Is America No Longer Exceptional? with Curtis Yarvin

Hey, everybody. It's the end of The Charlie Kirk Show.

Curtis Yarvin. Boy, he has radical ideas, I gotta tell you. You should listen to this entire episode. Super smart guy. I agree with part of it. Don't agree with all of it, but he articulates it really well.

Incredibly smart, and very, very analytical. Curtis Yarvin. Email us as always. Freedom at CharlieKirk.com. Become a member today at members.charliekirk.com. That is members.charliekirk.com. Email us as always. Freedom at CharlieKirk.com and get involved with Turning Point USA at TPUSA.com.

That is TPUSA.com. Curtis Yarvin joins us for quite a conversation and become a member today at members.charliekirk.com. Buckle up, everybody.

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Go to noblegoldinvestments.com. Last week, we had Christopher Rufo on the program, and Christopher Rufo launched a couple salvos against Curtis Yarvin that I thought was a little bit below the belt. And I didn't feel, you know, equipped to necessarily involve myself. I said, I said, Blake, get Curtis on the show. They had this viral debate on IM 1776, all about reform versus revolution. And Curtis Yarvin joins us now. Curtis, welcome back to the program. Curtis is the writer of The Gray Mirror. Curtis was on the program in person a couple weeks ago. So Curtis, kind of give us your observation, just like your analysis of your debate with Christopher Rufo. Well, first of all, I'd like to say I love Chris. I think he's a great guy. I think that, you know, someone once said loyalty is the most important political virtue and sort of the sense that Chris and I can disagree as effervescently as we do, and still be, you know, very friendly and really consider ourselves allies is too strong a term, because we're actually kind of doing different things.

But, but, you know, definitely that I can be friends with Chris, you know, friends, maybe that's a little too strong, but we're certainly not enemies, and it's really great. And so, you know, but the difference between us is essentially that he thinks he is leading people into what is the promised land, but is actually a box canyon. And I am leading them on a much longer, more difficult course to, you know, the real promised land, not not to be a cult leader or anything, but that's essentially the difference. And so I think that Chris is very well intentioned, but it's ultimately reality, which decides whether your plans have any chance of coming in any sense to fruition. And if reality is right, and you're wrong, you don't have the intent to be a sort of a grifter, but you are essentially a grifter. That's an objective question. It's not a question of intent.

And Chris's intent is, I repeat, absolutely the best. And I love the like PR he generates, like, I love it, you know, to see when this this or that, you know, bureaucratic hack is accused of falsifying their thesis. It's like the kind of early stage dissident in the USSR, who would be like, Oh, my God, state officials are corrupt. Oh, my God, the whole green program, the Karkov area has gone totally astray. We must have, you know, glasnost and perestroika or something, something, something.

And it's like, yeah, I guess. So let's take a step back here, Curtis. I want to just because our audience is not necessarily informed on every detail here. You guys had a debate.

What was the debate about? All right. And I want to roll this back.

I want to roll it back. I want to compliment you, Curtis. I thought you did very, very well. And I do sympathize with, you know, Chris on, you know, the aspirational idea of a free society. I thought you made some very good points of like, wait a second.

You're not thinking radical enough. Like, we're up against some huge forces. So let's let's wind the tape back. Let's wind the tape back, walk our audience through what transpired. Well, I think that that Chris's views on the American Republic as we have it are essentially evolutionary. I think he would say that politically, this country was essentially on the right track. The Republic, you know, the regime, if you will, was essentially on the right track from its brilliant founding in the Declaration of Independence to about basically the I think for most most conservatives, the point where everything went wrong is the the JFK assassination, actually, like, they still sort of revere Kennedy, and everyone before him in a kind of uniform and bipartisan way, apart from a few freaks, of course. But you know, then LBJ is definitely a lib and libs are bad. And and but if you're like, well, FDR was lib they'd be like, you know, so so there's a sense in which you basically see the kind of majestic history of the Republic as being completely on track until basically the childhood of most living boomers. And I would describe this as essentially sort of it's certainly the view of the world that as I, you know, became a conservative, I mean, I cried over Walter Mondale, losing the election in 1984.

I was very sad. But but but the like, he sees the world as being on the right track. And I'm basically like, no, actually, just because you think the period from 1963 to now is basically a myth of the mainstream media and academic history and all of that, right? You know, you're not questioning the reality of the whole period before it. And you're basically using the fact that in this myth, the train is on the track the whole time, to basically believe that the train was on the track the whole time. Well, if myths were true, all the children's books about Obama, you could buy in your local bookstore would also be totally true.

But some so so Curtis, but some myths have an essence of truth, and then a mythology grows around, you know, alongside of it. So you would agree the first half of the 20th century, America was pretty awesome. When did it start to go off track? Or do you say no, we went off track in this, you know, from the very beginning? Like, when would you say that we really diverted from our primary course?

I don't know that I believe in the concept of a primary course at all, Charlie. And that's sort of the problem is that there's this this essentially, you know, providential, and let's, you know, use some academic terminology, exceptional kind of theorizing about America. And the thing is, in the past, American exceptionalism that sort of came out of our national traditions, and so forth, was sort of very plausible, because America was such an exceptional nation. There was always an alternative theory, which was an exceptional nation, which was was was bound to result, if you gave an exceptional group of people, an exceptional country, an exceptional and largely empty country. And when we look at basically, do you know what the full name of the nation out to our south is, Charlie?

It's the United States of Mexico. They didn't get their political ideas from anywhere else. So they got them from here. And, you know, maybe a little bit of European ideas. But you know, if these principles were the thing that made once made America great, we can certainly agree that it was great in the 1930s. You know, if these were the principles that once made America great, then you would expect these principles to apply to Liberia and different to Liberia. No, that's right. I think your point is exactly right. Which is it is people plus principles. However, the principles are important because you can have great people like the people of Iran, and really bad government, and you get nothing. Right.

So I think you would acknowledge, maybe not that. Yes, of course, of course, of course, you can have very, you can have very bad government that will produce, you know, any any people can be governed badly. I think a better example might be the people of North Korea. I don't think are, you know, exactly like we don't need to go there.

Right. And so you can have bad government. But, you know, the question of what is good or bad government was a question that was considered, you know, long before the pilgrims landed, that is rooted sort of deep in historical tradition. And I essentially think that we need to basically abandon American exceptionalism entirely, and treat ourselves as a normal part of history. Because certainly, you know, if you looked at all the people who believed in American exceptionalism 100 years ago, and you basically told them that, you know, you said, Okay, we're doing an experiment, what would falsify the theory that America was this great and exceptional nation?

And I'm like, well, what about, you know, the country massively in debt, the street filled with trash and beggars, you know, robberies rampant in major cities, right? You know, and they'd be like, okay, but it doesn't work. We thought it worked.

It was just because we had this big NP country, just a coincidence. Let's move on. And so, you know, the thing is that, in a way, there's a kind of optimism in Chris Rufo, because he's like, we don't need to move on that we can make this work, we can make this work. And, you know, I think one of the most important concepts in political philosophy was developed about 130 years ago by the Italian political philosopher Gaetano Mosca. And Mosca said, you know, in Anglo American theology, we have the idea of like the consent of the government.

And Mosca rewords this in this sort of radically objective way. He says, every society has what he calls a political formula. And the political formula is basically the reason that the people believe that the people support whatever has power over them, because the minority, the ruling class will always rule over the ruling class, which is not to say that all governments are class rule. But in any case, you know, the classic example of a political formula is the Pharaoh is the son of the sun.

So basically, if you kill the Pharaoh, the sun will go out something something, therefore certain love and obey your Pharaoh. And these got sort of gradually more sophisticated until we sort of ended up with this 1930s political formula that essentially says the deep state is the voice of science of scientific government. And so so we have an entire administration and entire theory of government, which is not built around the idea that the Pharaoh is the son of the sun, but around the basically crazy 1930s, equally crazy 1930s idea that you can put science in charge of the government, or academia in charge of the government.

Yeah, and journalism in charge of the government. That's where we are. Okay, so basically, when you sort of think of like, this is where we are, and this is where we are in its fundamental and a deeper and longer way that the USSR was where we are, where it is. So the one basically, you know, and over time, this system was originally staffed by amazingly competent, creative people, really startup quality people in DC in the 1930s is run like a startup. That's the reason why we look back at the 1930s. And we see this like startup America, it was, that's how it worked. Right?

It was the same thing. And, and, and so amazing, amazing thing. And over time, and I had some delusions, I would say about the world, I'm by no means an unqualified endorser of FDR and the New Deal. But But these delusions over time kind of magnify and ossify and become like really stale and poisonous. And the people in the system gets worse and the bureaucracy gets worse and worse. And basically, you know, Kriff Rufoski is like, you know, Kristof Rufoski is coming out as a dissident saying like, the assistant farm commissioner in the Karkova region, you know, plagiarized her dissertation. I'm like, okay, yeah, but like, the problem isn't that the problem is that we basically, except for a few charmed locations, like, this country lives in an age of, and like, except for a few charmed locations, this world lives in an age of basically decay.

And like, you know, except for like China, which is nowhere I'd like to live. And, and so you're seeing this kind of rotting world, and then you're hearing this, like, triumphant voice of like, we're winning because we fired the assistant farm commissioner. Right? You know, whereas when you see a real regime change, a real change in government, everything changes. If you were doing if you were in West Germany, in East Germany in 1985, and in the unified Germany in 1995, your life is completely different. Everything you see is completely different.

Right? And and, you know, that's not as drastic as the regime change in Germany between 1944 and 1946. The great thing about the Allied regime change in Germany, in 1945, is that to be quite frank, it was done by the Libs.

So in a sense, you might be able to say anything they did then. Hey, everybody, Charlie Kirk here. What an unbelievable start to 2024. We had last month saving babies with preborn by providing ultrasounds. And we're doing again this year we did last year, we're going to stand for life because remaining silent in the face of the most radically pro death administration is not an option. As Sir Edmund Burke said, the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

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Click on the preborn banner. Curtis, you made such a good point last time. I want to emphasize that you mentioned it here, too, which is in the 1930s, you had people of high character, high IQ, high ambition that were working in these bureaucracies. You graduate from Harvard.

Here's the 30 million dollar budget. Go power the Tennessee Valley. Right. I mean, it was the best of America that went into the bureaucracies. Now it's not the best of America. And that was a terrible place to work. I mean, it's just it's a terrible place to work.

It's a terrible experience. Like there's still good people there. You know, my dad worked in the deep state. He was in the Foreign Service, you know, for his whole career after being a philosophy professor. Like this is a very, this is still it's not what it was in the 80s in his time. But like, it's still a very elite organization out there.

And I'll bet somebody out there from that organization is watching this in life. And and so but like what you what you're doing there is just like, it's like, BS upon BS. Nobody even knows why America has a foreign policy now. Like, what are we even doing?

Right? You know, just harvesting migrants and creating wars. As far as I can tell, it's it's like, you can at least say, I disagree with a lot of FDR's foreign policy choices.

But, you know, FDR wanted to conquer the world, he could conquer the world, he did conquer the world, like, you know, you can't really argue with a man for doing that. Right, you know, and, and what are these people even doing? So it's this horrible bureaucratic working environment. I think one thing that people really misunderstand when they look at DC, is they see that it's shaped like a private company. So they assume it must work like a private company. Actually, in a private company, people give you a mission, something to do and some resources to get it done and you get it done. In DC, everyone in the system up to the highest level is following a process.

They're following a procedure. They're supposed to be like scientists of public policy in a way and it just has degenerated into this like utterly high bound bureaucracy. And honestly, I'm not a libertarian government is an important and necessary thing. But if I had to create a government, would I start with these organs?

Absolutely not. So what what what Rufo would say to that originally is but like, we want to try to go back to course correct back to more of a founder's vision, where it was left to the states outside of the bureaucracies. What is your response to that not radical enough wrong premise from the beginning? Or do you say that you inevitably get those bureaucracies with the form the founders gave us?

Look, here's a simple example. If you look at the country as it is, and many Europeans, I love reading historical accounts of European travelers, but many Europeans are have a very simple question, which is, why do these the United States have 50 separate motorcycle motor vehicle administrations? And, and, you know, the only possible answer to this question is not functional, but historical. Now, if the states were truly the laboratories of democracy in this sense, and let's say there's kind of there's a Florida style of driving, an Alabama style of driving, they're slightly different. You know, people in Maine driving a totally different way.

Southern states don't even need to think about salting the roads, right? You can kind of justify this, but if you were creating it from scratch, what the hell, like, no way, like, why would you do that? Right, neat.

And so there's sort of all of these things in the structure that were so important. And why is that the case? Why was that a case of the case originally? Why did the all wise founders come up with that? Well, they lived in a world where the difference between Massachusetts and Virginia was like the difference was as great as like the difference between like, I don't know, Germany and Morocco today.

Right. So, you know, of course, this couldn't be treated as a single country. And, you know, and, and nor did anyone in the days of 76 really imagine it as a single country. And in some ways, the strongest point that was made in 1861, which I'm sure, you know, may be a contentious issue among some of your watchers. There's a great essay by Charles Francis Adams, Jr, who was like, well, the reality was that no, constitutionally, it wasn't he's an he's a northern writer. He's like, no, it's true that the Constitution never envisioned like amalgamating the country into a nation and like, coercing states that tried to leave. On the other hand, it had become a nation. And the thing is, however much it had become a nation, by 1861, they made it a national government.

They kept these forms of the states. But actually, my God, if you asked Silicon Valley to spin up a new National Motor Vehicle Administration in three months, they would do that. They could do that if you put enough money into Silicon Valley, and your days of like insane DMV hassles. Yes, would be over, because the new DMV would be run like Tesla.

And I don't see why it shouldn't be run like Tesla or why it can't be run like Tesla, because and I'm sure we don't want it to be run like Google. Great point. Well, this really emphasizes the difference between an executive branch and an administrative branch. What I always say is that we don't actually the basic problem with DC is that we don't actually have an executive branch, we have an administrative branch, which is essentially a creature of the legislative and the judicial branches. It's actually the executive presides over it, largely in name only, he still has a few responsibilities that are more than ceremonial. Think about it with the president spent a third of his day on photo ops, if he was really the CEO of the country, intuitively, we all know that the president is not the CEO of the country. But we've sort of like agreed to pretend in very similar way that the Englishman of agreed to pretend they have a king. No, actually, you don't.

And sorry, Englishman. Um, and, and so when you look at what the administrative branch actually is, it runs, as I said earlier, on the basis of process, there's a process for every and everyone from the frontline to like the National Security Council has a process for what they do, nothing is unstructured. And there is a hierarchy, but the hierarchy is a hierarchy of what in computer science we call exception handling. So if there's something that doesn't fit your process, you kick a pure boss, eventually, it ends up on the president's desk as a giant interagency conflict. So reacting, you know, when we talk about what the president does, we say he makes decisions. Okay, that's exactly what he's doing.

He's he's a purely reactive official. And what are happening is exceptions that the bureaucracy can't handle are winding up on his desk, and there's a vast torrent of them. And the country would not be really substantively any different if the way he checked these boxes on his desk was to roll the dice. And and so actually, when you when you vote for the person who gets to sit on top of this, your attention is being to disguise to the fact that from the fact that your democratic power has been essentially eliminated, because the only election that people care about, and the only election that even works like the Congress, the I mean, with its 98% incumbency rate, right, the only election that actually works is the presidential election. So if the president doesn't have any power, you've been systematically disempowered.

They didn't, you know, hack the voting machines that just cut the wires leading out of the voting machines. And this was done before you were born. So that's a very bitter pill, I think, for some patriotic Americans to swallow that they really have to choose the country above their government.

No, and I want to just zero in on this. And this I think is one of your strongest points that we actually do not have an executive branch. We have some we do not have an executive branch. Well, we might have an executive, I guess there's an administrative state that calls itself an executive branch with like a, a ribbon cutting pageantry placeholder that calls himself the president.

And when did that change? You said post FDR, but Nixon tried to get it back, did he not? Nixon? Yes, yes.

So I'll let me let me go through this. Yes, it's not an executive branch. You know, it's an administrative branch in very much the same sense, the snake that ate your sister is not your sister. And however, but the same size, you know, and, and the the and and this is again, so they're like, that's a difficult truth that because for a lot of time, you've been, you're putting a lot of time humoring into humoring the snake on the assumption that she's your sister, right? This has already cost you a lot.

There's a lot of sunk costs fallacy and like, you know, thermal lamps and so forth. But but the, you know, there are even more disturbing, difficult and unpleasant truths underneath this. And the more difficult truth is that basically, at the start of the 20th century, power was taken away from politicians by this class of sort of meritocratic oligarchs by, you know, essentially, you know, by people like Charles Francis Adams, who I mentioned earlier, who were sort of American aristocrats educated on the continent, and they were just embarrassed by American politicians. They considered it ridiculous that New York City, one of the greatest cities on earth should be in the hands of this corrupt Irish political machine, you know, Tammany Hall. And and so, you know, all around, you remember, like the urban like good government movements, the early early progressives before it meant communist, a progressive before 1930 does not necessarily mean communist. And sorry to shock you with that. And, and, you know, and then you have great progressives like like Teddy Roosevelt, for instance, who is in, you know, would absolutely abhor the condition of the country today.

So basically, these kind of natural elites, you know, kind of surged forward and took over the government and they blended a hereditary elite with a selected elite. Most emergencies come without warning. And when the next one comes, you won't have a second to spare on packing and preparing.

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All right. So where I left off, we're back in the first half, really the start of the 20th century, when you have these rising institutions, essentially the universities and the university class, which is America's like, you know, it's old enough that it has a hereditary elite. It also learns this great trick of selecting really smart people with standardized tests. So a lot of like very Jews from very humble classes join this system and it creates this, don't get me wrong, you know, the culture that's created is, is, is, is an Anglo culture, not a Jewish culture. You know, the Jews who go to Yale start calling themselves Irving, you know, the Jews, the wasps at Yale don't call themselves moisture, you know, but, but it creates this amazing, amazing meritocratic ruling class, amazing administrative class, you know, the universities, despite all of this sort of ridiculous race stuff still, you know, select a very good crop of people.

And these were just very, very powerful systems. And they created this oligarchic elite. Meanwhile, the American Republic that Chris Rufo so loves, is like this dying corrupt thing. It's like these politicians, you know, they're all it's like, you know, if you look at sort of lib history of like the Gilded Age, as they call it, which is really the last period in which the country is really governed by elected politicians, like Lincoln is really in charge. There's no deep state telling Lincoln what to do.

Right, you know, and there isn't really also a deep state telling like McKinley what to do, but there's kind of starting to be. So you see these sort of early wise men like L. Hugh Root, you know, and so that force and the truth, the really unpleasant truth is that why did oligarchy built beat democracy in America? You know, why did this new class come to power over the elected politicians and cut the wires coming out from democracy? And the answer is it was just stronger and better.

Like these people had 20 or 30 IQ points on the elected politicians, they weren't corrupt at all. They were like amazing people. And so it was just natural that these amazing people would take over the system. But that was then.

And this is now so and so they created this. Yeah, go on, go on, go on. I want to get back to the Google question. The Google question. Why don't you Why don't you hit that before we because I Okay, so you basically said, here's the problem with creating a new executive branch. First of all, or let me talk about creating a new executive branch.

And I'll get to the Google the Google problem. So an executive organization like like a startup, like any functional company, like any functional military runs from the top down, it's it's runs on what the US military calls mission orders. Everyone at every rank at every level has a mission to perform resources, people and money to do it with. And they don't get micromanaged the whole point of like, whereas like the idea of using talking about micromanagement in the US government, it's like talking about speeding at the Indy 500.

It's talking about speeding on the Elon Musk Starship. Right, you know, everything is micromanagement there. Because, you know, there's this constant sort of concern for accountability pervading the whole thing, which again, came in to get rid of the like corrupt, you know, politicians and their patronage jobs, which was the old system of 1890s.

Right. So and by the way, one date that most of your viewers probably don't know that should is 1980. Because in 1980, on the way out, the first act of like woke race warfare warfare against the USG was taken. President Carter, I think basically by suing himself eliminated competitive examinations for the US Civil Service.

Only the Foreign Service still has them. So the whole bedrock basis of 20th century bureaucratic meritocracy is just being shredded up and thrown in the toilet by an expiring administration. And then Reagan couldn't reverse it.

So much for that revolution. Right. So, so, you know, anyway, in any case, when you have an organization that runs by mission orders, it's actually run from the top down. I would say, especially if the President is someone like Donald Trump, he should be more the chairman of the board than the CEO. Yes. But maybe he could choose Vivek and Vivek could be the CEO.

I think that's I think it's a great idea. He at least did the job. Right. But the thing is, when Vivek hires the Google employees, when Vivek hires the Googlers, who are all libs, it doesn't matter. Because basically, if it's executive, it's run from the top down. Nobody gets to run the company from the bottom up. Nobody gets to send policy from the front lines. Personnel is no longer policy in an executive organization. And that means that a new regime can tap into the full administrative talent of this country, even though it's 85% lib. Okay, so let's, that's a great segue. Donald Trump becomes president.

He's chairman of the board of Vivek does. You're saying that this is, is it possible to use the current oligarchy for good purposes? Is that your argument that this action?

No, no, it's absolutely it's, it's out. It's like, if you are actually trying to do anything serious in Washington, you realize quickly that there's a, you know, first of all, you know, the concern I have with the Trump administration is essentially, if you look at Donald Trump, you notice one fact, which all Americans can agree on, is if elected, is not eligible for reelection. What incentives will that place on Donald Trump? Actually, just this week, we saw that Donald helped organize the new Ukraine bill. I think that that I don't know who, you know, the Trump, you know, office is a complicated place.

I don't know which faction that came out of their apparently many factions. You know, I mean, I thought Trump did good things and bad things, like many people in this ridiculous job. But the incentives on Trump to basically conform and become and become a rhino, were essentially are essentially magnified at this point. And so when we look at whether he can cut against the grain or back toward the grain, that's basically as did Nixon and Reagan legitimizing and basically making bipartisan many things that had previously been liberal and even extreme liberal causes. That will be the incentive on him. And at that point, knowing that incentive objectively, any predictions for his regime, any regime for his administration have to rely on his personal honor and honesty.

And I'm like, well, let's I hope so. Let's then let's detrumpify the conversation. Just say president.

Let's detrumpify the con. Vivek Vivek. Yeah, or President A or President Vivek. You have some creative. Let's go with we didn't get to this the last time, which is Curtis's ideas for electrifying the executive branch in the best possible way of trying to invigorate the country.

What ideas, policies, what can be done, if anything? So so so let's say President Vivek, let's to make this practical. Let's say the Donald Trump, you know, achieves a mighty victory and then passes away, sadly, or even is assassinated by deranged animal rights activist, which would be very sad.

And and because he truly is a great man. And, and, and, and we would have a President Vivek. And what would Vivek do? Well, Vivek would essentially be in a position, he needs to essentially assume the mandate that essentially is the same, roughly the same mandate that FDR assumed in 1933. I do a fun, dramatic reading of the last 10 paragraphs of that speech. It's great speech. And he basically demands the power of a general resisting an enemy invasion.

I think Vivek has to go a little farther than that. I think he has to assume the essentially the powers of Allied military administration in Germany. I think that's the closest historical connection. And the way to essentially, you know, and and and you're basically your first thought of like, wow, that's roughly 100,000 times more power than the president currently has. And what you have to realize when you think that is, this is true, but also, the political will on your side is much, much weaker. The people didn't have the political will to keep ruling. That's why they lost control to the bureaucrats. They actually just didn't care enough.

They're like a weak king. And and the the like, that's just that's a really sad and bitter truth. But there are not enough people who care enough to keep America a democracy. Therefore, America has to evolve in a different direction.

I don't make the rules. In any case, President Vivek comes in and he's basically like, okay, the first his first task is actually to perform what they call in South American oracle. So like President Fujimori in Peru, for example, or FDR in 1933 comes close to this, not quite there.

But he essentially, you know, he was sort of stopped in the 30s by the Supreme Court close to that. And so okay, you're essentially when you do that, you're essentially treating Washington the way the bankruptcy reorganizer treated the ruins of FTX. Okay, the idea of like anyone in previous management having any control over this thing is as ridiculous as putting Sam Bankman Fried back in charge of the FTX. On the other hand, it's this gigantic, enormous thing with tons of money and assets employees, and it's like 10,000 times bigger than FTX.

So you're basically in the position of a bankruptcy administrator. Or, you know, if you prefer FDR said the enemy, the general resisting an enemy invasion, I would say the general of an enemy invasion. So So basically, that's the level of power he needs. So you said something about Germany, I just want to make sure I'm clear. What did what do you mean by that? I mean, the allied I mean, the denazification of Yeah, okay, that's what I see. That's an excellent word sitting right there. Denazification. I hate the word woke. But we can easily go from dewoke of denazification to dewoke of vacation.

I think it's so hard. And what you're saying is the you know, this is an Eisenhower type. I am in charge of the Supreme Allied command.

Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was done by it was a Lucius Clay was in charge in Germany, actually, was done at a lower level. Really, if I had to choose, I think the occupation of Germany was had some excessive rancor in it, I would choose MacArthur's operation in Japan. But once again, there's nothing left of Imperial Japan.

Right. And so, for example, you know, in the fall of 1945, in Germany, kids are going to school. Are they learning from Nazi textbooks? No, they are not they are not because those people work hard and they could get that done. They get that job done in the summer.

Children are going to school and it is no longer Nazi school. We have to, okay, I've never heard anyone say denazification. We have that's what we have to do. We have to purge out this entire wasteland of crap. Is that correct? Yeah, yeah, it's a it's the end.

It's the complete end of an era. And the thing is, and here's the thing about like, especially all this insane like race crap, right? In the spring of 1945, in January, in New Year's Day, 1945, everyone in Germany is a Nazi. They're not just pretending to be Nazis. Oh, no, after enough of that time, they generally are Nazis. And like, and even if they're anti Nazis, they actually have a lot of Nazi ideas in their heads. And that's how powerful modern propaganda is.

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That is my pillow dot com. Promo code Kirk. Policy. What can what can a President A or President Vivek or whatever sign an executive order? Are you talking about just we need to purge entire cabinets? We need to, you know, remove the entire infrastructure that exists.

How would you lead us forward? What is the no it's it's it's much it's much stronger than that because essentially when you're erasing remember I said that you know if you read one of the great things about the Constitution is that it doesn't specify the precedence of the branches. And so in Marbury versus Madison as every American high school student knows the Supreme Court just kind of seizes command. And it's Marbury versus Madison is a coup. In fact the Constitution itself is a coup right.

Any change in regime. The Articles of Confederation never embellished themselves right. And and they're they're you know and and so what you're essentially doing what the new president is doing in terms of the Constitution because as FDR says in his his first inaugural that's kind of the genius of the Constitution is that it leaves things unspecified and that allows for change. Actually, each of the three branches has been supreme during the history of the US because there's a brief period when the country is run by Thaddeus Stevens out of the Senate. And so what you're doing has to be understood within that framework. And within that framework, what you're saying is that the power of the president has been usurped by the other two branches and has essentially been negated. And more than that, the only way to redeem this wrong, this essentially like sort of crime of like stealing democracy while everyone still believes in it, which is just an incredible frickin thing to do, to be honest, and might be excusable if you're doing it well, might have been excusable when it was being done well, but now that is no longer being done well, it stinks from the end to end. And what you're saying is that in order to replace it, you can't replace it by making the branches equal in some sense.

That just doesn't work. You know, you actually have to say, no, what we call law is itself a mistake, because what the executive branch does the whole process, the whole fabric of the deep state is absolutely compelled by law and where it's not compelled by law, it's compelled by courts. Those are the other two branches. If anyone can imagine a way of restoring a balance between these branches, from the present, you know, supremacy of the of the legislative and judicial branches, I simply cannot imagine it as a real thing in any way on this earth. What I can imagine is restoring this balance by reserving absolute power to the chief executive. So in order to remedy this sort of great imbalance, or this this usurpation of the legislative and judicial branches over the executive branch, which has become the democratic branch with a small D, and thus has been rendered utterly toothless in the sense that the president himself has power over the government, the only remedy for this wrong is to put the president entirely in charge of the government. And that essentially means that the executive branch far from being checked and balanced in a way that does not work and has left the executive branch not checked and balanced, but simply hogtied and held hostage is to render the executive branch completely unilateral. And when I when I talk about a completely unilateral presidency, I mean, a president, President Vivek, let's say, let's hang this on poor Vivek, a president Vivek, who, in his inauguration speech, declares a state of emergency. By the end of the day, he has unilateral control over both the security system and the financial system. He can print his own money at the Fed. He can issue orders to local police. He of course commands as his constitutional right, the military. By next Tuesday, every cop in the country is wearing a red armband, which shows that he is under the direct command of the president. And so, of course, not only does the president control the... Curtis, I gotta interrupt. Are we are we you're talking about nationalizing the US police force? Yes, absolutely.

Absolutely. As is done, that's done in a state of emergency. And basically, and basically, the reason you do this, the reason you do this is very, very simple is that if you if you don't, you either get a complete fizzle or a civil war. So you're basically saying, for example, to Boston, okay, Boston, we know you voted for Biden, actually Vivek is the president. Because otherwise, Boston will basically be like, no, we are the real republic. We're obeying the law.

And all of those Boston cops who probably all voted for Trump will be basically obeying orders, trying to set up a competing government. And essentially, if you do anything more interesting, like all of the latitude for any course between that course, and the course of just being another rhino cock is vanishing. It basically doesn't exist. Do you pretend it exists is kind of a grift. So Curtis, I don't want to get into a debate. I don't think I agree with that. But I want to ask you, I'm sorry. No, it's okay.

No, it's great. Do you have any concern that that sort of power will just obviously be abused and you get a really bad leader? And all checks and balances are gone. And you have people goose stepping. If you're swimming, if you're Leonardo DiCaprio, and you're swimming in the icy wreckage of the Titanic, and a lifeboat comes by to pick you up. Is it possible that the lifeboat could sink? Yes, it's very possible that the lifeboat could sink. Lifeboats sink all the time.

This one was probably damaged by the iceberg. Okay, fine. So yes, it's dangerous.

Where we are is not dangerous. It is that, you know, it is actually a descent into the third world is certain. And I want to leave, like you guys, I know time is limited, I'd sort of want to respond to Rufo's myth and your implicit myth of a nation on course.

Oh, I don't know. As it were, I am attached to the myth, though, I agree. A nation with a course. No, again, a nation, an exceptional nation, which has a providential course, this piece of American history that's really dates to the 17th century and the Puritans. But the 17th century and the Puritans, and basically every kind of generation before the modern one, were also educated in the studies of antiquity. And they also had had another model in mind, which is the rise and fall of Rome. And so when you look at the rise and fall of Rome, and of course, larping the Roman Republic was something the founders all did. And they were all confident that by doing it right, they could prevent the decline of their civilization, which was very similar in some ways to the Roman Republic, with its very strong and virtuous aristocracy, they could prevent the decline of their society into the society of the Roman Empire.

And they would immediately recognize our society as resembling that of the Roman Empire. But Curtis, you must acknowledge that the attachment to a free society that once existed, that I have, is admirable. And that's a thing that plays to our higher parts. And when people here, just to be perfectly honest with you, because I have great respect, we have police officers, the red armbands, that terrifies people. It terrifies people. And the thing is, the fact that it terrifies people should basically, remember I spoke of political formulas earlier, I would basically say that anything that leads you to be terrified of any replacement of the regime is a political formula. And it is a way of saying, you know, and so, for example, Rufo really thinks he's he's an opponent of the powers that be.

Actually, what he's saying is tremendously supportive of the powers that be because he's saying, without any evidence at all, that these institutions can change in a way that makes them work, which is like saying, like, you know, every marriage has a formula to it's like saying my like, crack smoking, triple amputee wife could stop smoking crack and get her arms and legs back. Right. Okay, sure, maybe right.

But you know, like, medical science done great things, right. But like, I don't see a realistic way to go from basically, I love Chris, but this kind of strategy of media hits, right to actually, you know, performing this kind of serious operation. Moreover, when I basically think about how to perform this kind of serious operation, yes, it ends with all the cops wearing red armbands.

And the you know, even worse, it might be all the cops who support Trump are the only ones who wear red armbands. Right. And and the thing is that if you move very smoothly and decisively along that path, and you skip straight to a winning strategy, you're you escalate before your your opponent escalates. And it is always the mistake of basically conservatives that because they think there is a course and because they think they are on the right course, they escalate basically, much too slowly, and they wind up doing half measures, which either don't work or actually cause the explosion that they're afraid of. Whereas if you're actually worried about this, you know, sort of solution going wrong, sure, it's it's surgery in a way surgery can go wrong. surgery should also be completely nonviolent. Well, and if it's done, just interrupt, though, but we have to make sure we're operating on the right organ and using general anesthesia, right? Because I think you would acknowledge we, some of these ideas you're proposing are radical.

Some are really interesting that I support the red armband thing, not so much. But, um, is that it could always get worse. You acknowledge that, right, Curtis, it could. Yes, it could, because things are bad now.

We're still having a dialogue, right? We're built, you know, we so so so yeah, I would say, you know, again, let's go back to this knowledge of like a predefined course, or destiny of history. It's, if you're actually worried about this going wrong, think about how to do it right.

And actually, what you think about when you think about how to do it right, is you realize that you're creating something that is not going to happen. Something that's much more like the fall of East Germany, it's a completely smooth and peaceful collapse. The thing is, the way to really do this badly, is to basically be forced into it without a plan. And what will happen, supposing Donald Trump doesn't take the direction of rhinoing which it is, he gets elected, he doesn't rhino out, which is absolutely his incentive to do so. He'll grow in office, he'll become an adult, he'll be like a respected, if eccentric, you know, he'll just basically sign whatever's put in front of him. That's what Arnold Schwarzenegger did when he was the governor of California, right? And if he doesn't take that direction, if he's just like, oh, actually, this is my last chance to do something real on Earth. Then, like, I'm going to take a different direction. And I'm going to take a different direction. And I'm going to actually go against the deep state.

And what he is going to find when he tries to go against the deep state, or at least following it, or at least follow is that it's going to be revved up to attack him in a way that makes his previous term look like George W. Bush's honeymoon with the press, which itself was shocking to even people who remember the Reagan administration. And, and he's going to be met with this incredible full court press of lawfare. And this regime has already discarded all standards of law. When it comes to lawfare, the stuff that's being done is just absolutely ridiculous cargo cult law worthy of Liberia. This is the way they would prosecute the opposition presidential candidate in Liberia. And just so everyone knows, as we close it out, Liberia has a similar constitution, literally an American flag. Their capital is Monrovia. We founded library, Liberia. And yeah, and look at the and look at the place now.

And and now it's run by our State Department and look at it now. Right. And so so you're basically looking at the situation where he just has to keep doubling his only remedy in the face of this attack is to keep doubling down, or just completely cave. Moreover, he doesn't have any kind of roadmap, any kind of plan, he has no idea what to do if he needs to keep doubling down. And if he actually the regime was so scared in November 1916 2016, you know, they really thought that he cared as much about power as they did. And they knew that they had no defenses, and he could just drive right over them.

And he didn't. And this time, it would be a lot harder. And it would really take a real plan. But the thing is, the idea that there's anything between a real plan, or just cucking is like, steadily becoming completely inadmissible. And so yeah, it's time to think in terms of police officers with armbands, because you know what I'd rather have police office with officers with armbands rather than police officers shooting each other.

Curtis Yarvin. And so everybody, we got to run. I don't see it that way. But I agree with a lot of what you said, Curtis. And you always you bring your argument super well. Always interesting, very fascinating. Curtis, thanks so much. Thank you so much, Charlie. Bye. Thanks so much for listening, everybody. Email us as always freedom at charliekirk.com. Thanks so much for listening and God bless.