Consequential Actions Podcast

Jeff Kellick

Our standard is simple: we evaluate every policy, every leader, every turning point by asking the founders’ question updated for our time—Did this leave people more free or more governed?

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S5 · E19
Thursday · 1 hr 6 min
Kevin Gutzman on James Madison and the Constitution
Kevin Gutzman on James Madison and the Constitution At twenty-five, James Madison moved the Virginia Convention past mere toleration to "the free exercise of religion." Eleven years later, he went to Philadelphia to ask for a veto over every law of every state — and came home with a federal union instead. Historian Kevin Gutzman calls Madison not the father of the Constitution but its unhappy stepfather. Week 19 of Self-Evident: The Road to 1776 closes with a living voice. The companion piece is Article 19, "The Convention: From a League of Friendship to We the People." Kevin R. C. Gutzman is a New York Times best-selling author and professor of history at Western Connecticut State University. He holds a J.D. from the University of Texas School of Law and a Ph.D. in history from the University of Virginia. His books include James Madison and the Making of America, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution, Thomas Jefferson — Revolutionary, and The Jeffersonians. Professor Gutzman traces Madison from Witherspoon's Princeton to the research on past confederacies behind the Virginia Plan, and explains why Edmund Randolph presented it and how Madison brought George Washington to Philadelphia. Then comes the question Jeff has gone back and forth on for weeks: is the federal courts' use of the Bill of Rights against the states Madison's veto, delivered at last? Professor Gutzman calls that idea "an affront to Madison" and the incorporation doctrine "groundless." The question underneath all of it: did this leave Americans more free, or more governed? ⏱️ CHAPTERS 0:00:00 — Madison, free exercise and the veto he wanted 0:02:22 — Kevin Gutzman on the Constitution's "unhappy stepfather" 0:03:41 — Witherspoon's Princeton and the jailed Baptist preachers 0:07:40 — From toleration to free exercise in Virginia, 1776 0:09:47 — Madison's research on past confederacies 0:14:12 — The Virginia Plan and what Madison wanted 0:15:43 — Roger Sherman and the Connecticut terms 0:17:07 — Why Edmund Randolph presented Madison's plan 0:17:50 — What if Madison's plan had passed? 0:20:27 — A negative "in all cases whatsoever" 0:23:08 — Mount Vernon, Annapolis and the call to Philadelphia 0:24:58 — Getting Washington to the Convention 0:27:11 — The Seventeenth Amendment and the states' voice 0:28:49 — Partly national, partly federal 0:31:24 — When a state abuses the individual 0:35:00 — The Politically Incorrect Guide and how lawyers are trained 0:36:18 — Revise the Articles, or replace them? 0:38:27 — What the ratifiers were told 0:40:23 — Inside the Virginia Ratifying Convention 0:41:15 — Hamilton's bank and the enumerated powers 0:42:15 — Georgia and the pressures inside each state 0:44:10 — A Bill of Rights against every government? 0:47:45 — Is incorporation Madison's negative at last? 0:50:36 — Judges as policymakers 0:55:21 — John Bingham and the Fourteenth Amendment 0:56:45 — Where is individual liberty protected? 0:59:12 — Gutzman's last word on Madison 1:00:51 — Closing: the Liberty Test 📚 Article 19: https://www.consequentialactions.com/post/the-convention-from-a-league-of-friendship-to-we-the-people 📚 Subscribe free: https://www.consequentialactions.com/subscribe 📚 Kevin Gutzman: https://kevingutzman.com/ 📚 Professor Gutzman at WCSU: https://www.wcsu.edu/history/faculty/kevin-gutzman/ 📚 Kevin Gutzman's books: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B001JP0Z0A 📚 Raoul Berger, Government by Judiciary: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0865971447 🎙️ Self-Evident: The Road to 1776 — Episode 19i Next: Episode 20, "The Loyal Opposition" — Saturday, November 7. — Consequential Actions is a libertarian, non-interventionist analysis of American constitutional and foreign policy. New episodes weekly. 🌐 https://www.consequentialactions.com #jamesmadison #kevingutzman #constitution #billofrights #fourteenthamendment #federalism #selfevident
S19 · E5
Tuesday · 38 min
Not a Red Line but a Lever: Who Decides Who Governs Europe?
The Federalist Papers and the European Union: Who Decides Who Governs? On the night of October 30, riot police lined the street outside Poland's Constitutional Tribunal in Warsaw. One of the tribunal's own judges had suspended its president and his deputy, Poland's president had turned his plane around to confront the judges, and the government pointed to a ruling from the Court of Justice of the European Union that the tribunal is not an independent and impartial court. Both sides said they were defending the constitution. On Election Day, as Americans vote in a union of fifty states that has held for more than two centuries, the question is what that union's builders feared. In 1787 the answer was Europe: a continent of rival sovereignties, standing armies and endless war. Hamilton warned in Federalist No. 8 that a people made more safe "become willing to run the risk of being less free." The history behind it is in Saturday's Episode 19, "The Convention," and in Article 19 of the written series, free with every source in its endnotes. Since 1950, Europe has built its union by a road the Americans never had to take: coal and steel, a common market, a common court, a common currency, each step a treaty among sovereign governments. Voters did not always agree; much of the constitutional treaty France and the Netherlands rejected in 2005 returned in the Treaty of Lisbon, ratified by parliaments. Since 2020 the union has added powers over money, through joint borrowing and rule-of-law conditions on funds, and over elections and information, through the European Democracy Shield. The Commission's case begins with Russian interference. Its critics answer that more of the decision about who governs a nation is being made outside that nation's voting booths. Seven countries from an October 30 post on X are sorted by two questions: who decided who could govern, and was it the nation, the union, or both? Romania's constitutional court annulled an election on intelligence whose evidence was never tested in open court. Hungary's new two-thirds majority amended a constitution the old majority wrote in 2011, with a term limit counted back to 1990 that bars Viktor Orbán for life, and frozen EU funds followed the reforms. Poland's tribunal is contested by both sides. In Germany, France, Spain and Britain the decisions were national, and Marine Le Pen remains free to run in 2027 with one more appeal pending; Spain does not fit the pattern at all. Three objections follow at full strength, and so does the liberty movement's own failure. Did this leave us more free, or more governed? ⏱️ CHAPTERS 0:00 — Election Day, and riot police at Poland's Constitutional Tribunal 6:12 — What the American union was for: Jay and Hamilton on a divided continent 12:45 — A union built the other way: treaties, referendums and conditional money 19:21 — Seven countries, sorted 30:15 — Three objections and the Liberty Test 📚 Article 19, "The Convention: From a League of Friendship to We the People": https://www.consequentialactions.com/post/the-convention-from-a-league-of-friendship-to-we-the-people 📚 Subscribe free: https://www.consequentialactions.com/subscribe 🎙️ Consequential Actions · Self-Evident: The Road to 1776 · Episode 19B Next: Saturday, November 7 — Episode 20, "The Loyal Opposition," and the Americans who warned that the Federalists' union would consolidate the states the way Europe's empires had. — Consequential Actions is a libertarian, non-interventionist analysis of American constitutional and foreign policy. New episodes weekly. 🌐 https://www.consequentialactions.com #SelfEvident #FederalistPapers #EuropeanUnion #Constitution #Libertarian
S5 · E19
Sunday · 58 min
From a League of Friendship to We the People: The Constitutional Convention of 1787
From a League of Friendship to We the People: The Constitutional Convention of 1787 Philadelphia, Monday, July 2, 1787. The states answer one motion in turn, an equal vote for every state in the second branch of the new legislature, and the tally comes back five to five, with Georgia divided. Roger Sherman of Connecticut names what the vote has shown: "We are now at a full stop." James Madison went to Philadelphia asking for a national veto over every law of every state, "in all cases whatsoever," the same words Parliament had used to claim its power over the colonies. He came home with a federal union. The companion article is free, with every source in its endnotes, and a new one arrives every Sunday. Under the Articles of Confederation, Congress could make war and borrow money, but it could not lay a tax, and nothing in the Articles could change without every state's consent. After Shays's Rebellion, a convention met in May 1787 "for the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation." What it proposed was a new government: a House apportioned mainly by population, a Senate in which the states were equal, a list of the powers Congress would have, ratification by conventions chosen by the people, and, in place of Madison's veto, federal law made supreme over conflicting state law, binding the state judges. The Great Compromise passed by the margin of a single state. The delegates' own words carry the story, from Washington's "Influence is no government" to Franklin's rising sun on September 17, when thirty-nine men signed and three refused, by way of the three clauses that accommodated and protected slaveholding interests. The Skeptic's Case takes up Charles Beard, the charge of usurpation, and the reliability of Madison's own notes. Companion to Article 19, published October 25, 2026. Was the Confederation's inability to tax a failure of government, or a protection of liberty? And did the Constitution leave Americans more free, or more governed? ⏱️ CHAPTERS 0:00 — Cold Open: A Full Stop, July 2, 1787 2:21 — How a League Became a Government 5:10 — A Firm League of Friendship 7:46 — A Congress That Could Not Tax 8:41 — Was the Confederation a Failure? 10:33 — Shays's Rebellion 13:09 — Annapolis and the Call to Philadelphia 13:51 — Madison's Remedy: A Veto Over the States 16:01 — Behind Closed Doors 18:49 — Enlarge the Sphere 19:45 — Madison Tries for the Veto 21:26 — Conclude Nothing, Propose Anything 22:43 — Hamilton's British Model 23:34 — The Great Compromise 26:40 — The Bargain Stands 27:41 — Federal Law Made Supreme 28:27 — One Executive or Three 30:39 — Consent Across a Continent 32:27 — Limits That Hold Against a Majority 34:11 — What Was on the Delegates' Bookshelf 36:34 — The Honest Reckoning: Three-Fifths 41:44 — The Slave Trade Bargain 44:48 — The Fugitive Clause 46:54 — The Skeptic's Case: Was It About Money? 48:19 — The Skeptic's Case: A Usurpation? 49:58 — The Skeptic's Case: Madison's Notes 51:10 — The Liberty Test 52:18 — September 17, 1787: The Signing 55:10 — "A Republic, If You Can Keep It" 55:47 — What Came Out of the Room 📚 Article 19, "The Convention": https://www.consequentialactions.com/post/the-convention-from-a-league-of-friendship-to-we-the-people 📚 Every article, free each Sunday: https://www.consequentialactions.com/subscribe 🎙️ Self-Evident: The Road to 1776 — Episode 19: "The Convention" | Consequential Actions Podcast Next: Episode 19B, Tuesday, November 3, carries the Convention's argument into our own time. Episode 20, "The Loyal Opposition," Saturday, November 7. — Consequential Actions is a libertarian, non-interventionist analysis of American constitutional and foreign policy. New episodes weekly. 🌐 https://www.consequentialactions.com #selfevident #constitutionalconvention #usconstitution #jamesmadison #articlesofconfederation #greatcompromise #foundingfathers #americanhistory #libertarian #consequentialactions
S5 · E18
October 29 · 1 hr 11 min
Chris Gambino, Independent for PA House District 143 | Closed Primaries
Chris Gambino, Independent for PA House District 143 | Closed Primaries In some Bucks County homes, a husband and wife register in opposite parties before every primary. They do not disagree: in Pennsylvania only party members may vote in a party's primary, and where one party is sure to win, the primary decides the seat. More than one Pennsylvania voter in eight belongs to neither party. Chris Gambino, an independent candidate for the Pennsylvania House in the 143rd District, reached the November 3 ballot by petition. Five days out, Jeff Kellick asks what a citizen can ask of a system that also decides whether his name goes on the ballot. The interview episode for Week 18, closing the week of Saturday's Episode 18, "The Revolutionary Argument," and Article 18, published October 18. In 1765 the ministry told the colonists that a man without a vote could still be virtually represented. Chris Gambino is a scientist with a doctorate in animal sciences and a former professor, and works as a senior monitoring, evaluation and learning officer at a national foundation. His nomination papers were challenged, and the Commonwealth Court and then the Pennsylvania Supreme Court kept him on the ballot. They cover the challenge to his petitions, open primaries and who pays for closed ones, redistricting, an independent in a closely divided House, and pricing crop insurance to a farm's risk. Afterward, Jeff weighs California Democratic Party v. Jones (2000) against Tashjian v. Republican Party of Connecticut (1986) and House Bill 280, which passed the state House on September 29. The question underneath all of it: did this leave Americans more free, or more governed? ⏱️ CHAPTERS 0:00:00 — The split household 0:01:15 — Week 18: from asking to stopping asking 0:03:34 — Petitions, 1765 to 2026, and introducing Chris Gambino 0:05:38 — Reaching the ballot by petition 0:08:52 — The challenge to his nomination papers 0:12:40 — A list of grievances for Harrisburg 0:13:55 — Who pays for the primary 0:14:50 — Ballot access and the signature gap 0:15:44 — Gerrymandering and independent districts 0:18:02 — Party loyalty and accountability 0:23:13 — Virtual representation in 1765 0:25:21 — Is a voter with no party represented? 0:29:18 — Splitting registrations across the kitchen table 0:32:02 — Closed and open primaries explained 0:34:22 — The club-membership argument 0:35:00 — Who does a party legislator owe? 0:38:38 — An independent in a divided House 0:41:05 — Committee seats and Pennsylvania agriculture 0:42:14 — Two of everything in Harrisburg 0:43:20 — Aligning farm production with environmental outcomes 0:47:17 — Pricing crop insurance to risk 0:49:47 — Working lands and food security 0:51:18 — A Speaker vote that comes down to one member 0:54:20 — Education, outcomes and humility 0:56:43 — Lessons from the wrestling mat 1:02:00 — Where to find the campaign 1:04:47 — Voting as an affirmative act 1:05:25 — Dulany's test, turned around 1:06:29 — Crop insurance and the subsidy 1:07:18 — The Liberty Test: who pays for a closed primary? 1:10:22 — Next: Episode 19, "The Convention" 📚 Article 18, "The Revolutionary Argument," free with every source in its endnotes: https://www.consequentialactions.com/post/the-revolutionary-argument-from-the-rights-of-englishmen-to-the-laws-of-nature 🗳️ Chris Gambino's campaign, with his policies: https://gambinoforpa.com The wrestling ad he mentions is on his About page: https://gambinoforpa.com/about-chris 🎙️ Self-Evident: The Road to 1776 — Episode 18i: Chris Gambino Next: Episode 19, "The Convention," Saturday, October 31. — Consequential Actions is a libertarian, non-interventionist analysis of American constitutional and foreign policy. New episodes weekly. 🌐 https://www.consequentialactions.com #pennsylvania #openprimaries #closedprimaries #independent #ballotaccess #buckscounty #statehouse #libertarian #selfevident #consequentialactions
S5 · E18
October 27 · 46 min
In All Cases Whatsoever: The Case Against Nationalizing SpaceX
Starlink, Ukraine and the Call to Nationalize SpaceX | Youngstown v. Sawyer In October, the satellite link guiding Ukraine's drones began dropping out above about 100 miles per hour, and no one would own the decision. Elon Musk wrote that the U.S. military and ultimately the President decide the limits on Starshield; Secretary of State Marco Rubio said no one at the White House ordered a slowdown. After service returned on October 24, Musk wrote that SpaceX had enforced Starlink's terms of service. Then former Labor Secretary Robert Reich called for nationalizing Starlink and SpaceX. When a government claims a private man's property for a war, whose consent does it need, and who answers for what is done with it? Companion to Saturday's Episode 18 and Article 18, "The Revolutionary Argument," published October 18. In 1766 Parliament declared its power to bind the colonies "in all cases whatsoever," and the colonists objected before anything had been seized. Jeff Kellick sets the competing accounts side by side, then follows the line between private firms and the government through Intel, U.S. Steel, MP Materials, Microsoft, and years of requests to switch Starlink on and off. He makes the owner's case for SpaceX and names its limit, Starshield, then turns to Montgomery Ward in 1944 and Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer (1952), where the Supreme Court struck down Truman's steel seizure 6–3. Three objections follow: one man's control, the taxpayers' claim, and the cost in lives. The question underneath all of it: did this leave Americans more free, or more governed? ⏱️ CHAPTERS 0:00 — Drones dropping out of the sky 2:43 — Whose consent does a government need? 4:15 — Private power and military reach 5:39 — Starlink in Ukraine since 2022 7:37 — Russian drones and the February whitelist 8:24 — October: the restrictions and the first accounts 9:34 — Service restored, and Musk's terms-of-service account 10:38 — Ukraine's answer: Starlink or Starshield? 11:41 — Every account comes from someone with a stake 12:36 — The timing: refineries, fuel prices and the midterms 13:41 — Senator Blumenthal's inquiry 14:25 — The Sugar Act and the Declaratory Act 15:19 — Robert Reich: "Nationalize it" 16:53 — Trump, Bannon, and the government as shareholder 18:39 — SpaceX's public shareholders and Musk's voting control 19:44 — The colonists of 1765 20:14 — The Pentagon's cloud and a handful of owners 20:40 — Years of requests to switch Starlink on and off 21:32 — Amazon moves Ukraine's data 22:27 — Microsoft and Unit 8200 23:30 — The principle has to work both ways 24:23 — The owner's case for SpaceX 25:58 — Jeff's own reading 26:55 — The limit of the owner's case: Starshield 28:51 — Seizing a company for a war: Montgomery Ward, 1944 30:11 — Truman's steel seizure and Youngstown v. Sawyer 31:09 — Justice Jackson's three categories 32:09 — The Defense Production Act and the Takings Clause 33:34 — The Honest Reckoning 35:35 — Objection one: one man's network 37:27 — Objection two: the taxpayers' claim 38:39 — Objection three: the cost in lives 41:39 — The Liberty Test: the man with the truck 43:18 — November 3 and the power of Congress 44:43 — Next: Episode 19, "The Convention" 📚 Article 18, "The Revolutionary Argument," free with every source in its endnotes: https://www.consequentialactions.com/post/the-revolutionary-argument-from-the-rights-of-englishmen-to-the-laws-of-nature 🎙️ Self-Evident: The Road to 1776 — Episode 18B: "In All Cases Whatsoever" Next: Episode 19, "The Convention," Saturday, October 31. — Consequential Actions is a libertarian, non-interventionist analysis of American constitutional and foreign policy. New episodes weekly. 🌐 https://www.consequentialactions.com #starlink #spacex #ukraine #nationalization #privateproperty #youngstown #declaratoryact #constitution #libertarian #selfevident
S5 · E18
October 25 · 56 min
From the Rights of Englishmen to the Laws of Nature: The Road to the Declaration
From the Rights of Englishmen to the Laws of Nature: The Road to the Declaration In June 1776, Thomas Jefferson's draft of the Declaration called its truths "sacred and undeniable." Those two words were struck through, and a new one was written above them: self-evident. A self-evident truth needs no charter, no statute, and no ancient constitution. In 1765 the colonists stood on their charters as Englishmen. By 1776 they claimed rights from the laws of nature. That appeal was there from the start, in James Otis's 1764 pamphlet, beside his pledge to obey Parliament. What changed was its place. The record runs from the Proclamation of 1763 through the Stamp Act, virtual representation and Daniel Dulany's answer, the committees of correspondence, the Congress of 1774, Common Sense, and George Mason's draft set beside Jefferson's. Then the bookshelf, sorted three ways: what the founders named, what they owned, and what had passed into the language without citation. The Honest Reckoning takes up the slave-trade passage Congress struck, the Prince Hall petition of 1777, the frontier, and the loyalists. The Skeptic's Case puts three objections at full strength. Companion to Article 18, published Sunday, October 18. On Tuesday, Episode 18B carries the Declaration's argument into our own time. Did the Revolution leave Americans more free, or more governed? And does the answer depend on which Americans you count? ⏱️ CHAPTERS 0:00 — Jefferson's rough draft, June 1776 1:09 — "Sacred and undeniable" struck through 2:18 — Introduction: The Revolutionary Argument 4:43 — The Proclamation of 1763 5:33 — The Sugar Act and Boston's answer 6:48 — James Otis, 1764 7:45 — "We must obey" 8:26 — The writs of assistance, 1761 9:02 — Coke and Bonham's Case 9:29 — Who said "taxation without representation"? 10:20 — The Stamp Act 11:14 — The third Virginia resolve 11:43 — Patrick Henry and the French traveler 12:58 — Hutchinson's house 13:31 — The Stamp Act Congress 14:29 — Virtual representation 15:04 — Dulany: "a mere cobweb" 15:35 — The Declaratory Act 16:20 — Adams and the law of nature 17:02 — Dickinson and the Townshend duties 17:54 — The committees of correspondence 18:34 — "Among the natural rights of the colonists" 19:56 — The tea and the Coercive Acts 20:20 — Jefferson's Summary View 21:05 — James Wilson: "equal and free" 22:25 — The Continental Congress, 1774 23:03 — Hamilton: "as with a sunbeam" 23:36 — Novanglus names the bookshelf 24:07 — How thirteen colonies became one cause 25:52 — Common Sense 28:07 — Adams and Inglis answer Paine 28:43 — The spring of 1776 29:27 — Lee's resolution 30:14 — Mason's draft and Jefferson's 31:34 — July 1 and July 2 32:51 — Congress edits the draft 33:04 — Where the second paragraph came from 34:06 — The bookshelf: what they named 35:57 — What they owned 37:31 — What the language carried 39:17 — The Levellers 40:20 — The Scots: Wills and Hamowy 41:57 — "The harmonizing sentiments of the day" 43:35 — The struck passage on the slave trade 45:35 — Johnson and the Prince Hall petition 46:36 — The frontier and the loyalists 48:16 — Skeptic's Case: a tool, or a belief? 49:45 — Skeptic's Case: the loyalists' law 51:29 — Skeptic's Case: the shelf itself 52:50 — The Liberty Test 53:49 — What changed was the order 54:46 — Next: Episode 19, "The Convention" 📚 Article 18, "The Revolutionary Argument," with full endnotes: https://www.consequentialactions.com/post/the-revolutionary-argument-from-the-rights-of-englishmen-to-the-laws-of-nature Consequential Actions Podcast · Self-Evident: The Road to 1776 · Episode 18: "The Revolutionary Argument" — Consequential Actions is a libertarian, non-interventionist analysis of American constitutional and foreign policy. New episodes weekly. 🌐 https://www.consequentialactions.com #selfevident #consequentialactions #declarationofindependence #naturalrights #thomasjefferson #americanrevolution #stampact #johnlocke #americanhistory #libertarian
S5 · E17
October 22 · 1 hr 15 min
Liberty by Default: Ken Krawchuk's Education Plan and the Governor's Veto
Ken Krawchuk Interview: The Libertarian Running for Pennsylvania Governor Twelve days before Pennsylvania chooses a governor, Libertarian nominee Ken Krawchuk takes up the history of the week: New England towns that voted their own taxes and refused one laid by a governor they had not chosen. This is the interview episode for Week 17 of Self-Evident: The Road to 1776, "Self-Government Before Theory." Ken is on the ballot November 3 with his running mate, John Thomas, our Week 6 guest. He has spent a career as a computer programmer and business systems architect, and he is the author of Atlas Snubbed. We begin in Ipswich in 1687, with what a governor should do alone: the veto, a cabinet cut to six departments, and pardons through the Board of Pardons. Then the wasted-vote objection, ballot access, consent and the veto, who decides what a township allows, from data centers to the newcomer Ipswich turned away in 1639, school choice, the National Guard, where Ken and Jeff want the same thing and part on how to get it, the emergency clock, license-plate cameras, and incorporation. Did this leave us more free, or more governed? Jeff puts the question to Ken's "can't license": liberty as the default, restricted only after an abuse, by a sentence before a jury. ⏱️ CHAPTERS 0:00:00 — Cold open: the race by its numbers 0:02:14 — Introduction: Week 17 and a candidate on the record 0:04:04 — Three threads for the hour 0:05:10 — Meet Ken Krawchuk 0:06:40 — Ipswich, 1687: what should a governor do alone? 0:09:24 — Cutting the cabinet to six 0:11:04 — Drug policy and the Board of Pardons 0:13:13 — The wasted-vote objection 0:16:15 — Approve, approve, disapprove voting 0:18:37 — "Free and equal" elections and ballot access 0:21:46 — The Ballot Access Coalition 0:23:09 — Consent and the veto 0:24:56 — The Municipal Planning Code and data centers 0:27:37 — Who speaks for the landowner? 0:29:07 — Ipswich, 1639: "the town was full" 0:31:20 — Fund the child, not the system 0:38:04 — The National Guard and Defend the Guard 0:41:53 — Statute or constitution? Where Ken differs 0:42:30 — The 21-day limit on emergency declarations 0:48:19 — License-plate cameras and Flock 0:50:40 — "The Flocked Up Blues" and the campaign songs 0:52:35 — Atlas Snubbed: the separation of society and state 0:56:36 — The "can't license" 0:58:07 — A court without coercive power 1:00:42 — Incorporation: where does the line belong? 1:02:46 — Ken's answer: the Supremacy Clause 1:05:30 — A message to the voter on the fence 1:07:27 — Where to find Atlas Snubbed 1:08:34 — Closing: what came out of the hour 1:09:27 — Where we part on the Guard 1:11:09 — From Tuesday: Ken on incorporation 1:11:44 — A correction: Heller and McDonald 1:12:16 — The Liberty Test: the "can't license" 1:14:44 — Next: Episode 18, "The Revolutionary Argument" 📚 Article 17, "Self-Government Before Theory," with every source in its endnotes: https://www.consequentialactions.com/post/self-government-before-theory-a-hundred-and-fifty-years-of-practice 🗳️ Ken Krawchuk for Governor: https://www.kenk4pa.com 🎵 Ken's campaign songs, including "The Flocked Up Blues": https://www.kenk4pa.com/1726-2/ 📖 Atlas Snubbed: https://atlassnubbed.com/ 🎙️ Jamie Frost Remmey, our Week 7 guest, running for Pennsylvania's First Congressional District: https://www.jamiefrostremmey.com 🎙️ Consequential Actions · Self-Evident: The Road to 1776 · Episode 17i Next: Episode 18, "The Revolutionary Argument," Saturday, October 24. — Consequential Actions is a libertarian, non-interventionist analysis of American constitutional and foreign policy. New episodes weekly. 🌐 https://www.consequentialactions.com #kenkrawchuk #pennsylvania #pagovernor #libertarian #defendtheguard #ballotaccess #schoolchoice #propertytax #consequentialactions
S5 · E17
October 20 · 42 min
Incorporation: Does the Bill of Rights Bind the States? Kian v. Florida
Incorporation: Does the Bill of Rights Bind the States? Kian v. Florida In 1789 James Madison asked Congress to bar the states from violating the rights of conscience, the freedom of the press, and trial by jury in criminal cases. He called it the most valuable amendment on the list. The Senate struck it out. This term the Supreme Court decides whether Florida may convict a man of a felony with a jury of six. Hamed Kian was convicted on five felony counts by six jurors. In federal court he would have faced twelve. On Saturday, in Episode 17 and Article 17, New England towns governed themselves for a century and a half, and by the same authority taxed for the minister and hanged Quakers. The question that history leaves: when a near government and a distant one disagree about a person's rights, which one gets the last word? Jeff traces incorporation from Barron v. Baltimore through the Fourteenth Amendment, Colfax and the Slaughter-House Cases to Duncan and Ramos, and sets Kian beside the Zenger trial of 1735. Two libertarian answers point down opposite paths, the Honest Reckoning names two failures of the liberty movement, and the Skeptic's Case takes three objections at full strength. Did this leave us more free, or more governed? ⏱️ CHAPTERS 0:00 — Madison's lost amendment, 1789 1:43 — A felony and a jury of six 2:20 — Saturday's towns, today's question 3:36 — Two commitments in conflict 4:51 — "Congress shall make no law" 5:28 — The states' own bills of rights 6:06 — Madison's fear, Georgia's bounty 7:33 — Barron v. Baltimore 8:53 — Massachusetts, 1833 9:41 — The Fourteenth Amendment 10:24 — Howard and Bingham 11:53 — Colfax and Slaughter-House, 1873 13:52 — United States v. Cruikshank 14:35 — Due process, one right at a time 15:33 — Palko and double jeopardy 15:58 — Black's dissent in Adamson 16:27 — Duncan v. Louisiana 17:25 — Heller and McDonald 17:55 — Timbs and Humboldt County 18:24 — Ramos and the convention of 1898 19:04 — What remains, and Saenz v. Roe 20:18 — Kian v. Florida 21:45 — The Zenger trial, 1735 22:42 — Andrew Hamilton's argument 23:50 — The jury in 1776 24:32 — Ramos against Williams 24:55 — Florida's answer 25:20 — The scholars, and the reach 26:32 — Who stands on each side 27:06 — Not left against right 27:38 — Florida's business, or Kian's? 28:43 — Barnett and Bernick 29:47 — Power close enough to watch 31:29 — A floor, not a ceiling 32:03 — Saturday's two statements 32:44 — The Honest Reckoning 34:26 — The historical objection 36:01 — The federalism objection 37:20 — Who decides? 38:02 — Privileges or Immunities 38:51 — The Liberty Test 40:37 — Thursday and Saturday 📚 Article 17, "Self-Government Before Theory," with every source in its endnotes: https://www.consequentialactions.com/post/self-government-before-theory-a-hundred-and-fifty-years-of-practice 📚 Week 14, Jared McClain of the Institute for Justice on the civil jury: https://www.consequentialactions.com/post/humboldt-county-s-cannabis-fines-the-civil-jury-jared-mcclain-institute-for-justice 🎙️ Consequential Actions Podcast · Self-Evident: The Road to 1776 · Episode 17B, "No State Shall" Next: Thursday, Ken Krawchuk, the Libertarian nominee for governor of Pennsylvania. Saturday, Episode 18, "The Revolutionary Argument." — Consequential Actions is a libertarian, non-interventionist analysis of American constitutional and foreign policy. New episodes weekly. 🌐 https://www.consequentialactions.com #billofrights #fourteenthamendment #incorporation #jurytrial #supremecourt #kianvflorida #federalism #libertarian #consequentialactions
S5 · E17
October 17 · 46 min
The Mayflower Compact to the Town Meeting: How Colonial New England Governed Itself. “Self-Government Before Theory”
The Mayflower Compact to the Town Meeting: How Colonial New England Governed Itself In November 1620, the Mayflower dropped anchor far outside the only patent its passengers held. Before anyone went ashore, forty-one men promised to make just and equal laws and to obey them. The paper named no office and stated no right. The habit it began lasted a century and a half. New Englanders elected their officers, voted their own taxes, wrote down their laws, and ran their own churches long before one of their ministers explained the practice in the language of natural law. The record runs from the Massachusetts Bay charter through the May 1631 court that widened the vote and narrowed it in one sitting, the Body of Liberties of 1641, the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, and Rhode Island's "lively experiment" of 1663. When the Dominion of New England laid a tax without an assembly, the Ipswich town meeting refused it in 1687, and its leaders pleaded Magna Carta at trial. Thirty years later their minister, John Wise, recast the practice through Pufendorf in his Vindication of 1717. Jonathan Mayhew's 1750 sermon on Romans 13 and Edmund Burke's 1775 "salutary neglect" complete the record. The Honest Reckoning counts who stood how far from the meetinghouse door: women and non-members, the banished, the Quakers hanged in Boston, the people Liberty 91 let the colony hold as property, and the Pequot and Narragansett. Samuel Appleton, jailed for his town's right of consent in 1687, had commanded Massachusetts troops at the Great Swamp in 1675. Companion to Article 17, published Sunday, October 11. On Tuesday, Episode 17B carries the question into the present day. Did it leave people more free, or more governed? ⏱️ CHAPTERS 0:00 — A ship outside its patent, 1620 1:27 — The Mayflower Compact 3:02 — Introduction: Self-Government Before Theory 4:30 — Jamestown, 1619, and the short answer 6:48 — The Massachusetts Bay charter 8:08 — Winthrop on civil liberty 8:48 — May 1631: the vote widened and narrowed 10:09 — 1634: the freemen read the charter 10:53 — The Body of Liberties, 1641 12:06 — Magna Carta and Coke's books 12:41 — The town: Dedham and the selectmen 13:48 — Liberty 12: the right to speak 14:19 — 1647: non-freemen in town affairs 15:25 — The church covenant and the meetinghouse 16:36 — Hooker and the Fundamental Orders 17:25 — Rhode Island's "lively experiment" 18:18 — The Dominion of New England 19:12 — Ipswich refuses the tax, 1687 20:39 — Samuel Appleton's winter 21:09 — 1689: Boston rises 21:49 — John Wise and Pufendorf 23:44 — Adams, Gridley, and the 1772 reprint 24:40 — The Great Awakening and its name 25:53 — Mayhew's sermon of 1750 27:53 — Burke and "salutary neglect" 28:57 — What distance did and did not do 29:47 — The Honest Reckoning: inside the room 30:16 — The disfranchised and the banished 31:04 — The Quaker executions 31:49 — Liberty 91 32:53 — Mystic, 1637 34:41 — What London did not stop 35:20 — King Philip's War and Samuel Appleton 36:33 — Skeptic's Case: only neglect? 38:18 — Skeptic's Case: a standard it never held? 39:57 — The Liberty Test 41:19 — Incorporation, and two interviews 43:34 — The answer 44:56 — 1763, and the road ahead 📚 Article 17, with full endnotes: https://www.consequentialactions.com/post/self-government-before-theory-a-hundred-and-fifty-years-of-practice 🎙️ The John Thomas (Week 6) and Jared McClain (Week 14) interviews: https://www.consequentialactions.com/posts/categories/podcast--the-interviews Consequential Actions Podcast · Self-Evident: The Road to 1776 · Episode 17: "Self-Government Before Theory" — Consequential Actions is a libertarian, non-interventionist analysis of American constitutional and foreign policy. New episodes weekly. 🌐 https://www.consequentialactions.com #selfevident #consequentialactions #mayflowercompact #townmeeting #colonialamerica #puritans #selfgovernment #americanhistory #libertarian #johnwise
S5 · E16
October 13 · 44 min
The Houthis vs. Saudi Arabia: Who Can End Yemen’s War?
The Houthis vs. Saudi Arabia: Who Can End Yemen's War? On Saturday a Houthi missile struck Riyadh's airport and killed thirteen people, one of them an American. In Yemen, tribal mediators have spent the whole war bringing the dead home to their families before anyone speaks of terms. Episode 16B sets the war in Yemen and over Saudi Arabia beside the condolence rite of the Haudenosaunee Great Law of Peace, the rite that answered a grieving man's loss before anyone asked him to make law. Who carries that condolence today: a patron, an interpreter with a stake, or a peacemaker? This is the contemporary application of Saturday's Episode 16, "The Great Law of Peace," and of Article 16 in our written series, posted October 5. Saturday followed the Six Nations (the Iroquois Confederacy) as a union that began by ending a blood feud. Today asks what that history has to say about a feud being fought right now. Jeff traces the House of Saud and Yemen's Zaydi imams from 1902 to the war that began in 2015, and the outside powers, from Britain to Iran to the United States, that courted and armed them. He sets Washington's warning against passionate attachments and Jefferson's "entangling alliances with none" beside a partnership with Riyadh that no Senate ever ratified. He follows Saudi oil through its two threatened doors, Hormuz and Yanbu, to a record September at American gas pumps. Then he turns to the peace that almost happened: Nadwa al-Dawsari's study of Yemen's tribal ceasefires, the Omani-carried talks of 2022 and 2023, and what broke them. The Honest Reckoning names two failures of the liberty movement, and the Skeptic's Case takes three objections at full strength, including the cost of staying out. Did it leave people more free, or more governed? ⏱️ CHAPTERS 0:00 A missile on Riyadh, a rite in Marib 2:29 Episode 16B: who carries the condolence? 3:31 Article 16, and why this week 5:19 Yemen in plain words: the three camps 8:04 The House of Saud and the British 9:46 Yemen's old house: the Zaydi imams 11:00 The expulsion, the bin Ladens, and the border 11:57 Native houses, courted by empires 12:40 The war of 2015 and its record 13:37 The cost on both sides 14:55 How the war came back in 2026 15:44 The Six Nations stay neutral, 1701 16:45 Washington's Farewell Address 17:36 Entangling alliances with none 18:17 The Quincy and the Carter Doctrine 19:20 Saudi Arabia's eastern door: Hormuz 19:58 The western door: Yanbu and the pipeline 20:45 What it costs at the pump 22:16 Interceptors, deficits, and a personal note 23:46 Two forecasts: Ritter and Malik 25:22 Conrad Weiser, the interpreter with a stake 25:57 The American posture: intelligence and Muscat 27:11 The case for doing more 27:36 Oman, the house where enemies meet 28:08 The Mecca defense pact 28:50 A union made for war 29:19 Yemen's own condolence rite 30:51 The limits of tribal mediation 32:03 Stockholm and the central process 33:01 The truce, Riyadh in Sanaa, the roadmap 33:54 What broke the roadmap 34:38 Tadodaho: not defeated, seated 35:09 Seating the Houthis 36:30 The Honest Reckoning 38:23 The Skeptic's Case: three objections 41:41 The Liberty Test 43:03 Next: Episode 17 📚 Article 16, "The Great Law of Peace," with every source in its endnotes: https://www.consequentialactions.com/post/the-great-law-of-peace-the-haudenosaunee-confederacy-and-the-question-of-influence 📚 The backstory, from our Empire of Liberty series: "Lines in the Sand," on Sykes-Picot, Balfour, and the creation of the modern Middle East: https://www.consequentialactions.com/post/lines-in-the-sand-sykes-picot-balfour-and-the-creation-of-the-modern-middle-east 🎙️ Consequential Actions Podcast · Self-Evident: The Road to 1776 · Episode 16B, "Who Carries the Condolence" 🌐 https://www.consequentialactions.com #yemen #saudiarabia #houthis #greatlawofpeace #haudenosaunee #foreignpolicy #libertarian #noninterventionism #middleeast #consequentialactions
S5 · E16
October 10 · 33 min
Did the Iroquois Shape the Constitution? The Great Law of Peace
Did the Iroquois Shape the Constitution? The Great Law of Peace In 1744 an Onondaga speaker told three English colonies to unite as his forefathers had. Franklin printed the speech. When the colonists designed a union, they did not copy it. This is Episode 16 of Self-Evident: The Road to 1776, and it opens Week 16 of the series. It corresponds to Article 16, published October 5 on consequentialactions.com. The full article is free, with every source in its endnotes. The Six Nations (the Haudenosaunee, whom the French and English called the Iroquois) held a union of self-governing nations together for centuries without a king. Their Grand Council had fifty seats fixed by its founding law. Clan mothers chose and could remove the men who held them, and nothing was decided until all three benches agreed. The colonists lived beside that union for generations, heard its speakers urge them to imitate it, and bought those speeches in small books printed in Benjamin Franklin's shop. The episode asks one question: to what extent did the Confederacy influence the founders? It follows the record from Canassatego at Lancaster in 1744, through Franklin's 1751 letter and Hendrick's rebuke at Albany in 1754, to the scholarly dispute between Grinde and Johansen and Elisabeth Tooker, and the 1988 concurrent resolution in which Congress wrote its own answer into a preamble. The verdict: the contact is documented and the example is documented. The blueprint is not. In the same letter in which Franklin praised the Six Nations, he proposed a union with a Crown-appointed governor, a common treasury, and a tax on liquor. Then the cost. By 1777 the Confederacy could no longer hold a common neutrality, and in a single season in 1779 an American campaign under John Sullivan destroyed more than forty of its towns. Eleven years later, three Seneca leaders told Washington the name their people had for him. An honest reckoning follows, then two objections from the skeptics, including one the episode concedes: the verdict rests on an archive made by one side. Did it leave people more free, or more governed? ⏱️ CHAPTERS 0:00 Lancaster, 1744: Pen and Ink Work 2:02 Introduction 3:07 The Question of Influence 4:53 The Longhouse 5:54 The Peacemaker and the Condolence 8:05 Fifty Seats, Fixed by Law 8:41 Clan Mothers and the Three Benches 10:20 Wampum: A Law Never Written Down 11:26 Ely Parker and the 1916 Text 12:59 Conrad Weiser, the Man in the Middle 13:58 Two Versions of the Education Reply 15:24 The Union Speech, July 4, 1744 16:12 Franklin's Press and the 1751 Letter 17:48 Albany, 1754: Hendrick's Rebuke 19:06 Franklin's Own Plan of Union 20:37 Grinde, Johansen, and Tooker 21:25 What Congress Did in 1988 21:55 The Verdict: Example, Not Blueprint 22:37 1777: The Council Fire Put Out 23:28 The Sullivan Campaign, 1779 24:26 The Seneca Address of 1790 24:56 Grand River and the Written Law 25:29 The Honest Reckoning 26:58 Objection: Any Federation Resembles Any Other 27:55 Objection: An Uneven Standard of Proof 28:54 The Liberty Test: Unanimity 30:18 The Answer 31:23 Coming Up and Closing 📚 Read Article 16, "The Great Law of Peace," with full endnotes: https://www.consequentialactions.com/post/the-great-law-of-peace-the-haudenosaunee-confederacy-and-the-question-of-influence 🎙️ Self-Evident: The Road to 1776, Episode 16: The Great Law of Peace. The Haudenosaunee Confederacy and the Question of Influence. Consequential Actions Podcast. Next: Episode 16B, our contemporary application episode, on Tuesday, October 13, takes this week's questions into the present. Then Episode 17, "Self-Government Before Theory," on Saturday, October 17. — 🌐 https://www.consequentialactions.com #selfevident #greatlawofpeace #haudenosaunee #iroquoisconfederacy #benjaminfranklin #constitution #americanhistory #foundingfathers #libertarian #consequentialactions
S5 · E15
October 8 · 1 hr 4 min
Peter McPhee on the French Revolution: Robespierre, the King's Trial, and the Terror
Who Decides When the Emergency Ends? Peter McPhee on the French Revolution In 1793, France gave sweeping emergency powers to a few committees. Historian Peter McPhee explains why, and why ending them became a deadly question. This is the interview episode for Week 15 of Self-Evident: The Road to 1776, "The Fork in the Road": Voltaire, Rousseau, and the Two Enlightenments. Tuesday's episode ended on the levy of February 1793 and the revolt in the Vendée: "they have killed our king, chased away our priests, and now they want to take our bodies." Peter McPhee is Emeritus Professor at the University of Melbourne, where he was the first provost, and a Member of the Order of Australia. His books include Liberty or Death: The French Revolution and Robespierre: A Revolutionary Life, both from Yale University Press, and most recently An Environmental History of France: Making the Landscape, 1770–2020. We begin in the spring of 1789, with the cahiers de doléances, the books of grievances that communities across France drew up for the Estates-General. McPhee argues that what ordinary people asked for (a representative assembly, an end to privilege by birth, careers open to talent, and an end to the lords' dues in the countryside) had, one way or another, been won by about 1795. The controversy, in his account, is the cost. Once France went to war in 1792, "matters of opinion become matters of life and death." He explains how historians count the dead of 1793 and 1794 and which deaths trouble him most, how the enslaved of the French Caribbean forced the abolition of slavery in 1794, and why the tension between liberty and equality, which the Revolution never resolved, has never gone away. The closing sets the Declaration of 1793, with its rights to public relief and instruction, beside the declarations of 1776 and 1789. ⏱️ CHAPTERS 0:00:00 Cold open: Danton asks for a court 0:01:15 Introduction: the week and two threads 0:03:28 Meet Peter McPhee 0:05:25 The cahiers: what ordinary French people asked for 0:11:04 The Estates-General: when did they know it was a revolution? 0:12:50 The libertarian case and the two declarations, 1789 and 1793 0:16:50 How much did Rousseau matter? 0:20:29 Robespierre and the cult of the Supreme Being 0:27:17 The committees or the war? 0:30:41 "Except for this": the conviction of 1789 0:32:40 Who chose the war of 1792? 0:35:31 The trial of Louis XVI 0:40:25 Marie Antoinette: was there an off-ramp? 0:41:41 After Fleurus: who decides when the emergency ends? 0:44:59 Counting the dead 0:47:34 Slavery, abolition, and the Liberty Test 0:49:45 "Both": more free and more governed 0:51:35 One law for everyone: the bureaucratic state 0:53:19 Liberty against equality, then and now 0:55:41 Peter's newest book: the landscape of France 0:58:28 Closing: more free or more governed? 1:03:48 Next: Episode 16, "The Great Law of Peace" 📚 Read Article 15, "The Fork in the Road": https://www.consequentialactions.com/post/the-fork-in-the-road-voltaire-rousseau-and-the-two-enlightenments 🎓 Peter McPhee The Conversation: https://theconversation.com/profiles/peter-mcphee-11480 Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_McPhee_(academic) 📖 Peter's books Liberty or Death: The French Revolution: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/liberty-or-death-peter-mcphee/1122747240 Robespierre: A Revolutionary Life: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/robespierre-peter-mcphee/1110982004 An Environmental History of France: Making the Landscape, 1770–2020: https://books.google.com/books/about/An_Environmental_History_of_France.html?id=lPyW0AEACAAJ 🎙️ Consequential Actions · Self-Evident: The Road to 1776 · Episode 15I Next: Episode 16, "The Great Law of Peace," Saturday, October 10. Five nations whose common council could not act without agreement. 🌐 https://www.consequentialactions.com #frenchrevolution #robespierre #petermcphee #history #enlightenment #rousseau #emergencypowers #libertarian
S5 · E15
October 6 · 1 hr 13 min
The Draft Was Never Repealed. Here Is What Changes in December
Automatic Draft Registration (Dec. 2026) and the History of the American Draft This December, Selective Service registration becomes automatic. The duty to sign up moves from the man to the government, and the agency that has to run it withdrew its implementing rules in July without ever publishing them. When a majority decides the country needs soldiers and will not wait for volunteers, what exactly has it done, and who was supposed to say stop? On Saturday we defined Rousseau's general will as he defined it and ended on a gap in the design: nobody is clearly charged with saying when a law has become a decree against particular people. Today we put that question to the hardest case in American life, which is conscription. Daniel Webster's 1814 question on the House floor, and the conscription bill Congress killed on recorded votes while it still believed it was losing the war. The three-hundred-dollar commutation of 1863 and the New York draft riots. The Supreme Court in 1918 calling the Thirteenth Amendment objection "refuted by its mere statement." The December 1969 lottery that was not random. The Gates Commission, and a draft that ended because a deadline Congress wrote in 1971 arrived and nobody moved it. Then what stands today: a federal student-aid penalty that has not applied since 2021, the driver's-license counter that now does most of the registering, a bipartisan bill to abolish Selective Service, and the case for compulsory national service at its strongest, with Rousseau on the side you might not expect. Did it leave people more free, or more governed? ⏱️ CHAPTERS0: 00:00 — August 1793: every Frenchman in permanent requisition 0:03:25 — Introduction: the gap Saturday left open 0:06:09 — Where I stand on soldiering, war, and the draft 0:07:53 — 1814: Monroe's plan and Webster's question 0:11:06 — How Congress killed conscription in 1814 0:13:19 — 1863: the three-hundred-dollar way out 0:14:49 — The Confederacy's exemptions 0:16:00 — The New York draft riots 0:18:06 — 1918: "Refuted by its mere statement" 0:20:45 — 1940: the first peacetime draft and a one-vote extension 0:23:33 — Local boards and Nixon's two reforms 0:24:59 — December 1969: the capsules in the jar 0:26:05 — The lottery that was not random 0:27:34 — The Gates Commission and the all-volunteer force 0:31:39 — How the draft ended: a deadline, not a repeal 0:32:58 — S.J. Res. 55: the referendum amendment 0:35:52 — 1975 to 1980: registration suspended and restored 0:38:05 — The student-aid rule that no longer exists 0:39:58 — Driver's licenses, and Ohio 0:41:11 — Automatic registration this December 0:43:57 — The bill to abolish Selective Service 0:44:33 — A list is not a draft 0:45:39 — Germany builds the switch 0:47:07 — The kindest version: compulsory national service 0:50:01 — Rousseau on paid armies 0:52:13 — "A gift made conditionally," and what it is not 0:53:53 — The honest reckoning: three failures 0:57:49 — Objection one: a draft makes war costly 1:00:58 — Objection two: the power to raise armies 1:03:26 — Objection three: a civic duty, not slavery 1:06:21 — The Liberty Test1:08:41 — Closing 1:10:02 — Thursday's guest, and Episode 16 📚 The companion article, Article 15, free with every source in its endnotes: https://www.consequentialactions.com/post/the-fork-in-the-road-voltaire-rousseau-and-the-two-enlightenments 🎙️ Preview Thursday's guest, Peter McPhee: https://theconversation.com/profiles/peter-mcphee-11480 Self-Evident: The Road to 1776, Episode 15, Part B, on the Consequential Actions Podcast. Thursday: Peter McPhee, Emeritus Professor at the University of Melbourne and author of Liberty or Death and Robespierre: A Revolutionary Life, makes the case for the French Revolution. Saturday: Episode 16, "The Great Law of Peace." —Consequential Actions is a libertarian, non-interventionist analysis of American constitutional and foreign policy. New episodes weekly. 🌐 https://www.consequentialactions.com
S5 · E15
October 4 · 1 hr 28 min
Does Majority Consent Make You Free? Voltaire, Rousseau & the General Will
Self-Evident: The Road to 1776 — Ep. 15 Voltaire vs. Rousseau: Toleration, Consent & the General Will In 1762 a Protestant cloth merchant was broken on the wheel in Toulouse for a murder that never happened. Voltaire spent three years getting the verdict overturned, and the case became the occasion for his Treatise on Tolerance. That same summer, Rousseau’s Social Contract was burned in Geneva, his own city. It answered a different question, where legitimate authority comes from, and its answer gave the world the general will and the line about being “forced to be free.” They wrote in the same language over the same decades and attacked each other in print for years. They never met. They died thirty-three days apart in 1778, eleven years before the Estates General assembled, and a revolution neither lived to see dug them both up and laid them a few yards apart in the Panthéon. What is covered: the Calas affair and the four arguments of the Treatise on Tolerance; the general will versus the will of all; the real limits Rousseau set on his sovereign, and the question he did not clearly answer, which is who applies them; the “noble savage” phrase that is not his, and the famous Voltaire line that Voltaire never wrote; what Americans actually read of each man; how Robespierre invoked Rousseau, and why invocation is not derivation; how Edmund Burke and John Adams read him in the 1790s; and an honest reckoning with both men — Voltaire’s courting of autocrats and his writing on Jewish persons, and Rousseau’s five children and the anonymous pamphlet that exposed them. Episode 15 closes Arc IV, the European Enlightenments, and the European arcs of the series. Tuesday’s episode applies the general will to today, asking what happens when a majority says it speaks for everybody, and Thursday closes the week. Did it leave people more free, or more governed? ⏱️ CHAPTERS 0:00:00 — Cold Open: Paris, 1778 0:03:06 — Introduction 0:05:27 — The Calas Affair 0:10:47 — Voltaire: The Bastille, England, and a Burned Book 0:14:39 — Censors, Crowns, and the Philosophes 0:17:40 — The Treatise on Tolerance 0:21:16 — Calas, Sirven, and La Barre 0:23:16 — No Democrat, Not Quite No Republican 0:24:53 — Geneva and the Young Rousseau 0:26:57 — 1745: The Only Kind Words 0:28:12 — The Road to Vincennes and a Refused Pension 0:30:15 — Condemned in Paris and Geneva 0:33:32 — The Social Contract 0:34:50 — The General Will and the Will of All 0:37:24 — “Forced to Be Free” 0:38:52 — The Limits Rousseau Set on His Sovereign 0:41:58 — Who Applies the Limits? 0:44:08 — The Legislator and the Civil Religion 0:45:57 — The “Noble Savage” That Is Not His 0:48:51 — Lisbon, Candide, and “I Do Not Love You” 0:50:56 — What Americans Actually Read 0:55:39 — Robespierre and the Cult of Rousseau 0:59:16 — Invocation, Appropriation, Derivation 1:02:18 — Burke and Adams Read Rousseau 1:05:47 — The Honest Reckoning: Voltaire at Court 1:08:11 — Voltaire’s Writing on Judaism 1:11:11 — Rousseau’s Five Children, and Who Told 1:13:28 — The Distinction With No Judge 1:14:56 — The Skeptic’s Case 1:22:08 — The Liberty Test 1:24:03 — Two Graves in the Panthéon 📚 Read the companion article, Article 15, “The Fork in the Road”: the Calas case, the limits Rousseau set on his sovereign, the Robespierre record, and every source in the endnotes. Free: https://www.consequentialactions.com/post/the-fork-in-the-road-voltaire-rousseau-and-the-two-enlightenments🎙️ Consequential Actions Podcast — Self-Evident: The Road to 1776, Episode 15: “The Fork in the Road.” Next Saturday, Episode 16: “The Great Law of Peace” — the Iroquois Confederacy as a working federal union, and what Franklin actually said about it, and when. Arc V opens there.— 🌐 https://www.consequentialactions.com #voltaire #rousseau #socialcontract #generalwill #enlightenment #frenchrevolution #religiousliberty #libertarian #constitution #selfevident
October 1 · 42 min
What Did Your Straight Ticket Buy? Both Parties' Platforms, Graded
What Did Your Straight Ticket Buy? Both Parties' Platforms, Graded. A Contemporary Bonus Episode to the series: Parties, Ideologies, and Systems. A party-line vote is a vote for a party, and the one formal statement a party adopts of what it stands for is its convention platform. Almost nobody reads it. Bob Dole said he never read his own. This episode reads them. Each of the two major parties wrote a platform, then won the White House and both chambers of Congress this decade: the Democrats in 2021 and 2022, the Republicans now. Each majority is graded against its own platform, on the issues voters ranked highest in its own campaign year, using five grades: enacted by law, done by executive action, attempted and failed, never brought to a floor vote, and contradicted. The records fail in different ways. The Democratic majority's characteristic failure was the promise it never brought to the floor, or the one its own members blocked. The Republican majority enacted a bill that worked against its written promise to defeat inflation and improve fiscal sanity, and went to war under a platform that promised to prevent one. Both enacted what I call corporatism: public money routed through chosen firms. Then the Libertarian platform, the only one of the three that sets itself against it, and the only one that has never governed. Recorded five weeks before the November 3, 2026 midterms. Live matters, including the Iran war and the election bills, are as of that date. A stand-alone episode of Parties, Ideologies, and Systems. It follows my answer to Victor Davis Hanson on third parties: https://www.consequentialactions.com/post/in-the-age-of-trump-and-biden-victor-davis-hanson-is-wrong-about-third-parties Did it leave Americans more free, or more governed? ⏱️ CHAPTERS 0:00 Voting as an Affirming Act 3:05 Introduction 4:00 Four Voters, One Lever 5:48 Capitalism or Corporatism? 8:11 Almost Nobody Reads the Platform 10:50 How Platforms Get Written: Treaty vs. Top-Down 13:44 Project 2025 Is Not a Platform 14:57 How the Libertarian Party Writes Its Platform 15:46 The Straight-Ticket Ballot 16:54 The Case for the Party-Line Vote 19:40 Counting Agreement vs. Weighing It 21:59 The Five Grades 23:08 Democrats, 2021–2022: The Scorecard 27:37 Republicans, 2025–2026: The Scorecard 35:10 The Pattern: Same Machine, Different Operators 38:07 The Unscored Column: The Libertarian Platform 40:04 The Four Voters, Revisited 41:02 More Free, or More Governed? 📚 The full scorecards, with every promise, every grade, and the sources, are in the written companion at https://www.consequentialactions.com Consequential Actions · Parties, Ideologies, and Systems · Stand-alone episode: "What Did Your Straight Ticket Buy?" — Consequential Actions is a libertarian, non-interventionist analysis of American constitutional and foreign policy. New episodes weekly. 🌐 https://www.consequentialactions.com #midterms2026 #straightticket #partyplatform #republicans #democrats #libertarian #corporatism #congress #votingrecord #consequentialactions
S5 · E14
September 24 · 1 hr 13 min
Humboldt County's Cannabis Fines & the Civil Jury | Jared McClain, Institute for Justice
Self-Evident: The Road to 1776 — Episode 14i Prosecutor One Day, Judge the Next: Inside America's In-House Courts | Jared McClain Montesquieu wrote that there is no liberty if the power of judging is joined to the power of carrying out the law. Jared McClain, a senior attorney at the Institute for Justice, works on the far side of that problem: a county hearing officer hired by the county that brought the charge, an agency lawyer who argues the government’s case one day and sits as the judge the next, and courts that have written their own rules about who gets through the door. Jared represented the five Humboldt County, California, landowners whose federal lawsuit against the county’s cannabis code-enforcement program settled in August. The county used satellite images to charge property owners, levied daily fines of up to $10,000 per violation, and sent appeals to a hearing officer it had hired itself. Jared explains how the case became a petition asking the Supreme Court to guarantee a civil jury against the states, why Justice Gorsuch wrote that the 1916 decision standing in the way warrants a second look, and what the settlement did and did not change. Then Jared answers Montesquieu’s question — too much power, or the wrong people doing the judging — and walks through qualified immunity, the language cut from the Ku Klux Klan Act, the immediate appeal officials get that the people suing them do not, and a double standard in how courts weigh the privacy of people caught on body-camera footage. After the interview, I put the civil jury itself to the Liberty Test, starting with the strongest case against it. 🔗 Institute for Justice: https://ij.org Did it leave people more free, or more governed? ⏱️ CHAPTERS 0:00:00 — Introduction: Montesquieu & The Problem of In-House Judges 0:03:14 — Introducing Jared McClain & The Institute for Justice (IJ) 0:06:12 — Impact Litigation: From Kelo to Immunity Battles 0:10:54 — Crushing Fines in Humboldt County: When Enforcement Becomes a Trap 0:19:45 — The Seventh Amendment & Incorporating the Right to a Civil Jury 0:25:20 — “The Process Is the Punishment”: Administrative Law Realities 0:28:05 — Montesquieu’s Question: Too Much Power or the Wrong Judges? 0:31:42 — Building Precedent: From Timbs to Jarkesy 0:34:33 — Judicial Bandwidth & The Pushback Against Court Access 0:37:22 — Settling Humboldt: Did Landowners Win Liberty or Just Process? 0:41:24 — Qualified Immunity & The Ku Klux Klan Act 0:47:00 — Interlocutory Appeals: How the Rules Tilt Toward Government Officials 0:54:16 — Body Cameras & Surveillance: A Double Standard on Privacy and Access 1:00:37 — Supporting IJ & The Scope of Impact Litigation 1:03:25 — Sun Valley Orchards: The Next Battle at the Supreme Court 1:04:36 — Post-Interview Analysis: The Three Criticisms of the Jury 1:09:18 — More Free or More Governed? The Power to Refuse 1:12:21 — Looking Ahead: Rousseau and the General Will 📚 Companion article, “The Spirit of Laws” — Montesquieu and the Architecture of Liberty: https://www.consequentialactions.com/post/the-spirit-of-laws-montesquieu-and-the-architecture-of-liberty
S5 · E14
September 22 · 51 min
Massie, Hegseth & the Epstein Petition: Why Congress Stopped Checking
Self-Evident: The Road to 1776 — Episode 14B The House Didn’t Vote No. It Just Went Home. On September 15, 2026, Rep. Thomas Massie read eight articles of impeachment against Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on the House floor and gave notice of them as a question of the privileges of the House — a rule that puts the question on a two-legislative-day clock. The House did not take it up, and it did not vote to table it. The next morning, the last scheduled day of votes before the election was cancelled and the voting membership was sent home until November 9. Speaker Mike Johnson called any link between the schedule and the resolution ridiculous. In Federalist 51, Madison connected the interest of the man to the constitutional rights of the place. Montesquieu gave the legislature the means of examining how its laws are executed, and warned against a legislature a considerable time without meeting. Every one of those means is still on the books. We follow the Hegseth resolution and the second Epstein files discharge petition, left two signatures short when the members went home; the House Oversight Committee’s subpoena record from Dan Burton through Henry Waxman, Edolphus Towns, and Darrell Issa, read against Levinson and Pildes’s “Separation of Parties, Not Powers”; and the Kentucky primary that removed Massie. The Honest Reckoning takes on two libertarian habits — cheering every recess, and treating the lone dissenter as the victory. The Skeptic’s Case takes on party accountability, sparing members a doomed vote, and wartime deference. The Liberty Test asks you to reverse the parties. Status as of September 22, 2026: the Hegseth resolution has not been taken up, and the Speaker has said it will be tabled in November; the discharge petition stood at 216 signatures, and Massie and Khanna have announced commitments for 218. Did it leave people more free, or more governed? ⏱️ CHAPTERS 0:00 — The Canceled Vote: Massie’s Impeachment Resolution on a Clock 3:38 — Self-Evident 14B: When Constitutional Parts Stop Resisting 5:14 — Federalist 51: Ambition Counteracting Ambition & Montesquieu’s Design 8:53 — The Constitutional Toolkit: Impeachment, Subpoenas & Discharge Petitions 11:24 — The Hegseth Resolution: Pro Forma Sessions & Avoided Votes 16:26 — The Discharge Petition: Epstein Files & Calendar Maneuvers 24:39 — Oversight by Party: The Historical Subpoena Count Record 30:35 — Separation of Parties, Not Powers 32:02 — Primary Elections: The Defeat of Thomas Massie 37:01 — Two Libertarian Blind Spots on Legislative Power 40:02 — Confronting Three Objections on Party Discipline & War Powers 44:36 — The Liberty Test: Reversing the Political Labels 46:58 — Preserving the Means vs. Restoring the Motive 48:45 — Upcoming Episodes & Outro 📚 Companion article, “The Spirit of Laws” — Montesquieu and the Architecture of Liberty: https://www.consequentialactions.com/post/the-spirit-of-laws-montesquieu-and-the-architecture-of-liberty Thursday: Episode 14I, with Jared McClain of the Institute for Justice. Saturday: Episode 15, “The Fork in the Road” — Voltaire and Rousseau. — Consequential Actions is a libertarian, non-interventionist analysis of American constitutional and foreign policy. New episodes weekly.
S5 · E14
September 19 · 1 hr 23 min
Everyone Quotes Montesquieu Almost Nobody Reads Past the First Page
Montesquieu and the Separation of Powers: The Spirit of the Laws Explained In 1748, a retired French magistrate published The Spirit of the Laws anonymously. Within three years, the Church banned it; within forty, Americans on both sides of the constitutional ratification fight relied on it to make their case. This episode explores Book 11, Chapter 6—the most quoted yet misunderstood passage of 18th-century political writing. Most assume it mandates three permanently separate powers. However, Montesquieu actually envisioned an occasional, temporary judiciary of ordinary men, calling the power of judging "next to nothing." This was entirely unlike the permanent English judiciary of his time, a fact he privately recorded. We follow the parts of his argument that reached America: the sorting of governments, the passions driving them, and the republic doctrines debated by Anti-Federalists and Hamilton. Madison, calling Montesquieu "the oracle," used the British constitution in Federalist 47 to prove pure separation was never the doctrine. We also examine Montesquieu’s flaws: his climate theory, concessions on slavery, and private notes—unpublished until 1818—claiming the English no longer deserved their liberty. Finally, the Liberty Test: Dividing a government restricts who exercises authority, but not how much authority exists. The anti-tyranny and limited-government arguments are different, though tradition often conflates them. Did his system leave people more free, or just more governed? ⏱️ CHAPTERS 0:00:00 The 1721 Sensation and The Persian Letters 0:03:26 Episode Intro: Montesquieu and the Architecture of Liberty 0:05:25 Montesquieu’s Early Life and the French Parlement 0:10:27 Judicial Torture, The Parisian Letters, and The Study of Rome 0:13:13 The Spirit of the Laws: Publication and Church Backlash 0:14:25 The Method: Adapting Laws to the People and Climate 0:18:27 The Scottish Connection: Adam Ferguson and Adam Smith 0:23:27 Sorting Governments: Republics, Monarchies, and Despotism 0:30:33 Montesquieu in England: Observing the Constitution 0:33:13 Defining Political Liberty as a Tranquility of Mind 0:34:55 The Three Powers and the “Invisible” Judiciary 0:42:16 Distribution of Powers vs. Separation of Powers 0:46:35 James Madison, Federalist 47, and Parchment Barriers 0:52:24 The Anti-Federalists, Small Republics, and the Confederate Republic 0:56:45 The Most Cited Secular Author of the American Founding 0:58:11 Building a Portable Model: Stripping the Corruption 1:02:39 Climate Theory and Montesquieu’s Contradictions on Slavery 1:06:29 The Skeptic’s Case: Elitism and the Intermediate Ranks 1:09:51 The Gap in the Doctrine: Limiting the Scope of Government 1:15:26 The Liberty Test: Applying the Mechanism Today 1:20:24 Conclusion, Follow Information, and Preview for Episode 15 📚 Companion reading: Article 14, “The Spirit of Laws: Montesquieu and the Architecture of Liberty.” Deep dive with full endnotes: ⁠https://www.consequentialactions.com/post/the-spirit-of-laws-montesquieu-and-the-architecture-of-liberty⁠ 📖 Read it yourself, free: The 1777 London edition at the Online Library of Liberty: ⁠https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/montesquieu-complete-works-4-vols-1777⁠ Self-Evident: The Road to 1776 — Episode 14 of 22. Next Saturday, Episode 15, “The Fork in the Road”: Two more Frenchmen on toleration vs. the general will. This Tuesday: What happens when the parts of a design stop resisting each other
S5 · E13
September 16 · 1 hr 5 min
Socialist Calculation Debate Explained: Menger, Mises, Hayek and "I, Pencil" in 2026
Self-Evident: The Road to 1776 — Episode 13B Nobody Knows How to Make a Pencil. So What Is a Price Actually Telling You? In December 1958, Leonard Read published an essay in the voice of a pencil, and its claim still holds. Not one person in the pencil’s global supply chain knows how to make one, and the pencil gets made anyway. Something tells each of those people what to do, and much of what reaches them is a number. Adam Smith wrote in 1776 that no human wisdom or knowledge could ever be sufficient to direct the industry of a nation. Carl Menger argued in 1871 that value sits in the person valuing, not in the object. Ludwig von Mises argued in 1920 that without private ownership of producer goods there are no exchange ratios for them. F. A. Hayek recast the problem as dispersed knowledge. We trace that line through Rothbard, Bastiat, Hazlitt and Read. The tradition itself does not agree on whether Mises and Hayek were making the same argument. We test that line against five fights this year: RealPage and algorithmic rent-setting, where the Justice Department reached a consent settlement with no finding of liability; the roughly one-third of federal contract dollars awarded without full and open competition; occupational licensing and the 2015 dental board case; certificate-of-need laws that give incumbent hospitals a formal route to object to a new competitor; and the September proposals from leading AI firms to pace the frontier, and the antitrust objection that followed within a day. The Honest Reckoning takes on libertarians who treat “I, Pencil” as a proof. The Skeptic’s Case gives the market socialists Lange and Lerner their due, along with the argument that computation has changed the terms. The Liberty Test asks three things of any arrangement where a number is set: who has a choice, what narrowed it, and whether walking away still does anything. Recorded Sunday, September 13, 2026; the RealPage matters and the AI pacing debate were both moving at the time. Did this leave us more free, or more governed? ⏱️ CHAPTERS 0:00 — The Mystery of “I, Pencil” 5:47 — Podcast Introduction 6:54 — Adam Smith’s Pin Factory 11:10 — Carl Menger & Subjective Value 17:18 — RealPage & Rental Antitrust Lawsuits 20:47 — Mises & The Socialist Calculation Debate 26:11 — Federal Contracts & Thin Competition 29:24 — AI Cartels & Smith’s Warning 33:26 — Occupational Licensing & Healthcare 38:38 — Intellectual Genealogy of Austrian Economics 45:23 — Critiques & Modern Objections 56:44 — The Liberty Test & Episode Conclusion 📚 Companion article, “The System of Natural Liberty — The Scottish Enlightenment, Part II: Smith and Ferguson”: https://www.consequentialactions.com/post/the-system-of-natural-liberty-the-scottish-enlightenment-part-ii-smith-and-ferguson 🎓 I, Pencil, by Leonard E. Read: https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/read-i-pencil-my-family-tree-as-told-to-leonard-e-read-dec-1958 🎓 The Law by Frédéric Bastiat — five top lessons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goHMDXfm7vc
S5 · E13
September 13 · 1 hr 32 min
Adam Smith and Adam Ferguson: The Wealth of Nations, An Essay on the History of Civil Society, and the Militia Question
Self-Evident: The Road to 1776 — Episode 13 Adam Smith Made the Case for the Free Market. Then, in the Same Book, He Wrote the Strongest Objection to It. Two men were born in Scotland in 1723, a county apart. They joined the same Edinburgh club, kept the same friends, and worked from the same premise about what commercial life does to a people. They never agreed about the remedy. Every account of Adam Ferguson says that at Fontenoy in May 1745 the young chaplain of a Highland regiment was found in the front rank with a drawn broadsword. Walter Scott told it; the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica printed it as fact. The regiment’s own museum now says it could not have happened, because Ferguson had not yet left Scotland. Smith’s system of natural liberty discharges the sovereign on grounds of capacity, not rights; and his writing on merchants and guilds is as harsh as anything produced on the left since. The book opens with the pin factory — ten men, forty-eight thousand pins — and several hundred pages later Smith writes that such a worker becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. Ferguson had warned that a nation which contracts out its own defense has dismembered the human character. Smith answered that only a standing army preserves a civilized nation, and that the martial spirit of the people deserves the serious attention of government anyway. Neither man survives the reckoning cleanly: Ferguson crossed the Atlantic as secretary to a peace commission sent to end the war on British terms, and Smith spent his last twelve years as a commissioner of customs. Did this leave us more free, or more governed? ⏱️ CHAPTERS 0:00:00 — The Legend of Fontenoy and Adam Ferguson 0:02:41 — Two Men, One Premise: Adam Ferguson and Adam Smith 0:03:57 — Podcast Introduction and Previous Episode Recap 0:05:31 — The Select Society, The Militia Club, and Scotland’s Grievance 0:12:59 — Kirkcaldy and the Early World of Adam Smith 0:17:24 — Academic Postings: Hume, Hutcheson, and Smith 0:19:34 — The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Impartial Spectator 0:27:21 — Attacking the Mercantile System in The Wealth of Nations 0:31:28 — The System of Natural Liberty and the Duties of the Sovereign 0:37:32 — Deconstructing the True Meaning of the “Invisible Hand” 0:41:32 — Smith’s Warning About Merchants, Monopolies, and Guilds 0:44:29 — The Pin Factory and The Hidden Costs of Divided Labor 0:48:44 — Adam Ferguson: Life and Background as Chaplain to the Black Watch 0:53:13 — Ferguson’s Essay on the History of Civil Society 0:56:02 — Specialization and The Threat of Professional Armies to Free Citizens 1:02:26 — Smith’s Counterargument: The Necessity of a Standing Army 1:07:44 — The Reckoning: Ferguson and Smith’s Later Government Careers 1:13:40 — Three Objections to the Libertarian Reading of Smith and Ferguson 1:23:03 — The Scottish Influence on the American Founders 1:27:09 — The Liberty Test 1:29:47 — Episode Conclusion and Preview of Next Episode on Montesquieu 📚 Companion article, “The System of Natural Liberty — The Scottish Enlightenment, Part II: Smith and Ferguson”: https://www.consequentialactions.com/post/the-system-of-natural-liberty-the-scottish-enlightenment-part-ii-smith-and-ferguson

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