Self-Evident Justin Stapley

In a solocast, Justin Stapley discusses the rise of anti-semitism in America and across the world, reckons with the ugliness of war and the need to see terrible conflict through to victorious conclusion to secure peace and prosperity, and once more addresses the reality of dysfunction and decay shot through America’s civic culture.


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.freemennewsletter.com

Is the Israel-Hamas War recalibrating American politics? Just how MAGA is the Republican Party? Does the GOP primary race for second matter? Who will perform well in tonight’s primary debate and who stands to gain the most from a good performance?
Justin Stapley and Scott Howard discuss all these questions and more.
This podcast is brought to you by the Freemen News-Letter, a Substack-hosted online publication operating under the auspices of the Freemen Foundation as part of its mission to conserve and renew American constitutionalism. Audio editing provided by Stephen Chucay.


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.freemennewsletter.com

Episode notes:
Jake’s website. Follow Jake on Twitter @jakehunsaker
Peruse the Original Draft of the Declaration.
Check out more from Justin Stapley at the Self-Evident newsletter.
Follow Justin on Twitter @JustinWStapley.


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.freemennewsletter.com

Show Notes and Points

Part 1 - Is the Trump era over? Arguably, yes. 
* Not because Trump isn’t still a force to be reckoned with or is no longer relevant 
* But because the Virginia election demonstrates he’s no longer a center of gravity in American politics 
* Aside on Buffalo write-in-campaign, why don’t non-Trump conservatives have this kind of political will?  
* Democratic reactions: Racism, accelearate progressive agenda 
* Democrats are the ones who want Trump in the conversation 
Part 2 – Trump as a wedge issue 
* I just recorded a podcast episode with Josh Lewis who hosts the Saving Elephants podcast and we discuss some of these kind of issues 
* Specifically, he asked me why I don’t treat Trump as the existential crisis to the Republic so many other non-Trump conservatives  
* Points: 
* 1. The Democrats have not acted as center-left partners in a “coalition of the decent” 
* 2. They have used Trump and Trumpism as wedge issues to get votes for a progressive vision that the country doesn’t support 
* 3. Biden didn’t follow through with the moderate approach or the return to normalcy he promised (as a I predicted) 
* 4. The Lincoln Project and other “Never Trump” actors haven’t acted as center-right partners in a “coalition of the decent” but have embraced a role as partisan boosters, acting and behaving just like the #MAGA crowd they claim is existentially threatening the Republic 
* 5. Finally, as I touched on earlier, if Trump was truly an existential threat to the Republic, why on earth would Democrats want him in the conversation, why would they goad him to jump into the fray in Virginia, why do they seem to want him around and part of the dialogue? What political objective would be worth resurrecting the specter of a defeated president so that he can be used as a wedge issue to get people to vote for Democrats?  
* I guess this is the whole point of my frustration. So many of Trump’s political points want the political advantages of a narrative that treats him as an existential threat, but then they engage in politics as usual instead of shifting their rhetoric and their actions in ways that would make sense if he truly was an existential threat. 
Part 3 – Trump and Trumpism are problems 
* Don’t get me wrong, I have long recognized and resisted the nationalism and populism of the Trump era 
* Written extensively on this unique issue, and the threat that presents to the political health of our society 
* Points: 
* 1. Trump has been a catalyst for the embrace of nationalism on the Right 
* Nationalism is different than patriotism 
* Patriotism is love of country for its ideals, believes in exceptionalism based in principles and values 
* Nationalism is love of country beyond or even in absence of ideas, believes in national supremacy based on some belief of superior traits, whether that’s cultural, ethnic, religious..etc. 
* American patriotism clings to the norms and moors of our unique constitutional culture, nationalism views these norms and moors as “suicide pacts” and will circumvent them or even destroy them in order to defeat or “own” political enemies. 
* 2. Trump has been a catalyst for an assault on classical liberal values from the Right 
* Now not only is the Left largely illiberal, the Right has become anti-liberal 
* Since Trump’s rise, America’s constitutional framework is now under determined assault from serious and determined camps on both sides of the political aisle 
* Trump has been a catalyst for the dismissal of the importance of private and public virtue in political representation 
* Too many conservatives no longer consider character and virtue as important and desirable traits in their leaders. They want fighters, they want people who can play dirty. They view character and virtue as weakness and think anyone trying to cultivate or demonstrate character and virtue is going to get steamrolled by progre

Transcript
Welcome to the Self-Evident podcast. It’s been quite a while since my last episode. Life has been crazy, school has been crazy, and, honestly, I just do what I have time to do. Since it’s been so long, I decided to make an episode in connection to the debate triggered recently by an article written by Jonah Golberg about the idea of creating new conservative third parties. I won’t go into too much detail. I and many, many others have delved into this debate and I’d suggest doing some reading of the various articles yourself to get a measure of what it is we’re talking about. As for my two cents on the issue, I wrote a newsletter last week where I submitted a subtle shift from Jonah’s aims, maintaining the same goals but seeking to accomplish what he suggests, not through third parties, but through committees or caucuses that can organize people towards championing values within the existing party structures.  
Today, in this podcast, I’m going to take this argument a little further and add some philosophical flavoring to what I’m positing. I’m not going to rehash my arguments too much from last week’s newsletter, so before you continue listening, I would suggest taking a moment and giving that newsletter a read.   
As a Madisonian, one of my key interests throughout my studies of political theory and constitutionalism are the mechanisms or “auxiliary precautions” that can be introduced to a political system and political culture in order to maintain the counterpoise necessary to ensure that no single majority faction gains control of the government and proceeds to assault the rights and liberties of those outside of the majority’s interests. 
James Madison, for his part, was zealous in assuring that such auxiliary precautions existed within the framework of the US Constitution. While others would have preferred a strong bill of rights within the main body of the proposed constitution, Madison initially scoffed at the effectiveness that “parchment barriers” could have in actually controlling the actions of the government. Pointing to the serious violations of English Constitutionalism at the hands of Parliament that necessitated the struggle against Britain, James Madison was more interested in establishing checks and balances on power than in an enumeration of rights.  
Madison argued that only through a proper diffusion of interests that forced governance by coalition and consensus could rights and liberties ever truly be secured. In this view, no enumeration or declaration of rights can ever fully secure a nation from arbitrary oppression and tyranny if there was not a proper diffusion of interests to make it impossible for any one faction to be large enough to compose a true majority. 
It should be pointed out that faction and party are not necessarily synonymous in political theory. More often than not, especially in American political history, a political party is more likely to constitute a coalition of factions rather constitute a single faction in and of itself, seeking absolute dominance of the wheels of government.  
In our own day, most of Madison’s auxiliary precautions remain intact, though the counterpoise he helped establish has been disrupted by several key developments. The four main disruptions of constitutional counterpoise I’ll discuss today are negative partisanship, national communities, the imperial presidency, and national parties. 
National Communities 
By national communities, I refer to associations that allow individuals to assume identities disconnected from their local communities and their states. Social media, for example, has created platforms for political activism that tend to establish core constituencies of citizens united by ideological beliefs that can wield political power despite being spread out across the country. This has tended both to increased instances of groupthink through self-sorting as well as a tendency to view polit

Transcript
What is a military-grade weapon? Should any of the firearms currently on the market in the United States be considered military-grade? Specifically, is the AR-15 a military-grade weapon? These questions are difficult to answer because “military-grade weapon” is another term in a long list of terms being used in the gun debate that have no specific, relevant meaning.  But, for the sake of argument, I’m going to attempt to find a working definition of “military-grade” in this episode of the Self-Evident podcast. So, here we go.  
Full-Automatic Fire
The most obvious firearm feature that we can universally consider “military-grade" is the capacity for full-auto fire or the ability to simulate or approach full-auto fire. That’s because a full-automatic weapon is what’s considered an area weapon, meaning it’s designed to saturate an area with gunfire far beyond what’s possible with manual pulls of the trigger. Area weapons fall into a broader category of weapons that are considered mass casualty devices, meaning their design fulfills a specific military need to cause mass casualties in an opposing force.  
Because the civilian application of a firearm for self-defense falls quite exclusively into situations requiring what are called point weapons, firearms designed to deliver purposeful, precise, and controlled gunfire, there is an established tradition in American law that civilians do not have a protected right by nature of the second amendment for area weapons and mass casualty devices. This allows us to classify, based on existing law, Light Machine Guns, Assault Rifles, and Submachine Guns as military-grade weapons (legally, they are classified as machine guns). This also allows us, generally, to classify a semi-automatic weapon modified in some way to simulate or approach full-auto fire as a “military-grade weapon”.  
However, if the limit of our definition of “military-grade” is only on the capability for full-auto fire, the debate would be closed. Manufacturing full-automatic weapons for general civilian use is already banned and the sale of existing full-automatic weapons is highly regulated. The highly complicated process for acquiring one of the little over 500,000 existing automatic weapons in the hands of civilians is so complicated and rigorous that their use in crime is virtually non-existent.
There have only been three reported incidents of full-automatic weapons used in crimes since 1934 and none of these incidents were mass shootings. Additionally, the Vegas Shooting remains the only occurrence of semi-automatic weapons modified to simulate or approach automatic fire by use of external devices and those devices (bump-stocks) have since been banned. So, if we are to extend our working definition of “military-grade” to include any of the firearms currently on the market for purchase by the general public, we’re going to have to discuss other firearm features. 
Since the AR-15 is the weapon most commonly accused of being military-grade, let’s see if we can find a feature that helps in creating a broader definition of “military-grade” that makes sense. In this episode, I’m going to break down the features of an AR-15 to see if any of them can be highlighted as a feature that makes a weapon “military-grade.” The features of the AR-15 style rifle that I’m going to discuss will be semi-automatic fire, ammunition capacity, ammunition caliber, weight, length, material, grip style, attachments, and butt-stock modifications. Most of these features have either former laws, current laws, or proposed laws that would affect them. 
Does Semi-Auto Fire Make a Weapon “Military-grade”?
Alright, so far, we’ve established that full-auto weapons, or machine guns, are already well regulated and that in order to have a working definition of “military-grade” that applies to firearms on the civilian market currently, we need to establish another