Overall, red states still prove to be safer. Gill notes that many people in red states own guns, which create a deterrent for criminals. Red states also have judges and prosecutors who value law and order as opposed to blue states, which give lighter sentences to criminals. There is also the issue of messaging, with the left demoralizing police and scaring them into not intervening in a crime. Why risk your life and badge to protect someone if you will be prosecuted for it? This type of Democrat messaging emboldens criminals.
The recent migration pattern shows that overall, people are safer and happier in red states. Most of the people moving want to be in a better place, but it remains to be seen if they are going to bring their politics with them or if they will change their ways and reinforce the politics and values that make red states a more appealing home. Many residents of red states are concerned the newcomers won’t realize why they are moving and will keep voting for the things that made them want to leave their old state in the first place. Gill says people in red states should make sure the people moving to their area learn why Republican values are so important so that they can continue to build upon them.
In the episode, Gill also interviews scholar Michael Anton, a lecturer and research fellow at Hillsdale College, a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, and a former national security official in the Trump administration. Anton talks about the left’s obsession with governing via mandates as well as building the political power of unelected bureaucrats.
The reason for this obsession is derived from the foundational ideologies that progressives hold. Anton argues that during Woodrow Wilson’s administration, the original progressives essentially believed that the country is like a computer and the laws are like the software. Progressives believed the software—the Constitution, founding frame of government, etc.—was too out of date, he argues, and that they thought America needed a much more complex set of rules to govern a new and complex society. He says that at the time, they did so for sound policy reasons that the country needed and benefited from, but the problem was that the progressives didn’t want to do it through a legislative or constitutional process.
Instead, they wanted to do it by giving discretionary power to so-called experts who could be allowed to make rules that aren’t laws. Anton gives an example of being on an airplane and hearing the announcements saying it is a federal law to wear a mask. This is not true. It is not a federal law. It may be a federal rule, but mandating masks on airplanes was not passed by the legislatures and signed into law by the president. This progressive ideology is why Democrats rule on lockdowns as if they have emergency power and impose mandates that violate people’s constitutional rights. These are the kind of things that could not be permitted to happen under a constitutional order, Anton says.
In conclusion, Anton says that the core of the Progressive idea is that society is complex and learned people understand that better than other people or elected legislatures; therefore, these educated elite should be entrusted with ruling for the common good regardless of what everyone else wants. People assert this belief all the time when they say “trust the experts.” Ironically, this belief doesn’t necessarily lead to progress. Although America has seen technological progress in recent years, we have ceded so many of our rights and liberties to unaccountable government agencies and the bureaucrats who staff them. This is not social or political progress; if anything, this is regress, Anton says.
It seems that America has abandoned the elaborate structure of checks and balances given to us in our nation’s founding. The question now is, can we get back to that? Anton says that political decay is not often followed by a political rejuvenation back to the original state. However, if America is to get back to its founding principles, the only way to do it is for the people to stand up and repeatedly elect members of Congress, state legislatures, city councils, school boards, etc., who will represent them, demand a say in government, and not take no for an answer.
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