Tyrant In A Top Hat: Radical Ideas for a Fractured Nation?

[0:02] Did President Lincoln plunge us into a civil war needlessly?

[0:06] Are the roots of that conflict still with us today? And if so, should we split up the United States?

[0:13] We speak to Martin Armitage, co-author of the book Tyrant in a Top Hat, that proposes a libertarian fever dream that bases its premise on actions taken by Abraham Lincoln in 1861. I’m Doug Berger, and this is Secular Left.

[0:35] Music.

[0:49] Welcome to this episode of the Secular Left podcast. I’m your host, Doug, and I want to introduce you to an author that I interviewed recently. His name is Martin Armitage. And he and his son, Chris, wrote a book about President Lincoln in the Civil War called Tyrant in a Top Hat. And I think it’s a very interesting interview, something I don’t normally interview people about, but I thought that the topic was very interesting. And after the interview, if you wish to hear my take on this book and their theory, check out, I attached an epilogue to this episode after the interview.

[1:36] Okay. Our guest today is Martin Armitage. He, along with his son, Chris, wrote a book called Tyrant and a Top Hat, and it takes a look at the issue of Lincoln and the Civil War. Thank you for joining us today, Martin.

[1:54] Thanks for having me on. I’m honored to be asked to join you on this conversation. And could you tell us a little bit about yourself, like a short bio, so we can get to know you? Sure. Yes, I have a degree in history, an undergrad degree in history, master’s degree in online education. I spent 16 years in various political positions from elected official, appointed, paid positions. And I am just somebody who’s been a history enthusiast my entire life. Uh just a little side note and unrelated to this podcast i also am an outdoor enthusiast and my later years uh outdoors has pretty much become my expertise and i have a podcast if you don’t mind me giving that a little no go ahead papa bear hikes uh which is available on all platforms, all right and uh and your son chris he uh is a a veteran of the air force and master of science degree in homeland security uh he was a former law enforcement officer is that correct yes he He was in the security forces with the Air Force. He did two deployments as well as presidential duty detail while President Obama was in Argentina. Okay. And he’s also written some other books about human trafficking and about

[3:09] policing and things like that. So what is Tyrant in a Top Hat briefly? What is your goal for this book? Well, in a nutshell…

[3:22] What we’re doing here is trying to get people to not sway their position, not say this, you know, I mean, I think there’s a lot of books out there now that are trying to tell us this is how we should think. Instead, the goal here is to maybe get us to question, to get us to step back, maybe not necessarily read this and say, well, now I, I disagree with this or, or, you know, this has changed my mind, but maybe just get people to think something unique

[3:48] in this day and age, I think, is provoking people to think and analyze what they believe. So what we’re doing here is examining, was war really the last resort for Lincoln? Or were there other measures that possibly could have been taken to avoid a civil war?

[4:08] Not even, you know, and not excluding letting the union dissolve. Okay and then also later in the book then you also propose uh some ideas about the current situation that we have and and how to deal with that as well is that correct yes we get into uh you know we examine you know the historical nature of the cultural differences we have in our country the geographical makeup of the country you know you can you can take a map and, a pencil and say, yeah, you go along here in the Southeast and you’ve got a group of people that believe this. And in the Northeast, you may have that. And in the Midwest, their beliefs are unique to their lifestyles and what’s important in their lives. And going as far back as when the country was even founded or before, those differences have always clashed. And 200 and some odd years later, are we looking to make a square peg fit in a round hole possibly? All right. And how did you get interested in this topic? What made you want to help you and your son write this book?

[5:19] Well, this goes back to when he was 16 years old, and we took a trip to Gettysburg with the Boy Scouts. And on the way home, I shared with him something that I had always thought about from the time I visited Gettysburg. And I grew up during the bicentennial. I was 11 years old, turning 12 in 1976. So history was a big part of our lives, anybody that grew up during that period. Oh, definitely. Yeah. And my family was really big on exposing us to history, which I’m very fortunate and grateful they did that. But I put it out there, you know, being a pacifist, did we really need to go to war? And I always said, you know, if we let the South just secede and go on their own way, they probably would have come running back anyway, right? If we had maybe approached it as a cold war instead of fighting on a battlefield. Is it possible that if we had forged some trade agreements with other countries, other empires at that time, with European countries, Could we have put the South in a position where, hey, you know, we better make good with the North and maybe become a little bit more, you know, be a little bit more willing to compromise on some of these ideas and take a look around the rest of the world and say, yeah, they’re doing away with slavery. Maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s time for us to do that.

[6:35] Okay. And one of the things that is mentioned in the book is about Lincoln suspending habeas corpus. For the non-lawyers out there, could you explain what habeas corpus is and why it’s important? Habeas corpus, in a nutshell, and I’m not an attorney, so I’m going to give you a layman’s and very layman’s explanation to this. That’s the protection of our rights, our constitutional rights, such things such as free speech, for example, which is probably number one on that. The right to a speedy trial, protection from cruel and unusual punishment.

[7:18] And I’m sure I’m missing a lot of this. Like I said, it is a very layman’s explanation to habeas corpus. Free press, you know, all the things that were very important to our founding fathers, you know, some of the cornerstones of how this country was built.

[7:34] Yeah. And, and for historical perspective, at least in this situation was that habeas corpus was set aside in the early part of the civil war to deal with Maryland. Maryland was a border state. they had southern sympathizers and in fact a unit of the army was attacked by some sympathizers and that kind of what led Lincoln to deal with it in that way and was Justice Taney, I forget how to pronounce his name.

[8:13] Had said that it was illegal because even in a war sense you still have civil rights, or you should still have civil rights. And basically, Lincoln ignored his advice. And he was the district judge for that area. And I read further that he never even brought any of the cases up for hearings after this had all taken place, because he disagreed with it so much.

[8:47] How do you square that with the need for, it was a national emergency, there was a rebellion going on, and he had to take these measures and Congress was in recess. Does that play a part or does that mitigate anything that he did at that time, early in 1861?

[9:07] Well, it’s real easy for us 150 or 60 years later to say, yeah, this would have been an easier route to take. And I could certainly understand, all right, there was an emergency, something needed to be done very quickly. So yeah, I’m sitting here. Abraham Lincoln obviously didn’t have the time that I have to sit around and think about this. So, and that’s part of what we’re trying to do with this book is to get people to think a little bit. And uh you know the possibility could have been maryland you know just honoring the notion of states rights and the sovereignty you’re with us so we need you to exercise the laws that would protect people because let’s face it if you pick up arms i guess up until what’s his face, took office against the u.s government or aggressive towards u.s government you broke the law wrong. I know you committed an act of violence or an aggression, and it wouldn’t matter if it was against the government or your neighbor, right? You would go to jail. If you took up a gun, went to your neighbor with a gun, you still broke the law. If you went to the Capitol building with guns and with the intention of overthrowing an election or a country, you still should go to jail. Could the people, could they have possibly been detained until they were brought to trial or…

[10:30] I think that that could have been an option that anybody that was caught. And again, it’s hindsight. We didn’t have the intelligence that we have now, the ability to gather intelligence. There was a lot of hearsay. You know, hey, you know, my neighbor, Joe, you know, I overheard him talking about that. He was going to take his gun and go down to Fort something there next month or, you know, or go to the go to Washington. We didn’t have access to that kind of intelligence. But the possibility of maybe detaining people who they knew were involved in the planning of the insurrection, obviously somebody that committed an act, that’s a no-brainer. They can be detained and dealt with through the courts.

[11:11] Yeah, and to kind of put a modern context on that, when they had the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, a lot of times those people were arrested because they were breaking the law. They were detained. And then before they could be brought to trial, they were released because they knew that they had to bring them to trial and they probably would have got out anyway. So they released them so that’s generally how it’s supposed to work and and i know in maryland i guess they arrested one third of the general assembly and some newspaper editors and anybody that had said a nasty word about lincoln they just they just cast a wide net and at the time it seemed like something that they should do and you know hindsight like like you said you know a hundred, a hundred years later, more than a hundred years later, it’s maybe that wasn’t the best thing to try to do. You and I have over a hundred years of history here that we can talk about and point to examples and, and some of them not that long ago where we could say, Hey, when a president gets out of control and feels he has that kind of power, right? There are people that were released that assaulted and even killed a police officer. And, uh, you know.

[12:29] Committed violent acts on our attacked our capital let’s be honest here that was in that was a terrorist attack on january 6 2021 or um 2020 was it 2021 yeah 2021 that was a terrorist attack okay so our current president pardoned people who actually were involved in a terrorist attack, right and is there precedent for that well yeah sort of there is and i think what we’re looking to do here with that book is saying, well.

[12:59] Yeah, was it, were we setting some dangerous precedents back in 1860s with the Civil War? Did we now set some precedents that when maybe somebody with not so wholesome ideas or can maybe look back on that and say, well, you know, Lincoln did it because he thought it was going to help the country. Well, you know, I did it because I needed, we couldn’t afford to let Joe Biden, you know, this is going to happen if they take office, You know, we’re going to be done as a country, right? You know, four years, right? We can’t let that happen, right? So you all got to go down here with your guns and your goofy costumes. And, you know, I’m sorry I’m offending you. I don’t, you know, I’m guessing your politics are probably not going to be offended by this statement, but, you know, you guys, your goofy costumes and your silly flags and, you know, go in and destroy the Capitol.

[13:45] Moving on, though, to another point that you, that make in the book was that, you know, There was other alternatives to war, and one of them was that Congress could have just passed laws and outlawed slavery.

[14:00] And I just wanted to get your opinion, though, that there was at least two that were passed prior to the Civil War. The Slave Trade Acts of 1794 and 1800 and the Act of Prohibiting the Importion of Slaves that was signed by President Jefferson in 1808, which is kind of ironic because Jefferson was a slave owner. And he said, and he noted, he said, the spirit of master is abating that of the slave rising from the dust, his condition mollifying the way I hope preparing under this auspices of heaven for total emancipation. Now I’ll start with the Jefferson one. I mean, sure. And you know, like Jefferson’s kind of a mixed bag historically.

[14:46] He owned slaves. Did Jefferson have something to gained by banning the importation of slaves? He probably did because, look, they were seen as a commodity, right? They were labor. So what would that do to the value of his slaves? And it’s been said that he was financially struggling at the time. So was there a little bit of a motivation here to increase his wealth? We don’t know. But it didn’t really have any teeth to it because Did it stop slavery? No, it just, at that point, there were enough slaves where if they just kept that institution going, they wouldn’t need to import anymore.

[15:32] And what we were doing with the indigenous community, many of them were becoming enslaved as well. No, I mean, neither one of those acts, I think, had any teeth of them that were really going to do it. There were nothing more, I think, than compromises to appease the Southerners and maybe gladhead Northerners that were anti-slavery a bit. My opinion, it should have just simply been, look, slavery is not recognized in this country as it anymore, okay? And if these states, the Southern states felt that strongly about it and they seceded, well, look, the rest of these states that are abolishing slavery, move up here. Move to the Northern states. And again, I know I’m oversimplified. I’m giving a very simple solution to something that was very complicated here. But I think that it would have really weakened it. Again, it would have been another instrument of weakening the South, the Southern culture of slavery and that institution.

[16:31] For more information about any of the topics covered in this episode, check out our show notes at secularleft.com.

[16:38] Music.

[16:44] Yeah. And I know one of the examples that you use when you were talking about just passing laws and just getting rid of it was what happened with the UK and that they abolished slavery. But it took them at least 30 years to get to that point. You know, they didn’t, they started like in 1803 and they didn’t abolish it officially until 1833.

[17:07] And so look at this country we abolish slavery supposedly with the civil war then there’s the passage of the 13th amendment and then how many decades later we still have people you know rosa park is arrested for riding in the front of the bus uh, yeah about 100 years right yeah over 100 years before it was enforced yeah and and there are people today that can tell you, rightfully so, that that fight is still going on. We’re not calling it slavery, but that fight for equality is still taking place. And then the other point, the other idea that you mentioned in the book was about, you know, besides there being other alternatives was that, uh, you know, Lincoln went with total war, destroyed crops, uh, burnt, uh, cities, uh, went whole, you know, I think you use the term total war, which is a common term to use where you put everything in. He got rid of commanders who didn’t fight like McClellan.

[18:13] And the thing though, that, that I didn’t see mentioned though, well, you kind of mentioned it was that, I mean, you mentioned it, but it kind of undercuts the argument, was that Lincoln did try to compromise with the Southern states, and they even offered to pay compensation, and the South rejected it. And the quote in your book, it says, the failure of compensated emancipation efforts reflected Southern intransigence. Even in those moments where Lincoln sought compromise, the South’s reaction should have dispelled any illusions about the possibility of reconciliation. The Southern leadership made it clear that slavery was not up for negotiation, even when accompanied by financial compensation. This refusal exposed the depth of the South’s commitment to preserving human bondage at all cost, prioritizing their preference for continued Black subjugation over economic incentives or peace. So how do you square that with your notion that Lincoln was a tyrant and didn’t take these alternative measures? It looks like he did and the South rejected them too. I mean, it was kind of both sides rejected compromises that were introduced. Right. And tyrant, I think, is meant to just kind of be that, you know.

[19:38] I mean we live in a day and age everything’s clickbait right so it’s like all right yeah it’s maybe you know using an exaggerated form but in that sense yes lincoln did try to try to compromise there was no compromise there let’s face it right it’s to the south there was no south right it wasn’t a compromise right to the south yeah they didn’t want to compromise, you know lincoln should have maybe stepped back and said you know and again it’s my opinion i I don’t have the, you know, I can’t go back in time and change or pick anybody’s brains.

[20:14] But look at the alternatives. I just, you know, I’m a pacifist. And that’s kind of funny. Two of my kids were in the military, but I’m a pacifist. And I just really believe that wars can always be avoided, or 90% of the time they can be avoided. This was one that could have been. I think when the South rejected his proposal, that should have opened the door to say, okay, well, states who are anti-slave, hey, everybody’s welcome to move here.

[20:48] And there is no returning. There’s no, you know, once they cross that line, they’re free. There’s no sending them back. There’s no extradition. They have total immunity from being sent back to the South. I think that would have weakened the South right there. And again, it’s simplifying such a complicated topic. But I just think that, you know, right there, that would have taken their legs out for them because they were so dependent on slave labor for their means of

[21:16] production, for their farming. Okay well that nicely segues into what we’re going to talk about next is some of the ideas that you introduce in the the last chapter the 12th chapter in your conclusion about how to deal with uh this what you call it fracture culturally fractured nation i think that’s the term that you used yes um so you’re talking about uh dividing the united states up into regions that are culturally the same and at people that don’t fit in then would move to where they would fit in.

[21:56] But that does to me that doesn’t seem at all practical i mean who’s going to pay to move these people because they they have they they’re located they may or may not have jobs but they have familiar ties and you know it’s not like you can just get up like back in the 1860s you just can’t get up and move you know what i’m saying today so how would you work through that is there a process that you’ve thought about or yeah that’s i think just like a again i keep using the same phrase very simple simple way of looking at it but if there’s certain things that are very important to you like um.

[22:39] Teaching history out of a Bible is that important to you and you live in California or New York or Vermont, maybe what you need to do is consider moving to one of those states where your kids can be taught history out of a Bible. If you live in Alabama and you want your children to learn history, actual history, maybe you move them to a state where they’re teaching history. And yet, yeah, not an easy thing to do. Of course, a lot of my, I just moved from New York down to florida i know how difficult that is and i’m self-employed but somebody who has a job it becomes even more complicated the idea of getting up and moving but you know that’s not something that would happen overnight it would um you know that would take time that would you know, you first would have to see a situation where you would have to start to see some successful secession movements and you know and unfortunately you know world history has shown us that when you have these type of movements, these secession movements, where a group breaks off from a country. You have refugee crisis.

[23:47] Does it create a refugee crisis in this country? Well, probably not. I think probably what it creates is, I really hate, it really sucks living here. It sucks living in California, surrounded by liberals who, you know, make me recognize that there’s people out there that look and act different than I do. It sucks. But one day I’ll get to go move somewhere where everybody is white, Christian, and the males dominate.

[24:11] But yeah, the other thing I wanted to ask you too about that is that on one hand, you talk about separating culturally fractured nation into separate regions, and then you talk about an overarching protection of rights.

[24:31] And I don’t see also how that works either. I don’t see how you could, I don’t know, let’s call it the Ohio region, and they believe a certain way, and they make laws just based on that. How does that mean that somebody like me could have my civil rights enforced that are guaranteed by the Bill of Rights if we’re all fractured? I mean, how would that work? That’s a great question. That’s a good question. first of all the fracturing would it wouldn’t be structured you know it would have to it would have to happen in a very organic way right it couldn’t be forced it couldn’t be like congress would sit down with a map and draw lines that would not work okay uh i think what if it were going to happen you would see maybe you know.

[25:29] Like maybe President Musk says, okay, you know, we’re not going to give any aid to New York. Instead of governor of New York, it’s pissed off and says, well, you know what? We’re going to secede from the United States. We’re going to be a sovereign nation and not be a part of the United States. And then you start to see the smaller states, you know, maybe New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and it spreads up into New England. I think it would work that way. Maybe the Southern states then say, hey, you know what? They can govern the way they want to. So you would end up with these, you know, and again, this is my vision. You’d see these regions fracturing off and forming their own governments. But then what you’d have, you know, you would need some sort of protection because then these regions become very vulnerable to outside forces. So what I’d see is something maybe reflects what the European Union possibly is, where you don’t necessarily have a central government that is passing laws, but maybe just being able to oversee commerce, trade, and military security.

[26:30] Well, we have kind of a microcosm of what you described there about having separate sections and overarching look is here in the state of Ohio where I live, we have what’s called home rule. And the cities and municipalities in the state are granted limited ability to govern themselves how they see fit. So if they want a separate tax to pay for schools, they can do it.

[27:03] In the past, it’s been they’ve outlawed plastic bags, single-use plastic bags, or usually it’s a quality of life thing. Well, some conservatives in the state government in Columbus didn’t appreciate that, and they ended up passing laws that prohibited states from making those kinds of laws.

[27:28] And so it’s kind of sort of describing what you’re talking about with the federal government and these different areas that you think are going to come around is that the national government is passing these laws that the states don’t like. They should be allowed to to govern themselves. Am I pretty much in the ballpark? Okay. Yes. All right. And then you talked about having – basically, to me, what it looks like is that depending on where you live, you would enjoy certain rights and privileges that you wouldn’t get in certain other areas that you live. But the national government would guarantee a certain level of rights that everybody would enjoy. Is that correct? I don’t know that they would be able to guarantee rights. I mean, I would see a national government that would be more focused on just commerce, trade, and security. But I don’t think we should have a national government that nullifies gay marriage.

[28:44] If you’re in a state where gay marriage was legalized 20 years ago, and now the federal government’s saying, well, no, we’re not. We’re doing away with it. It no longer exists. You know, right now we’re in a situation and we’re going to start seeing it in this country. Anybody that doesn’t believe it’s happening, we’re dealing with a very heavy handed executive branch of this government. Like maybe we have never seen ever in the history of this country. And that’s why. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt, but how would you think that a national government couldn’t pass a law outlawing same-sex marriage again?

[29:23] Because they would have limited powers they’d have limited powers they they can’t you know they’re not involved in things like civil rights for example right so states would have their own con those new nations i guess we’ll call them regions would have their own constitution, so what do we do with the bill of rights then that’s in the cost our constitution well we would no longer be the united states first of all you know we would be the country formerly known as the united states yeah and we would be a collection of of maybe four or five possibly six states within what was formerly the united states united states would then just become as i said this, body of this body that oversees commerce trade and national defense not continental defense.

[30:13] Sort of what you know maybe maybe even more in line with what the european you know having it evolve into closer to maybe what the European Union is trying to achieve.

[30:24] All right. Well, in quoting from the book here, you talk about, it says, proponents of controlled separation respond that certain legal instruments could preserve a universal safeguard of civil liberties. As in the European Union, individual rights might be enforced through overarching frameworks, charters of essential freedoms or constitutional clauses that no state or region may derogate. I think that’s how to pronounce that. But you’re saying the Bill of Rights wouldn’t be that document. We would have to have something different.

[31:04] Yeah, I’m not a doomer and gloomer, but I have to feel at this point, we’re moving closer to being the country formerly known as the United States. And you know that document that we have the bill of rights um you know we may be reaching a point where if the country were the fracture where if we were to break up there would be and we really wouldn’t need it right if there’s you have four or five six different nations forming within is what now the united states those four or five nations whatever would be writing their own bill of rights of their own constitutions. And, you know, for better or for worse, and in some places for worse, some of the rights we’re enjoying right now, currently, will be gone.

[31:51] But they’re not being, you know, right now on the other side of that coin, they’re threatening to be taken away from, you know, people who have fought decades or over a century, rights they have fought to achieve, women, people of color.

[32:06] LBGT plus community what they have fought for for decades are watching rights being taken away from them.

[32:14] Well, like we know, you know, if you study history, I believe you’ve studied

[32:19] history just like I’ve studied history. And at the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution was all about protecting property, protecting wealthy people’s property. And it used to be that a citizen was a white man who owned property and nobody else was considered a citizen. Nobody else could vote. you know and it’s changed as we’ve moved along in history but that was that was the intention and you know so you know i totally i totally agree with your with your premise about the fractured nation and that that uh we have these different competing uh looks and ideas and values I get that. I do know that we’ve had many polls, newspaper and other kind of polls that show that a majority of Americans today approve of a progressive supporting government that protects the rights and make sure that people are fed and help with housing and take care. Make sure that nobody falls off on the wayside.

[33:40] And so I’m not sure that leaving all that up to individual states is really workable. For example, the abortion question was given back to the states, and we just see a mishmash of different things. But I am the idea that we’re human. We live in this country. We all have the same exact rights. And nobody should be able to take them away. They’re not debatable. Abortion rights are not debatable. Same-sex marriage is not debatable. Unless you’re causing harm to people, the government should just stay out of your business completely.

[34:21] And I agree with the 100% on all of that. Yeah. Right. And so that’s why I really don’t, I really don’t subscribe to your conclusions in this book. You bring up some valid points. I really enjoy it. It was a good read. It made me think, which I think is important.

[34:39] And, but you know, the conclusion I just didn’t agree with. So what I will do is as we wrap up today is I’ll leave you have the last word. You know, you want to get people to read your book, you know, what’s the takeaway? Is there something that we didn’t discuss that you think is important? Go ahead. Well, first of all, thank you for reading your book and thank you for thinking. Okay. You don’t agree with the conclusion, but it made you think. And that’s important. Okay. Because when we’re thinking, what we’re doing is we’re looking for answers. The answer might not be, probably isn’t in that book. Okay. But we start thinking about it. Okay. And how do we protect these important rights that we all have? You mentioned rights that are so important. People fought for decades, in some cases, centuries. We don’t know if our founding fathers, how they would have felt about healthcare. Something tells me that in 1776, if they knew that our health system was going to look like it does today, if they knew we were going to have the advancements we have in healthcare today, there may have been something in that Bill of Rights regarding healthcare and public education and addressing civil rights much more. Than just white men that own property, as you said, right? Because it wasn’t just all white men. I grew up in New Jersey. Our county representatives were called freeholders. They were freeholders because they were people that owned their land outright and that qualified them to hold office and vote.

[36:07] So please read the book. Don’t have to agree with me. Don’t hate us for what we say. Just put it down at the end and say, all right, let me think about this stuff. Because as I said, when we’re thinking, we’re looking at options and we’re looking for answers when we’re talking as adults and not just fighting with each other, because there’s just too much of team politics going on to ever resolve anything. We get rid of this bullshit team politics. We might actually start finding some answers. The days where Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives can sit down and find the middle ground, they just seem to be lost now. And we’re in trouble. I’m not going to use the word dune, but we are in trouble as a nation. We can’t get ourselves back to that point where we could peacefully disagree. Where two people can sit down and have a political debate, disagree, even let it get heated. And when it’s over, we can laugh and sit down and have a cup of coffee or a beer and our lives go on.

[37:06] All right martin again thank you very much and and you know let chris know i appreciate that you guys wrote this book and took a chance and and was discussing a point that probably most people don’t even realize it’s a it’s a valid point and and uh good luck on your future endeavors, thank you thanks again for having me on.

[37:27] Music.

[37:38] And again, I wanted to thank Martin Armitage and his son, Chris, for giving me the opportunity to interview them about this book. As you heard in the interview, at the end of the interview, I point out, said that I did not buy the conclusion of the book. The reason why I don’t is because it’s, and as I said in the blurb at the beginning of the episode, the opening blurb during the theme music, was it’s a libertarian fever dream. They have this idea that they could have a decentralized government that would only be tasked with trade, foreign relations, and military security. And that’s it. Everything else would be left up to the states or the individual zones or areas or whatever their particular idea is about this that’s in this book. And I just don’t think that that’s a practical solution. Just to give you some example is that we had a decentralized government prior to the United States Constitution being adopted. It was the Articles of Confederation.

[39:00] And basically, the central government had literally no power to do anything other than trade, foreign relations, and the military. And they elected the white landholders that controlled the elections and the government at the time elected to change it. And you can read the arguments for it in the Federalist Papers. And I really think that a stronger central government, kind of what we currently have, that protects a set of civil rights for everyone, no matter where you live, no matter what your socioeconomic status is, you’re a citizen, you get these rights. You’re a human, you have basic humanity, and the government protects you. You know, I’m just one of those people that do not believe that rights can just be voted away or that politicians can pass a law and exclude a certain group of people like what we see the attacks on the trans community currently going on by Christian nationalists.

[40:17] And it’s only the libertarians that have these ideas. Now, I’m not saying that Martin Armitage and his son are libertarians. I’m just saying that they’re advancing a typical libertarian idea that we have a decentralized national government and then we’d have these little zones that people could live in wherever they felt like they fit in. The other thing that I don’t agree with either was this notion that we are a fractured society. Yes, there’s polarization. There’s political polarization. And yes, in the current political situation right now, it sucks for a lot of people in marginalized communities. But I don’t think it’s a systemic issue. What it is, if you want to call it systemic, is that there’s some people that just don’t care enough to vote. That’s one thing. They don’t care enough to stay in the loop and hold their elected officials accountable. And when you have enough people that do that, who just don’t care, don’t vote, and don’t thing, and they’re like, oh, I don’t want to. Politics is so messy. I don’t like it. Ah, when you have enough people to do that, then you have these little pip squirts like Trump and Musk come in and screw everything up.

[41:44] And that’s exactly what we have. When you don’t vote because of some issue, some single issue that is very important to you, and you don’t take the long-term approach and look at it from a long-term situation. These conservatives that are currently running roughshod through the country, they’ve been planning this for decades. They’ve been planning to do this for decades. They’ve been planning to do it since at least the 1970s. And Paul Reinrich, look up his name. I’ll throw a link about this guy.

[42:26] And they’ve taken the courts. They’ve gotten these extremist politicians in office. They got Trump elected again. Project 2025 is chock full of everything that they plan on doing. And that is because the conservatives have all this money, these billions of dollars behind them, and they’ve basically put everybody else to sleep, and then they come strolling on in and have their way with us. That is what I think is the problem. I don’t have a problem with Abraham Lincoln in the Civil War. He didn’t start the war. He decided that he was going to use whatever means necessary to preserve the union. And that’s what he did. That is what a leader does. You know, he, he had a, he believed he had a constitutional duty to do it. Did he overstep his bounds on occasion? Yes. When you talk about rebellion and the civil war, sometimes the people in power overstep their bounds. And, and like I was telling, talking with Martin during the interview that, you know, when we had the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, a lot of people got arrested.

[43:47] And luckily, our legal system was such that then they were released. And basically, the whole point was to get them off the street. It wasn’t to put them in prison. Now, we have some people want to be dictators that would like to put people in jail for a long time. Now, that would be undemocratic. But again, if you break the law, whatever law it is, then you should be willing to face the consequences, whatever that is. You know, even if it means certain death or whatever. And I’m not saying that that means that the law is good. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m just saying that you just can’t ignore a law because you don’t agree with it. And so I think President Lincoln did what he needed to do to preserve the Union. The South is the one that attacked Fort Sumter first. They started the shooting war. And as I pointed out, even in their book, they note that Lincoln tried to compromise with the South and the South rejected it because they believed slavery was the only thing that they had going for them.

[45:05] And they were never going to give it up. They were never going to give it up without a fight, put it that way. And I think Lincoln knew that. And that’s not why he fought the Civil War. He didn’t fight the Civil War to free the slaves. He fought the Civil War to preserve the Union. And that is the job that he accomplished. And then towards late in the war, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation. So I, if you were asking me if I’m going to recommend this book, I don’t recommend the book only because I don’t agree with it, but it’s open to you. I mean, like I said, it has some good, good ideas, you know, to, to read. They did their work, their research. I just don’t agree with their, their premise or their conclusion. And that’s what I think about that book. But again, I appreciate Martin and his son for giving me the opportunity to have them on and discuss the book.

[46:09] Thank you for listening to this episode. You can check out more information, including links to sources used, in our show notes on our website at secularleft.us. Secular Left is hosted, written and produced by Doug Berger and he is solely responsible for the content, Send us your comments, either using the contact form on the website or by sending us a note at comments at secularleft.us, Our theme music is Dank and Nasty Composed using Amplify Studio Music.

[46:56] Music.