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Kevin Dolan and Peter Calfee didn't know each other before November 2022. Kevin showed up to a Veterans Day luncheon with years of unconnected notes — dots he hadn't yet figured out how to link. Peter sat down next to him. Three years later, no arguments, a lot of back-and-forth, and one book.
Hijacked: Our Republic | Unless We Can Save It is structured around six pillars — the foundational elements Kevin and Peter argue are necessary for a republic to function: critical thinking, education, faith and values, history, political systems, and economics. The book's core argument is that each pillar has been compromised, and that until we address those root causes, we'll keep playing whack-a-mole with symptoms.
Their reference point is Thomas Paine. Common Sense reached one in four colonists. It didn't tell them what to think — it modeled how to think. That's the template Kevin and Peter are working from.
The world is a better place if we are better people. That begins with each of us as individuals. Be kind to one another. Be grateful for all you’ve got. Make every day the day that you want it to be!
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[00:00:00:00] Wilk Wilkinson: Ben Franklin walked out of the Constitutional Convention and someone asked him what they'd been given. He said, A republic, if you can keep it. My guest today wrote a book about what happens when you can't. And probably more importantly, what they believe it actually takes to get it back. Stick with me.Welcome back, my friend, to the Derate The Hate podcast. I'm your host, Wilk Wilkinson, your blue collar sage calming outrage and helping to navigate a world divided by fog and those who would spread that fear, outrage and grievance. The Derate the Hate podcast is proudly produced in collaboration with Braver Angels, America's largest grassroots cross partisan organization working toward civic renewal, this podcast amplifies the mission that we share to foster a more respectful and united America where civic friendship thrives even when we disagree.Each week, through the power of story, conversation, and connection with incredible guests, we work to build bridges instead of barriers, not to change minds on the issues, but to change how we see one another when we differ. Because friends, it really is about bettering the world one attitude at a time. We did not create the hate, but together we can Derate the hate.So be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcast, share it with a friend and visit Braver Angels to learn how you can get involved in the movement to bridge the partisan divide. Friends, I am so incredibly grateful that you have joined me for another powerful Derate The Hate episode. So let's get to it.Kevin Dolan and Peter Calvi didn't set out to write a book together. They met at a Veterans Day luncheon in 2022 strangers sitting next to each other. And over the next three years of conversation and a lot of give and take. They produced Hijacked our Republic. Unless you can save it between them. They bring military service, careers and financial services, and decades of watching something go sideways in the fabric of our American civic life.Their thesis is straightforward the foundational pillars of a strong republic critical thinking, education, faith and values, history, political systems and economic systems have been quietly undermined. Not all at once, not always intentionally, but the cumulative effect is a country that increasingly treats symptoms instead of causes and mistakes. Noise for conversation. Their model is Thomas Paine's Common Sense, 47 pages that reached a quarter of the colonial population and changed everything.They're not claiming to match that, but they are asking the same question what does it actually take to preserve what was built? Let's get into it with Peter Caffey and Kevin Dolan. Here we go.Kevin Dolan and Peter Caffey. Welcome to the podcast, guys. How are you today?
[00:03:33:20] Kevin Dolan: Glad to be here.
[00:03:35:12] Wilk Wilkinson: Yeah, it's fantastic to have you here.I'm excited to hear about this book. The book it's calledHijacked.our republic. Unless we can save itAnd.And the the book. When? When I was presented with thisthis idea to have you guys on. I'm looking at this and and I'm like, you know I immediately obviously my mind goes to the oldthe old Ben Franklin phrase whenthey come out of the constitutional conventionin Philadelphiaand the lady walks up and says,Mr. Franklin, sir, what have you given us?And he says, a Republican, if you can keep it right. So
[00:04:12:07] Kevin Dolan: So we played on that very thing.
[00:04:14:10] Wilk Wilkinson: Yeah. I had imagined andand I'm looking forward to hearing about it. But but before we get, you know, deep into the book, guys, I want to heara little bit about about you guys and what brought you to this.And and as I understand it, looking into your backgrounds a little bit,you guys are I think you both had some military experience, ended up in financial services in certain ways, and done a number of different things over the, over the course of your careers. But what gets you guys, Kevin and Peter together at this point and say, you know what, we need to write a book.I always like to get a little bit of a backstory,I like to have a little bit of the why.So, Kevin, let's start with you.
[00:04:56:13] Kevin Dolan: Certainly what happened was inNovember and on Veteran's Dayof 2020, 2022, 2022, we went to a Veterans Day luncheon. A friend of mine asked me to go to our club and said they had this luncheon. I said, great, so we went Peter Cafe sits down next to me, who I don't know at this point in time, and but I recognized immediatelythat I'm sitting next to a very bright person.And I've always understood that if you're going to do a project, it's always best to find someone more intelligent than you. So. So I found someone more intelligent than I. Andand then we. Peter took a look at a few pieces of information that I provided him, and, and we we decided to write the book together. And that was in we weren't committed to successfully writing.We were committing to engaging and starting. We did that. And three years later, not a single argument. A lot of give and take, a lot of, you know, debate about what we each thought,but never an argument. Andit was really a great experience. And we we think that the book achieves what we hoped it would.
[00:06:14:05] Peter Calfee: In fairness, Kevin brought stacks of notes that he'd been making for the years prior to this meeting.Yeah, and it all had to do withdots not yet connected as to what's going on in our country, what's going on in conversation, what's going on actually in your industry and what you do polarization or depolarization or as you say, Derate the hate.And we knew something was wrong because how many times have we experienced talking to someone who promptly gets up, I can't even talk to you.I'm leaving and off they go. That's right. You know. And that that's not productive. That's not Caligula's aurora. That for turnover, that's not getting together and working towards a conclusion together.So we began to connect these dots using as our model common sense by Thomas Paine, who was when he wrote the four little pamphlets put together in 47 pages.He wrote a man anonymously write a little over 2 million people in the 13 colonies, and about 500,000 were printed. So it's absolutely it was a seminal work that charged everybody up for 1775 as to why why we should bust apart from the empire of Great Britain, and giving it logic and thought and providing that critical thought as to where we want to go as a country, not part of a colony.
[00:07:34:13] Wilk Wilkinson: Yeah.
[00:07:35:15] Kevin Dolan: The early version of a viral viral experience. 500,000 copies on 2 million population.
[00:07:42:00] Wilk Wilkinson: right.I mean, you crank out a full quarter of a full quarter of thepopulation in, in distributable copiesof something right off the bat andand yeah, you're going to make a splash, right? I mean, that's going tothat's going to do some stuff and, and I mean, I'm very thankful that it happened.you know, started what I, what I believe to be the,you know, greatest, greatest countrythat's ever been devised by, by mankind.And, and, you know, we can go to the works of, of all kinds of different people and, and the different, different things that the founders,you know, leaned upon. And in terms of,in terms of their understanding of, of what a republic should be and, andand what the pursuit of happiness meant. And, you know, we think about Cicero and Socrates and all these different people that that really steered the minds of, of our founders and why we why we came to have a republic instead of aof a democracy.That's where I want to start our conversation, guys, is, is, you know, that that whole conversation right now, those are two very politically charged words right now that a lot of people don't completely understand or, you know, to your point, Peter, when you say, a lot of times people will try to sit down and have a conversation, but something happens right away and says, I can't talk to this person.Well, that republic versus a democracy thing. I can't tell you how many times I've had a conversation where people just they just lose it one side or the other, just loses it over those two words and, and kind of what those words mean. So, so what do you what do you make of that. And, and how does that, that trigger word or those trigger words affect people's ability for critical thinking?
[00:09:43:16] Kevin Dolan: Well, today,I think you would kind of go back to the concept of education. We can be educated where we teach people how to think, or we can educate what we teach people what to think. One is indoctrination, teaching people what to think.Teaching how to think means you're independent. You're going to form your own opinion. You have a right to an opinion.But in today's educational environment, there's too often a process ofsomewhat of indoctrination. But the the the the safe space concept I have, I really almost cannot comprehend because when we went to college, you were supposed to be in an intellectually stimulating environment where you were challenging everybody and everybody's challenging you, and you're and you're developing your thought process and you're developing your intellect.And the the test is, how well can I harbor my information to present it in a most effective fashion,to make the points and to engage in a very productive debate? And by productive, I am not saying that a person has to come away agreeing with me. In fact, I'll give you an example. I can take a position in an argument and I can say, here are the contributing factors.And I therefore, with these factors, I come to this conclusion. Now I weigh those factors in a certain fashion. That's me.If you take the same factors, agree to all the same factors, but weigh them differently, you can come to a different conclusion.
[00:11:24:22] Wilk Wilkinson: That's right.
[00:11:25:14] Kevin Dolan: And what people don't realize is it's not about saying,oh, we're talking and I've got to talk to you. They're not they're not being interested in the other person. They're saying, I'm willing to have a conversation if you want to listen to me, but if I've got to remove myself from a conversation, what they're really saying is they've got no interest in the other person, right?
[00:11:44:10] Wilk Wilkinson: Right.
[00:11:45:00] Kevin Dolan: And that's a shame, because we've all got something to contribute.
[00:11:48:05] Peter Calfee: Along your lines. Well, thedemocracy Republic. Think back to the 13 colonies. And there were major, significant and major differences between each colony and the population of each colony. And you begin to immediately walk right into the room called Republic, because democracy could have been the most populous states. Democracy could have been applied by two or 3 or 4 states, being the majority of votes for all 13.That's not at all what they wanted. We had a classic example of the House of Lords, House of Commons in England and that carried over. We have a lot to thank for Magna Carta and after that in Great Britain.But we wanted that representation in geographic and political and socialstructures,and that is exactly how it worked out.Kevin makes a beautiful argument about, look, it says, you know, written by slave owners, but we didn't get rid of slavery until Civil War and then another hundred years of application. But they knew where they wanted to go, and they created the structure and the fabric of our society that could get us to where we wanted to go with representation.That's right. You know, Switzerland is a pure democracy, probably the the most classic example. They just vote. And if the majority says this, that's what they do. They don't they don't have the costs of Lords, House of Commons, Congress, Senate. They don't have any of that. They just have representation and something bugs them enough. They have a national public site and that's what gets passed.Yeah.
[00:13:17:21] Wilk Wilkinson: Yeah. Well, and I think what and when I think about those things and, and certainly the way that those two terms are used todayas opposed to how they were used back in 1776, 1789, whatever the case may be, you know, it is a bit different now, and I think it's certainly a lot morein my my opinion, it's probably more politically charged.And because I think it's less understood today than it was then.
[00:13:49:21] Kevin Dolan: I think understanding it is critical.Well, I think that the difference on Republic versus a democracy,you've got the potential for a tyranny of the majority in a democracy because just everything is just pure majority. And what Peter alluded to in terms of some populous states in 13 colonies could overwhelm the votes because they had a bigger population.Well, the nature of republic is to make sure that every entity and every individual is represented well. That means the state is represented. That means the individual is represented. Therefore, the structure of congressmen by population and senators by state. Okay. You add those up. That's the Electoral College. So the point of the Electoral College to say we don't want flyover states, we don't wantelections that say we care about California and New York and Massachusetts and and when we get enough critical mass of population, we get to control something because we got the sheer majority.
[00:14:51:03] Wilk Wilkinson: Yeah. We just forget about everything in between. And it just it turns.
[00:14:54:22] Kevin Dolan: Into it. And that's what a republic achieves
[00:14:58:08] Peter Calfee: And really, Wilk, we're somewhat we're more than somewhat optimistic because if you just study our history, you can go back to many periods of time in the last 250 years where we had Douglas MacArthur take horses and kill people on the mallwho werenot rioting, perhaps, but certainly protesting against the lack of their bonus payments from World War One.But that didn't stop him from shooting a lot of the people, right? I mean, he had violence onWall Street in 1919, 19 bombs blew off. The fragments are still in the original JP Morgan Bank building.So we we've we've been here before. We're just adapting our structures to, to get us to the next phase of our progress.
[00:15:39:05] Wilk Wilkinson: So let's let's talk about that because I think the optimism is very important. And I want to make sure that the conversation stays optimistic. And I want to hear more about what people are going to find in this book. And the thing, you know, when you said, Peter, when, when Kevin brought all these notes, it was a bunch of dots,basically dots that you guys had to had to then weave together into to something.When you're talking about those dots, are you talking about the pillars that you guys talk about in the book in terms of the six pillars? And let's talk about those six pillars? I know we've talked about, you know, really two of themso farin terms of critical thinking and education, but but in terms of these pillars, what, what are what it is that, that those pillars areand how those, those particular pillars have been hijacked.
[00:16:34:17] Peter Calfee: Well, and we can also use the metaphor of a tapestry where the threads are all woven together to support the entire picture that suddenly presents itself as you step away from the tapestry and now see it.These could be six foundational pillars that keep the structure solid.We talk about education.We talk about teaching to the test. We talk about rote memorization.We talk about lack of mastery of skills and the fact that everybody must learn this in two weeks. Well, no, I might take ten weeks to learn it, and you might take ten hours to learn it. You master the skill and you move on at the proper rate and move ahead, as opposed to being forced to matriculate, forced to graduate and not really know anything.That's education. The lack of critical thinking is really an byproduct of of of the screens we look at every day. And we we don't a lot of us don't have the time tocritically think about what we're looking at. So we just accepted or what we hear what's on the what's on the, the newscasts and so forth.And it's amazing how many people don't read anymore.They simply listen.
[00:17:36:12] Kevin Dolan: So what I would say is that critical thinking is the process of questioning everything. That's the first chapter, the second chapter of education. We've covered that pretty as you described. Third chapter is religion, faith and values. Well, what's important in that, it's not that we're saying that everybody's got to follow a particular religion.We think most religions have some fundamental, excellent qualities about treating their fellow man well.And you can we could all live by the Golden rule if we took it to heart properly.But it creates a value system. How do you get how do you acquire a value system? Well, with your family, your family's exposure to what their religion is. But but the positive application of religion, not the the theater critic controlling. I'm going to tell you what to do.And in fact violent application of religion.So so it's so when you get your value systems, it's critical for the fabric of society because the value system says, I agree with where I'm at. ET cetera.
[00:18:36:22] Peter Calfee: And that's the positive side. Well that's really wake up. You have something that guiding you that day, whatever that may be. Wherever you are in the world, there's some string of continuity from Socrates and Plato and Aristotle to present day, and we have hundreds of quotes in the book, as you've seen, that, that backstop and support that.And if you don't have that, if you wake up and you're really in a meaningless, less existence, you're like Nietzsche in a corner with nothing to live for.And if you if that is the case, it would be ourit would be our argument that that is exactly how identity politics was developed in the last 20 years, because you created your own identity, because you didn't have any, you didn't have a place and you created that identity, and then you present it and, Wilk, you better listen and you better pay attention to my identity.And if you don't, I'm getting up and leaving because I can't talk to you.
[00:19:28:04] Wilk Wilkinson: I this is this is something that I talk so much about. And in terms of, of whether it be identity politics in general or, or people's personal identity, what their core identity is. And, and when people then take, you know, going back to one of the first things you said in this conversation, Peter's, you know, sometimes people sit down and try to have a conversation with somebody, but they realize quickly that this person isn't, you know, it doesn't think like they do or believe the same things that they do.So they're like, I'm just out of here. Well, I think a lot of that stems from the idea that that people have allowed their their political identity to become part of their core identity or even a big part like a, like a large, like a large portion of their core identity. So each time somebody says something that doesn't comport with yourpolitical identity, they take it as a personal attack, right?And then the conversations over, because they just, they, they take it as, as as being attacked.
[00:20:28:12] Kevin Dolan: Support the tribe. Because I'm a tribal individual, I'm a part of a tribe. Either are supporting the tribe or you're not. And so I only am going to work with function with a function of supporting a tribe. Well, that's not how it works.
[00:20:43:01] Peter Calfee: Yeah. That's indoctrination.
[00:20:44:14] Kevin Dolan: Yeah. In a republic,we're supposed to be thinking critically. We're.We become educated to learn how to think.If we do that well, we apply a value system. And then we also want to look back in history and say, what are we learning? So we don't have to repeat all these mistakes and also identify what great things have been done.So we say that's a great example, a great example as opposed to something I want to avoid when you've got that fundamentalset of pillars in place, you now are ready to apply them to political systems and systems. AndChurchill was asked, you know, what, what, what do you think of the democratic system? And he says, it's the worst system except for all the rest.Now that's that's a great. And that phrase applies to economics too. If you look at communism, socialism,theocratic places, etc.,the, the the process, you know, how how does it work for an economic system? Well, that capitalism is the worst, except for all the rest,because you take political systems that control centrally planned dictatethings. Well,if you go and understand price point discovery, Anna Smith and Invisible Hand, etc., price point discovery is the is the huge marketplace around the worldand within entities of countries and states and cities and all that stuff where people make decisions every day, multiple decisions.So you've got billions and billions of people and they're all making multiple decisions a day. Pretty soon you got trillions of decisions being made. What do you think someone can centrally planthese decision making? No.
[00:22:29:02] Peter Calfee: Communism has never worked. Unfortunately, it kills hundreds of millions of people simply because it takes a long while for figure out it doesn't work. A witness what's happening around the world now, what's happening in Cuba, what's happening in Venezuela. All of those things which prove yet again that socialism and communism don't work. The problem is now ponder this one.You have two young men who never worked, earned a paycheck in their short lives, get together and write a manifesto about how communism would be the most perfect, perfect structure in which to live, not Engels and Marx. What a disaster. But they they did it. They convinced half the world that this is the best way to go, right?
[00:23:11:15] Wilk Wilkinson: Yeah, well.
[00:23:13:02] Kevin Dolan: And they hadn't had a job in their lives. You know, they wrote this thing about a theoretical concept and that's great. But it gets back into understanding if something is going to work.There's a few phrases that are useful. We want to harness the power of pursuit of self-interest. So in the in the Declaration of Independence is an aspirational document.As we kind of alluded to, all men are created equal. Well, as Peter said, they weren't equal for the next 100 years because it was then until the Civil War where slavery was was eliminatedper se. But then even then, it took from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to really make things better. And then we we have elected a black president.And that is a wonderful thing. But we need to look at this, the entire continuum and say what contributes to strengthening the fabric of society? Fabric of society is a very useful phrase. Andit's it's dynamic. It's either strengthening or weakening. It's not remaining static. And so what are we doing to to strengthen it? Well, we ought to pull on value system to strengthen it.Because if if we can create a common set of values where we say, you know, we shouldn't be murdering anybody, we shouldn't be stealing for anybody, we shouldn't be committing any fraud, which is theftand other and other things of that nature. Then society say, if we do this successfully, we're not abusing fellow citizens, right? But, you know, we don't we don'twrite laws.We don't travel over to Paris and say, I want to vote in a French elections. So why is it anybody else could come into the United States and participate in that? They're welcome to come here as as a visitor,and they're walking to come here. And even if they can get a H-1b visa or a green card or whatever, they can participate and work towards citizenship.But citizenship has privileges, and the privileges should be given on a greater level to those that possess citizenship. And then other people working towards it have some privileges, not quite all of them. So they work towards citizenship and they get they therefore get the remaining.
[00:25:28:00] Peter Calfee: And that's why we constantly say it's a mantra in the book. Everybody can do the following. They can think and really put your mind. Use it. Think about what is the issue in front of you. Question it constantly. As Kevin says, question the hypothesis of what's in front of you. Having thought it through to the point where this could make sense, I'm going to question and do my litmus test on whether it makes sense or not.And then you speak and continue to open your mouth and speak about what you thought about and what you question, so that you've done the verification, the authentication, and the applicationof what is in front of you as, as a situation to be embraced or solved.
[00:26:09:13] Kevin Dolan: And there's very you referred to litmus tests.There's only a few, but they're very important to test whether or not an idea has any merit whatsoever. Number one, is it consistent? You can't have inconsistency and say we're strengthening fabric of society. I mean, you can't treat one person one way, treat another person differently, one favorably, one not favorably in the same situation and say, you know, that's the way it is and think the fabric of society is going to improve.It can't. The only thing that's going to enhance fabric of society is if we're consistent with how we treat people well, if we're consistent with how we treat people. Another question to ask is are we is a solution to a problem? If identified, distinguishing between symptoms and problems. You don't want to solve a symptom and be playing whack ML forever.But if you identify the real problem, then is this the solution I come up with? Does it create a consistency and is sustainable in the long term? If it's not in the long term, if we can't afford it more than two years, then it's not sustainable for 20. You can only forward it for two. So how well have we done it?How much supervision does it take? Do we have to have policemen looking over everything? No. That's when you harness the power of pursuit of self-interest. If you put a good policy in place, it self motivates people to behave properly. And within society, people are functioning as contributing members of society. And so it doesn't take a lot of supervision and oversight.
[00:27:38:08] Peter Calfee: Which speaks to the point we also raise in the book as to the social contract, which was the concept that Rousseau developed in France as an author, as a philosopher, and that social contract between the individual. And I'm not talking Darwinism here. I'm talking about the individual as a member of society who willingly accepts the rules that society adopts to provide that fabric of society, and yet the government or the structure of society owes the individual the right to be free and undo him or herself pursuit of happiness.So there is this contract that goes back and forth that we always have to respect, and it can get biased and go one way, but go ahead.
[00:28:21:04] Wilk Wilkinson: Well, yeah, that social contract is a is a huge part of this. And well, there's a number of different things here that that were said that I'd like to get into. And, and we're already getting close to the end of our time.I want to see if we can, we can narrow downa couple of things that are really important here and, and do just, just a little bit of a back and forth. But but you know, when we think, you know, Kevin, you had mentioned the idea that, you know, treating the symptom instead of, you know, treating the cause.And, and one of the biggest problems and this is this is where this is where my mind goes when I see a book like hijackedor, you know, when I, when I hear people talking about the, the different breakdown in things that we're seeing in the country today and, and I think it's very important, Peter, what you brought up earlier is, you know, we've we've seen some pretty ugly times.We've seen some very, very ugly times in this country. But the optimist thing is important, and I always want to bring it back to that. And I always want to bring it back to solutions, because what I don't often see from our government isespecially now, I mean, and I think it's been getting worse, but what I don't often see is people looking to solve root causes to big problems.They all want to, they want to address the symptoms and they want to. They want to play with things. And I think, I think it really comes down to quite often. And this is this is where mymaybe libertarian conservatism mind goes, because I'm very skeptical of government power and what they actually do, as opposed to what they're supposed to do, is they often mess around with the symptoms instead of addressing the root cause of a problem.And and I think that that's a big problem. So when I think about books like hijacked, you know,my mind immediately goes to, okay, well, who's doing the hijacking and what is the definition of hijacked? So in the quickest way,without, you know, finger pointing, but actually what is happening in terms of the the system that we currently have, how has it been hijacked?
[00:30:31:04] Kevin Dolan: I think it's I think it the best example is the deep state process. You've got bureaucratswho are supposed to becarrying out the Constitution and the laws. Regulations. What? In fact,what they, in many cases too oftenfeel as being superior. And so I'm the bureaucrat. I know this area. Everybody that's ignore it, ignore anything else. I'm going to tell you what needs to be done.Well, when they justturned out the way the Chevronthing at the at the Supreme Court,they, they reduced the power of the bureaucracy and that, that needed to be done because the bureaucracy is what enablesthings. You've got educational bureaucracy, hijacking education where the where they're doing more indoctrination than teaching young children how to think. Children are seed corn to the future.Sowe need to teach them how to think. With artificial intelligence coming along, we definitely need them how to think so they can control artificial intelligencewhere it's a dangerous environment.The hijacking of religion. Well,theocracy to me is an example of hijacking a religion. Iranian theocracy. Here you've got someone that says that they are going to employ the will of God as if they know a God wants.Well, we've got all kinds ofreligious literature and they've got the Qur'an, we've got the Bible. The Jewish state hasthe Talmud. And so, so all of these things have concepts. Okay, well, let's establish two different things. One is judgment and ultimate form. That's God. There's a universal God. I think everybody talks about their God.But most people are talking about one singular God now in society, social contract, where we say we signed it, we're going to function within this contract and we're going to not only function within the contract and responsibilities under the rules of laws, regulations of, ofthe Constitution, but that also has mechanisms for change. So if we're going to change, we don't have violence.We don't destroy federal property, we don't, you know,crate arson and all that kind of stuff. If if we take our responsibility, we say, what are the mechanisms for making change? And we'll go through those. They're longhand, they're difficult. But understand, mankind is only here for a nanosecond. So we're evolving. And it's the evolutionary concept that I think is helpful here.So that if you go and you understand your evolving, you don't expect immediate change. But you say we're going to work towards a better place. Okay. How do you work towards a better place? I will use the mechanisms, present ideas, present information to say that this needs to be addressed and try and create critical mass so that it's agreed to.I mean, if the same act says we ought to havea,aI'd for, for elections, and 85% of the population says that they that they want that and then Congress, both the, the, the congressmen and the senatorscan't get a majority when 85%. That's a supermajority super, super majority. Why can't why is it so hard for the congressman to do what their constituents want?It makes no sense. So if we're going to do things right, we've got to understand we're selling associate contract. We've got a function within the social contract. We've got to look at sustainability,and we've got to look at the fabric of society and looking for sustainability and consistency. And when you bring these things together now, it's one big picture.And that's the purpose of the book, is to create a bigger picture of the contributing factors, those pillars as well as well as some litmus tests.Andand even at the end where we talk about leadership skills, you know, the primary definitional termsI would say would be a credibility inspiration. But the sub definitional terms are critical. Their integrity, selfless behavior, dependability, consistency, determination, perseverance, teamwork, collaborative skills, communication skills, charisma and vision is not leadership.That's a separate skill. So you want someone that can take you into the future. So you want someone with leadership skills, with vision skills.
[00:34:59:07] Peter Calfee: And you see the you see the checks and balances of our system, which we are thankful for. But it seems like water sloshing in the bathtub. It's sloshing ever higher in the bathtub. Somebody something is propelling it ever higher, perhaps over the lip of the bathtub.And that is a result of having education moved to a area that we think is not appropriate, where God is dead.Time declared that in the 60s, God is dead. Okay,you begin to whittle away at this and you study the history of Stalin in London. That's exactly. They wrote books about this as to how to take over a society. And we are seeing a lot of that happeningacross the world.So it's insidious. But without those pillars that we describe and the symptoms resolved into solutions,you you ever get closer and closer to the to the abyss, you just you cannot function.And that's where we got very concerned because we saw our whole economy, our whole political system getting close to the abyss.
[00:36:01:09] Wilk Wilkinson: Yeah,the social contract that we have with each other is incredibly important. I think you guys have laid out some, some very strong pillars here in how,how people need to, to be thinking about these things.we need to be thinking in terms and I don't care where you fallon the political spectrum,we need to be thinking about solutions to the root causesof these issues, which I think you guys have have laid out.And it's it's it's important that we do it.there's a number of things going wrong. And, Peter, I love the idea,what you're talking about here in terms of a, a washtub with the water sloshingfrom side to side, there's, there's a because eventually it just gets so chaotic that all the water just gets completely tossed out and we've got nothing left.I think, again, I'll go back to something I said at the beginning of this conversation is, you know, this is the greatest country ever devised by man.I do believe for certain.I'm fairly certain that thatit it involved a lot of divine providence. I think it's going to take divine providence to to right the ship and get that water to calm a little bit.Peter.And and I think,I think people need to check out your book.Hijacked.our republic. Unless we can save it andI appreciate your time, guys. This has been fantastic conversation.Kevin Dolan and Peter Coffee, thank you so much for joining me here on the Derate the Hate podcast.
[00:37:30:02] Kevin Dolan: Thank you Wilk.
[00:37:30:18] Peter Calfee: Our pleasure, Wilk. Good being with you. W
[00:37:33:11] Wilk Wilkinson: Friends, I want to thank you so much for tuning in. And if there's anything in this episode that provided exceptional value to you, please make sure to hit that share button. If you haven't done so already, please be sure to subscribe to get the Derate The Hate podcast sent to your email inbox every week. We really are better together.So please take a moment to visit Braver Angels and consider joining the movement towards civic renewal and bridging our political divide. This is Wilk wrapping up for the week saying get out there. Be kind to one another. Be grateful for everything you've got. And remember, it's up to you to make every day the day that you want it to be.With that, my friend. I'm going to back on out of here and we will catch you next week. Take care.
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