962 – Transcript

Just Right Episode 962

Air Date: April 29, 2026

Host: Bob Metz

Program Disclaimer:

The views expressed in this program are those of the participants.

Clip (Red Planet Mars, 1952):

President: I’m not going to drag this out, Cronin. I’m afraid I’ve got to break your heart.

Cronin: You made a pretty fair start on that, Mr. President, when you pulled Gary back to Washington and clamped this censorship on us. Well, I suppose that lies within your power, Mr. President. You can declare a national emergency.

President: I don’t have to declare it. It’s here, and not merely national.

Secretary of Defense: You’ve shattered the economy of the civilized world.

Cronin: I’m not interested in economics, Mr. Secretary. Who makes or who loses money doesn’t seem as important to me as the chance to advance civilization a thousand years in one jump.

Secretary of Defense: Our job isn’t the advancement of civilization. It’s to preserve the country handed down to us.

Bob Metz:

Welcome, everyone. It is Wednesday, April 29th, 2026. I’m Bob Metz, and this is Just Right, broadcasting around the world and online. Join us for an hour of discussion that’s not right-wing. It’s Just Right.

Preserving the free nation that has been handed down to us is a mission that many on the right would wholeheartedly defend, and rightly so. So when I say I have no faith in constitutions toward achieving that objective, I am by no means dismissing the importance or significance of having a written constitution to preserve and identify certain basic principles and rules upon which a country is founded. But I have long argued that laws and constitutions aren’t worth the paper they’re written on if the people to whom they apply no longer abide by them. My own country of Canada is Exhibit A on the world stage, but it is far from being alone on the list of such exhibits.

When it comes right down to it, all societies are effectively governed or ruled by convention, meaning that whatever current practices are being used and accepted without resistance or opposition effectively become the law, ipso facto. And ipso facto, for those unfamiliar with the phrase, is a Latin phrase directly translated as “by the fact itself.” Or in other words, argue all you want, but that’s just the way things are.

The question that demands addressing is, is this a good or bad thing, that laws and constitutions are secondary to the cultural norms and practices already in accepted use? And to help us address that highly contentious question, we have some very enlightening and unique perspectives to share with you today. Perspectives that I have described to some of my own friends and acquaintances as being of the kind that, once you hear them, you can’t unhear them. I think you’ll better understand why I would say this after we kick off today’s presentation, following our reminder that you can write us at feedback@justrightmedia.org. Hear us on WBCQ and on Channel 292 shortwave. Follow and like us on your favorite podcast platform. And Robert Vaughan has asked me to mention that among those platforms is a new option, Amazon Music. And of course, you can always visit us at justrightmedia.org where you can access all of our social media links, archived broadcasts, and the support button that makes it easy for you to support the show. Because, as always, your financial support is appreciated and is what makes this show possible.

Now, over the past several weeks or so, I have had many various images forwarded to my attention online that depict a given geographical scene before the so-called colonizers of a given area were either forced to leave or driven out from that area, placed beside the exact same picture after the so-called colonizers left. And I can’t recall when I’ve ever felt more depressed or repulsed by what these images reveal.

The image accompanying this week’s podcast and blog posting is but one example of this. And for the benefit of our exclusively audio audience, on the left side of the image is a photo of a South African street named Sophie de Bruyne Street, which passes in front of a high-rise apartment building immediately to its left, while on the right side of the image is another photo depicting the exact same area and perspective. But the difference between the two photos is that the one on the left was taken in 2013, while the one on the right was taken in 2023, a mere 10 years later.

And here’s the reason I found the contrast to be so depressing and repulsive. In 2013, that street and high-rise were amazingly well kept. In a clean and virtually pristine environment, showing a clear road and a clean sidewalk worthy of any First World nation. But in the 2023 version of the exact same location, you’d swear that the place had just been recently attacked and hit by some kind of bomb or something. The road was littered with garbage and refuse, including a few abandoned trailers and other miscellaneous discarded items. It was just one huge garbage dump as far as you could see. And suddenly, the term Third World took on a new meaning to me. No, this was not caused by a war or an attack, nor was it caused by some economic crisis or local conflict. The reason, believe it or not, appears to be primarily cultural.

Now we arrive at one of those very unique perspectives I mentioned earlier that you simply cannot unhear after you’ve heard it, especially if you were among those who might consider yourselves constitutionalists or strict and literal interpreters of a given constitution. I have recently been following the commentaries of a podcaster named Franck Zanu, who, although currently a U.S. citizen, was born in the Republic of Benin, West Africa. In a quick check online, I learned that Franck Zanu is described as a life coach, inspirational speaker, and human development consultant. He is recognized for his unique and analytical approach to personal development and cultural identity. He hosts the podcast Zanu Project Rethink, where he discusses various themes related to African identity, governance, and the experiences of the African diaspora. Zanu has worked as a reporter for the New York Tribune and as a photojournalist for the Washington Times, covering regions such as South Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Bulgaria, and several African countries.

So when Zanu asks, as he did on his April 16 podcast entitled The Speech That Africans Didn’t Understand, why the whole continent of Africa can’t seem to get its act together, he’s not just speaking to Africans. His message is a universal one, difficult to forget or dismiss once you’ve heard it.

Clip (Zanu Project Rethink, April 16, 2026 – “The Speech That Africans Didn’t Understand”):

Franck Zanu: The question that most people who have some intellect are asking is why a continent of 54 countries doesn’t seem to get its act together.

Now, the danger of every situation, I’ve said this too many times in all the videos I have made, the danger of every situation is this: you rush to a conclusion, unexamined, untested conclusion, and you have locked yourself into a corner you are never going to get out of, because conclusions form soft prisons around us. They are invisible prisons, so you don’t even know that you have imprisoned yourself by the very conclusion you made about a situation that happened to you. Conclusions form a wall in front of you. You can never go past it. It’s like trying to go past your own conclusion is like violating your own principles, and that is what has happened to Africa.

The question here was explained almost over 60 years ago by the first minister of government of Singapore. Listen to the first prime minister of Singapore, what he said after he visited a few countries in Africa.

Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew: Why have all these countries gone down? They have taken power over from the British, the Dutch, the French, the Belgians, and look at the Congo. Look at Nigeria. 45 million people. They don’t enjoy our standard of living. Vast natural resources. About 20 persons per square mile. Why? I’ve asked myself this often. Why? Because I must know the reason. Otherwise, I cannot fulfill my simple elementary function as a minister of the Singapore government.

And I tell you, there are many reasons. First, the will to be a nation. If a group of human beings do not want to together constitute a nation, nothing can make them other than superior force.

Franck Zanu: Right there. Stop there. Let me explain that to you.

One of the things he said that is very interesting. He said, I myself must know the reasons why these countries, he was referring to the African countries, why have they all not been able to build themselves into a prosperous nation? He said, as a minister of Singapore, I must know the reason. Nigeria, he mentioned Nigeria and the Congo. I’m sure if he went down the list, it would include Ghana, Togo, Mali, Senegal, Gambia, Benin Republic, all of them. He said, why are they not rising up to our standard? And of course, every time you listen to any African, they always quote Singapore as an example. But nobody ever says why, why?

Post-independence, 25 years, and Singapore became the envy of Southeast Asia and almost the entire continent of Africa. And they used to quote them, but nobody ever asked, why did Singapore do it and you couldn’t do it? You think there are no corrupt politicians in Singapore? You think because of him, Lee Kuan? No, you should have asked the question.

Instead of turning around and saying, oh, because they are not corrupt and our politicians are corrupt. That is a soft wall you build around yourself. Oh, both of you were colonized you say. So now you have to drop your colonization accusation, right? And so the next one is what? They are not corrupt as us. That’s not true. You listen to what he said.

There is nowhere on earth where a heterogeneous group of people who do not have the will to be one people. Now take that home. In this speech and what I have said time and again, when I use the WASP formula to tell you no black country would ever develop. And people were angry, nobody even wanted to listen to the entire video and ask why. I told you, you just have to look at the foundation on which you were put together, not by you, but by some foreigner, and ask yourself, can you take this formula and really believe you’re going to look like the other country? It’s impossible. It has never happened anywhere. It has never happened. And that is it.

And if you force anyone from Nigeria or Ghana, anywhere at all from the continent, and ask them to leave and lead and build a place like that, if you can stop all of them from being corrupt, and they all stop being corrupt, you still will not build Nigeria into Singapore or South Korea. Not going to happen. The key ingredient is not there. An agreed homogeneity. Not in ethnicity or language or history. It could be as simple as homogeneity of principles and philosophy. Somebody has to create it and shove it down your throat.

You know what Chairman Mao Zedong did with China. It was a cultural revolution, not an industrial revolution. You see what he went for? He went for the soft spot before going for the hardware. Without software in place, the hardware is useless. And the countries in Africa, the modern continent, have not built the software. They’ve always been concerned with the hardware. The hardware is only as good as the software, I’m telling you. And the software is not found in doctors and lawyers and engineers. The software is found in principles and philosophy. It must be shared by all. That is the homogeneity of philosophy. Ideology is what countries are built on.

Yes, you need that national philosophy. Without it, you can raise and educate engineers and builders and doctors and lawyers from here until the cows come home. You will not build a bridge from Lagos to Ibadan. Not even a road. Yes?

Look into history and read it properly. You’re saying today, first you try with socialism, it didn’t work. You went into the parliamentary system, it didn’t work. Then you embrace democracy in the mid-90s so you can get a loan from the IMF. It’s not working. And now I’m hearing some podcasters saying democracy is not for us. Every 15 years, you let go one thing and embrace the other. How can you let go anything when you have nothing authentic to you?

So if you don’t have socialism, democracy, parliamentary systems, what do you have? You would have no government because you don’t have an authentic African political system to hang on. It is not the political system, my friends. It’s not the political system. Political systems don’t build a country. Political systems don’t develop an economy. A political system is just like you have a referee from any sports. They are meant to just help everybody play fair.

You have to focus on the software, build the internal will of the people. They should have one voice because they understand only one principle of that country, which is, where are you going? But to answer that question, you need to ask yourself, who are we?

See, the “we” in the Constitution of the United States is clear. It was written way before I came, before the Asians came by boat, before the Cubans poured in here, before the Irish came, even before the Germans and Italians and the Jews came here, and then followed by the Asians and the Arabs. The “we” in that Constitution was written into it before all of us, and some of us were brought here by force, but the “we” was there.

So you may not be part of the original “we,” but you are going to operate on the very principle and foundation on which that “we,” “we the people,” the 38 or 33 or 38 people who were sitting in the dark room, writing that Constitution and looking around, they were only putting into that document what was already part of them.

Constitutions don’t promise and yield anything. No, constitutions are not notes you write for what you want to become. It’s not a promissory note, no, it’s not a blueprint. Constitute, that is the word. You got to have it first in order to write the note. You got to have it first. You got to acknowledge, you got to notice it, that you have it, and then you put it into a document for your children so they can protect what you are now 200, 300, 500 years to come. That is what a constitution is.

We are putting in the document what we constitute, culture, ethnicity, history, religion, and sheer thinking. Even in poverty, you feel superior because of that. What is the “we”? And who is the “we” in the Nigerian constitution, the Ghanaian constitution, the Benin constitution? Who is the “we”? You just copied something. The language sounds good. You wrote it down too for yourself as if the constitution, the law. So every argument you hear in every parliament in Africa, “oh man, the constitution, the constitution, the constitution, the constitution,” as if that document has legs and arms to do anything for you.

Listen to what this Singapore prime minister has laid out clearly. He said, I have wondered about those countries, why they have not been able to rise up. And I don’t have the reasons. If I don’t know the reasons why they haven’t risen up, I can never govern and change my country to what it should be. And he saw the reason, a homogeneous group of people who do not have the will to be a country.

No country was built top down. Politicians are not responsible for building countries. They are only responsible for supervising the people at the bottom, who are the innovators, the builders, the inventors, the thinkers, the doers. They are there to just supervise. Politicians don’t build countries. If the minds of the people at the bottom do not have what it takes, nobody, not even a magician at the top can make it happen. Public officials can never fix any group if that group has no aspiration. They have no blueprint. They have no road map. They don’t know where they are going.

Take a look at the United States of America. This is one of God’s creations. People would say, oh, this is a white town. That’s why it’s doing well, because the government is pouring everything into that town. It’s a lie. You are building another wall around yourself, it doesn’t work that way. So you can elect as many black politicians into Congress all you want, which is now the sickness, the fever that has gripped this country, Obama and his wife and many celebrities. “Let’s go to the polls and vote people who look like us.” Every time it’s people who look like us. You can vote up to 90% of Congress black, and the condition of black people will never change, because a public official is elected to supervise already what you can do. If you cannot do it, a public official cannot help.

Public officials become stars if only the people they’ve been elected to supervise has what it takes to build a place. So all the laws and the marching and the demonstration and all the every six months you have Black Lives Matter and then it dies and then it got buried and then you have… No no it’s not gonna it’s not gonna happen I promise you.

No the condition of black people in this world whether you live in the United States you live in Europe you live in Africa you live in the Caribbean if we continue to look up to public officials politicians to change our condition then I am telling you you’re gonna only get worse year after year.

We got to change it yes that forced heterogeneous presence would never build a country regardless of how small they are we’d no resources on their land and in a mere 25 years Singapore is among the G20 any one of you who’s going to blame colonization and slavery and corrupt politicians you are only delaying the solution.

Bob Metz:

Well that’s certainly an argument that no one on the left wants to hear or deal with. And when Franck Zanu said take a look at the USA, this is one of God’s creations, I couldn’t help but recall how Ayn Rand described the country: “I can say not as a patriotic bromide that with full knowledge of the necessary metaphysical, epistemological, ethical, political, and aesthetic roots that the United States of America is the greatest, the noblest, and in its original founding principle the only moral country in the history of the world.” And in that description of America Rand basically cited all five branches of philosophy in justifying her praise of the country.

So when that minister of Singapore some 60 years ago asked why have all these countries gone down and how he pointed out how they’ve taken over from the British, the Dutch, the French, the Belgians, and look at the Congo, look at Nigeria, 45 million people who don’t enjoy our standard of living with vast natural resources, 20 people per square mile, why, he asks. Well that question implies that the countries in question were much better off under colonial governance than they are under their supposed independence.

There are many reasons, he says. First, the will to be a nation. When a group of human beings together do not want to constitute a nation, nothing can make them do so other than superior force. And he asked why these African countries could not build themselves into a prosperous nation when after independence for 25 years Singapore became the envy of Southeast Asia and almost the entire continent of Africa. Why could Singapore do it and not Africa?

And by the way that’s the same question that many around the world are asking about Canada. How is it that a country of Canada’s size and low relative population is incapable of building itself into a prosperous nation? Because today Canada, like Africa, no longer seems to share a common culture among its citizens, the majority of whom are hell-bent on destroying the country rather than building it.

Bear in mind that by no means is Singapore a free nation in the Western sense of that term, but like China and even certain other authoritarian nations it adopted many of the fundamental principles of capitalism to its economic realm if not to the moral and political one, and combined with the cultural homogeneity of its citizens the productivity and living standard of its people rose to unprecedented heights, whereas in Canada with its history of being a relatively free nation the exact opposite trend has been occurring.

And how many times have we heard our politicians, particularly Trudeau and Carney, boast that Canada is a post-national country and are flooding the nation with culturally divisive forces that are incompatible with one another, to say nothing of its homegrown racist indigenous culture clashes. Oh, and let’s not forget the English-French divide and all of that fascist official bilingualism legislation that we have to deal with. And consider just what it culturally means when Canadian politicians with their Trump derangement syndromes and long-standing anti-American attitudes place themselves in opposition to a country that Zanu called God’s creation and Rand called the only moral country in the history of the world. You know, ungodly and immoral are two terms that come to mind when describing such a contrast.

And before anybody climbs on the racist bandwagon objecting to any calls for deportations or separating these culturally incompatible groups, bear in mind that the agreed homogeneity that Zanu cites as a prerequisite to building a nation is one of principles and philosophies, not of skin color, sexual identity, or ethnicity. And I found it very fascinating that he would refer to such shared principles as the software on which countries are built. Yes, you need that philosophy, he says. Without it you cannot build anything. And this is not so unlike our own metaphor comparing the language and concepts we use to think with as the software of the human mind to which we refer as the hardware. Once either of those things becomes corrupted, the rest cannot function. And we’re not here talking about political corruption but the corruption of ideas, concepts, and philosophies.

But perhaps the most significant and essential perspective that Franck Zanu has brought to our attention is his view of a nation’s constitution itself. It was one perfectly consistent with my own observations about how nations are more governed by convention than by laws and constitutions. And this occurred when he said that writers of the constitution only put into that document what was already part of them. “Constitutions don’t promise or yield anything. Constitutions are not notes you write for what you want to become. It’s not a promissory note. It’s not a blueprint. Constitute, that is the word. You have to have it first in order to write it down.”

Wow. The more I think about that I can’t help but conclude that this is an expression of a profound truth, one that perhaps places the horse before the cart rather than the other way around that we’ve been having it so long. Every argument you hear in the parliaments of Africa is about the constitution, he notes, as if that document has legs and arms that can do anything for you.

And then as if to echo our own mantra that governments should be a referee and not an independent player in the game of life, Zanu describes that very role: “Politicians are not responsible for building countries. They are only responsible for supervising the people at the bottom, the innovators, the builders, the inventors, the thinkers, the doers. If the mass of the people at the bottom do not have what it takes, nobody, not even a magician at the top, can make it happen.”

And sure enough, now we arrive at yet another one of those very unique perspectives I mentioned earlier, you know the kind you simply cannot unhear after you’ve heard it. This time round and on this side of our upcoming bumper from the April 22nd podcast of Your Welcome hosted by Michael Malice with his guest historian Arthur Herman. And they were discussing something called the founder mindset, a concept that very much applies to the innovators, builders, inventors, the thinkers, the doers that Zanu was describing.

And then just to add some icing on the cake on the return side of the bumper, none other than Stephen Crowder in describing America as a representative republic cites the principle that representatives were exclusively supposed to represent those who could create and keep a country, not those who simply take from that country. Here we go.

Clip (Your Welcome with Michael Malice, April 22, 2026):

Michael Malice: Michael Malice here we have returning with us Arthur Herman. Arthur wrote what I think is one of the 10 most important books I’ve ever read, The Idea of Decline in Western History. I could not have written The White Pill without it because what Arthur did was go through generation after generation and people are like look things are terrible it’s all gonna go to hell and yep the things are terrible they’re not wrong but somehow things revert back to the mean and he just goes through generation after generation of all these apocalyptic fears and how they never came to fruition.

You also, and this is the book that made me a big intellectually intimidated by you, The Cave and the Light: Plato versus Aristotle, the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization. And what Arthur does is he takes Plato’s views which is this world of ideas and like hey if I can imagine it we can make it happen and an Aristotle who’s very much grounded in reality and reality has certain laws that you cannot avoid nor can you escape there’s nowhere else to go and he traces the path as each of these ideas takes a sense of ascendance in civilization and its consequences up through the 20th century.

So then I got this one and I saw the title Founders’ Fire: From 1776 to the age of Trump and I thought oh god this is gonna be some conservative you know red meat about the founding fathers how great they were blah blah blah but then I read the first paragraph of the blurb the jacket and it goes “whether it’s 1776 or the era of Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Arthur Herman argues that the United States has always been propelled forward by a special kind of leader, the founder.” And I’m like oh wow this is something I’m super excited to read because there’s this concept which I don’t know if you would subscribe to associated with Thomas Carlyle which is the great man theory of history and Rand certainly has this view as well that history isn’t like Marx says of the masses but there are men who strictly by the force of their intelligence and their hard work make life better for everybody else often fighting everybody else who do not want change and progress not in the leftist sense but the sense of making humanity better. And in this book you trace that path. You go from 1787 you’re talking about the Gilded Age you talk about the two world wars and then the Rust Belt. Am I getting the gist right?

Arthur Herman:
You’re getting the gist totally right. And that what you called the great man theory of history which people will have sometimes ascribed to me because I do see the role of historic individuals pushing forward moving history forward in powerful ways and in ways that we benefit from and future generations benefit from.

But part of the point of this book Michael too is that generating that kind of founder, that kind of forward pushing personality, is something that is very much part of what it is that has made American history and that it is part of the American character. People call American exceptionalism has been the way in which these kinds of figures spring up all the time throughout our history going all the way back even before 1776. Every part of America is about a venture into the unknown and that this has carried forward and shaped our culture in ways that shape our view of business, our view of capitalism and how different that is.

And what this book in many ways is about is how why we are so different from our European cousins if you like. We share a similar heritage and a lot in many regards and yet we’ve developed into a completely different type of culture, one that celebrates what you were just talking about, that pushing forward, deciding you’re going to venture forth and take on a task, use your own personal energy and your own personal vision as a way to move forward to get rich in the process yes but also at the same time that you have this vision of what could be better and what your contribution could be for making America and making the world a better place.

Michael Malice: Also this sense that I think in America of you know Arthur when if your book’s a huge success we hope it is I’m happy for you. It’s like hell yeah and vice versa. And I don’t think that’s a thing in other countries as it is here.

Arthur Herman: Not at all

Michael Malice: When we see people achieve especially through their own merits like on a crowdfunded thing or something like that people applaud it not ironically and earnestly even people who are normally cynical.

Arthur Herman: But it’s completely foreign to the world in which Europeans grow up or Asians for that matter too. And in the case of England like you were saying those who do cross those class lines are viewed with suspicion

Michael Malice: Yes

Arthur Herman: You know that if to do that you must have done something dishonest or you must have abandoned some aspect of humanity to be you know work your way out from a working class background and then becoming a multi-millionaire there’s something something has gone wrong.

What I worry about and one reason I wrote this book Michael too is that you see a lot of that creeping into American society, American culture as well. It is in many ways especially in the literary, the electoral world where people who make money, people who establish businesses, successful businesses, are seen as greedy right and for that reason it is such a cliché but it’s also a dangerous one when it creeps in it becomes the mainstream of culture. That’s one of the reasons why I wanted people to come to appreciate the role that that plays, the founder, that founder instinct, that drive, that vision, that willingness to risk everything to achieve a goal, just how important it is to our history and to be celebrated as part of what it is that makes us Americans.

Michael Malice: And not only to risk but to certainly fail because I think every founder on exception along the way blows it and they have to have that kind of come to Jesus moment where like all right am I a joke am I you know one of the ones who’s going to bash his head against the wall or is this just a setback I have to keep going. And I think so much of success in any industry is much more about persistence rather than talent or something else. It’s if you’re the guy standing there when everyone else went home you’re at the very least you’re going to win by default.

Arthur Herman: There’s someone who did a demographic study of millionaires in America and on average they’ve failed in a business or in a job seven times. And for so many people the energy and the drive tails off after the second or the third and then they blame the system they say it’s the system’s fault I’m just a victim of an unfair system.

But you know by the way that’s another characteristic of founders and that is founders tend to be almost without exception optimists. They have to be in order to create a business out of nothing. That there’s this constant struggle here between those who see a brighter a different vision and move that forward and those who are saying we’re not ready for that yet we’re not willing to take the kinds of risks that you’re asking us to take in these circumstances. And it’s not always the opposition to what the founding instinct wants and demands.

It isn’t always cowardice it isn’t always complacency it springs from human emotions which is that there’s only so much change we can take. It’s an ongoing cycle the struggle on the one hand of those who want to propel and push forward and those who are sort of resisted sometimes for self-interested reasons sometimes because they say it’s just too risky for us we just can’t engage in it. And then when those who are resistant to change who will become comfortable with the inertia of bureaucratic institutions when it reaches a point where there are those who say I can’t stand this anymore I gotta get out of here and do something totally different and go off in a totally new direction and they do and then you get a new generation of founders the new founding instinct that comes to the surface.

Michael Malice: Do you think this kind of founders’ fire is something that is receding in present society because I feel like everyone’s always saying like in your The Idea of Decline oh everyone’s lazy now oh everyone’s dumb now it’s always been the outlier no matter how many what year it is it’s going to be that rare individual out of a billion or a million. So do you see that’s the case now or is that just claptrap?

Arthur Herman: Now here’s optimist speaking but I think it’s a rational optimist and that is I don’t see it receding in fact I think it flows in different channels within the culture. I see that very much in the right places and functioning at the right times. And I don’t despair over our Gen Z or any of the other the future comers that are here. I see them as doing this and embracing it. What I hope this book will do is be to help them and others understand what’s really going on.

Clip (Steven Crowder, April 21 2026):

Steven Crowder: We have to get away from this idea of democracy good. Democracy isn’t good. Democracy is really the byproduct of the people who are the majority and you need to have some mechanism to protect the rights of the minority from the majority.

We are not a democracy we are not even people use the term democratic republic we are a representative republic and the founding fathers were exceedingly clear. This is not controversial whatsoever and never would have been until the 19th amendment not because women voting but because that was the era of everyone voting with no qualifications.

Representatives were exclusively supposed to represent those who could create and keep a country not people who come to a country to take, not people who live their whole lives suckling at the taxpayers’ teat, not criminals who the left also believes should vote. They had an older voting age than we have today even though they started families younger.

They believed and they knew that a representative republic with the constitutional framework that we have is only adequate for a Christian and moral people and the representatives need to represent those who can make and sustain a country. The idea now is everyone gets a say even if they contribute nothing and that is music to the ears of a Marxist.

Bob Metz:

You’re listening to Just Right broadcasting around the world and online.

Wow. Between the presentations of Franck Zanu, Arthur Herman, and Stephen Crowder that we’ve heard so far you’d think they’d all gotten together in advance somewhere to create such an incredibly consistent and complementary narrative.

Personally it occurs to me that Stephen Crowder’s description of America as a representative republic is among the best I’ve heard in a long time. And what are the odds of having Herman talk about the founder’s mindset as Crowder refers specifically to those who can make and sustain a country? And of course these are the two ingredients that Franck Zanu argues are missing from the African matrix. You know maybe they’re on to something.

Now when Stephen Crowder emphasized that democracy is not good he was of course referring to the idea of majority rule which from a freedom perspective is incompatible with the meaning of true democracy.

Majority rule is the left’s interpretation of democracy whereas properly framed democracy’s “majority” refers to a restriction of the franchise to vote only to those who have reached the age of majority and accompanied by certain limits and restrictions not only on who can vote but on what can be voted on. We’ve gone into some detail of this history on past broadcasts but for the purposes of our focus today I think Crowder did a pretty good job of contrasting left and right without using those terms by contrasting the leftist idea that everybody gets a say even if they contribute nothing with the right idea that only those who can make and sustain a country should have a legitimate say.

More to the point let it never be forgotten that a free constitution is one that prescribes limits on the powers and scope of government. It’s not a list of permissible freedoms framed as rights. And in this regard Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms stands out as the latter and as such as a democratic fraud. And yes I know there are those who say that the framers of the Charter didn’t intend it to be used in the way it is today but as Professor Bruce Pardy once told us when he was a guest on the show they didn’t write it down that way.

And on the whole theme of the founder’s principle I recall quite clearly when a few decades back at a Freedom Party of Ontario dinner function guest speaker Dr. Walter Block then senior economist at Canada’s Fraser Institute cited the same principle in refuting the myth of overpopulation and the unnecessary and unfounded fears that myth has caused.

Dr. Block pointed to the fact that throughout history it has always been singular individuals well apart from the collective who have been most responsible for increasing the betterment of all. So by limiting population growth or decreasing the existing population he argued that there are in essence fewer of these founder type of innovators and thinkers who would propel the entire collective in ways that the remainder could never do nor even imagine.

Now Aristotle stood out as a giant in this regard having not only formulated the polarity between left and right but he also became known as the father of logic and established basic scientific principles of discovery that still stand to this day. As Michael Malice properly described the political and philosophical polarity earlier when contrasting Plato’s views with those of Aristotle he noted that Plato’s views is about the world of ideas you know hey if I can imagine it we can make it happen. And then he compared it to Aristotle who’s very much grounded in reality based on laws you cannot avoid.

And by the way that’s the very contrast you will see artistically depicted in Raphael’s famous painting The School of Athens which is the image you will see partially displayed at the top of several of Just Right social media sites such as Facebook, X, YouTube, Odyssey etc.

By describing Plato’s perspective as “hey if I can imagine it we can make it happen” Malice was explicitly referring to a philosophical principle known as the primacy of consciousness. And when he described Aristotle’s perspective as being very much grounded in reality he was explicitly referring to the opposing philosophical principle known as the primacy of existence. And being a fan of Ayn Rand his awareness of these contrasts should not be surprising. The first describes the thinking of the left the second that of the right.

Again from the Ayn Rand lexicon on Aristotle: “If there is a philosophical Atlas who carries the whole Western civilization on his shoulders it is Aristotle. Whatever intellectual progress men have achieved rests on his achievements. Aristotle may be regarded as the cultural barometer of Western history. Whenever his influence dominated the scene it paved the way for one of history’s brilliant eras. Whenever it fell so did mankind.”

Well happily Arthur Herman has a very optimistic view of the future and cited the fact that founders are almost exclusively optimists themselves and said that he sees a new direction a new generation of founders on the horizon and let’s hope he’s got it right.

Now winding down with a brief break for a smile on this side of our upcoming bumper on the return side a rather fascinating parallel message to everything else we’ve been hearing today as expressed by John Stossel when he appeared on John Popola’s Dad Saves America on April 23rd.

But first, beware of hillbillies.

Clip (National Lampoon Radio Hour, September 12 2012):

Announcer: Immigrants. Who are they? Where did they come from? Why did they come? From every direction and continent they came answering Miss Liberty’s call: “Send me your tired your poor your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” She lifts her lamp beside the golden door and from the teeming shores the wretched refuse came like hungry mosquitoes to the yellow porch light of freedom. This week on the immigrants the hillbillies. And now your host Gregory Puck.

Gregory Puck: From every hillside in Europe discontented hillbillies voiced their dissatisfaction with living overseas. From Switzerland:

I don’t like it here in Switzerland.

The pants are too short.

Yeah, and those frog skiers coming over the hills causing trouble.

The cheese got holes in it.

And hell, I’m a Baptist I don’t want to guard no pope.

In America they got cheese in aerosol cans.

From France:

I don’t like it here in France everyone’s so snotty.

Yeah, I can’t read the menus.

And everything here is so expensive.

In America you don’t have to dress up and you can get Levi’s real cheap.

From Italy:

I don’t like it here in Italy.

I’m tired of sharecropping grapes.

Yeah losing all the land to those big olive oil barons.

Yeah I got six little bambinas and a fat mama mia and I can’t hardly make it on the lira. Iron here

And here you can’t get no d-i-v-o-r-c-e.

Clip (Dad Saves America, John Papola, John Stossel):

John Stossel: What an outrage that in this rich country some people are poor and don’t have enough and we have to create we can’t just give them money because some will waste that so we’re going to create programs but we’ll teach them to take care of themselves and give them money and food stamps because you don’t want people to starve. And everybody’s for that in my world. But now we’ve spent how many trillion I forget what it is but it’s in the trillions

John Papola: Yeah it is in the trillions for sure

John Stossel: And we’ve created a new class of dependent people that never existed before. If you look at the poverty rate in America it was going down before the War on Poverty. Americans were lifting themselves out of poverty on their own. And since then progress has stopped because we taught people to be dependent. Most black children were raised by a married mom and dad. Not anymore because government gave you money if you didn’t have married parents. This has been a horrible destructive program and yet most Americans would say we gotta have it you can’t live without it.

John Papola: You know one of the things you do great is say “but don’t we need these programs? I know aren’t people gonna starve I mean look I go out in the streets and I see people pushing carts full of dirty clothes and living under overpasses and we’re such a rich country.” And but what’s your response to someone for people to push back and say John you’re being a utopian look at all these people who are in need of help and they can’t help themselves and we have all these churches in America and they aren’t picking up the slack so this is why the government programs exist.

John Stossel: I say the government programs do more harm than good and there are three ways to help people through the market and these people obviously are not there through government or through private charity. I think charities will do a better job than government for poor people I give money for example to something in New York called the Doe Fund yeah they help people who get released from prison teach them you want to stay in our free dorm? You must work in one of these jobs and learn how to work and learn how to get up in the morning it’s tough love. The Salvation Army does that in their case it’s religious you I think you need to follow some religious demands. But whatever it is those programs work much better than government does.

John Papola: Mamdani’s grocery store his first city grocery store is going to cost like 30 million dollars and not be like open until 2029. Why? Why does the richest city in the world isn’t there like it can’t build a grocery store in less than three years and 30 million dollars

John Stossel: Yes. Obviously it’s ridiculous and it’s useful we need models of failure like Mamdani sorry it’s in my town and I’m sorry people don’t learn. But Germany and Japan became the economic leaders of the world when I was graduating from college why was that well part of it is they have a work ethic but part of it was because we’d bombed them to smithereens during the war they got rid of all their regulations and their guilds they started over with new fresh rules and that allowed them to prosper.

Why is America successful? I addressed an auditorium full of high school kids in New Jersey and said why is New Jersey wealthy and India’s poor? And they said well India’s overpopulated. And in fact the population density of India happens to be the same as that of New Jersey which is why we picked New Jersey. So they kept guessing natural resources and so forth. But the answer is limited government. And Hong Kong is a good example because they don’t have any natural resources it’s just a rock. It is a port but no other natural resources. And Hong Kong went from third world to first world in something like 30 years. How did they do that?

They did that because the British rulers at the time did something wonderful they enforced rule of law. And you need that you need people to punish thieves and killers so people can feel safe in their homes. And you need someone to establish that if you bought a home that deed is valid and it’s yours.

One reason Africa stays poor is you don’t want to build a factory because people may steal what you make or the dictator may take the whole factory so you just don’t build it. So you need basic rule of law to protect persons and property.

But then the British rulers did something American politicians rarely do and they left free people alone with rule of law. And left alone people in Hong Kong went from third world to roughly our level of wealth in very few years. You’d think the world would have learned from that. You’d think the Chinese communists who had to open their economy to capitalism to stop people from starving would have said okay there’s a message in Hong Kong we should learn from. You’d think American young people would have learned it but they don’t.

Bob Metz: I found myself laughing aloud when Stossel said we need models of failure like Mamdani but then it occurred to me that we already have economic models of success like Japan Germany Hong Kong Singapore and all those kinds and still a significant number of people have learned nothing.

“Germany and Japan became economic leaders because after the war they started fresh without guilds and regulations,” noted Stossel but interestingly during that period they were also effectively under the rule of America which not quite like being a colonizer acted in that role as the ruling force behind the advancement of these countries.

Again says Stossel “British rulers enforce the rule of law punish criminals protect property rights. In Africa you won’t build a factory because the dictator might take it. You need basic rule of law to protect persons and property.” And boy is that ever right. And notice that what he was describing was a government that acted as a referee and not a player in the game.

And if ever there was an argument that applied to Canada today it is that one. The Canadian government increasingly fails to punish criminals or protect property rights and Canada’s dictators are simply taking and stealing the private properties and investments of hard-working Canadians under the ridiculous fraudulent guise of honoring Indigenous land claims. Give me a break.

Which is just one reason why investors will not invest in Canada and that includes Canadian investors themselves. I mean like even Canada’s prime minister Mark Carney conducts most of his business outside the country of Canada. And he’s no founder of any kind that’s for sure.

The Canadian government like the United States has been flooding the country with immigrants illegal status aside whose cultural backgrounds and values conflict with broadly held Western values.

That earlier audio by humorously lampooning hillbillies in Europe was taken from a National Lampoon Radio Hour going all the way back to 2012 featuring discontented hillbillies expressing their dissatisfaction with living overseas in places like Switzerland, France, and Italy. It was a perfect parody for what is happening in America and in Canada today.

Yeah, you know those hillbillies are a serious problem no matter where you find them. They just don’t assimilate. And that was the very phenomenon that Donald Trump addressed late in 2025 when he warned that America was at a tipping point and referring to the flood of illegal immigrants pouring into the country he said “we’re going to be going the wrong way if we keep taking garbage into our country they don’t go let’s make this place great they’re people who do nothing but complain.”

Trump’s crude reference to an America flooded with garbage metaphorically reflected the reality of literal rivers of garbage associated with cultures whose people not only do not clean up their garbage but live in it. And this is the very trend we were talking about earlier with respect to the before and after photos of South Africa.

So when John Stossel lamented that despite the evidence you’d think the world leaders would have learned and young people too but they don’t I think there’s a major assumption behind that observation that needs to be addressed.

During his January 1st inauguration speech as mayor of New York Zohran Mamdani proudly announced that “we will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism. These policies are not simply about the costs we make free but the lives we fill with freedom.”

That any American could possibly take such an irrational and demonstrably destructive political agenda seriously is stark evidence of just how far its culture has shifted from every value on which the country was founded.

It’s also evidence of how, as Stossel put it, they just don’t learn or maybe it’s just that you can’t fix stupid.

It would be wise to follow the advice of Arthur Herman when he said use your own personal energy and personal vision to move forward and always be happy about the success of others.

So hopefully after what we’ve heard and reviewed today we’ve all slightly refocused our freedom lens to be able to see the big picture a bit more clearly. And speaking for myself no matter how bad things may appear to be at any given point in time I continue to remain quite optimistic about humanity’s future just as I am optimistic that you will choose to join us again next week when we will continue our journey in the right direction. And until then be right, stay right, do right, act right, think right, and be right back here. We’ll see you then.

Clip (Ben Bankas, X post, January 20 2026):

People caught saying that to white people they’re like, “you’re a colonizer.” Like as an insult. It’s like “bro, that’s kind of a big problem.” What’d you do show up 300 years later and ask for welfare?