Can Our Republic be Saved? – Rick Green Interview

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Man in America. I'm your host, Seth Holhouse. So as we look around our country right now, I think that most of us, especially those of you that are watching this show, would say that in a lot of ways, our country has fallen. We've fallen especially into the hands of our enemies. You look at D.C., not just the White House, you look at Congress, the Senate, the people that are supposed to be representing us. And I would say a large portion of them are not controlled by we the people. But in fact, they're being controlled by foreign powers, whether it's the Chinese Communist Party, George Soros, other globalists. And they are working to not only block the good things in our country, but to really accelerate the destruction of this country. Because for the people that are pushing for an agenda of a one world government, whether it's under the CCP or the people out of Europe, the people, the elites, whatever you want to call them, they are pushing for this agenda. And America is the biggest thing in their way. So, and they've noticed for a very long time that if they're going to implement their world order, they have to collapse America. And from what I see around us, I think that we're in the late stages of that plan to collapse America so they can finally usher in their global governance. And so one of the things that stands in their way, though, is the Constitution. And we're seeing that, right? The 50 states, the Constitution, the Second Amendment, the First Amendment, basically everything that came into the founding of this country, which I believe was really divinely guided. These are the tools and mechanisms that have really helped us to stave off tyranny this long. And so the question is, though, is that, is our Constitution still valid? I mean, can we still save our constitutional republic? Because you're seeing that they're no longer playing by the rules, are no longer adhering to the principles and guidance and rules that the Constitution and the founding fathers set forth. And so joining us today is actually someone who is a really, has a master, masterful understanding of the Constitution. And that's Rick Green, someone that is just on the forefront. He's got an amazing Patriot Academy, but, and I'm going to have a really just honest and sober conversation with him and say, look, man, can we save our country? I mean, is civil war the only thing we have left? I mean, what's going to happen? And so this is going to be a real candid conversation, but I think it's an important one for us all to have because, look, if we don't figure out where we're going in the right and how to get it in the right direction, in a couple of years, we won't have America. I mean, just look at what's happened to our country in the past couple of years since under Joe Biden. I mean, it's, it has fallen faster than I ever thought possible, but can we still save it? So folks, I think you're going to really enjoy this conversation with Rick Green. Also every show is done as a podcast as well. So if you want to listen instead of watch, just go to your favorite podcast app and search for man in America, you'll find me there. And if you want to make my day, leave a five-star review on that podcast app, because that's what helps the show reach more people. All right, folks, enjoy this conversation with Rick Green. Rick, it's great to have you on the show. Thank you so much for joining us today. My pleasure, man. Thanks for having me on. So before we dive into the nitty gritty, why don't you just give us a quick background of yourself and especially what you're doing with the Patriot Academy. And then towards the end of the show, we'll go back into that and show some links and whatnot, but just to kind of frame you and especially your understanding and knowledge of the constitution and the founding of this country. Sure, man. Most important thing I can tell you is I'm a husband and father and now a grandfather. Good for you. And I love my country. I love the principles of America and been fighting for them for 30 years. I used to be a state rep in Texas. So I've served in the legislature and been on, you know, inside the belly of the beast, if you will. But for the last 25 years, it's really been about teaching citizens how to live out our constitution, restore our constitution and do this at the local level, not just, you know, a Hail Mary pass for a presidential race, but actually rebuild from our communities. So we've got a wonderful organization. We've got about 25,000 constitution coaches across the country that use our materials in their living room or church or wherever they get people together. And then we do a lot of youth leadership. So we do programs in state capitals around the country where I bring in high school, college law students, put them in the hot seat, put them on the house floor in the committee and give them a mock legislative session where in the hot seat, they can learn those principles and learn to defend what they believe, kind of figure out what do they believe, what, what actually works to build a good society and then teach them to communicate it well and go out and be champions. So we do a lot of different things, but it's all centered around. What does it take to be a good citizen in America? Since frankly, we are Caesar in America. So if we, the people are supposed to be in charge, we got to learn how to do our job. Well, great. And that was a good, concise intro. And my perception of you is that you're someone that is really understands the constitution. And, you know, I just, you know, a little bit of my background, you know, gosh, 10 years ago, aside from the, the basic stuff I was taught in social studies, which kind of an odd name for a class in America, socialist studies about, you know, the, the founding of our country has become socialist studies. It has. I never really, really understood the constitution and its role, but I can say that over the past couple of years, really since probably 2017 for me, the more I've dug into it, the more I've really tried to understand just how precious it is and really how that document, how the country was set up with the 50 States, et cetera, that the second amendment, that these are some of the only things that are holding us basically that they're holding tyranny at bay. And so, you know, the conversation I want to get into today is really just to look at our, our country today, the state of our constitution, the state of our elections, you know, the fact that I think that most people in especially the high level elected positions, they might as well be NASCAR drivers with their Pfizer patches and their big oil patches. I mean, we're, our country in a lot of ways is being controlled, I would say by a corporatocracy, which, you know, the, the big oil, big pharma, et cetera, big media that's really merged in a lot of ways with what should have been an independent government. And they're all working together. I think you've got the Chinese communist party with their hands in the pie. You've got the globalists like Klaus Schwab and George Soros, and, and they've done everything possible to shred our constitution. Well, you know, it's the Patriot Act or the freedoms that we saw lost during the COVID pandemic. And so I just want to have a really sober conversation about how do we get ourselves out of this? So what are your, what are your initial thoughts? Well, let me, let me first say, man, I was exactly like you. I'm the most unlikely guy on the planet to be now America's constitution coach. I slept through high school government and college as well, man. It wasn't until law school that I, I realized as I was reading all these opinions of these judges, that their perception of history was determining their decision and therefore impacting our, our future. I hated that stuff, you know, memorizing dates and names and places. It just wasn't interesting to me. And, uh, and so I hate boring history as well. So all of our courses, everything we do, um, I'm really adamant about, it's gotta be entertaining. It's gotta be fun. We're going to go to the battlefield, not just talk about the battlefield. We're going to go into independence hall to teach the constitution, those kinds of things. So I, man, I hear you. And I think there are millions of Americans exactly like you and me, where they didn't care about this stuff in their younger years, but now they're looking and they're going, whoa, tyranny is at the door. The barbarians are not just at the gate, man. They're inside the gate. They're at the door, sometimes inside the door. And I better figure out how this thing works. If I want to have any chance of passing it to my kids and my grandkids. So there's an awakening going on in the country. Is it too late or not? That's probably our topic today. You know, can we restore this thing? Have we been so lazy and so spoiled for so long that we just enjoyed the blessings of liberty, not bearing the burden of it? And now we're going to watch it slip away. We are living Ronald Reagan's statement where he said, if we don't have an informed patriotism, not just patriotism waving that flag behind me, but understanding why that flag is worthy of being waved, an informed patriotism, it's an intellectual patriotism. If we don't restore that, he said, we'll be telling our children and our children's children what it was once like to live in America where men were free. I think we're teetering. I think we could fall absolutely into tyranny almost overnight. We are right there where that could happen. But I also think there's a great chance that we can come back to liberty. If that wake up call results in action steps and people are willing to take, frankly, the big steps, they're going to have to sacrifice. This is not going to come easy. This is not just voting in one election or even a couple of elections or getting a couple of good people elected. Took us generations to get in this mess, man. It's going to take us generations to get out or at least one full active generation to get out of it. And that's a really important point that I think that I want to just highlight is that, you know, there's a lot of folks, I think that it really wasn't until COVID that they saw what was happening. And then also they wake up and they realize like, wow, it's almost like you've got a leaky tap. It's kind of in the basement leaking. And for 10 years, you ignored it. For 10 years, you let it go. And you go down there and you realize you've got, you know, three feet of moldy muck in your foundations rotting away. It's like, yeah, if we could go back in time, if we could go back to say 1970 or 1960, when we saw a lot of Bolshevik movements coming into the United States, we saw that the Beatles craze, you know, John, you know, Imagine by John Lennon, which is the, you know, the communist anthem. If you look back on it, if we could go back then, yeah, it'd be easy to say this is the way we can fix our country, but is it too far gone? And that's really the question. Of course, I'll never give up until the last day, but, you know, I've got, you know, I've got a little girl that's two and a half years old. I want to be able to leave a country for her that she can live in and have freedom. And so, you know, from your perspective, you know, with where we're at, because a lot of people I've talked to, you know, they'll come on and they'll say, you know, especially people that are more in the political realm, right? They're a little higher level people. And it's almost like rehearsed. It's like, well, how do we fix our country? I say, well, we've got to get the right people in Congress. We've got to do this. And it's like, well, look what happened to Carrie Lake. Look what happened in 2020. Can we expect 2024 to be any different? Have we changed anything since 2020? Aside from more people being aware of what's happening. And so to me, it's like that solution, you know, we might as well say click your heels together as much as you can and say, there's no place like America and hope that something else appears. So when you talk about these big steps, these big sacrifices that people need to be making, what do those look like for you? Yeah. Let me start by saying, cause I love your analogy and it actually fits with mine. I always say the petri dish where bad government grows and tyranny grows is civic ignorance. When you don't know truth, when you don't know your history, when you don't know what makes a good society, a good neighborhood, you fall for the lie. And if you're willing to allow multiple generations or you purposefully make it where multiple generations are ignorant about their history and what made America special in the first place, man, that's the open door. That's where you open the door for that cultural Marxism to be poured in. And that's what's happened. We've educated now three generations of Americans through an education system that embraced cultural Marxism, that taught our own children to hate their own nation. And so we're at a point where not only do they not know what actually works, what are the principles of a constitutional republic? Why is free enterprise better than socialism? All those basic things that we used to teach in fifth grade, third grade. I mean, it was instilled year after year in education. Not only do they not know those things, they've been taught the opposite. They've been taught really the principles of socialism. They've been moved towards this Marxist ideal and to be dependent on government for everything. And you nailed it, man. It all came to a head with COVID because all of a sudden we used this virus. What I said in April of 2020, this is a bio-weapon. This is something that is being used by government to finally get us to rely entirely on government, to act out of fear. They're doing things that we never did. And I looked at the history. That was one of the reasons that some of us realized from the beginning what was going on. We went to 1918. I read every statute in 1918 from every state. I looked at every response of every city, every state. We did not do this nonsense that nobody actually quarantined healthy people. Nobody shut down an entire state. Anybody that asked a theater or church to shut down, it was for a couple of weeks, not for two or three years. I mean, we didn't know any of that. So everybody out of fear said, okay, whatever you say, government. Instead of saying, wait a minute, what is the government's proper role? What is my role as an individual, as a family leader, as a church leader, whatever it might be, everybody leaned on government to keep them safe. And so out of fear, you make bad decisions. Your logic goes out the window. And then all of a sudden we found ourselves in a tyrannical situation. You couldn't even, you know, they were controlling your bodily autonomy, making you wear these face diapers. I mean, all the stuff that happened. And then the medical industrial complex came in. And like you said, it became, I mean, there was no question our government was taken. I mean, when we are being forced to take a medical experiment and they're using our money to pay for it, they're using our money to advertise it and they're using our government to force it upon us and then colluding with big pharma, not big pharma, big corporations to then force it upon us saying you're going to be fired if you don't using the military to say you're going to be fired. I mean, all of that, it became man, wake up call for at least a percentage of the country. I'm shocked at how many people are still just lockstep, follow whatever they say. But for millions of Americans, it was the wake up call, including not just conservatives like myself, it was liberals. I mean, people like Naomi Wolf, I'm seeing Tim Robbins tweeting out now and talking about how this is tyranny and that he was wrong in the beginning of this whole thing. And so you nailed it. COVID has been the wake up call. And then of course you got parents watching on the Zoom classes and realizing, wait a minute, you're teaching my kid that? And so that was a jar. And so you had a flood of homeschooling tripled and people are fleeing the public school system and thank God. But I do think there's a window here where you can educate people to say, okay, we're in a mess. We are in a mess. There's no doubt about it. Look around us. It's like the old book in the Old Testament of Nehemiah, where they said, look around us, look at the reproach we're in. It's time to rebuild the walls. And so I think Americans have a choice right now that they care about freedom. Like you said, I've got a two-year-old, I've got a 10-year-old, I've got a grandson, whatever it might be. They have a choice. They can look at that rubble. They can look at the crumbling of the American culture around us and they can give up. They can go, you know, I got friends that say, Rick, it's all over. Go hide out at the ranch, grab your guns and canned food. I think you ought to have the ranch, the guns, and the canned food. Don't get me wrong. Or we can pick up the pieces and rebuild. We can seize this opportunity, this window of opportunity where people are paying attention and say, we're going to fight back tooth and nail. We're finally going to get in the trenches. The left has been in the trenches for 80 years. They have been doing this for a long time while we slept. And we've got to make sure we go into this eyes wide open and say, this is going to be hard. This is going to be trench warfare, not in terms of physical trench warfare, in terms of intellectual and economic trench warfare. We're going to have to scratch and claw, sacrifice, make long-term decisions. And the things I'm talking about when I say that, number one, and pardon me for being cheesy. My wife says I'm the king of Velveeta, but it's literally life's fortune, sacred honor. It's lives, our time. We've got to start giving up hobbies. I tell people all the time, look, if you're still playing golf four or five, six, 10 hours a week, get real, man, give up the hobbies, take the money you're spending on the hobby and start investing in freedom. Start spending that time educating yourself, your kids, your neighbors, people in your church, start hosting a constitution class, become one of our constitution coaches and start diving in. I mean, it's time to give up the little things like golf, but for some people, it's going to be changing careers, giving up the job they're in now, maybe making less money, but being able to invest time into restoring and rebuilding the nation. Maybe it's the sacrifice of running for office, which is not glorious. It's hard work. And when I served in the legislature, I nearly went broke because you don't make any money doing that unless you're willing to be on the take. And so for a lot of people, it's going to be major economic sacrifice, selling their home, downsizing their home so that they have the money to invest in good candidates or invest in good causes, perhaps moving to a state or a community where they can find people that they're like-minded with and they can rebuild, and no exaggeration here, literally rebuild society that reflects the values that they're trying to teach at home. But if you're in a Portland or a Seattle or whatever, you got to at least think about getting out of the blue county where you've got a DA that if, you know, you have to defend yourself, they're going after you, not the dirt bag, at least get into a redder area of your state. But you may have to think about literally moving to another state and helping to rebuild in that state. It's going to be a long haul, man. And there's no shortcut. There's no nirvana. There's no perfect community. You know, as proud as I am of Ron DeSantis and Florida and the things they've done, here's a politician, first politician in my life that said, I got it wrong. I screwed up. I should not have followed the advice of the health experts and shut down my state. But two months in, he said, the data doesn't back up what they're telling me to do. We're going to stop this nonsense. And he hit a home run every since. But Florida's no nirvana. They're fighting their tooth and nail to stop CRT and all this. But they're doing better than most because they've got good leadership. Texas, people talk about Texas all the time being the beacon of hope. I brag about it all the time. It used to be. But right now, man, we're purple and we're having a fight. We can't even get, I mean, some basic conservative principles out of our legislature. So I am not a Pollyanna, you know, just wave the flag and everything's going to be OK guy. But I am optimistic just from the standpoint of I'm spoiled in terms of every night I'm somewhere in the country speaking to three or four hundred, sometimes three or four thousand patriots. And so I see it all over the nation, pockets of people that love America. They love God. They love the Constitution. They still want biblical principles and they understand the formula that made America great in the first place. They want to come back to that stuff and they are willing to sacrifice their homeschooling, their kids. They're doing the things that it takes. They're running for school board. They're taking over their local school boards and their city councils. So I get to see constantly these little victories, not big, big ones, but these little victories. So I'm more optimistic than most. But I always start with it's going to be hard. All right, folks, I've got a quick message for you. So obviously you can see in this conversation we're talking about the threats that are at our doorstep and how we can get out of them. Now, one of the major ways they're trying to take control and seize control is through our finances. If you look at what's happening with the banking system, whether it's the bank runs, the consolidation of the small, you know, the local and regional banks into the big banks of JPMorgan Chase, they have a very, very, very defined plan of pushing us into a central bank digital currency. At the same time, you have the raising of rates. They say it's supposed to combat inflation, which is not working. And you have this rapid process of de-dollarization around the world. So really our dollar, our currency, which has played as a, it's a double-edged sword, it's allowed us to have a strong nation. We have a successful nation. We can buy the things we want, but it's also become the fuel for the military industrial complex and the global corporatocracy, et cetera. But they're trying to accelerate the collapse of that system because they want to bring in their absolute control grid through a central bank digital currency. And we're seeing this happening. So if you've got a lot of your money currently tied up in the dollar, whether it's in an IRA, a 401k, even in your savings account or stuffed under your mattress, my personal advice, and look, I'm not a financial advisor, so please do your own research, is the safest place for that is going to be in precious metals. These are currencies that have stood the test of time, their store of value that have lasted the rise and fall of civilizations throughout thousands of years. And so having even a small portion of your wealth in, say, physical silver, as an example, even if things go really topsy-turvy and the government starts really coming at us even harder, and they're attacking the dollar, moving towards central bank digital currency, that silver you're holding could become your lifeline. Look, in some of the other countries like Venezuela or Argentina, when there's stories of when the collapse happened, when their currency collapsed, when people were literally lining up with wheelbarrows of cash to buy a piece of chicken, which that could be America, I'm not being a fear monger, that is absolutely a potential, that even during those times, a single ounce of silver would buy enough food for a whole family for a month, because that's what happens when there's crisis, the value of precious metals and the buying power just goes up and up and up, while still maintaining the store of value that's not going to be lost with the dollar. So anyway, if you want to check this out, if you have something you can already buy from, great. If you don't and you're looking for someone that you can trust, my good friend Dr. Kirk Elliott is who I personally use and who I could not recommend more. So to learn more, go to GoldWithSeth.com or call 720-605-3900. Again, 720-605-3900, or if you go to GoldWithSeth.com, you just scroll down, at the bottom of the page, there's a very simple form, you fill that out, their team will be in touch with you, they'll set up a consultation call with one of their wealth advisors, and they'll help you really plan out what the best moves are for you. So again, that's GoldWithSeth.com or 720-605-3900. All right, folks, let's get back to the interview with Rick Green. And I think that's such an important point, because I think actually, I remember part of the point I was making, going to make earlier, in talking about for a lot of people, it was COVID that kind of snapped them out of it. But I feel like there's a lot of folks that it's like, okay, now that I see the problem, I want to have it fixed within two or three years. And so they're thinking, by now, I see so many battle-weary soldiers that are like, how long is this going to take? And I thought that Trump would have been back in the White House by now, or that there'd be arrests and they'd be sent to Guantanamo Bay or whatever. And at one point, I had those thoughts like, okay, when's it going to happen? And we're going to take back control. But I've really repositioned my thinking to almost like, look, being very sober about it, say, look, it might take us 20, 30, 40, 50 years to save our nation. And so I'm really, because our expectations are key, right? If you think that someone's giving you a Ferrari for a whole month and you show up and they give you a Corvette, you're like, why only the Corvette, right? Because your expectations are misaligned. So if we're thinking this whole thing's going to be over in five years, once we get to six years, we're going to feel tired and worn out because we're not going to pace ourselves for it. But I've really adjusted my thinking. It's like planting fruit trees and say, when's the best time to plant a fruit tree? 20 years ago. The second best time is today. And so I think that just framing- You're a wise man, brother. Most people don't think like you. That's hard to find. I feel like, wow, a kindred spirit, somebody else that sees the long game. This is great. I love hearing this. Thank you. Yeah. So I went and I spent a good part of my adult life really focusing and living in a way that we've got a few years, but now I'm really looking and almost planning generationally. How can I make sure that by the time my daughter is going to be having children, can I get the country fixed by then? And it's difficult because I think that part of the reason why our country is in this state is because we've been robbed of our discipline, right? I take responsibility for it, but it's been intentional. The cultural Marxism, the moral erosion, look back at the 50s, look at the discipline. The men would wake up, they'd get dressed, they'd comb their hair, they'd wear a belt and a tie, they'd go to work and the whole family kind of functioned together. But now it's just, especially with the younger generations, that's lost, right? We've become really, really impatient. Even the adults, a lot of the adults I know, they haven't been free from infection in this modern culture. And even for them, it's like, well, I'm running out of energy. It's like, well, was George Washington like two years in or whatever? Was he sitting there complaining or tweeting about how upset he is or complaining how bloody and sore their feet were from the frozen March? No, they just kind of stormed on. We're impatient and we're soft, impatient and soft, right? It's like, everything you said, man, 100%, put a stamp on it, couldn't agree more. And it is that the unrealized expectations is why people tend to give up so quickly. It's the microwave mentality, right? We want it really quick. We want it to happen overnight. And then the other thing is false hope that unfortunately people that are kind of, a lot of people from our side, sometimes they latch onto these easy, hopeful things that are impossible. I had people telling me and late January 21 and even into February and some in March, Oh, don't worry. Trump's really running the show from underneath the Pentagon somewhere in some secret location or, or, or on January 19th, you know, they're saying don't worry tomorrow. You know, it's almost like they thought Trump was going to descend from a helicopter with a bazooka in one arm. And, you know, and I'm going, listen, people, you got to be realistic about what's happening here and what, how this stuff actually works and how long it takes. And when, when something is nefarious like this, that sometimes the nefarious side wins and you have to come back, get reentranced, draw your battle line, defend what's behind you and then gain ground. And that's kind of where we are right now. It's time to draw a line in the sand and say, okay, we're going to defend certain ground, get it solid again, get our troops trained. And again, I'm talking intellectually here, not physically. And like you said, bazookas and, and all that kind of stuff. And, and, and get, get people educated, get a new generation that's educated on these things and then start moving forward. And it definitely is generational. And we have to ask people, not what is your freedom worth? What is your child's freedom worth? Are you willing to plant trees that you will not enjoy the shade of? Are you willing to spend your time saying it's not about me? It's about the next generation. You mentioned George Washington. I mean, my goodness, these guys started from, you know, think about it. I mean, really from the Boston massacre in 1770 to the bill of rights being the law of the land. That's 21 years, 21 years. Think about even six years into it when they're sitting there on Christmas 1776, when Thomas Paine writes those words in an American crisis, no nation would help us. Everybody said, you're going to lose. Washington's troops have dropped from like, you know, 25,000 down to about 2,500. He's lost 90% of his guys. Everybody's given up on the cause. We got our butts handed to us in New York. I mean, it's just, it's just over. And Paine says, these are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will in this present crisis shrink from service to his country, but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. What's he saying? He's saying you need winter soldiers. You're not going to win this with those people that just show up at a rally, wave a flag for a little while, and then go home and forget about it. Now we need the rallies. We need the times where we come together and heat up like coals, but then you've got to get back out in the, literally in the trenches, in the streets and show up at that school board meeting week after week or month after month, show up at the polls and vote and stand out there, even with a broken system that we're having to scratch and claw to fix. And there's some states that are still going to be a total disaster in 2024. So we've got to isolate the ones that can potentially make the difference to get somebody different. And I mean, there's all these strategies that got to take place, but man, we're going to, and I don't want people to be depressed by this, but it's going to get ugly and it's going to get worse before it gets better. I believe that I think we have to recognize that we are paying the price where there's a consequence for years and years of being lazy and just enjoying the blessings. We're paying the price, you mentioned it, for moving away from morality. I mean, you cannot say to a country, there is no right or wrong, do whatever feels good, do whatever's right in your own eyes and not have a consequence for that. Once you say moral relativism for all, chaos will ensue. It's going to take a while. It took, I mean, we've been at this for 60 years, moving towards moral relativism. There's going to be a consequence just like it was in the French revolution. I mean, the reason the American revolution worked because it was freedom under God, freedom with respect for the authority of God, recognizing that you're not the source of my freedom, I'm not the source of your freedom, so you can't take away mine and I can't take away yours, where the French revolution was all about, we just have freedom. I give it to you, you give it to me. So what happens? You lead to total chaos, slaw the tiger and the shark, whoever has the power wins, guillotine for whoever loses. We've got to get back to the formula, the secret sauce, and that brings us back to our first part of our talk, the Petri dish, right? We've got to get back to solving civic ignorance. We will not just win an election and solve things. We've got to educate America on the principles of liberty. That's why we do what we do. That's why all these coaches that are teaching the constitution in their living rooms or in their church, that's why it's so important. And you don't have to know anything about the law or history of the constitution to get started. We're all just sojourners. I start every constitution class I teach saying, I'm no guru, man. I'm just a citizen, just like you. As I said earlier, I slept through government in high school and college and I had to become hungry later in life. And I'm a country boy, man. I do this stuff in very simple ways. I get so sick and tired of these Supreme court justices writing these complicated opinions that with all these fancy words, creating theories. I love Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas because they've been tearing down all of that junk from the last 60 years, substantive due process. I mean, they basically said, that's a made up thing. The Supreme court made this up in order to pass abortion. They made this stuff up in order to remove religion from public life. And last summer, just some good news for those at home. We are winning in some areas. Last summer was the summer of love. If you love the constitution with the Bruin case, restoring the second amendment right, not only to keep, but to bear arms, the Kennedy case, religious liberty in the public square. We got the, obviously the Dobbs decision, overturning Roe v. Wade. You had the West Virginia EPA case saying, we're going to start chipping away at this fourth branch. These bureaucrats that are making law without representative approval of the people. And you know, just all of these things where for the first time in my life, I'm going, wow, good Supreme court decisions. And here's the beauty of it. The left is now screaming. We don't want the Supreme court to tell us what to do. And I'm like, welcome to the party. We've been trying to say that for 50 years, get the court, get the federal government out of your life. Those things should all be decided at the local, on the state level. The feds are supposed to do 17 things and that's it. They're doing 17,000 things they shouldn't be doing. And that's why we have all these problems. You've got these left-wing San Francisco cabal people in Washington, DC, trying to use the federal government to make you allow men into girls' locker rooms and bathrooms and just crazy stuff like that. That's one example of many things they're doing where they should have zero saying this. If California wants to be goofy, let them be goofy, but don't allow them to tell Texas what we do. Don't allow them to tell Arkansas or Oklahoma or Idaho what to do. We've got to restore federalism. I'm sorry, I'm filibustering here, but that's really what I wanted to get to is when you talk about big things that we have to do, we have to restore federalism. We have to come back to a situation where the states can be very, very different. And that's okay. The only reason for the federal government is for us to come together in war, come together in commerce, come together in protecting property and copyrights and patents and that sort of thing. There's very few things that our states are coming together for. Other than that, let each state be unique and then let people vote with their feet and we'll see who does well, which principles actually produce a great society or not. And I agree with that. And I've also often I was wondering, you know, if I look forward 20 years, are we going to have like, oh yeah, that's the blue part of the country, that's the red part of the country. And there was the great migration that happened back in, you know, say 2020, when everyone then relocated based upon their political affiliations. And again, like, that's why I think it's so important to have, you know, nationalism, have different countries. It's like, okay, well, let's look and see what happens in the Middle Eastern country where they rule by Sharia law. Okay. What's life like there? What's life like there compared to, you know, a very socialist country like France? What's it like there? Like we see the examples playing out, you know, but in terms of just looking at where our countries are now, so I'm going to bring up some words of one of our founding fathers here. So Jefferson said, this is a famous quote we oftentimes see, but he said, but when a long train of abuses and usurpations pursuing invariably the same object, events as a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty to throw off such government and to provide new guards for their future security. And I really want to dig into this a little bit with you and just see your perspective of this, because like, what does that mean? I mean, we literally had, you know, the founding fathers and we had these, these patriots that took up arms against the tyranny, you know, for a few percentage points of tax and, you know, some issues that they'd looked to where we are now. And they'd be like, how are you? They wouldn't be, they wouldn't believe it. George Washington would be crying looking at our country today. And so of course we'll put the, you know, the disclaimer, we're not advocating for violence, of course, which I think that would play into their hand. They want, they want violence. They want a reason to bring in martial law, to bring in UN troops or whatever it is. They want civil war. They, you know, they're demons and demons, they thrive in chaos. And so that's what they want. So, but you know, just going to the poll box or, you know, just, you know, working the ways that we're trying to, I, you know, I'd like to say that I'm seeing that it's having a big effect. I agree on a grassroots roots level, it is, but what I'm seeing, especially with Biden sitting in the White House chair, whoever's whispering into his ear that we're, we're seeing just the, the federal government expand and expand and expand. We're seeing our debt ceiling raised. We're seeing, you know, money being laundered to Ukraine. We're seeing, we're now understanding that the federal government's involved with human trafficking across the border and child exploitation. So it just seems like this, that Petri dish is like, you know, you left it open in the lab, came back a year later and the entire lab got taken over with it. Like there's this bacteria growing everywhere. And so just looking at this situation as it is now, you know, what's that, you know, what's the, what's the line in the sand that we draw? Like, what do we, like, what do we do? Well, if you back up, uh, uh, right before that quote, Jefferson said in the declaration that mankind is, uh, tends to, um, suffer as long as those evils are sufferable. In other words, they'll go as far as they can. They're willing to put up with as much pain as possible before they finally quote alter or abolish that government. I think the solution is to alter. I don't think we have to abolish, but I do think we have to alter our government. I think we have to alter it back to the way it was originally designed. It's been stolen from us. I mean, we, we have a federal court or federal government that is so outside that jurisdiction that it was a really originally given and state government. I mean, frankly, local government, we've got so many areas where we've let government grow, like you said, uh, and it, and it's become insufferable for, for, um, some of us, some people are fine with suffering through that. Still, they haven't had enough pain yet to be willing to, uh, to get up and do something about it. You've made some really important points there, man. And we we've had at our fingertips, the peaceable tools we needed to stop this nonsense for a long time. And we haven't been willing to use the tools. Let me give you one example in 2020, when, when the election was, and I, and I say this, and let me explain what I mean when I say the election was stolen, I don't even have to use dominion or machines to make my case. This election was stolen in broad daylight by officials changing election law and violating the constitution in the final months of the election constitution is very clear that only the state legislatures can change election law. And so when these secretaries of state or governors or Supreme courts, it's different in a few States, Georgia did it, Pennsylvania did it. I mean, depending on who the actor was that did it, it was still unconstitutional because it wasn't a legislature and they changed the law to favor the Democrats. So they put the polling places in more polling places than Democrat places. They opened up absentee balloting. I mean, early voting longer, they did absentee ballot balloting for everybody, all the easy to cheat stuff, but also it favored one side over the other. But even if it hadn't favored, even if it had been neutral, it still was against the law. It still violated the constitution. And so this was what frankly, Mark Levin first brought attention to. He saw it happening in August and September of 2020. He said to the Republican leadership, here's the bad thing, man. It was Republican leadership in each of these state legislatures that could have stopped this. And he started sounding the alarm saying, guys, you got to convene yourself. You've got to get into session and you've got to stop this. You've got to tell them they can't do this. And it was Republican leaders in each of these States that sat on their hands and let this happen in broad daylight. It was stolen in broad daylight. And then after it happened, there's three different Supreme court decisions that make it clear that the legislature has the power to choose how electors are chosen and can do that at any time, including after the election, they could have said in these States, this was wrong. The election's tainted. We're taking the electors back. Either we're not going to allow our electors to be counted, or we're going to send our own set of electors. And that's the ones for you to count and then make it very clear to the vice president, which set of electors should be counted when he opens on January 6th. So we had plenty of opportunity to do this. They didn't want to play hard ball. They weren't willing to scratch and claw. They were so afraid of being tied to Donald Trump, to being seen as overturning the election. The left was far better at defining terms. So all of a sudden, if you didn't accept what happened, you were overturning the election. I said, well, nobody's asking anybody to overturn the election. We're asking you to verify the election. All we're asking you to do is count the votes correctly and then have a recount if necessary to make sure you counted the votes correctly. But they won the terminology battle. And even Mike Pence, this year, he used those terms in a speech. He said, they asked me to overturn the election. I thought, Mike, you've given, and he's a friend, man. I've known him for 25 years. You've given in to their terminology. So anyway, that's what January 6th was all about, actually. That's what all of this, all of that to say, we had the tools, we had the peaceable tools at our fingertips, and our people, our side, did not use them. They were unwilling to use the power that they are given in the Constitution. And frankly, state reps still are unwilling to use the power that's given to them in the Constitution to right the ship. The founders knew this, man. They got all the way to the end of the convention. I mean, we're talking September, I think it was 15th, 14th or 15th. At the very end of the convention in 1787, this guy, Colonel Mason, George Mason, gets up and he says, all right, guys, we've created a federal government. That's great. We've limited it to only these few things that it can do at that time, 15 things we added to with the 27 amendments. Anyway, we've limited to these things. But he said, what happens if the federal government decides to add to their power without us giving them permission from the states, we the people? What happens? Because right now, the way that they would get put back in their boxes, they would have to choose to give up that power. He said, when has that ever happened? No time in history has anybody stolen power and then just given it back on their own. So that was when he said, we need a way for the states without the feds involved to crush these guys back into their box, put them back, limit their jurisdiction. He created this thing in Article 5, a second way to amend the constitution called Convention of States. And we still, to this day, have never used it. We still, to this day, are having to fight tooth and nail to get state legislators to recognize you have the power to overrule the federal government if you'll just use it. And I could talk about that all day. It's a 34 state process. We've got 19 that have done it. We need 15 more. And I fight state legislators every day over this as a former legislator saying, you are the most powerful player under the constitution. But if you don't use your power, you give up your power. And right now, you're asking the federal government to put itself back in the box or the Supreme Court to do the job for you. It's not going to happen. It's got to be the states that forced the hand. I always use the 11th Amendment as an example. That was literally overturning a Supreme Court decision called Chisholm v. Georgia in four months. So the Supreme Court hands down a bad decision. The states say, hey, we want this overturned. Congress actually at that time answered to the states because the Senate, that was before we changed the election of senators from the state legislature to the people. So Congress was actually did his job back then. And we actually overturned a Supreme Court decision in four months. Don't tell me we can't overturn the federal government. Don't tell me that the supremacy clause means they get to do whatever they want. They're about to give up our sovereignty to the World Health Organization. And instead of a lousy state health commissioner telling you got to wear a mask or get a job or stay home or can't go to work, it's going to be some Chinese-controlled international agency that's going to be telling us to do that. We have got to start using the peaceable means at our fingertips. And if we don't use the peaceable means, we are going to end up in civil war. I don't say that to scare people. I don't say that to warmonger. I'm just saying use the peaceable means, civil discourse, state legislative action, all of these things. You got to use the peaceable means to prevent the actual physical war from coming. And civil war, listen, I'm a student of history now. I mean, that's the way of the world. We're at the 250 year mark. This is the point at which most civilizations fall apart. We've broken the mold every step of the way because of our foundation. I think we still can, but not if we don't take action. And so anyway, I say all that to say it can be peaceable, but not if we're afraid, not if we act out of fear. We cannot be fearful. We have to err on the side of freedom, not on the side of fear. And even if we do the things that we have the power to do, it's still going to be scratching and clawing, but it can be done. Which I think it's also, as you mentioned before, the ranch with the guns and the canned food, et cetera. That's why, to me, that's a big part of it. It's not about becoming a doomsday prepper and building a bunker, but it's about, I think, really gaining back your self-reliance, your ability to take care of your family, to defend your homestead, et cetera. And that's a key because we might get to a point where things really do fall apart. And at that stage, I think the patriots that have the moral foundation, have the faith, the belief in God, the belief in family, the belief in the constitution, that might be their time to stand firm, bring their community together. They've seen it coming. They've felt the winds long before everyone else did of the hurricane that was potentially approaching. And so all of those things that we can do now, while we still have a window, I can still go to Costco and I can buy a bunch of canned food. I can still go to my local gun store. I can buy 10,000 rounds of ammo if I wanted to. No limits. They're not tracking it. So we can still take some of those actions. So I think it's really, I mean, it's hope for the best, prepare for the worst, right? It is, man. I'm sorry to jump in on you, but I'm going to say there's actually two reasons to do what you're talking about. There's the immediate reason, and this is the founding fathers. This is not me. This is not some, you know, oh, that guy's a, you know, a patriot militia, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This is the founding fathers said that you absolutely are responsible for your own self-defense. James Wilson signed both the declaration and the constitution's original Supreme court justice. He said, if you get robbed in your home, he said, every man's house is castle. We all talk about the castle doctrine said every minute houses castle. And you are the commanding officer of your house. If you get robbed in your house, it's your own fault and negligence. In other words, we get robbed in our house or on the street or in a grocery store. If the mass murder walks into your grocery store or your church or your school or whatever it is, if you're not armed and trained and ready to stop them, it's your own fault. We love blaming the police. We love blame. And there's a lot of jail break going on. And there is a problem with the system, letting out the criminals and all that. But at the end of the day, we're responsible. So even short of a tyrannical government, every person out there needs to be training, needs to know how to defend themselves, needs to be exercising their second amendment right. Not just to keep, but to bear arms. And then the second reason is exactly what you just said. And that is the way of the world, man. That is the way of history. And the only reason we've been able to keep our country as free as we have for this long is exactly what Joseph Story said. He was one of the fathers of American jurisprudence, served on the Supreme Court for 20-something years, wrote 94% of the opinions. He talked about the fact that the second amendment is the, quote, palladium of all of our other freedoms. It's the protector of everything else. Why? Because it offers a strong moral check against the arbitrary power and usurpation of government. In other words, if they know we're armed and we're equipped and we're able to fight back, they have to go, hmm, that's kind of a check on my balance here. Maybe I, on my power here, maybe I don't want to do this. I have to really calculate, you know, was it, who was it, Stalin or whoever that said, you know, with America or who was it that said there'll be an armed American behind every blade of grass? We need our own government to remember that, right? They need to know. And that's not, again, not war. That's just the founding fathers. That's what they said. And then we get peace. You know, we get to live in peace and have a good government, but not if we're not exercising those second amendment rights and doing exactly what you just said. And I think, you know, one thing just to remind ourselves of is that of all the countries, of all the different regions that have fallen to tyranny, you know, whether it's Germany, China, Russia, Cambodia, the list just goes on. They never were able to do that when they had an armed populace. They always had to disarm the populace. And the thing is, even if they tried to disarm us, you know, how many Americans at that point, even a lot of the liberals went out and bought guns for the first time during COVID in record numbers. How many of them are going to say, you know what, I trust the government. I don't want any more school shootings, so I'll give up all my ways of protecting myself. You know, so I think that we, you know, there's a lot of things that do give me hope. Not to mention, I really do believe that we have God on our side, that there's enough people that are really, that are standing up and making this a nation worth saving. You know, five years ago, you know, maybe not, but now there's enough good people here, I think, that it's making it worth it. I agree. And I think that's growing every day. I really do. I see it. I mean, we see it in our organization and the people that are doing our classes and the coach. We've had a million people go through the class and I hear the testimonials all the time and they come back every week going, wow, there's hope. Oh, wow, I didn't know that. I'm learning something about our history and about freedom and all these things. And oh, wow, there's things I can do. There's actual steps I can take. There's no doubt about it. And I don't want to skirt the question you asked earlier, you know, about where's that line in the sand. And I've always said that the two places where I will take up arms are if they try to take my arms or my children, right? That's the two things that I cannot abide. That's the two things that when Jefferson said, evils that are sufferable, those two evils are not sufferable because of what you just said. Once they take the guns, you can't fight back, right? And if they take my kids, you know, it's just something I'm not going to let happen. And man, I hate to say this. And three years ago, if you'd said this to me, I'd have said, you know, where's your tinfoil hat? But that's happening in some places in America. I mean, the medical kidnapping of kids by CPS, I have good friends that had their, you know, six-month-old baby taken and over and weighing a little bit low, you know, and some social worker and doctor decided the parents weren't fit. And, you know, thankfully that family was very politically active and knew how to fight back and they got their kid back. And that happens all the time in America. This stuff that's happening on the border in my state here in Texas is evil. Kids are being trafficked, raped along the way. One in four women coming across are raped on the way. It's just evil stuff that's going on. As you said, it's demonic. And we have a president that's right there with a man. He's letting it happen. He wants it to happen. He's literally encouraged because it's a Marxist thing. They need this chaos. They need to dilute America with people that don't share our patriotism and share our values. They need to create this chaos. The cartels being able to operate inside America is huge for them in order to create this chaos. So this stuff is real. And a lot of stuff you and I have said today, again, three years ago, five years ago, I would have been like, I don't know, it's getting kind of out there. Man, I figured out the difference between conspiracy theory and reality is about six months. You know, there's not much you could say at this point that I wouldn't say, you know what, that could be happening. I mean, now it's the banking stuff, controlling our money, being able to use ESG to shut us down and prevent us from even being able to buy gas. The Chinese are doing it and they want to do it here. And we've got to wake people up to realize this is real. This is happening. I mean, tyranny comes on slow and then suddenly it comes on fast, as my friend Mark Meckler says. And we're there, man. It's a time to stand up. Be prepared for the worst. Like you said, hope for the best, pray for the best. It's like we always say, pray like it all depends on God, work like it all depends on us. And don't give up, stay in the fight, no matter what. I always tell people, you know, if you've got the pillow or the coffee mug from that verse in Jeremiah, it says, I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you, yada, yada, yada. Don't forget what was happening. They were marching off to 70 years of captivity. So, you know, God can still bless us in the dark times and bad times. And we may go through some dark times and some bad times, but the principles of liberty don't change. The laws of nature and God don't change. It may take us a while to replant these things and rebuild these things, but it absolutely can be done. Will we save the whole nation? I don't know, man. I don't know. I think we are going to come to a red blue split, maybe not as a nation, because I think in order to fight China, we need to stay together. But we're definitely going to come to a split in terms of, I'm not going to, you know, you can live in fantasy land if you want, you can't make me live there. And I'm not going to let you carve up kids in my neighborhood. I'm not going to let you put boys in my daughter's locker room and shower. So there's some things that we just can't abide and we can't live with. And there's too many other people out there that want those things that I think we're going to have to, over time, push them out of certain states. They're going to assemble in states where they want to be and, you know, let them have their chaos, I guess. But I wish it wasn't that way. I wish we could outlaw certain things for the whole nation. I wish we could get to that point. And like slavery, we might be able to do that, but it took them, you know, nearly, you know, 80 years to get to that point. And that's probably what's going to happen here is it's going to take solidifying certain areas of the country, showing the better way, showing what happens when you put good stuff in, you get good stuff out, and then watch those other states keep putting garbage in and getting garbage out. And people will come to their senses to some extent. And if not, they'll have to live with the consequences. I agree. Wise words. So I know we're already past your time. Before we sign off, I just want to bring up your website one last time. It's patriotacademy.com. When people land on this website, say someone saying, you know what, I forget everything I was taught about the Constitution. I want to learn more. This is the place. Where should they go when they land on patriotacademy.com? If you want to do a Constitution class, click on Constitution Coach. You can sign up as a coach for free. And then you can invite your friends or family over to do the class with you for free. Everybody can do the class for free. If they want workbooks, they can buy them. But we have a digital workbook on your phone or iPad or whatever that doesn't cost anything. And then if you want to do a handgun defense class, we've got a class called Constitutional Defense, where you do handgun training during the day. And then I teach the Constitution at night. It's fun. It's great fellowship. You get to be around other good people from coming from across the nation, best instructors on the planet. They make it, you know, really, really good. And a lot of the people that come to our class have never touched a gun in their life, or they've never really trained. So it's a really, I highly recommend. I want everybody to have a gun and carry, but I want them to be trained if they're going to carry. So anyway, we put thousands and thousands of people through that class. It's really fun. And then if you've got a kid that's 16 to 25, and you want them to learn leadership skills and learn to be a good citizen, then have them come to our Leadership Congress. It's a great experience on the real House floor, in the real committee room, chance to really learn how the system works. And we're even doing that for people of all ages now. So if you sign up as a coach, you can come to the Coach Congress first week of August and actually be a legislator for a week and learn that process really well. And then we have a Military Leadership Congress for military veterans only. And that's where they take over the Senate and they, and they have their own legislative simulation. So lots of different things in there, man. Sorry to again, filibuster, but lots of different ways to get involved and love for people to come be a part of it with us. No, that's great. And I appreciate what you're doing. And for all the folks that are watching or listening, you know, this is one thing we do is we help spread this information. So, you know, if you enjoyed the conversation, share this, email this or text it off to a friend, say, listen to this, because I think that I couldn't agree more with you that we have to learn. There's a reason why. There's a reason why the Marxists are attacking the roots of our country, attacking the roots of our identity, because we forget that we're just, we're just blowing in the wind and they can get us anywhere they want to. But if we go back to this, that's where our strength lies. So Rick, it's been such a great time having you on here and I feel like we could just go for hours and hours. So we'll have to do this again. Thanks again for what you're doing. And I just, I appreciate you being here with us. Well, God bless you, man. And thanks for what you're doing. You're Paul Revere today, man. You're warning, not only the British coming there, they're in the backyard and I appreciate you very much and look forward to coming back and doing it again. Great. Thank you. Folks, I have one final message for you. I hope that you enjoyed the interview with Rick and I think it had a good, a few good doses of reality and sober perspective, but also hope, because I do think there is hope. But as we talked about towards the end of that show, we do have to be prepared. We really do. Especially when it comes to our money, as we talked about earlier, I talked to you about the gold and silver, but also with our food. And the question I had to ask you is that if tomorrow you could no longer go to the grocery store to buy food for your family, right? Because it could be a grid down scenario. It could be government regulation. They could be requiring a vaccine ID, digital passport to get your food. If that were to happen, how long would your family sustain? Would it be a month? If you look in your pantry, how long could you keep going? A few weeks, half a year, two years. And so one of the best things I would recommend aside from learning how to grow your own food and getting good quality heirloom seeds, is this having some storable food on hand. And so for that though, I highly recommend Heaven's Harvest. Look, I've vetted a lot of the different storable food companies and a lot of them are similar, but for what they do is they pack these things full of cheap calories, sugary drinks, et cetera, to say, Hey, look, we're the least expensive, but you're actually buying packets of Kool-Aid that jack up the calorie count while reducing the price. Heaven's Harvest doesn't do that. They've got high quality storable food that will last up to 25 years. And this food is locally sourced from farms and companies in the United States of America. They are, it's an amazing Christian Patriot company. They also sell seeds. So if you want to get heirloom seeds, you can buy a heirloom seed kit. It's also there. So again, that's heavensharvest.com. And if you use the promo code Seth at Heaven's Harvest, you're going to save 15% on your entire order. So again, do it, do an audit, see how much food you have. And if you want to round out your food supply, look, hopefully you never use it. But then maybe, maybe 10 years from now, you have to tap into your storable food. It's still going to be waiting there. It just gives you a great security. And that's going to be honestly, one of the best ways that we can resist our government, because if they turn tyrannical, it's through the control of the food supply that oftentimes the populace has fallen to the control of the government is because they weren't able to have control of their own food supply. And this is something very important you can do. So again, it's heavensharvest.com and promo code Seth to save 15% today.