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I'm Josh Hammer and this is the Josh Hammer Show. The fallouts from the Joe Kent resignation letter continues. Tulsi Gabbard in highly related news, testifying earlier today on Capitol Hill. Meanwhile, sparks flying in Markway Mullen's own Capitol Hill confirmation hearing to be the next DHS secretary. We have an update for you when it comes to John Thune and the Save America act, this indispensable piece of voter ID legislation. There's much to get to when it comes to Capitol Hill, but for now, we're going to begin with first principles. Alexander Hamilton, one of my favorite founding fathers. A founding father who frankly, from my estimation, tends to be underweighted in the pantheon of American great intellects. A man who was at times overshadowed by men like James Madison, men like Thomas Jefferson, men, frankly, like his his fellow Federalist Party member himself from America's initial two party system. George Washington Hamilton oftentimes was under the shadows, at least until the recent Broadway play that bears his name came to light over the past decade. Your mileage may vary when it comes to that Broadway play, but in any event, his legacy tended to be obscured for a long time. He was full of brilliant insights, and one of his greatest insights, in my estimation comes in his opening sentence of federalist number 31. So recall, the Federalist Papers are these papers that were written on behalf of the ratification of the United States Constitution. They were all written under the pseudonym of Publius. We now know that the authors of the Federalist Papers were Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay Hamilton actually wrote the majority of them. He was the most frequent author. So Alexander Hamilton, this is not necessarily one of his most well known Federalist Papers. You'd probably go to essays like Federalist 78 or 70 for that. But the opening line of Alexander Hamilton writing In Federalist number 31 is this. He writes, quote, in disquisitions of every kind, there are certain primary truths or first principles upon which all subsequent Reasonings must depend what he is saying. To translate that into contemporary, not necessarily 18th century English is what he is saying is that when you are engaged in logical reasoning, when you're having a conversation, he's used the word disquisition here. I mean it's essay. When you're having a conversation, you're writing an essay or having a colloquy, a conversation, any kind of back and forth dialogue, it is self evident, he says, that there are certain primary truths or first principles upon which all subsequent reasonings depend. In other words, you have to start somewhere if you're going to have a conversation about public policy, about morality, about ethics, about politics, about national security, anything. You can't just have it in a vacuum. You have to know where you start. That then raises the obvious question as to what are those primary truths or first principles. A lot of American natural rights theorists then go back to the Declaration of Independence written by Thomas Jefferson, just a little over a decade prior to the Federalist Papers where they say that we hold these truths to be self evident, that every man is created equal in animal rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, and so forth. There that is one possible answer. A closely related possible answer as to what these primary truths or anchoring principles are is revelation is the actual Bible itself. Frankly, in many ways that is my own answer, as I wrote about at great length in my book last year, Israel and Civilization. But the point is that you have to believe in something. You can't just be outraged for the sake of being outraged. This is all too common. Dare I say, it's actually even ubiquitous in our era. There are so many people, whether they are social media influencers, whether they are elected officials, whether they're politicians, whether they're artists, whether they're reporters, television hosts, you name it, who are just ticked off because they like how it feels, they think it gets clicks or for some other self serving reason. They are trying to make you angry because they think that maybe you want to feel angry, you want to feel an emotional rush. Or maybe they think that it's better for their audience retention to make you angry. Frankly, in many ways maybe actually they think it's better for you to be stupider. I've been referring to this for a while now as a brain rot op, a brain rot operation or a brain rot psyop a bit of psychological warfare. There is a concerted effort both inside and outside the government to denude us, to strip us away from having what Hamilton refers to as these anchoring truths or first principles to make us forget that what we as conservatives actually believe in the first place. And yes, we actually do believe in some very basic things. We believe in the rule of law, we believe in the intergenerational civilizational inheritance going back to biblical times. We believe in tradition, we believe in traditional values, we believe in morality, we believe in substantive justice, in rewarding good and punishing evil. And borders and nationalism, there's a lot of things we believe in, but this, this brain rot op is intended to get you to forget all that and to just be outraged and transgressive, to stick it to the man, to stick two middle fingers to the quote, unquote establishment over the issue of the day. I think back sometimes to this sign that maybe you've seen way back 15 plus years ago. It was a sign that a certain protester held, I believe was on the national mall in Washington D.C. at the height of the Tea Party movement, so circa 2009, 2010. And it was a protester who was clearly inspired by the anti establishment, anti Washington rhetoric of the Tea Party era. The Gadsden flag, the coiled snake, don't tread on me and all that. A lot of good stuff in there for sure. But this protester sign that I'm thinking of here somewhat infamously said, get your big government hands off my Medicare. And the reason this sign has stuck with me is because that is an oxymoron. Medicare, a Lyndon B. Johnson Great Society welfare program, is the definition of big government. I'm not saying gut Medicare. I do think it's financially unsustainable and we're gonna address that sooner rather than later. But this is an example of someone who is outraged not necessarily because he's fully thought it through. He's not outraged because of what Hamilton referred to as anchoring truths or first principles. He is outraged for the sake of being outraged. We see this today in a slightly different context. We are now many, many years past the Tea Party era. We are in the era, at least on the American right when it comes to the Republican Party conservative movement. When it comes to the era of maga, the era of Donald Trump, we are in an not defined by Tea Party era notions of limited government and a libertarian inspired conservatism. Quite the opposite. Say we are now in an era of national populism, national conservatism, of using government a bit more robustly for the sake of the common good, within the constraints of the rule of law and inalienable rights and so forth. There I've developed much of this in my own capacity over the past 10 years or so, I have been a contributor to a lot of this theory, spoken at the National Conservative Conferences, written countless essays. It's in my book, it's on this show over and over and over again. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, but when it comes to this MAGA national populist context, what you are seeing now is a different form of outrage and performative outrage at that and the people who are trying to be transgressive and stick it to the establishment simply for the sake of being transgressive and not actually having thought things through. Just like that Tea Party era sign of get your big government hands off my Medicare. So too today do we see plenty of people and we're gonna get to Joe Kent here in just a moment. Plenty of people who are outraged not because they have thought things through, but because they are just trying to get clicks and to drive you mad. Because they have themselves contributed to and indeed been a part of this sprawling brain rot psyop. So more on that in just a moment. For now, just a quick word from our sponsor for today's show which is Balance of Nature. 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Again folks, that is balanceofnature.com sponsor for today's program. So you're seeing this play out today, this notion of being outraged performatively or trying to transgress the man, trans the establishment, transgress perceived orthodoxy, perceived norms. But now it's not necessarily taking this intellectually muddled way of trying to get in the mode of Limited government sentiment. It's not this Tea Party era counter establishment sensation. Now, today, really, the issue above all, believe it or not, tends to be the Jews and Israel, which is consuming so much of the attention from this sprawling brain rot operation. There are people with massive megaphones. We talk about them right here on the show all the time. People like Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, who are now engaged in a sprawling psyop to try to make you stupider and to try to make you outraged and angry without realizing why you are angry. They are not talking, as Hamilton did, about first principles. They're not talking about anchoring your primary truths. They're just trying to get you angry by going to the most timeless source of all time of people to blame to try to explain to you why you are suffering allegedly the way that you are. And that, of course, is the Jews. We saw this in the resignation letter from the now former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Joe Kent, just earlier this week on Tuesday. So Joe Kent's writing in this truly disgraceful letter, which he had the chutzpah to actually put on official government letterhead, which is really quite something. He says that the only reason the United States is in this war with Iran is due to, quote, pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby. He essentially says that, quote, high ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media deployed a misinformation campaign. Actually, Joe, you're the one who's part of this misinformation campaign. But I digress. So according to Joe Kent, this campaign, quote, wholly undermined Mr. President, your America first platform and sowed pro war sentiments to encourage a war with Iran. This echo chamber was used to deceive you into believing that Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States, which is just hilarious because Donald Trump has been consistent on this issue for 46 to 47 years. There's literally a clip of him in New York City in 1980 saying how Jimmy Carter was being too weak in trying to rescue her hostages from the embassy in Tehran. So it's extraordinary stuff from Joe Kent. But the broader point here is, is that this is not an isolated incident. It's part of a broader, more concerted brain rot psyop that is trying to strip you away of any connection to your anchoring truths or first principles. Don't fall for it.