National Review’s Noah Rothman on Voting Ourselves Free | “YOUR WELCOME” #419

Summary

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YOUR WELCOME with Michael Malice

Episode 419: National Review’s Noah Rothman on Voting Ourselves Free (June 10, 2026)

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Overview

In this thought-provoking episode, Michael Malice sits down with Noah Rothman, senior writer at National Review and author of the new book Blood In: A Century of Left-Wing Violence in America. The conversation dives deep into the historical cycles of political violence in the United States, the asymmetrical narratives around left- and right-wing extremism, and the legitimacy (or lack thereof) of extralegal violence in free societies. With Malice’s trademark wit and skepticism, the dialogue sharply contrasts individualist, anarchic perspectives with Rothman’s deeply skeptical, institution-first conservatism.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Historical Pattern of Political Violence in America

• Cycles of violence: Rothman outlines how waves of left-wing violence have recurred every 50 years or so, tracing back to the 1910s anarchists, Puerto Rican nationalists in the 1950s, and the Marxian guerrilla movements of the ’60s–’80s ([05:02–07:22]).
  • "It tends to come in these 50 year periods… we don't have immunity to the initial indications that we’re about to face another wave." — Noah Rothman [05:48]
• Forgetting as a pattern: Institutions, academia, and media, according to Rothman, have a vested interest in forgetting, covering up, or valorizing past left-wing violence, which ensures society is unprepared when it recurs ([07:22–10:16]).
  • Examples include the Weathermen, Angela Davis, and figures like Assata Shakur who are celebrated on campuses even when involved in violent crime.

2. Institutional Bias and the Narrative of Political Violence

• Asymmetrical coverage & database games: Rothman argues that institutions systematically treat right-wing violence as uniquely dangerous, often through questionable statistical manipulation, while excusing left-wing violence ([11:21–16:27]):
  • "When there's episodes of violence on the left, we get efforts to excuse it, explain it away…" — Noah Rothman [12:35]
  • "Gang violence, prison violence, intra family violence, that that's coded as right wing violence too." — Noah Rothman [13:45]
• Academic bias: Those who try to research left-wing extremism face intimidation and marginalization, leading to a dearth of studies and understanding.

3. The Legitimacy of Political Violence

• Rothman's position: In a country with a functioning constitutional order and accessible legal processes, extralegal violence is never justified ([11:21–19:19]):

  • "Extralegal political violence is, in my view, never acceptable in a country that is free..." — Noah Rothman [11:21]

• Malice's challenge: Citing American founding violence, the end of slavery, and cases of self-defense or retribution, Malice pushes for a more contextual view of violence and questions the blanket rejection ([16:31–19:19], [40:08–42:27]).

  • "This country was founded on political violence. Slavery was ended by political violence. I don't see how you have this blanket 'no' to it." — Michael Malice [16:31]

• Distinction between revolution and reparation: Rothman draws a line between the American Revolution (seeking to reclaim lost legal rights + no court recourse) and contemporary revolutionary violence aiming to completely remake society ([17:05–19:19]).

4. The Ballot Box, Voting, and Redress

• Legal mechanisms first: Even if courts are slow or unsatisfying, Rothman insists that as long as one can petition the courts and participate in voting, the legitimacy of legal order stands — violence is not justified ([22:18–25:38], [42:38–45:08]).
  • "Even if [the system]...hasn't responded to them with the alacrity that you like, it is not deaf to your appeals." — Noah Rothman [41:14]
• Malice pushes hypotheticals: Impracticality of redress (e.g., during COVID, prohibition), the slowness of legal remedy, and the fact that political "we" is illusory, often clouding real injustice ([22:43–30:00]):
  • "I don't see how I'm beholden to anything that other people have decided to impose on me." — Michael Malice [27:16]
  • "My freedom is not contingent. My rights are my rights." — Michael Malice [41:42]

5. Personal vs. Political Violence: Retribution and Vigilantism

• Morality vs. legality: Emotional or situational vigilantism (e.g., father enacting revenge for daughter’s assault) vs. broad, systemic political violence ([25:40–30:07]):
  • "I'm personally sympathetic to it. Intellectually, I'm not thrilled with it because… it's a very dangerous slippery slope." — Noah Rothman [29:34]
• Civic danger: Rothman warns that widespread justification of such acts leads to a Hobbesian "war of all against all" ([50:07]), eroding the rule of law and leading to endless reprisals.

6. Threats, Deterrence, and the Political Environment

• Threats impact decision-making: Judges and politicians now factor threats into their choices; Malice suggests this proves violence or threats can be efficacious; Rothman maintains state has the monopoly on (legal) violence ([31:02–34:46], [57:50–60:37]).
  • "Responsible communicators...have a duty to moderate themselves in order to not court disaster." — Noah Rothman [34:07]
  • "The state has a monopoly on legal violence." — Noah Rothman [59:03]

7. The Conservative Dilemma and Status Quo

• If left-wing violence goes unpunished, what are the options for the right? Malice asks if “vote harder or just submit” are the only choices ([61:33–63:44]).
  • Rothman insists that the answer is yes, if the system can be reclaimed through legal mechanisms, even if the status quo is unsatisfying.
  • "If you want to preserve the system as American conservatives do... the way of life in this country is underwritten by law." — Noah Rothman [63:44]

8. Irreconcilable Views and Closing Remarks

• Non-consent: Malice emphasizes the core principle: he does not view his rights as subject to others’ will, whether majority or judiciary.
  • "I don't agree that my freedoms should be subject to the will of the aristocracy, the majority, or the Judiciary." — Michael Malice [65:53]
• Incrementalism vs. immediacy: Rothman stands by incremental, legal remedies; Malice notes he trusts himself and his peers with their rights more than he trusts government ([68:56–69:29]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On historical amnesia:
  • "All these questions I attempt to answer in Blood in Progress." — Noah Rothman [09:34]
• On left-wing violence valorized:
  • "Not only is the violence not discussed… The people who perpetrated are valorized and valorized at the highest levels within academia and the Democratic Party." — Michael Malice [06:53]
• On legitimacy of violence:
  • "If you listen to what people who execute extralegal terroristic political violence say… they justify it as meting out vendetta, vengeance against their political adversaries…" — Noah Rothman [12:40]
• On the public’s shifting attitudes:
  • "For the first time, a majority of those who identify as MAGA now say, yes, there are certain circumstances [where violence is justified]." — Michael Malice [31:15]
• On the conservative order:
  • "If you're engaged in violence against the state, then you've lost faith in its ability to impartially adjudicate disputes. …That makes you an outlaw. That makes you a revolutionary." — Noah Rothman [65:33]
• On incremental reform:
  • "It's very incremental. It is a generational project and it's a sort of thing that you have to be a participant in." — Noah Rothman [67:38]
• On rule of law:
  • "It is not perfect. Nothing is. But it’s better than the alternative. Especially if that alternative is extra legal wanton violence that is subjectively determined…" — Noah Rothman [69:33]

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Key Timestamps

• [03:18] – Rothman’s definition of foundational conservatism and critique of revolutionary traditions
• [05:02] – Waves and erasure of left-wing violence in U.S. history
• [11:21] – Rothman explains why he opposes all extralegal political violence in the U.S.
• [16:31] – Malice challenges the absolutist rejection, citing U.S. founding
• [22:18] – Judicial redress during COVID and Rothman’s argument that courts eventually worked
• [29:34] – Discussion of legitimacy of retributive violence in cases of clear injustice
• [31:15] – Malice introduces poll showing rising acceptance of political violence among MAGA
• [42:27] – Rothman: “Constitution is itself the remedy” for constitutional injustices
• [50:07] – Rothman’s warning of a Hobbesian war if vigilantism spreads
• [59:03] – On the monopoly of violence and outlaws in society
• [65:53] – Malice: “I don't agree that my freedoms should be subject to the will of the aristocracy, the majority, or the Judiciary.”
• [70:13] – Rothman’s favorite part: the intellectual conflict of the interview

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Tone & Style

• Spirited and adversarial but respectful;
• Malice’s tone is irreverent, probing, and individualistic;
• Rothman is cerebral, principle-driven, and cautious, always bringing the discussion back to institutions and precedent.

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Summary Takeaway

This episode offers a powerful, sometimes uncomfortable, examination of political violence, legitimacy, historical memory, and the role of the law in American life. Listeners walk away with a richer context for understanding contemporary debates over protest, state power, and the fraying of civic trust. Both Rothman and Malice embody their respective worldviews and challenge listeners to question their own assumptions about accountability, incrementalism, justice, and defense of rights.

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Transcript

[Michael Malice]

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[Noah Rothman]

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[Michael Malice]

Folks, My new graphic novel Unwanted A tall tale of the old Western New wave. It is out for pre order now. I've been working on this for 25 years. It's a dark comedy with a shiny exterior. Please check it [e-mail]. Good afternoon. Michael Malice here. Let that be your welcome for the next hour. Guys. We are doing something we have never been done before in the show, which is I'm often sent books in the mail. I have never before gotten a book in the mail anonymously. By the way, I don't know who sent it and gotten the author on the show because I was so excited to talk to Noah Rothman about his new book Blood in A Century of Left Wing Violence in America. Noah, I want to thank you and commend you for writing this. I am not a senior writer at National Review. I am not a conservative by any means, but I can make the case for conservatism very easily. Which is and correct me at the end if you disagree. Human beings and human nature has not changed very much since the days of Pharaoh. It is incumbent on all of us to study the lessons of history and apply them to today and that there are certain universal Truths that apply across cultures and across time. And much of our social problems come when people ignore this and think they can reinvent man and ignore what Thomas Sowell calls the constrained vision of humanity, that it's quite finite, what we can tweak and move. And if you try to break that box, carnage follows. How'd I do?

[Noah Rothman]

I think that's fantastic. That's not only a foundational premise of conservatism, it's a foundational premise of the country. Yeah, that's right. The founders believed and approached human nature as though it was immutable and flawed. So they designed a series of constrictions to channel mankind's flawed nature in productive ways, which conflicts with the revolutionary tradition. Subsequently, the French revolutionary tradition, Russian revolutionary tradition, etc, all of them tried to remake human nature and start your zero mentality, which explains why those revolutions also failed. So, yes, applaud that definition.

[Michael Malice]

I am also bothered, and I suspect you are as well, though maybe not as vocally as I am, by how often conservatives forget this, especially online. And I hear this perpetual the left has gone crazy. Twenty years ago, I remember vividly that Biden was both a Marxist and the worst president. American History 2 claims you cannot make with a straight face if you have any knowledge of what happened before. So why I was really excited about this book, instead of it being like conservative pablum and red meat, you're like, guys, this isn't new. This is part of a long tradition in America. You're not going to really expect the New York Times to tell you about it. President Clinton, for example, pardoned people who bombed. Was it the Capitol? I mean, explicit terrorists or commuted. Whatever the thing he did. I don't know what it was, but it was something not nice. But there's this kind of idea that, like Charlie Kirk, you know, which was horrific. Of course, this has never happened before and it's like this was a pattern. So please educate people about how this is not some kind of phenomenon that happened yesterday.

[Noah Rothman]

Yeah, well, I feel like so much of our debate around political violence in this country is predicated on ignorance and sort of a cultivated ignorance, especially from our institutions that have a responsibility and a duty to inform you about sort of, you know, basic history so that we don't relive it. And they failed so much in that charge that we are reliving it. You hear consistently about how the American right is uniquely violent and especially violent threat to the American social compact. Why do you hear about it so often? Because it's become a rejoinder to episodes of obvious objective left wing violence. The assassination or attempted assassination of a right wing political figure shooting at an ICE or CBP facility. Yeah, the mobs that descended on cities almost nightly. And you're always told, well, you don't have to worry about that. Right. Because it's mostly the right. That's a reflex and it's a permission structure that allows mainstream institutions and left wingers to avoid confronting the violence that is on their side. And there's plenty of it. Not just in our era, but as I write in this book, subsequent era, previous eras, waves of political violence from the left in the 1910s and 20s and 1970s and 80s, and today it tends to come in these 50 year periods. And partly because I think we don't have any immunity to the initial indications that we're about to face another wave of left wing violence. They're just unstudied. And my book describes why it's unstudied. It's not really a conspiracy per se, but it is a set of shared interests in the, in academics and media and politics that have conspired to ensure that we don't really carefully examine these waves of left wing violence when they crest and recede. Which leaves us destined to experience them again.

[Michael Malice]

I'm reminded. And I would bet money I haven't looked at the quote in the book when AOC was saying that riots are the sound of the voice of the unheard. The Weathermen.

[Noah Rothman]

Who.

[Michael Malice]

There's this book called Days of Rage. I'm assuming you read this as reference

[Noah Rothman]

for this book closely.

[Michael Malice]

Yeah, yeah. There were bombings. What, like every. Every other day in America in the late 60s, early 70s, there's a group called the Weathermen. Bill Ayers, who's now a professor somewhere, was Obama's mentor. So not only is the violence not discussed in terms of. Oh my God, this is awful. The people who perpetrated are valorized and valorized at the highest levels within academia and the Democratic Party. Angela Davis being another prominent example.

[Noah Rothman]

Yeah, it's become a little gauche, I suppose, to acknowledge that the President of the United States, the 44th President of the United States, launched his political career in the living room. Unrepentant domestic American terrorist. Yeah, but it's the truth. Even though it's really discomforting to a lot of people who don't want to be reminded of that fact. I mean, you could go to the cults that attend around some of the 1960s, 1970s militants like Assata Shakur, who was involved in a police shooting on the side of a New Jersey highway. Prior to that, robbed churches, robbed gangsters in order to fund the illicit activities of the Black Liberation army, which targeted police officers for death as a. As a routine doctrinal approach to political radicalism. She died uncomfortably, by all accounts, last year in exile from American justice. A fugitive rather, from American justice in exile in communist Cuba. But there's a cult of personality around her too, that the left incubates. On college campuses, for example, there are buildings that are named after her. Her, her works are studied probably without a lot of the scrutiny that should be applied to them. There's a whole cult of martyrdom and heroism around practitioners of what we would probably recognize as more or less criminal violence, Although it's tinged with an ideologically revolutionary element to it, which lends more gravity and, and righteousness to what we would otherwise recognize as just bloodshed and political violence. But that's just one of the, of the cult, the cults around the. The Marxian guerrilla movements of the 1960s and 1970s. And we don't even really know anything. I did barely knew anything. I knew about the 1920 Wall street bombing from the socialistic, anarchistic, Italian anarchist movement of the 1910s and 1920s, but I didn't know about anywhere near the amount of bombings that we experienced from that organization. The attacks on law enforcement, many of the murderous. The efforts to decapitate American industry. Twice in Chicago there was a mass poisoning attempt that was targeting political officials, governors, mayors, heads of clergy, heads of industry. The Gimbels brothers bombing, similarly attacked, sought to murder the heads of American state in the federal government, state level government industrialists, what have you. Some of these were very close to being extremely successful terrorist operations and they just receded into memory have been lost to posterity. Indeed all of the eras that I Chronicle. The 1910s anarchist wave, the nationalist wave, the Puerto Rican nationalist wave of the 1950s, which had conspicuous links to Moscow and the KGB and the Marxian guerrilla movements of the 1960s, 70s and 80s. All the scholars who study this stuff say it's been forgotten. But why has it been forgotten? How has it been forgotten? And whose interests are served by that forgetting? All these questions I attempt to answer in blood, in progress.

[Michael Malice]

That Wall street bombing you mentioned from 19 in the 20s, which was I think the biggest terrorist attack in New York until 9 11. Just trivia question. Still see the shrapnel on the building. If you go down to Wall street, it was this huge kind of historic,

[Noah Rothman]

right across from the stock market and the House of Morgan, yeah, JP Morgan's building pockmarks.

[Michael Malice]

But it's what's interesting. So behind me is Emma Goldman on the COVID of my book the White Pill. One of the reasons I wrote the White Pill, which is about the rise of all the Soviet Union, was kind of my shock at how ignorant most conservatives are about the nature of the Soviet Union, how glorious that victory was. But this one reason I wanted to have you on is there's, I think it's very important when people have a point of view to be able to steel man the other side. So you know, you know the issue inside and out. What is your, as someone who did organize the anarchist handbook, what is your perspective on political violence? Is it never acceptable?

[Noah Rothman]

Extralegal political violence is, in my view, never acceptable in a country that is free with a constitutional order and where we have conflict resolution mechanisms like the courts, which are legitimate and legitimate as defined by our capacity to influence them through the political process or the electoral process, which is unadulterated, you know, contrary to what the activist class may tell itself, all these mechanisms are still available to the citizenry. So no, I do not believe that there is a justification for revolutionary violence, extralegal violence in this country and therefore I take a blanket view that it's bad and wrong and a threat to the social covenant. And I also, one of the arguments that I make in this book right up front is that the American political class, the institutions in this country, don't need to be reminded of the necessity of scanning the horizon for incidents of right wing violence. Whenever right wing violence happens, we're treated to prolonged lectures. Sure. Why it's horrible how we let this happen, who failed us and why the social project is, is imperiled by that, those sorts of activities. And we should be. That's good. But what we don't get is symmetry. When there's episodes of violence on the left, we get efforts to excuse it, explain it away, pretend as though the right is much more violent than the left, and therefore we don't actually have to contend with this phenomenon. And until you get your hands around it, or until you acknowledge both sides of this equation, you'll never get your hands around it. Because if you listen to what people who execute extralegal terroristic political violence say when they're talking to one another, they justify it as meting out vendetta, vengeance against their political adversaries, which sometimes includes violent people on the other side of the spectrum almost always includes the state and the instruments of the state, like the police, because the activists on both sides of this thing think the state is a raid against them. So they always take inspiration from one another. And therefore if you're only looking at one side of the equation, you're never going to comprehend it. And that's why we have institutions in this country that seem incapable of comprehending political violence. Some of this by the way, is not as organic as you, as I'm leading you to believe, probably with my very nonjudgmental approach to this thing, is trying to steel man, this argument. There are also, as I describe in this book, two phenomenon that give the left permission to look the other way when their site commits violence. One is this phenomenon in which there are a bunch of databases that purport to break down incidences of political violence in this country and quantify it. So you have an at a glance idea of who's the problem here. And most of them maintain that the right is, if not uniquely violent, uniquely murderous. When you go into those databases though, the actual incidences do not seem to comport with what people really think of when they're thinking of political violence. Some of them maintain that violence and domestic political violence in this country peaked in 2019, which should leave you skeptical. Others contend that episodes that involve gang violence, prison violence, intra family violence, that that's coded as right wing violence too. And it's just not. It's like when anti gun groups, and there's an analogy that I use, it's like when anti gun groups say, well there have been 75 school shootings this year. And you say to yourself, I don't remember 75 school shootings. And that's because they're coding it so that somebody discharged a firearm adjacent to a school property and that counts. And that's just not what people think of when they think of school shootings. Likewise, they don't think of gang violence as political violence. Now the second thing that I know,

[Michael Malice]

I just want to add one thing to your point. This is also when you have this disingenuous claim of gun violence which includes people inflicting self harm. And it's like that's and you are not, that's not the same thing as me going to your house and doing something to you. But they kind of hand wave it away and lump it all together.

[Noah Rothman]

So yeah, we have a massive gun violence problem in this country when they mean mostly suicides, which yeah.

[Michael Malice]

To make that, that number as high as possible. Go ahead please.

[Noah Rothman]

Well, the second thing is this document that was prepared for the Department of homeland security in 2021 in which they say that the. The study of left wing political extremism in this country is a fatally flawed and subjective enterprise for two reasons. One, the activists who are adjacent to or participants in violent left wing movements are sometimes the authors of the study of those movements, which compromises the whole project. And second, that those who do engage in good faith research of violent left wing extremism face, in these researchers words, social isolation, campaigns from their colleagues, intimidation campaigns, as well as the threat of physical retribution for merely doing the work. So a lot of the studies, these studies that purport to claim that you don't have to worry about left wing violence are themselves products of an adulterated process that I don't think you can trust. I don't counter this with a whole bunch of different databases that counter the claim. I think it's a fatally subjective enterprise. What I do is I explore the mindset of individuals who engage in political violence aimed at an audience. It's designed to galvanize an audience to join them on the ramparts.

[Michael Malice]

It's called the propaganda, the deed.

[Noah Rothman]

Yes, that's right.

[Michael Malice]

I still have. I really want to understand your point of view because I don't at all like at all. I am absolutely the same thing with how guns are a tool. And it's very good if you have a gun. If someone breaks into your house and it's very bad if you have a gun and you know, go into a kindergarten or, you know, and start firing away. It's entirely contextual. This country was founded on political violence. Slavery was ended by political violence. I don't see how you have this blanket no to it.

[Noah Rothman]

Yeah. So the revolutionary tradition. I get this a lot on the revolutionary tradition in America. And the distinction that I draw is that the revolutionary tradition in this country, the violence of it, and it was very much a civil war. The first Americans.

[Michael Malice]

Yes, that's right.

[Noah Rothman]

But what the violence was designed to beget was not the kind of revolution that we were talking about previously. The subsequent revolutionary tradition, the remaking of the human being itself, to say nothing of the reshaping of the entire social fabric. The Revolutionary War was designed to protect that which already existed. It was, in the British context, attempting to alter and redefine what the American social covenant was. And in that process, removing from the American people the option of appealing to neutral judicial mechanisms for conflict resolution and mediation. They simply didn't exist. Therefore, there was no alternative but to seek redress from the system by other means.

[Michael Malice]

Right.

[Noah Rothman]

The second, the civil. The second Civil war. The actual civil war is a marginally different case too, because we're talking about the difference between extralegal violence and warfare sanction. I mean, you can go back to Aquinas to identify the philosophical distinction between states going to war and the violence that tends around intra state conflict and extrajudicial conflict that is in service to May. You can justify in your mind that you have a political cause that you're pursuing. But any number of deluded thinkers could do the exact same thing and convince themselves summarily of their own righteousness. The only objective way we have to evaluate that is the law. And as long as the law is valid and pertains in a country governed by a constitution with ordered liberty, then I think you have to appeal to the courts and you have to defer to their judgment. When that breaks down, as it does in the case of an intra state war, and I think a civil war, the Civil war constitutes an intrastate conflict. Insofar as the south identified itself as another sovereign entity, then a different set of morals apply. And it goes back to the. As long as we've had a moral tradition and a philosophical tradition exploring the distinction between warfare and extra legal violence, I don't think that's too difficult of a distinction to make.

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[Noah Rothman]

That's a lot.

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[Noah Rothman]

Well, it wasn't. I challenged the presumption because those lawsuits were not unsuccessful. They took some time, but they did succeed in maintaining that the federal government and state level governments had abridged your First Amendment right to worship by shuttering churches. That did succeed and that demonstrates my point, which is that conflict resolution media mechanisms do exist even if they're not, you know, working with the speed that you might prefer.

[Michael Malice]

I, I still don't get this then. So because in Canada, for example, let's take Canada, they have a Constitution, they've got a legal system quite similar to our own. People were pulled out of Thanksgiving dinner, people pulled out of church forcibly in

[Noah Rothman]

your and in America too, consistent gross violations of First Amendment rights.

[Michael Malice]

So is your view that I have to put my rights on hold until it's adjudicated? And what if it's adjudicated and not in my favor?

[Noah Rothman]

Well, again, if you're let's say that you're a Judah, it's adjudicated not in your favor and this is a gross goes all the way to the Supreme Court and it's a gross violation of the American compact. And then you have to say, well, okay, then the political process also is unavailable to me because that's still a mechanism for you to pursue. You can see, let's say the court goes against you. Again, we're in a constitutional system and ordered liberty. And let's say all the courts go against you. And what you regard as a gross violation of your moral rights, you still have one other recourse to you, which is the ballot box. Through the ballot box, theoretically, you can elect whatever politicians you want and those politicians can amend the Constitution subsequently to address what you believe is a holy immoral status quo. And when that whole process is available to you, and if it is, then in my view, you have a legitimate system with which you have to work within. Where the violent activist class gets wrong is they don't take any of that in stock. They don't regard the judiciary as a legitimate already right now. They don't regard the courts and the judiciary as legitimate mechanisms of conflict resolution. They think they've been adulterated by the system. I'm talking about the left wing activist class that talks itself into violence. They think they're a mechanism of a system that is already corrupted at its heart, corrupted by virtue of the capitalist enterprise and the corruption that attends around it. And therefore its judgments are illegitimate. They really don't necessarily have to abide by them. I talk about this extensively in chapter three of this book in relation to Daniel Penny and Kyle Rittenhouse and the judgments that were handed down in their favor, maintaining that the violence in which they were engaged which was imposed upon them was defensive violence. The act the courts rendered that judgment and the activist left dismissed it, said that they were functionally engaged in vigilantism. And because it was the vigilantism that this corrupted enterprise, the United States likes the right wing kind, it's not going to be addressed as such. So they talk themselves into the idea that this grave injustice is afoot and it has rendered the United States as a project sort of suspect, if not wholly corrupted. But my view is that this is a delusion that they've talked themselves into to justify a pre existing hostility towards the American state and a pre existing inclination to support revolutionary violent activity as an expression of political zeal that they think is valuable and can be harnessed and directed towards their political ends.

[Michael Malice]

Okay, I, I, There's a case that

[Noah Rothman]

we're talking past each other about the nature where violence is justified and where it's not.

[Michael Malice]

We're not talking past each other, we're just disagreeing. I understand your point of view, I just don't agree with it. I'm trying to understand where you draw the line. There was a case in Arkansas recently where a 13 year old, I mean, I'm sure you probably heard this case, it's pretty famous. There was a 13 year old girl who was violated by a man. He was arrested, he was out on bail, he kidnapped her and then the dad ended him and the dad was arrested. The cops conveniently or inconveniently lost the evidence, so he got off. Would you say that if that, that those dad's actions were morally wrong?

[Noah Rothman]

No, I wouldn't say the dad's actions were morally wrong. They were justified, they were legally wrong. And he got off by virtue of a technicality. But I don't think, but also I don't think that the law in this case is wrong. And the technicality as he got off on is also part of how the system works. Like it really is kind of frustrating when somebody who's obviously guilty of a crime is not convicted of it because the chain of custody, the evidence was broken and it's really unsatisfying. But it is how the system works. And it's how the system functions for a reason. That's those sort of law rules that are governed, that govern the entire system and are completely deaf and blind to your individual circumstances or your accidents of birth. That's how blind justice functions. And sometimes it creates manifest injustices. But in the aggregate the system holds because we are all beholden to these series of procedural rules.

[Michael Malice]

Yeah, I don't see how I'm beholden to anything that other people have decided to impose on me. Wait, so are you saying it's an it's wrong that the dad got off?

[Noah Rothman]

No, I'm saying, I'm talking about a hypothetical case in which a straight up murderer or a robber, you know, what have you, somebody who's engaged in violent criminality is not successfully prosecuted because a procedural problem with the prosecution that's very unsatisfying, but it is the nature of how the system works and doesn't render the system itself illegitimate.

[Michael Malice]

Okay, but if. If. Let's suppose in that case someone got off on a technicality, right? And the. The one of the victim's family members took the law into their own hands and there's no dispute the person's a murderer. Like, this is like there's video footage. Let's just steal man this much as possible because obviously if everyone, like, I kind of think he. That really gets out of hand, and I'm with you completely. Would you say it's morally wrong for a family member to take retribution onto

[Noah Rothman]

that murderer in the absence. I'm. I'm sympathetic to it. But where I would urge humility is in the degree to which we can assume that this individual who engages in violence has a perfect understanding, apprehension of all the facts involved in this case and is perfectly equipped to adjudicate, to render with extreme prejudice that kind of dispense what he would regard as justice. We can't determine that as justice because it's far too subjective. Just by virtue of the nature of our system.

[Michael Malice]

I don't know who we.

[Noah Rothman]

Is we being the whole, the society as a whole, and we've all been invested in the legal system in this country.

[Michael Malice]

Okay, I'm going to quote Margaret Thatcher, whose bookcases are right above my head in my living room, which was my big moment of making it as an immigrant, having Margaret Thatcher's bookcases. This use of the, there is no society, there's just us. It's a collection of individuals and does not exist independently of the elements that compose it. So I'm asking you, Noah, in that circumstance where someone has video footage of someone, you know, executing their wife and that person gets off, or maybe the jury just doesn't feel like convicting or whatever, would you find it morally wrong for a family member to enact murderous, violent retribution on that killer?

[Noah Rothman]

I'm personally very sympathetic to it. Intellectually, I'm not thrilled with it because I think it's. It's taking the law into your own hands, which I find to be a very dangerous slippery slope. But personally, I'm not. I'm sympathetic to that level of that kind of violence. It's completely independent from political violence. That's not political violence.

[Michael Malice]

Wait, wait, but you're sympathetic, and so sympathetic means it's. You like it, but it's bad.

[Noah Rothman]

I don't like It. No, I'm sympathetic to the motives behind it.

[Michael Malice]

Okay, this is where we disagree, because I think that's heroic. So that's the kind of, I guess, the root of our dispute. I don't.

[Noah Rothman]

Well, I guess, suppose it is. But it is central to one of the themes in the book, which is that if we don't have a shared apprehension of the legitimacy of the federal government and its constituent elements like the justice system, and we create a set of subjective rules for ourselves, the standards to which we hold ourselves to. And not me. Again, we as a collective. This is. Collectives don't make rules shorthand for society and all those of us who are born into the social covenant in the United States as defined by the Constitution.

[Michael Malice]

Okay, but we aren't making. The Congress makes the laws. I'm not making the laws. Even if I'm voting for a congressperson, they're not taking my orders. So I feel like this use of the word we is just backdooring consent, where I haven't given any.

[Noah Rothman]

Well, so the left would tell itself that, too. They would also say that because we lose elections, the whole system, the enterprise is illegitimate.

[Michael Malice]

That's right.

[Noah Rothman]

And that's wrong.

[Michael Malice]

No, I agree.

[Noah Rothman]

You participate in the system and you lose. The system doesn't lose its legitimacy just because you're angry. But that's what the left talks itself into. And sometimes on the right as well. Most recently. Yeah, there was online, there was a

[Michael Malice]

poll that just came out today which has the number of Americans who regard political violence as acceptable in certain cases as an increase. Literally just this morning, and for the first time, a majority of those who identify as MAGA now say, yes, there are certain circumstances.

[Noah Rothman]

A majority. I have not seen this poll.

[Michael Malice]

I'll pull it up. Of maga. MAGA Republicans say there are certain circumstances where it's. I'll put up on the screen. Okay, so this is 8,000 people were surveyed. Ipsos from May 23rd to June 13th. Is violence usually or always justified to advance at least one of 20 political goals? 52% of MAGA Republicans held that view, 32.1% of strong Democrats held that view. And the 20 checkpoints that were asked about included preserving an American way of life based on Western European traditions, stopping a protest or demonstration or supporting the right to life. And it says overall support did tick upward with violence seen as justified across 16 of the 20 individual objectives. Notably, strong Democrats were not more likely than MAGA Republicans to justify violence to advance any of the 20 objectives. Now, at the same time, the Number who were personally willing to do this was quite small. So I think that's kind of a distinction you and I are making.

[Noah Rothman]

For example, we can make more of that than we need to though, because those who are, who are welcoming violence, even if they're not the practitioners of it, can't inspire it. There's a certain level of deluded thinking that you have to engage in, even if you seem like pretty well adjusted. You have to have some disordered thinking to, to conclude a B bloodshed. Step, step, step, be positive social change. You've allied at a whole bunch of things that happen in the interim in your own mind in order to get to that place. And responsible communicators shouldn't be responsible for the actions of a deranged person who completely misinterprets what they say. But it's also incumbent on responsible communicators to be aware of the deteriorating threat environment and certainly concerned about the nature of the deteriorating threat environment, even if you're not a target for violence. Lawmakers, civil, civil servants, members of the court, the benches, the federal bench and state level benches, they all say that the threats that they're getting are so sincere, so serious and in such large numbers that it's having a real effect on their thinking and sometimes their own actions, depending on the report you read. So it's not innocuous the environment that we're in. And you know, responsible communicators, I think, have a duty to moderate themselves in order to not court disaster just by virtue of being a responsible participant in the civic process.

[Michael Malice]

Okay, I'm thinking of the Iraq war, which I think was a huge mistake. I think it cost an enormous amount of money, not to mention the lives lost both American and abroad. And during the Iraq war, there was an election in Spain, and Spain had been part of the coalition that invaded. This is the second Iraq war. And they blew up some terrorists, blew up a train station, and as a result of this, the leftists won the parliamentary election. And as soon as they sworn in, they pulled the troops out of Spain. So do you think that this is an example of political violence being efficacious in achieving one's goals?

[Noah Rothman]

Well, so I put Islamist terrorism, which is what that was, the Madrid bombing, I put that in a slightly different category because it is mesh enmeshed in geopolitical warfare.

[Michael Malice]

Right.

[Noah Rothman]

In ways that I find inextricable. If you were to just look at Islamist terrorism in this country, both left and right, the body count, the violence from left and right are dwarfed by Islamist terrorism and the body count that it produces and the violence that it produces and the subsequent impact on American society. I think that's, it's just such a different category that I take it out in order to explore left wing domestic political violence designed to beget changes within the system, not to destroy the system entirely. Although some Marxian elements want to bring the entire very much down, many of them just want to hold a gun to the heads of policymakers and get the political changes that they want. And likewise sometimes on the right wing as well. So those to me are just distinct categories of political violence within the universe of the the DVE, which is the FBI's term of art for domestic violence extremists, which accompanies encompasses rather every violent element in the country. Theoretically there are little pockets that capture most, not all political violence on the left and the right. On the right you have sovereign citizen and militia movement violence, racial and ethnically motivated violence, which captures a lot most, not all right wing political violence. On the left you have aves anarchist violent extremists. Again, most, not all left wing political violence. And then you have as Islamist violence which is out here in its other spheres. So within the constellation of violent elements they all, all, all are very distinct.

[Michael Malice]

Sure. But I'm saying, do you think that that was an efficacious use of violence to achieve one's political goals from the

[Noah Rothman]

perspective of the Al Qaeda terrorists who blew up the Madrid train station? Yeah, I think they would probably say it's efficacious because it begot the the policies right they sought from a cowed population that was intimidated and terrorized. It's as effective as terrorism gets. That's a statement about the political culture that prevails in Spain both then and now, in my view. But it is Islamist political violence is slightly different in my view than left wing political violence or right wing political violence within the American context.

[Michael Malice]

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[Noah Rothman]

Yeah, I do not. Because the law is just the law. Is manifestly unjust, but because the law could be repealed by virtue of the evidence that it was repealed. So if you have access to the political mechanisms to seek redress for your grievances, legitimate as they are, extra legal violence is not legitimate.

[Michael Malice]

But so I have. In that situation, you would expect the people who are peacefully trying to sell alcohol to wait like 10 years to resume their business.

[Noah Rothman]

Well, there's civil disobedience, which is also violation of the law. If you're civilly disobedient, you're in violation of the law and you should be processed. That's the whole point of civil disobedience, is for you to be victimized by this unjust system. That's what the civil rights marchers did, for example, and why they were critiqued pretty significantly by elements on the far left who said that the civil rights movement was far too passive for their. That they needed to be violent in order to affect the kind of change that they wanted to see. Which, by the way, was not true. They did not have to be violent to see the kind of change they wanted to see. But it's a similar outlook, is that you could say, well, change is happening too slow for me. This is manifestly unjust, which is generally agreed on your side of whatever this particular issue is. The fault line is within the nature of whether the system can be repaired or whether the system must be destroyed in order for it to be repaired. And I fundamentally, on just about every level, side with the folks who say repair, don't destroy.

[Michael Malice]

I don't understand from your perspective, I'm saying that literally why I should wait two minutes to have my freedoms.

[Noah Rothman]

Well, I just described it. I'll say it again, because the system, if you regard the system as refinable and it is not deaf to your appeals, it maybe hasn't responded to them with the alacrity that you like, but it is not deaf to your appeals or is in a majoritarian system, ordered majoritarian system with protections for the minority, that it's simply a lot of other people disagree with you to the point where you don't get what you want out of the system.

[Michael Malice]

Right.

[Noah Rothman]

I don't think those are licenses to engage in extra legal violence.

[Michael Malice]

No, but I. My freedom is not contingent. My rights are my rights. Right. From my perspective, and those rights are not contingent on getting anyone or everyone else to agree with me. And I think it's important, I think it's very American to have this idea of you have to fight for your rights, you have to have that second Amendment is there for a reason. And I. And this kind of thing like, sure, you're being, your rights are being withheld from you now, but you know, go knock door to door and get them to mend the Constitution or elect good people. I think that's a bit utopian from my perspective.

[Noah Rothman]

Well, it is, but it's also the nature of the system. I mean, this is what we were bequeathed. One of the things that we're contending with on the left is a hostility to the system as we were bequeathed it.

[Michael Malice]

Right, yeah.

[Noah Rothman]

It might be unsatisfying to the extent that if the courts have failed you, then your only redress is the political process through which, through a Republican mechanism, small R Republican mechanisms, those court, those, the system that you just dislike, whether it's statute, whether it's constitutional, that could be addressed through political means, all of which are legal and therefore legitimate, then yeah, there's no mechanism out there that says, well, you're, you're done, you have no, you have no recourse now, your rights are being abridged and there is precisely one option available to you now to seek redress and that is to take to the hills with guns. The circumstances that would lead me to say that, yeah, you have absolutely no other option left are difficult for me to see within the context of a constitutional system in which you have elections as the final backstop to secure your rights. And we have evidence throughout American history that the Constitution is itself the remedy to the injustices that are potentially abetted by the Constitution. Again, back to the civil rights movement. This was the argument that was the big argument between MLK and Malcolm X, for example, which was that the Constitution has in it the elements that can provide us redress. And I got into an argument with this about, with New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie of few years back where I said, listen, the argument against structural racism as being this permanent impediment to the advancement of American minorities is that the Constitution contains within it the elements of its own amendment, amending and shifting and changing to address whatever you perceive to be a problem of the day. So the Constitution is self correcting as long as the political class supports it and the political class supports it if enough voters support it. Right. And Jamel Bouie comes back to me, says, oh, congratulations, you just discovered mlk. And I wanted to say back, I didn't engage because I tend not to engage in arguments on Twitter. I find it to be not amen productive. But if I did, I would have said I'm not the one who turned away from it. I'm not the one who gave up on the formulation as articulated by mlk. You guys did. You turned over to Malcolm X. You decided that the system was wholly immoral and deaf to your appeals. And therefore you had one of two reactions. Get really despondent and withdraw from the political process because it's deaf to you and your. And your designs, or resolve to radicalize and resolve to take a sledgehammer to the foundations of this holy immoral enterprise that's deaf to what you regard as an ethical imperative. That's you. You've talked yourself into this thing. I didn't. So anyway, a digression, but an argument.

[Michael Malice]

No, that's not. I think that's not a question at all. I think it's exactly to the point where I think you and I disagree. Like there was. There are several people in my mentions, and I'm sure in yours, that were not allowed to have a funeral during COVID that were not allowed to see them.

[Noah Rothman]

I know those personally, of course.

[Michael Malice]

Yeah. So I. I not allowed to see their grandparents. Several of those governors who put kind of these virus bombs into the nursing homes and killed people. They were all reelected. So would you find it immoral just if you can? Yes. Or if I am someone and my grandmother was killed by one of these governors policies in a nursing home, do you think it would be wrong for me to enact retribution upon that governor physically?

[Noah Rothman]

Yeah, I do. And I'll tell you, I'll tell you why. Just because I think that this, what we're talking about here, this grievance around Covid is really analogous because. Yeah, there's, for example, I live in New Jersey. Okay. And governors.

[Michael Malice]

Yeah.

[Noah Rothman]

Governor Phil Murphy did not lose his reelection in 2021, but he almost did, and it came out of nowhere and nobody knew who the guy's name was.

[Michael Malice]

Okay.

[Noah Rothman]

And there was no reckoning with COVID in 2022 for a variety of reasons. But the 2021 elections saw a big shift in New Jersey as well as Virginia. Republicans did a little bit better there. They took over the governor's mansion there, but they did remarkably well in New Jersey. And a lot of things changed subsequently. The teachers unions, which had a lock on keeping schools closed, suddenly lost a lot of that authority overnight by virtue of those election results. Even though the governor survived, the policies that I manifestly enraged by disappeared as a response to voters outcry. And you could say the same about New York City Mayor Eric Adams, I believe owed his tenure to a backlash against Covid and did as much as he could within the context of the political culture in New York City, which constrains its mayor's brother significantly, and in New Jersey, significant constraints on your political officials did what he could to unwind a lot of those unjust, unjust policies. So it's not perfect, it's not revolutionary, it's incremental, and it's designed to make every single person who wants absolutes unhappy. It's just the nature of the system. Compromise is embedded within the system. But there are. When there are injustices and there are injustices in this country, they are responsive to political pressures from below. And until that changes. No, I just don't find that there's a justification for revolutionary political violence, right or left.

[Michael Malice]

I. I don't want to be Kathy Newman here. So what I heard, and please correct me because I really don't want to do that, is my grandmother or grandfather is killed as a direct result of Governor Murphy's actions, and I'm supposed to take solace that he almost lost reelection and there were marginal impact on the teachers unions.

[Noah Rothman]

As opposed to what?

[Michael Malice]

As opposed to taking the law into my own hands and doing what should have been done.

[Noah Rothman]

Will you find solace that way?

[Michael Malice]

Yes. Well, we could find out.

[Noah Rothman]

Well, you may. You may also. And you will most likely find yourself doing a lot of jail time.

[Michael Malice]

Right. That's a strategic issue.

[Noah Rothman]

Having. Having achieved very little is in terms of the grand political scheme that I think you really want to execute.

[Michael Malice]

That's not correct. Because. Hold on, hold on, hold on. You earlier had pointed out that increasing numbers of judges and politicians are. Their choices are being affected because they're getting genuine threats. And I agree with you. So my point being, if someone had done something to one of these governors, per what you said earlier, I think all of them as a whole would impact their decision making and the choices they would make in the future.

[Noah Rothman]

Maybe, but, you know, the enemy gets a vote. So let's say that you have adopted this plot. Let's say that this is broader than just you.

[Michael Malice]

No, I'm talking about just me. I don't want. Let's talk about just me. I'm talking about.

[Noah Rothman]

Let's talk about just you. But there's an audience for that kind of violence, right? Sure. You're not just. You're not just meeting out violence against this political figure who did something wrong to you. Rather analogous to everybody else, too, because you're not the only victim.

[Michael Malice]

No, no experience in this case. It's just me. I'm talking about me. Am I morally wrong? And you said yes.

[Noah Rothman]

Yeah. But if we were to listen, this isn't just about you, because you're attacking a political figure, and the political figure is meeting out injustices to a lot of different people, presumably the very same injustices that you suffered from. The COVID is the analogy, which I think is an appropriate analogy. And the enemy gets a vote. It's not just you that radicalizes and resolves to mete out violence in order to political ends. The other guys get to do that, too.

[Michael Malice]

That's right.

[Noah Rothman]

And will do that, especially if you're successful in your mission. And then we get to a process where we say, okay, the state doesn't really care about if it does, it's incapable of seeing to my safety, my family's safety. Therefore, it's incumbent on me as a responsible family man, to take matters into my own hands. And then we see vigilantism become a much more pronounced feature of the American, of American civic life.

[Michael Malice]

Right.

[Noah Rothman]

And then we risk the process, the prospect of a Hobbesian war of all against all in which violence is just. Violence in the streets is a feature of daily life in this country, indeed a mechanism for political change that we should just become. To become familiar with and accept. And that doesn't stop there. It's an. It's a phenomenon that feeds on itself. It's reciprocal. It grows. Which is part of the reason why you have to look at left wing violence and right wing violence. They don't just, you know, one doesn't exist in isolation without the other. And so, yeah, we could have a situation in which we have a cascading series of reprisals and retributions in which we get to a place in which violence is just a sort of a feature of American civic life. And I don't welcome that. It's something I want to stave off.

[Michael Malice]

Are you not characterizing putting diseased people into nursing homes as an act of violence? Because it's legal.

[Noah Rothman]

It was an act. It was an act of maladministration. I don't think it was deliberately violent, but we do have some evidence that the, for the, the Cuomo administration, for example, knew what they were doing was potentially murderous. It was horrible, unethical maladministration. But do I consider it political violence akin to the assassination of Brian Thompson, UnitedHealthcare CEO, or Charlie Kirk? I just think they're different categories.

[Michael Malice]

I don't see. I don't get it. I just respectfully Disagree. I don't understand it because I agree with your point that violence very, very, very, very quickly gets out of hand and it sings its own song. And when you light that match, you don't know where it's going to end up. But I think just like with Janelle Bowie, if I'm that grandson, I am responding to the violence. I'm not initiating the violence. And I think that's where you and I see things differently.

[Noah Rothman]

The only difference being that I think I put more emphasis on the fact that you can seek redress from the courts.

[Michael Malice]

But I think that's the odds of that governor getting the redress that he's due is zero.

[Noah Rothman]

Well, yeah, that's two different things, though. The political process, where he gets voted out of office or removed from office through a political process, that's one thing. The other thing is that you have a legitimate grievance that a court agrees with and provides you with restitution, unequal though it may be to her emotional pain, is nevertheless the court saying, you're right, here's why you're right and here's why it's 100% justified that we're giving you this, you know, return on.

[Michael Malice]

I mean, they should be. They should get the death penalty. There's no way they're going to get the death penalty.

[Noah Rothman]

Right. Well, there's not a criminal trial. Well, you're. Well, you would be taken to court. There is a civil rights right. So you think that these people should be strung up and there is, there's mechanisms for them to be prosecuted, to be withdrawn, removed from office, impeached with. Removed from office, and then tried criminally for behaviors that they engaged in in office. That's not even all that rare in this country. It's rare for presidents, it's rare for federal office holders. But at the municipal level, being removed from office and prosecuted isn't really unheard of.

[Michael Malice]

Not prosecuted for the actions you did in your political capacity. It's like if you're taking bribes, that's one thing. But if you legally put sick people into nursing homes as a result of this, many old people died, there's no redress for you.

[Noah Rothman]

Yeah, well, there is no redress for you as a victim of it. But yeah, if you want to see that individual be held criminally liable for that, you're going to have to change statute. And you could retroactively change statute in this country to have retroactively criminalize conduct. The courts might look on it weird.

[Michael Malice]

I thought that's. I thought that's grossly illegal to retroactively criminal.

[Noah Rothman]

Retroactive. Yeah. Well, to. To make something illegal and then prosecute somebody on it retroactively. Yeah. The courts would take a very dim view of it. But just to say that. That the legislatures can't do that. Legislators can do unconstitutional things all day long if they want to. But yeah, I mean, you're talking about vengeance.

[Michael Malice]

Yep. Justice.

[Noah Rothman]

Yeah, it depends on how it's defined. But yeah, vengeance and in remedy for injustice. And yeah, I think that that needs to be litigated in the courts and I think that needs to be removed from the street and street violence because that's too arbitrary and it's too subjective and it's the sort of thing that radicalizes people. What if the stories of gods, angels and ancient technology weren't myths, but memories of alien contact? On ancient aliens, we investigate the evidence, from mysterious ruins to strange celestial alignments, asking bold questions about humanity's origins. Could visitors from the stars have influenced our greatest civilizations? Journey into the unknown and challenge what you think you know about history? In episodes like Secrets of the Sumerians, Mysteries of the Maya, or the Chosen,

[Michael Malice]

we are not alone.

[Noah Rothman]

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[Michael Malice]

Let's get back to the show. Let's talk about the Rotterdam situation, which I'm sure you're familiar with. People don't know, hundreds, I think, of young girls over years were kidnapped, assaulted, so on and so forth. Many cases were brought to the police. The police didn't want to look racist. They looked the other way. They often returned these girls to their captors. It wasn't even just horrific things. Being violated with their baseball bats and beaten. Some girls escaped, returned, were beaten. If I. If in England. Rotterdam.

[Noah Rothman]

Yes.

[Michael Malice]

Situation.

[Noah Rothman]

Yeah, yeah.

[Michael Malice]

Would you. If you were. I don't say you, if you were on a jury. Right. And one of these parents enacted retribution on the police that enabled the. The continuance of violation of their children. Would you vote to convict?

[Noah Rothman]

Probably not. But again, this is not political violence. This is crime of passion.

[Michael Malice]

But the cops were acting as agents of the state. I don't know what you mean by non political.

[Noah Rothman]

I mean it's not designed to affect a political outcome, as I define it really clearly in the book. And again, disordered thinking, but nevertheless a social outcome, a political outcome that is supposed to be the result of this particular act of violence, whatever it may be. So compel lawmakers to change statute or compel police to no longer do one thing that they were doing, like there's supposed to be a policy outcome that flows from violence. What you're describing is, is pure, is pure retribution and fueled by passion, which is just a different category in my view.

[Michael Malice]

Okay, so earlier you were saying how there are increasingly judges and politicians who are acting differently because of fears on threats of their lives and their families. These threats we've all seen. This isn't Noah just making things up. There's many examples and I'm sure there's plenty of examples that nine of us know that were nipped in the bud, thankfully, and nothing happened. But things could have gotten very dicey very quickly. I remember, I think it was Andrew Sullivan who pointed out there was a time when like all these politicians were getting glitter bombed. And it goes, guys, these are soft assassinations. These are people showing you at home how easy it is to get to this person. This isn't funny. Point being, if, if someone is using these threats, right, to get their political goals or moving the needle, so to speak, is it just different that when politicians do it, they've been voted in, so it's okay if they do it?

[Noah Rothman]

I don't want to mischaracterize what you just said, so I ask you to restate the question because. Okay, so didn't understand where we were going.

[Michael Malice]

We were talking about earlier about how many political figures, legal judges and politicians have now adjusted their behavior because of sincere fears and threats and we don't

[Noah Rothman]

know how they're adjusting their behavior.

[Michael Malice]

That's correct. I think, I think it's non dispute. Any of us who've talked to any politicians, you know, either on air or off are like the environment is changing, like there's crazy people out there. I worry about my kids, so on and so forth. Right. That, that's kind of, you know, I think that's been across the political spectrum, Republican and Democrat in Congress. I've heard this over and over and I'm sure you have as well. Right. Point being, these politicians are enacting laws, right, that affect the choices that any of us make. Otherwise, if we don't follow their edicts, we're going to have consequences, whether financial or judicial. Right. Point being, why is it wrong for me as a left wing activist to nudge them with these threats to get what I want when the very act of passing a law is using threats to nudge the populace in the direction that I want?

[Noah Rothman]

The state has a monopoly on legal violence. Okay, so that is the proposition one. You can resent it, but it is one of the fundamental propositions to which we all submit as Productive citizens of the United States and the Constitution that governs the whole enterprise.

[Michael Malice]

Not all submitting. Their whole book's about people who aren't submitting.

[Noah Rothman]

Yeah, but they need to, or else they exist outside the law. And if they exist outside the law, they should face consequences, lawful consequences. Well, that's one of the things that I argue in the book, Michael, is that police have the tools on the books to. To tamp down a lot of these expressions of violence, which, by the way, are committed by very small cohorts of people.

[Michael Malice]

Oh, yes.

[Noah Rothman]

20s, 70s, 80s, today, very small numbers of people are actually manifestly violent. And they can be policed out of this behavior. If the police were to apply proactively and without regard for the sensitivities of the political class, which has a tendency to view some of these people as useful instruments, elements.

[Michael Malice]

That's right.

[Noah Rothman]

Political coalition.

[Michael Malice]

Yes.

[Noah Rothman]

They applied this proactively and across the board, without fear or favor. Then you can police this sort of thing and get a hold of a phenomenon that's wildly spinning out of control. So, yeah, there are some people who reject the legitimacy of the American system and seek to work outside of it. And we call those people outlaws and they should be treated like outlaws. It is not something that we should say, well, I got a chin stroke. And think about your unique bespoke conception of what the law is and whether it applies to you or not. I don't. I don't have to give you legitimacy on that line. You've talked yourself into this delusion. I don't have to support your delusion. It's a delusion. You should be disabused of it.

[Michael Malice]

But we're talking at the very beginning, which is my favorite aspect of conservatism, is looking at things as they are, as things have been historically, and realizing there's only so much to go. So when you say should, there is an entire apparatus that has been here for a century which not only justifies but validates left wing violence. I think it's. You see how many of those rioters during Floyd had their bail paid for. They were all, I think, slaps on the wrist. There were virtually no prosecution. Certainly per capita, there were a tiny number.

[Noah Rothman]

And we still don't know the level of coordination across the country. That's right, five or six months. And it's not me who's alleging coordination. You have the head of New York City PD and individual groups who studied these phenomenon and these activist movements or threats under the radar. They all maintain that this, these tactics were repeated country across the country by organized groups who you and I are

[Michael Malice]

on the exact same page here. Everything you say I agree with verbatim. I think it's indisputable. You said, frankly. Point being, if that is the system that we're actually in, if I am on the right and I see that leftists can engage in this with not only with no consequences, but I'm having buildings named after me, my choices are what? Vote harder or just submit.

[Noah Rothman]

Well, so I take issue with the premise because you said that this is the system that we're in that doesn't describe a system, that describes an anti system. Something that is hostile to the system wants to break it apart and replace it with something very different. So I just take issue with the premise there. Second,

[Michael Malice]

I don't want to split hairs, but I want to make sure we're on the same page. Maybe you don't like the word system, but would you not say that there is an organized mechanism across different areas to promote this sort of thing and to cover it up when it happens?

[Noah Rothman]

Yeah, I think you could fairly call it a status quo.

[Michael Malice]

Okay.

[Noah Rothman]

Depending on where you're at. But I don't think it's especially durable as a status quo. I think it's been 100 years now. Now when it comes to what we're talking about, the kind of. Are we talking about the threat environment that pertains today?

[Michael Malice]

No, I'm talking about 100 years of leftists being able to engage in like the faln. They blew up Congress and President Clinton comes in and they're out in the street and I'm sure they're getting huge speaking fees. Yeah.

[Noah Rothman]

So I try to be circumspect with this because I don't want to catastrophize and say that the entire country is beset by revolutionary Marxian elements. That is not true. So I am trying to be circumspect with the nature of the threat here. But yeah, so I would say that again, if you want to preserve the system as American conservatives do, I mean, go back to that really dispiriting and discouraging poll of mega voters who are say they're inclined towards violence. I'm not sure if they mean not inclined.

[Michael Malice]

Hold on, let's, let's.

[Noah Rothman]

I want to make sure I do too.

[Michael Malice]

You had to, you had to hear it instead of me reading it. So I want to be clear for you and for the audience. They were, they were, they were saying there are certain circumstances where they find it acceptable that's all they're saying. They're not saying let's do it. They're just saying, certain, I want to

[Noah Rothman]

be clear and preserve the way of life in this country is one of those rationales, right? Well, the way of life in this country is underwritten by law. Criminal statute, civil statute, adjudicated by neutral courts. That's something that conservatives want to protect too. And that deprives you of the need to engage and to apply violent remedies to what were otherwise civil disputes or even criminal disputes or, or frustrations with the, the state or the police or its apparatuses of government. All that stuff is available to you. And I think conservatives and Republicans generally want to protect and preserve it, not just because it's the, the milieu in which we're in. It's old and therefore should exist in perpetuity, but because it provides them with guarantees of life, liberty and property. And as long as those guarantees are. Persist, are illegal, and there are mechanisms to appeal to when they're abridged or violated by individuals or by the state itself, then yeah, I think conservatives and Republicans should want to preserve that status quo. It protects them as much as it does their political adversaries. It's the other side which, and I'm not saying by, by the other side, I don't mean the left. I mean those who are inclined towards violent remedies for what they regard as in violations of their essential liberties. Both left and right who are inclined towards violence talk themselves into that notion. And my, one of my goals with this book with Blood in Progress is to communicate to both left and right that those who are inclined towards extralegal violence to remedy what they regard as nevertheless, you know, real imperatives, real violations of their rights are not on your side. If you're on. If you're engaged in violence against the state, then you've lost faith in its ability to impartially adjudicate disputes.

[Michael Malice]

That's right.

[Noah Rothman]

And that makes you an outlaw. That makes you a revolutionary.

[Michael Malice]

Yep.

[Noah Rothman]

And I don't think revolutionary remedies are where we're at now. And I think we could talk ourselves into the notion that we have to tear this whole enterprise down because it's so immoral. But I think that would be a rationalization on the part of a lot of people who would regret what they have destroyed and have no idea what's coming next.

[Michael Malice]

I guess where you and I disagree is I don't agree that my freedoms should be subject to the will of the aristocracy, the majority, or the Judiciary. I just don't see it and I don't get it. But I, I understand would agree with

[Noah Rothman]

you and I agree with the founders. I don't care what the founders agree with you. Just that I agree with you.

[Michael Malice]

I don't care what the founders have to say. I care about my freedoms and I just don't get the. I, I don't.

[Noah Rothman]

I understand minority protections, major majority protections for majorities within or minorities within majorities. Your rights are not subject to a vote of the majority but they are simply say 50, 50 plus 1% and take them one of those are constitutional and Constitution. Amending the Constitution is a really high bar and you can seek redress for violations of constitutional rights.

[Michael Malice]

The Constitution is whatever the Supreme Court decides at any moment. There are enormous restrictions on the second Amendment. There have been until technology fixed the enormous restrictions on the first Amendment. It used to be illegal to teach women how to use contraceptions. Doctors use the license over this under the Comstock Laws. So I don't think the Constitution other than perhaps the third Amendment.

[Noah Rothman]

Well, let's take the second Amendment. It used to be illegal to bring a handgun into Washington D.C. until Heller. Right. It used to be illegal to spend money to, to engage in campaign speech within 70 days of an election until united. And then and before those decisions, you know, there was a status quo that prevailed that was amended by subsequent legislation and interpreted by the courts to mean restrictions on these things until the, the political culture changed in this country. And over the course of the last 20 years those restrictions on firearms ownership and political speaker been rolled back.

[Michael Malice]

Yes.

[Noah Rothman]

And that's a generational project. I mean it began in the late 80s. That's right. And only came to fruition in the last decade. But that's how political change in this country happens. It's very incremental. It is a generational project and it's a sort of thing that you have to be a participant in. You know, that frustrates a lot of people who want to see change tomorrow and that leads one towards revolutionary political remedies for quotidian political disputes in this country. But as long as those mechanisms exist to shape and change the political culture, I, I think they're legitimate and I think extra legal remedies for them aren't.

[Michael Malice]

Okay, I understand that that's your point of view. I just, I don't under, I don't agree that I should have to wait generations to have my liberties if I have resources to protect them and, and, and ground them in.

[Noah Rothman]

It's only because the other side is busily at work against you. That they're using the exact same mechanisms to restrict you even more. And those mechanisms are as available to them as they are to you. And if you were to abandon them as the revolutionaries. Do you see the field?

[Michael Malice]

Yeah, that's. That's fair. Folks. Head over to malice.locals.com where no. And I will answer questions from the fans. I guess where we disagree is I trust myself and my fellows and my guns more than I do the government.

[Noah Rothman]

Not about trust. It's definitely not about trust. There are overlapping mechanisms of accountability and competition within the governing enterprise. Which is. Which is envisioned by the founders and all their wisdom. Because the crooked timber of humanity cannot be trusted. All of those mechanisms are designed to take trust out of the equation. We're talking about competition among self interested, ambitious individuals and institutions that are supposed to jealously guard their power. All of which are competing against one another. None of it is about trust. It's all about incentives and competing incentives that are supposed to keep every institution and individual who wants power in this country in check.

[Michael Malice]

Yeah, but again, that's supposed to. I don't see it.

[Noah Rothman]

It's not perfect. Nothing is. But it's better than the alternative. Especially if that alternative is extra legal wanton violence that is subjectively determined by the people meeting out the violence.

[Michael Malice]

We're going to have to agree to disagree. And I'm very excited to read this book because I love where people do the homework and bring up history so you can learn the context of where we are today. Because to your point, it's not so generous. This didn't just happen as a result of Biden or Obama or even Jimmy Carter. This has been very long and I'm going to use the word systemic, even if that's the word that you're not comfortable with. Thank you so much for being here. Now we're running out of time. What has been your favorite part of this interview?

[Noah Rothman]

It's been conflictual. I enjoy that. I enjoy sparring intellectually. This book has a lot of friends, but it doesn't have too many enemies. I think the people who are inclined to support, support left wing extremism, if not violence. Just kind of hope I'm going away. So I haven't had a chance to really argue the premise yet. And that's what I really appreciated about this interview. Michael came taking an adversarial approach to. It was really sharpened, you know, sharpened the utensils here. So thank you.

[Michael Malice]

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[Noah Rothman]

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[Michael Malice]

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[Noah Rothman]

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[Michael Malice]

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[Noah Rothman]

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[Michael Malice]

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[Noah Rothman]

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