Janine Turner
speaker
236 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Dec 2024
Janine Turner’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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And it's interesting, I find myself quoting de Tocqueville a lot, and I understand democracy in America is something that you are very familiar with as well. Again, here we are, two Americans in the, not so early in the 21st century anymore, talking about and quoting a guy from 1820, a French aristocrat that visited us in 1820. What are your thoughts on de Tocqueville?
Well, we have academic studies every year at our foundation. And one was about American exceptionalism, which I really think we need to go ahead and say that word and why we are. And our study proves throughout history why we are exceptional. And the other is de Tocqueville. And de Tocqueville was so prescient. And he was able to talk about...
America from an objective point of view and juxtaposition America against the French, their monarchy, you know, how they didn't succeed really with the revolution and how we did. And I find de Tocqueville to be quite intriguing. We have a study about that at constitutedamerica.org right now. And he talks about everything. He even talked about the rise of America and Russia being great powers.
with which to deal in the future.
He predicted it. He predicted it. He actually predicted it. It's crazy, right? I don't know. How could he have seen that? That's so weird, right?
I know. Very, very true. But he talks about, you know, Voltaire and the freedom of speech and he observes our country and really how industrious we were and are and how we were based on off this sort of moral compass that gave us our ability to be, you know, great within our community, within our townships. And I think we've lost townships, haven't we, Dr. Drew?
I mean, we think that the, I give 600 kids, they think the president's the most important, but townships are really, really very important.
Well, and to that point, Janine, what de Tocqueville said was the local practice of democracy was the reason democracy in America was successful. So not only was participation of all citizens sort of brought in on the local level, It was a practice. It was a way of living that was in the classroom. It was in the civic centers. And it sort of permeates our life.
And we've lost some of that practice. And we have to be very careful about that because he really thought that was the reason it worked.
Yes, and when I speak to kids, I speak to students all over the country, and I ask them, you vote every, how often do you vote? And they say four years. And I say, for whom do you vote? And they say the president. And I'm like, well, really, the president's not supposed to be the most important person. It is your legislator in your district and in your township.
Teaching kids to be civic citizens and why that matters is, Also, Dr. Drew, I know you can relate to this, to be able to reason. And we can't reason if we don't hear two points of view.
Well, listen, we ascend to the truth through dialogue. That's how we get near the truth. Humans do not have the capacity for the truth with a capital T, but we can ascend to an approximation through dialectic, like you said. But everybody, look out your window.
When you look out your window right now, whoever is picking up your trash, who's ever doing the fire department, the local police, whoever is sweeping the streets, that is not the federal government. This thing was not set up so the federal government was supposed to be involved in our lives. It is our local government that really impacts us.
The fact that we worry about the federal government is an abomination. It's a bastardization of this thing you mentioned. Hamilton was a little bit towards big government, but at least Jefferson felt that they should not be in with us. They should be dealing with interstate commerce and defense, and that's about it.
It's true. It should be limited and enumerated government. That's what our constitution says, the national government, and that it's really federalism. And I have to tell you, I have a love affair with federalism. Because federalism is about the states and about the local governments and about what we, the people, what I teach the kids is, you know, it's the consent of the governed.
And it's we, the people, not we, the government. So we are actually, we've gotten to this mindset that it's government. But it's not going to be the government. And I'm excited about Doge, aren't you? I think Doge could be really, really exciting.
Oh my God, yes. I want to bring Elijah in for a second because there's two issues that Janine's triggering me to think about, which is one is this, I've come to realize that people on the left, when they were complaining about the end of democracy,
It's getting distilled down now to an understanding that what they really meant was, oh, no, no, now democracy means democratic institutions, meaning these bloated bureaucratic institutions that were invented under a democratic system. Those are in jeopardy, which I say is a good thing, but democracy, the practice of democracy is not in jeopardy, but maybe they didn't even mean that.
It's going at the institution that they put in place. Yeah. The other thing I want to ask you real quick, talking about de Tocqueville made me think about the French. Have you been keeping track of what's going on there?
Yeah. Well... They can't get a prime minister in there, even a guy like, I forget the guy that just got the no confidence.
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