There Are Laws That Control Men’s Bodies

Trump keeps going on all kinds of podcasts listened to by young men, all kinds of different comedians and YouTube influencer type guys that probably most of you listening who are millennials or older, maybe it's not really in your wheelhouse, but for sort of younger millennials and zoomers kind of more in your wheelhouse. And Harris is doing very limited as far as I mean, Harris is doing very limited media in general, far less out there than Trump is.

But she goes on this podcast called Call Her Daddy, which I think sort of started out of the Barstool universe for those who know what that is, but then sort of went off on its own. A lot of young women listening to it. Now, this is interesting as far as you know, to whom are the two sides talking.

Harris has a huge lead among single women, Trump is gaining a bigger, bigger lead among men and single young single men are leaning more and more into the Trump camp, and I sort of wonder for Trump if how that could go. I mean, no, one's probably a less reliable voter than a twenty year old man, But if Trump can get men like that out to the holes in droves, I think that could be a hugely untapped on accounted for by the pollsters number of people that could really

push Trump over the top at this point. I mean, I just saw a polling today showing Trump and Harris in a dead split nationwide, which if that's the case, then Trump's gonna win pretty easily, but we'll see. I mean, I think it's going to be very close election still. Anyway. The thing that I thought was interesting was Kamala Harris goes on this podcast and of course she's leaning heavily

into the abortion thing. It's like the only It's so dispiriting to me that how abortion is like the only thing Kamala Harris has to run on that that it seems for the most part, the nation likes her presentation of what she believes on the abortion issue more than they like Trump, and Trump has realized this and has completely abandoned ship run as far to the left on abortion as he can without completely alienating pro life voters.

So Harris goes on this show and she's asked about abortion, and the host just is Harris is not going on anything where she's getting anything other than complete total hanging curveballs right over the plate that she can knock out of the park, and even then she's not really knocking

things out of the park. The host asks her if there's any law that tells a man what to do with his body, the implication being that abortion restrictions tell women what to do with their bodies, and there's no equivalent thing for any man, no equivalent thing for any man. And Harris is like, oh, no, of course not. There's no law like that that controls a man's body. That only these evil abortion limitation laws. And I was thinking

about this. Of course there are laws like that. They're one hundred are and it starts to make me think about law and sort of what the purposes of laws are. All right, So, first of all, I don't know if all of you have heard of this thing called the draft. Men have to register for the select service, which could be the draft when they turn eighteen. Women don't have to. It's a law that's definitely controlling our bodies in the event of wartime. And these arguments about bodily auton that

women's bodies are. There's no place so many of these abortion arguments, you'll have the most liberal people in the world who favor all kinds of left wing restrictions of every sort of ever, every shape, all every liberal who was in favor of every kind and species of vaccine mandate possible, just like three years ago, all of a sudden, when it comes to a law regulating abortion, which, by the way, let's remember, these laws regulating abortion are not

dealing just with one person's body. They are dealing with a second body. They are saying, there is another human being here whose life has value and for whom the state has an interest. The state has an interest in preserving the life not just of the mother, but also of the baby. So we limit the practice of abortion because it's directly killing this other living organism who is

just stating inside a mother's body. But this idea, all of a sudden, liberals become the most extreme libertarians humanly possible. When it comes to abortion. The senator from Georgia, the Democrat Senator from Georgia, Raphael Warnock, is like the worst defender for this. His big line anytime anyone mentions abortion to him, and he's an African American pastor, so people

talk about how hypocritical his abortion position is. But his big thing that he keeps saying is I just think a doctor's office is too small for a woman, her doctor, and the government. And that's his big line. That's his big line that justifies everything, every that rationalizes his entire view in favor of expansive legal abortion. I just think a doctor's office is too small for a woman, her doctor and the federal government. Or the woman, her doctor

and the government. Now this is insane on like twenty different counts. First of all, Democrats regulate the healthcare industry, and the healthcare industry is maybe one of the most regulated industries in the entire universe. The standards according which your hospital room was built probably was influenced by the government dictating the very structure of the building. You're in. The licensure process for the medical professional whom you are seeing.

The doctor whom you are seeing is regulated by the state. There's a state Board of Medicine governing it. The state has all kinds of mandates. The federal government has all kinds of mandates for the kinds of drugs that your doctor is prescribing or can prescribe or cannot prescribe. There are layers and layers and layers and layers of state and federal intervention present in any encounter at any doctor's office.

Are you on medical Well, guess what that's both the federal government and the state government is therefore in the hospital room with you and your doctor. Medical requirements alter all kinds of ways in which care is delivered. But for some reason, liberals all of a sudden become the most extreme, make Ron Paul Blush level libertarians when it comes to the question of the government telling me what I can do with my body, and it makes me

think about law. Lots of laws, lots and lots and lots of laws tell us what we can do or cannot do with our bodies. Abortion gets singled out by the left as if this is the only thing that does. There are all kinds of laws regulating, for example, drug use that tell you, hey, can't put this in your body prescription drug abuse. Hey can't put this stuff in your body. Hey, you can't help someone put this stuff in their body. There's example after example after example of

this that, and we justify it as good. I think a more classical justification of law. A classical definition of law is that it is a dictative reason instituted the general Actually that's actually been promulgated by a lawful authority towards advancing the common good. The common good here does not necessarily mean okay, five of you think it's okay to beat up a homeless person, and three of you think it's not okay to beat up a homeless person.

Therefore the five people wins because that's the common good. No, that's not the idea of common good. That definition of law was from Saint Thomas Quite, and it's kind of a distillation of the classical legal tradition of from Greek philosophy throughout the Christian philosophical tradition. The common law in that sense was not, you know, five people think it's okay to, you know, beat up the slaves, and three

people don't think it's okay to beat up slaves. So the five people went, No, the common good is basically the good that is common to all, the shared moral and ethical vision that's grounded in human nature, and the goods towards which human nature is oriented. So in that light, if that's your definition of law, then yeah, you can have laws that kind of dictate what people do or

don't do. But this is a thing where I think conservatism and the Enlightenment philosophy that animated a lot of the Founding Fathers kind of runs into tension with one another. So the Founding Fathers were very much influenced by the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was this sort of philosophical movement that happened in Europe during the sixteen hundreds of seventeen hundreds, starting in the fifteen hundreds that was rejecting a lot of the older order when it comes to ethics and ethics

and particularly philosophy of law. It was rejecting Aristotle, it was rejecting Thomas Aquinas, and it was elevating newer thinkers, newer thinkers like Kant when it comes to ethics, newer thinkers like John Locke and Thomas Hobbes when it came to philosophy of law, and they rejected the Saint Thomas's ideas that there is one objective, no truth, there is an objective, knowable human good that governments should order their

laws too. And instead they said, every single person should be free to choose the good for themselves, and as long as you're not stepping on other people's toes, you pick the good for yourself. That's the spirit that's animating Kamala Harris when she says, oh, we can't have a law telling women what to do with their bodies now, is she wildly hypocritical in this because of all of the laws she does support that tell people what to

do with their bodies. Well, maybe, but maybe she tries to rationalize it by saying, well, a vaccine mandate that couldn't impact other people, So you need to do this because if you don't, you're impacting all these other people. You're stepping on their freedom. So we need to impose upon your freedom insofar as you're going to hurt other people's freedom. And that's the problem is that there is still an objective. There seems to be still not a

subjective moral good that Kamala Harris points to. But she's got her own set of goods that she points to that she wants to enforce in everybody else. So she's acting like she's this total libertarian when it comes to laws regulating abortion, but not really. If you are a libertarian, I don't think it's that hard to make an argument against abortion. I mean that the pure libertarian argument for that justifies law is everyone should be able to choose

the good for themselves. You're allowed to choose the good for themselves as long as you're not stepping on other people's toes. Well, abortion is the biggest act of stepping on someone else's toes possible. There's another human being involved who's getting killed in this procedure. But the thing libertarianism can't answer is what is the moral status of that

human being? Do we care about that human being? Is that human being who doesn't know his or her own good yet a valuable rights bearing member of the community whom we should defend. And this is kind of where libertarianism falls apart. They don't really have a great account for that. That's why probably a lot of libertarians you talk to, or ethical libertarians you talk to, probably most of them are in favor of abortion because they view

the adult as important. They view the adult who actually has an understanding of his or her own good as far more important than this unborn child. So in short, there's actually a lot of stuff, you know, Kamala Harris coming on a show and saying, now, there's no law that tells there tells men what to do with their bodies. In addition to being completely nonsensical, there's a ton of like ethical presuppositions that are really baked into what she's

saying about what is the whole purpose of law? Yeah, laws can intrude upon bodily autonomy if it is a dictative reason instituted by a duly authorized lawgiver, ordered towards the common good. And this is where I think modern conservatism kind of loses its way. On the one hand, it's kind of there's this author named Joseph Bottom who

said this, and this line I keep reusing. Modern day conservatism is in a tug of war between the Enlightenment on one hand, everyone's free to choose the good for themselves, freedom, freedom, freedom, and the Bible on the other the Bible, which has a very clear ethical vision of what is right and what is wrong, and a clear sense that no law should be ordered towards the good, this objective vision of what is right and what is wrong, even if he

don't like that. And I think what we're seeing is with Trump, you know, slowly as Trump is sort of abandoning ship more and more on the pro life position right at the very least, leaving it up to individual people to decide for themselves. Is a shift in conservatism away from the Bible and towards the Enlightenment. I'll dig into that a little bit next. This is the John

Girardi Show on Power Talk. I think Donald Trump is signaling a kind of shift in conservatism, but it's not the kind of shift that I think a lot of people are thinking. I think it has a lot to do with social conservatism and then the philosophical roots of

what it means to be a social conservative. All right, So the big shift Trump has advanced when it comes to the abortion issue specifically, and all this is prompted by Kamala Harris talking on a podcast about oh, there are no laws that control which is like, well, lots of laws control everybody's bodies, and also there's the draft and you're an idiot. But it's also making me focus on, like, well, what is the purpose of law, What is the point

of law? What is law? What is the philosophical justification for law? And the classical justification of law is that it is a dictate of reason, issued by a legitimate authority, ordered towards the common good. And the common good here is not understood. As you know, five people think it's okay to beat up almost people, and three people don't think it's okay to beat up homeless people. So therefore

the five people win. No, the common good is the vision of the good rooted in human nature, looking at the goods towards which human nature is ordered, including our ultimate good and the objective morality that springs from it. The natural law, the law that is part of someone's nature. That's Saint Paul himself referenced. So this has been the

tug of war within christ within conservatism. Conservatism as in American slash British post Glorious Revolution political rightsm that reacted so negatively to the French Revolution, for example, but was a little bit more accommodating towards the American Revolution. It is this tug of war between on the one hand, Enlightenment thinkers who think that law and right within government is a question of preserving every individual in their individual

choice for what the good is for themselves. So the government gets everyone latitude to choose the good for themselves. There's no common good. Every individual gets to choose the good for himself, and the government's there just to say safeguard your ability to choose the good, but just make sure that you don't step on other people's toes. That is libertarianism in its loosest sense. Everyone gets to choose what's good for themselves. There's no objective right and wrong

out there. The government's just safeguarding your ability to choose. On the other hand, is again this classical vision rooted in things like the Bible and American conservatism has been in a tug of war between the Bible saying there is an objective truth and libertarianism saying we don't know what objective truth is, so just let everyone choose the truth for themselves. I think we're seeing this tug of war playing out right now in the Republican Party about

the abortion issue. Before twenty twenty two and the bad election results of twenty twenty two, everything was pretty clear Republicans were anti abortion. Republicans thought abortion was bad, Abortion was wrong. Republicans supported federal restrictions on abortion. Republicans supported a constitutional amendment safeguarding human life. It was right there in the Republican platform. Look at the twenty sixteen Republican platform and see all the things it's supported as far

as regulating, limiting, cutting off abortion funding, et cetera. We had one bad election cycle in twenty twenty two, and Trump has reacted to this by running to the left on abortion, saying he doesn't like Florida's six week abortion limit, basically limiting abortion only to the first six weeks of gestation. He thinks there should be more weeks. But the big thing Trump has said is he keeps saying this for individual He's not even saying I am pro life and

I think abortion is wrong. He's just saying, I think every state should vote on its own. Let the will of the people completely decide the abortion issue. That's a libertarian approach. His notion of the common good is what the people decide to do, what the people decide to do, getting abortion to the states, to the votes of individual states, that is what he is proposing as what's right. Let everyone be free to choose the good for themselves, and

so we have this situation. I mean, I was saying, you know, the common good does not mean five people want to beat up homeless people and three people don't. Therefore the common good is beating up homeless people. But that is the situation that Trump is sort of praising. Within the states. Fifty one percent of the state favors the legal killing of children, who are just stating forty nine percent oppose it. Therefore, we're going to kill them

because that's the common good in that state. And maybe I'm being overly harsh about Trump's views on this, but Trump has been very explicit about saying, you know, I support the ability of states to vote on this stuff, and I agree having states vote on it individually is better than what we had before. It's better than the Roe v. Wade regime, where we had the worst possible

laws unabortion imposed on all fifty states. But at the same time, John Paul the Second wrote about this pretty extensively. I just don't think that the value of human beings should be left up to a democratic up or down vote. That's not what the common good is. There is a common good that is out there that is objective that is knowable, that should be respected. That that's and that laws that don't respect that lose their legitimacy as law.

So there's a lot of I think, really deep philosophical issues that are going on, and I think there is a shift on the Trump side when it comes to especially the abortion issue. When we return. An interesting piece about Proposition four, a bond measure for funding climate stuff ill defined next on the John Girardi Show. So there's

a good piece that's been published by cal Matters. It's written by Brian Jones, who's a Republican state senator, and it's about Proposition four and this lead up to the election. I'd like to do more pieces like this, sort of deep diving pieces I find that are interesting, that are doing kind of a deep dive on one specific ballot initiative or another. And Proposition four is I knew I was voting no on this from the start, just the very description of it, but he State Senator Jones is

kind of digging into this a little bit more. Let me give the first the first backdrop for it. So Proposition four is a bond measure to provide ten billion dollars towards various kinds of environmental programs. Now, the first thing, the first thing you should know is that it's a bond. And I hate bonds, and I think I basically will take a generalized approach that I am voting no on any bond measure ever. And I think it's a problem that people don't actually know what a bond is. I

think people hear the word bond. But I bet if I pulled all of the tax bank, all the voters of let's say, City of Fresno, and I said, define for me what a bond is, I bet most people

couldn't actually define it for you. They kind of vaguely know it has something to do with taxes or funding, and they hear, oh, it's a Because right now we are all of you listening to this, we'll be voting on I think within the sound of my voice, there's a good likelihood you're going to be voting for at least four or against at least four different bond measures this election cycle. All right, for me, I've got a

close unified bond that'll probably be on my ballot. I think I've got a state center community college bond that's on my ballot. I've got Proposition four, which is this climate bond, and then there's another I think it's proposition one that is h or two that's the education bond. I'll get the exact number. So if you're voting four or against a bond, you better know what it means. If you're a voter, you should know what a bond is.

So let me define it. A bond is a loan to a governmental entity a city, a county, a state, a school district, a community college district. Locally, for say, school districts or community college districts. Bonds get paid through your property taxes. Okay, So it is a loan to a governmental entity that the taxpayer must repay. That's what you get with a loan. If there's a loan, then you got to repay it. And if there's a repayment and it's not all at once and there's interest, well yeah,

there's interest. Okay. Most bond measures, most local bond measures anyway, are thirty year terms and they have a certain interest rate. So if you've got a local school district, like let's take Clovis Unified. Okay, I live in Clovis Unified. I think we've got it's a four hundred million dollars bond measure that's on the ballot. Okay, we've gotta so here's what will happen. We'll vote for this bond measure. If it passes, Clubs Unified gets four hundred million bucks, all right,

But somehow we got to pay that back. So the taxpayers, the property tax payers within who live within the boundaries of Clovis Unified School District, they have to pay that loan back through their property taxes over the course of thirty years with interest. So it's not really a four hundred million dollar bond. Yeah, that's what the school district gets. The taxpayer has to pay four hundred million dollars plus

thirty years of interest. Meaning by the time we're done, we might wind up spending seven hundred or eight hundred million dollars to get four hundred million dollars worth of benefit. President Unified, it's got a five hundred million dollar bond measure, largest bond measure in President Unified history. That's gonna be maybe a billion dollars paid by the taxpayers. Okay, So bonds from a certain perspective are pretty In a f you're spending two X to get X level of benefit.

And that's kind of fundamentally why I don't like them. It's like it's kind of like credit card debt, you know, but for a municipal entity. And I get it that, you know, the over time and with inflation that that number is not as damaging, but it's still this is it is having your cake and then kicking having your cake and expecting to eat it too, or kicking the

can down the road. I don't know whatever metaphor you want to use for this, or simply you want to use for this, but basically you're it's the whatever is the opposite of delayed gratification. Now we're facing a lot

of bond measures this election cycle. The only reason we're seeing so many local school districts and the community college district putting forward these local initiatives for bond measures locally is because of Proposition two, which is a statewide ten billion dollar bond measure that all of us can vote for or against. If Prop two passes and these local bond measures pass, then the school districts will get additional state funding. That's the only reason why all these local

school districts are doing bond measures. Right now. I don't think it's really in response to any genuine need. It's just that's what happens to be there, happens to be a state bond measure, and these local school districts are like, well, we're not gonna if there's money from the state that's on the table, we're not gonna leave that on the table. And you get more if you match. Basically, basically, if you raise local bond funding, you can get matching state funds.

So all these local school districts are Okay, well, let's let's pass a local bond measure. It's not actually a response to need. That's why, coincidentally, not coincidentally at all, every single school district in the Greater Fresno area is doing a bond measure right now this year for November twenty twenty four. It's because of this state bond measure. Now, let's talk about though, this environmental bond measure. This is

again State Senator Brian Jones, a Republican state senator. Imagine using your credit card to buy something, knowing that by the time you finish paying off the debt, you'll have spent nearly double the original price due to interest It's a poor financial decision most of us would avoid. Yet this is precisely what democrats in the state legislature are

asking California taxpayers to do with Proposition four. Add ten billion dollars in bond debt with billions more in interest to pay for ambiguous, short term, so called quote climate programs. Let's be clear about what bonds are. This isn't free money. They're Wall Street loans with high interest rates. The real winners with bonds are wealthy investors, and the losers, of course, are taxpayers. In February, California already had seventy nine billion

dollars in bond debt. Earlier this year, Proposition one added another six point four billion dollars. Now we're Prop one was funding some kind of like mental health th REEC sources or something like that. Now we're being asked to shoulder another ten billion dollars plus interest, this time for supposed climate programs that are vaguely defined and in some cases dubiously labeled. Guess who's paying for it all? You

the taxpayer. What's most concerning is that many items in Prop four don't even meet the basic definition of infrastructure. So that's a lot of how this is being sold as Oh, we need new environmental, green energy infrastructure. Bonds should be reserved for projects that offer lasting value, such as roads, bridges, or water storage that will still be useful decades from now, long after the forty year bond

payments have been made. Instead, Prop four will spend millions on so called infrastructure for farmers' markets, things like pop up tents, restrooms, and hand washing stations. It will also fund workforce development end quote to help quote mitigate unemployment end quote, which of course is completely unrelated to infrastructure and climate. To top it off, the bond also includes grants for exhibit galleries at zoos and museums, and even van pool vehicles for low income workers. Does that sound

like climate related infrastructure. While these programs may be worth pursuing, they shouldn't be funded with long term debt. Again, bonds should only be used for long term investments, not temporary programs that will be gone before the debt is paid off. Then he talks about previous bond measures and their unfulfilled promises. So he writes, in twenty fourteen, California voters passed a bond measure that would provide billions of dollars, specifically for

water storage projects. Nearly a decade has passed, and despite all that funding, not a single drop of water has been stored. The promises made to voters have gone unfulfilled, leaving many to wonder why Democrat politicians are asking for even more funding now with Prop four. If they can't deliver on their commitments from a decade ago, why should taxpayers believe that another loan will result in anything meaningful Before approving more borrowed money, voters deserve to see results

from previous investments. Bonds come with long term financial burdens that eventually can cut into essential public services. Governor Newsom has already declared a budget emergency due to the state's spending outpacing revenue. California also faces a fifty six billion dollar deficit, and the addition of Prop fours bond debt would only worsen the situation. What's even more frustrating is that just two years ago, California had nearly a one

hundred million dollar budget surplus. Had these climate projects truly been a priority, the state could have used a mere ten percent of that surplus to fund all the programs. In this bond instead, due to poor financial miss management, voters are now being asked to approve borrowing money with interest when these programs could have been funded with cash on hand. Recklessly borrowing money for pet projects is not

just fiscally irresponsible, it's a disservice to California's taxpayers. With upwards of twenty billion dollars in debt being added to our state's credit card, voters should ask why critical services like safe drinking water and wildfire prevention are not already a priority in the the state's general fund budget. What's in the budget that takes precedence over these essential needs? What is in the budget he has that takes precedents

over these essential needs? Before expecting Californians to sign off on billions in new debt which will ultimately come at the expense of future generations, Democrat politicians need to answer for their failures on previous bonds and why they can't pay for these supposed essential services through the existing budget. Kind of sums it up. We shouldn't be voting for more of these bond measures. And that's the thing that this bond measure in particular seems like a real kind

of Democrat laundry list of things they like. It just seems like kind of a slush fund that probably some big time donors were sort of pushing and Democrats are just going along with it. And I think that the thing with a bond measure is that it doesn't have the sting of just spending the money out of your actual normal budgetary process. It doesn't have that kind of sting. You get all the money up front, and you pay the money slowly over time, but over time that builds.

That builds locally in the form of very high property taxes that make housing more and more and more unaffordable. Property taxes that it's not just paid by property owners that you know, landlords will pass that cost on to renters in the form of higher rent. So again, I think if you see the word bond, vote no. Vote no as fast as you humanly can. Vote no on Prop two, Vote no on Prop four, Vote no on your president, unified Clovist, unified stations, inner community college bonds.

Just vote no. Tired of trying to get money up front and pay for it over the course of forty years and you're spending twice as much when we return a completely unimportant story about Beyonce and Taylor Swift. Next on The John Girardi Show, this is a completely unimportant, little celebrity thing about Beyonce versus Taylor Swift. So, Taylor Swift has had this incredibly popular over the last year

or two, She's kind of exploded in popularity. She's had this very successful tour where she was, you know, playing for football arenas and getting gazillions of dollars in her profiles really shot up, and I think a lot of liberals were uncomfortable with this because Taylor Swift's a white girl, and she's obviously way more popular and famous right now than any black entertainer, and more famous than Beyonce, who's probably the most out of black female singers, divas whatever,

it was, probably the most famous. So all of a sudden, Beyonce comes out with a song called Texas Hold'em, which is kind of like a country song. It's terrible. I mean, I think all Taylor Swift's music is terrible too. It's terrible. I feel like it's the most contrived thing possible. It's the record label saying, see, we're not racist. Beyonce is good. She's got a country album. It's the most contrived thing possible and the music stinks, but then again, Taylor Music's

Taylor Swift's music stinks too. Anyway, that'll do it. John Dirolady Show, see you next time on Power Talk