CTP (S3EAugSpecial6) Why Decentralizing Power Matters More Than Ever

CTP (S3EAugSpecial6) Why Decentralizing Power Matters More Than Ever
Exploring more of the fascinating intersection of Activism, Community Engagement, Faith / Religion, Human Nature, Politics, Social Issues, and beyond   
Jose Nino, a Venezuelan-born writer and deputy editor at Headline USA, joins the podcast to discuss constitutional principles, the dangers of federal overreach, and the importance of localism in preserving American liberty.
• Born in Venezuela and raised in North Texas, Jose has lived throughout the US and abroad
• Author of two ebooks: "How Socialism Destroyed Venezuela" and "The 10 Myths of Gun Control"
• Counters the misrepresentation of Christian principles by socialist advocates
• Explains the fundamental difference between a constitutional republic versus mob democracy
• Criticizes federal overreach, particularly in education policy
• Advocates for a proactive agenda focused on local engagement and decentralized governance
• Jose's writings have been cited by members of Congress
• Find Jose on Twitter/X @JoseAlNino and see GumRoad.com 

Chapters

• 0:38 Welcome to Constitutionalist Politics Podcast
• 4:43 Jose Nino's Background and Publications
• 9:56 Socialism's Destruction and Christian Values
• 15:06 Constitutional Republic vs. Mobocracy
• 20:39 Federal Overreach and Education Control
• 25:03 Localism and Reclaiming Constitutional Powers
• 29:19 Final Thoughts and Contact Information

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:19

Welcome to the Constitutionalist Politics Podcast, aka CTP. I am your host, joseph M Leonard, and that's L-E-N-A-R-D. Ctp is your no-muss, no-fuss, just me, you and occasional guest-type podcast. Really appreciate you tuning in. As Graham Norton would say, let's get on with the show. Hello everyone, welcome to another Constitutionalist Politics podcast. If you're looking behind the scenes video, yes, the new background with the city of Detroit in there. I dropped politics but we still get into them. And welcoming me today, joining me today, is Jose Nino. No, not like the Nino the Pinta and the Santa Maria Nino, nor like La Nina, more like El Nino, jose Nino. Right, welcome to the show, jose.

Speaker 1: 1:34

Yeah, thank you so much for having me on, ed for the thoughtful introduction. Well, I like to joke around with people with their names, because I'm touchy about name. My last name looks French like Leonard. It's not. It's actually derived from Polish. It was Leonard Awoskiewicz or whatever at some point. It's Leonard without an O and I have to go by Joseph M Leonard because there is a Joseph Lennard, who's also a Christian author out of South Carolina. So I'm touchy about names. I get it and I like joking about it because you know humor helps put things in people's heads.

Speaker 2: 2:24

It's funny you mentioned that because technically in Spanish my name would be Nino because of the tilde, the accent mark on the second N, but in government documents in the U? S it's technically Nino, but there are. I do have a. I have noticed I have like a doppelganger. That's in a somewhat tangential field, like in terms of, like, international relations. I've seen it when I go on LinkedIn but yeah, but they don't really look like me, so there's not going to be any confusion there.

Speaker 1: 2:53

Maybe you need to start doing like I do Put the middle initial in yeah, I'd like to joke. Yeah, I'd like to joke. In fact I've got my sixth international book will be out now by the time this show airs the book of Kennedy, project Carpe Diem. And in fact I joke in the book in there that I'm Joseph M Leonard. He is Josephus Lenard, I am not he. He is Josephus Lenard, I am not he, he is not me. Those aren't pseudonyms for each other, right? I am not he, he is not me, and neither of us will be confused for Shakespeare At any rate. Yeah, welcome to the show. Before we get into, I have circled on my notes, published author and items cited by members of Congress. But let's put the garbage truck in reverse Beep, beep, beep and get into the proverbial Haw, ah, christian show, pun intended. Proverbial usual first question who are you Right? Where were you born? Where were you raised?

Speaker 2: 4:24

And all that nitty-gritty stuff. So, yes, I am a freelance writer and I write for multiple websites on political issues and that range from immigration to foreign policy. I'm also like the deputy editor of headlineline USA, that's generally my main gig. But I was born in, actually, venezuela, but I grew up in North Texas, specifically the Dallas area. I've lived all over the United States. I'm actually currently in Charlotte, north Carolina, and I've also lived abroad, oh yeah.

Speaker 1: 5:00

Take a trip to South Carolina and say hello to Joseph Lennard to me, because he don't ever return my emails or my outreach. We've got similar names. We should connect and at least have a conversation, but he never gets back to me.

Speaker 2: 5:18

And anyway I could, perhaps I could link you up with him.

Speaker 1: 5:22

You could. You could be my ambassador. Yeah, you could be my ambassador, right.

Speaker 2: 5:27

Yes, yeah, your liaison.

Speaker 1: 5:30

Anyway, I interrupted you, so you're currently in North Carolina. Where else have you been?

Speaker 2: 5:38

Well, I've lived abroad as well. I've lived some time in Columbia, ph philae.

Speaker 1: 5:44

Yeah, I'm pretty well traveled, but now I'm very much settled in, though, in the united states okay, so let's get into, I guess, first the published author part, because we have that in common, of course. What are some of your books? Do you have any to hold up for behind the scenes video there?

Speaker 2: 6:11

no, they're actually two ebooks. One is how socialism destroyed venezuela and amen to that brother amen and the other is the 10 myths of gun control.

Speaker 1: 6:26

Oh, there's a. I don't even need to write those down, I know I need to go get those immediately after this. There are ebooks on amazon kindle, then I take it yeah, well, they're mostly on pds.

Speaker 2: 6:45

You can acquire them from dumb road, the platform gumroad.

Speaker 1: 6:49

I can send you a link to that as well yeah, please do, and then that way I can what go ahead and vocalize the link, so, and then I'll also put it on the scroll at the bottom and try to remember to put it in the show notes. What is it?

Speaker 2: 7:09

It's. If you go to gumroadcom G-U-M roadcom you can type in how socialism destroyed Venezuela and or the ten myths of gun control, and you'll find it with Jose Nino. I can also let me find the exact link as well, because I don't have that off the top.

Speaker 1: 7:30

Okay, right, how Socialism Destroyed Venezuela. Yeah, I go on and on and on on this show. Why I felt called. So many Matthew 23 Christians seem to think Jesus was a socialist. You're not reading your Bible, right? The Bible and Jesus is about free will, right, charity. We are to want to be our brother's keeper, not forced through worldly communism, which is a bastardization of biblical community at the point of the barrel of a gun to have money and whatnot stolen from us to give to others. Because the Bible also makes the distinction between the unwilling and the unable, like I myself am on disability right now. I prefer to have my six-figure IT salary, but instead I'm barely able to keep the roof over the head, the lights on and the show going on. Disability budget, disability income right, there's a distinction. I have no obligation whatsoever under biblical community to those who are unwilling to bother, to want to do anything for themselves. I have obligation to others who are unable for whatever reason.

Speaker 2: 9:14

Yes, yeah, I'm not the most well-versed on Christianity, but I do see a good deal of leftists using christian appeals christian appeals to support their agenda and it's very disingenuous. I mean, socialism and totalitarian communism can just be refuted by pointing out basic economic facts that completely seizing the means of production of the economy and abolishing private property is just going to lead to unmitigated disaster and just turn your country into an economic basket case at best or at worst, like a complete totalitarian police state where you live in economic misery and face constant repression yeah, I pretty much can tell how you're going to react to who I called madman dummy.

Speaker 1: 10:15

Right, the idiot running for New York mayor right now, mad dummy or whatever his name I call. Like I say, madman dummy wanting to seize control, take over and have government-run grocery stores. Yeah, that'll work just as well as the DMV does. And what will be next? Because these commies never end there in seizing control and turning over to government bureaucrats, aka their friends, their family, their donors, and it never works. Next will be what? South African style, let's seize the farms so that we raise the cattle and grow the crops to sell in the store. And of course, then we've got to seize the middleman distributors there too, and it all goes to H-E-L-L. Yes.

Speaker 2: 11:21

Yeah, I mean this is obviously, like politicians, really demagogic. Politicians get their start more often than not at the local level and they want to kind of create this microcosm of an economy, of this really kind of race-based communism. Because I haven't really researched Mondami that much, but I've noticed that he has said, like, talked about redistributing, like, the assets and properties of, like, white people in New York City and this is, you mentioned, south Africa.

Speaker 1: 11:49

That's just like there yeah.

Speaker 2: 11:51

Yeah, and it's like, and it's just like a really dumb policy. I mean, new York City has a lot of corrupt politics. I mean that's not even like up for debate. But what he's proposing I just don't see as like the solution. Like there's a lot of things you could say about like corporate policies in the us, but just like abolishing private property is a lot like the last thing you should do to like address um corporate inequities and all that yeah, oh, we, some people refuse.

Speaker 1: 12:21

this is the reason why they don't want history taught in school, because some refuse to learn from it and they want to ensure for their own power and control. The issue is never the issue with the leftists. The issue is their power, their control more, more, more for them, less, less, less for the average person. But they failed to learn from the Bradford colony and the Mayflower Commie Compact. It was a communist compact long before Marx ever thought he was having an original ideal and they almost all starved to death. So Bradford pivoted and Squanto came along also. That was divine intervention. An Indian who spoke good English, proper English, probably better English than a lot of the settlers. Hey, I'm here, can I help? And yeah, we're all starving. Well, that's because it was a commonwealth. He instituted private property ownership, individual personal free will, rights over collectivist rights, and the rest, they say, is history. Our founders knew that and that's exactly why we aren't a communist nation, nor are we a mobocracy. We are a constitutionally limited representative republic.

Speaker 2: 14:25

Yes, yes, this is something that's generally ignored that the US is a system that is supposedly designed to prevent mob rule, especially at the federal level. At the state level, you can have your little referendums and local ballot initiatives, but there's a clearly delineated separation of powers and also Republican features of government that are designed to check the excesses of impassioned mobs, because you'll get situations like the French Revolution, which was a Saturnalia of violence and just radicalism, the bench we had to be put down by Napoleon, but like, yeah, like. That's something that's generally not understood because of the lack of like civics education in the US, where people like to talk about banal terms like democracy, which have become almost meaningless now, and instead what they're really promoting is a system of stealing from so-called like oppressor groups, like white people, and redistributing it to victim, so-called victim groups, and it's just completely off base. You have to go back to first principles if you want to solve problems yes, I'm with you wholeheartedly there.

Speaker 1: 15:48

yeah, the divide and conquer. And, like barnum used to say, a sucker born every minute. Right now, if Barnum were alive in the computer age he'd be a sucker born every nanosecond. And that's what the left plays on the mobocracy theme of playing on useful idiots lie, lie, lie and always lie to to pass idiotic referendums. And I've got an article on beforeitsnewscom about Today's fascia Federalists versus the original Federalists. Now even Jefferson, as a Federalist, and others immediately started to undermine the Constitution, the compromise that was the Constitution, because the Articles of Confederation didn't go far enough but the states joined freely the union. The union did not create the states, and federalists of today want ever more growing federalist tyrannical power and destruction of the state's rights. You're seeing that, you know that.

Speaker 2: 17:16

you speak out against that yes, I mean, I um, I think that the ultimate like sovereignty is guaranteed, like in the constitution, that the powers like not delegated to the federal government are delegated to states, and then like states can then devolve that power to like local bodies and, eventually, the individual, because it's supposed to be protecting like property rights and the freedom of association yeah, and yet at the same time we have an illegal usurpation, overreach of powers Jimmy Carter creating, to pay back the teachers union, to help get them elected, the Department of Education, which again is that fascia federalism dictating to the states.

Speaker 1: 18:07

How and I say it's the new caller ours it's how and I say it's the new caller ours they're peddling radicalism, raunch and racism that divide and conquer through CRT versus arithmetic reading, writing, arithmetic history, soft core porn in the schools, rather than to kill a mockingbird to teach about equality and individual rights. The Constitution is silent. It is a state right for control of education. You would agree with me on that, yes.

Speaker 2: 18:50

Yeah, yes, yes, yeah. Education really should not be administered by the federal government. And, yeah, the constitution is pretty clear that's a function that's devolved to the states. States can craft whatever policies they see fit on that matter and it is amazing.

Speaker 1: 19:07

it's a clear matter of history. The idiotic communist line. I call the left the commie fascist socialists. This isn't the 1930s. The National Socialist Deutschlandabreiterparte socialists, later known as fascists, like El Duche and Italy fascists and Franco fascists in Spain, were fighting Moscow-backed communists at the time. Today they're all the same.

Speaker 2: 19:44

They're only minor variations on the same theme and I'm betting you agree with me on that same theme and I'm betting you agree with me on that yeah, today we are facing definitely unique challenges like the woke cultural left that is cultural Marxism, yep that is just obsessed with promoting demographic replacement via mass migration, promoting sexual degeneracy and also engaging in this race-based form of Marxism, where they're obsessed with trying to, like I mentioned before, promote agendas that involve the redistribution of resources based on racial and even gender lines, on so-called to the benefit of so-called victim groups. There is like definitely unique challenges to this epoch, but there are similarities in the type of radical spirit of these people.

Speaker 1: 20:43

Yeah, well, time is flying already, so let me move to the issue of views have been cited by members of Congress. Now, I used to have a friend. He got himself in trouble a re-election scandal where he paid for petition signatures and who he bought them from had a lot of fake fraud names on there, so he ended up having to drop out of Congress rather than get reelected. Thaddeus McCotter, here in Michigan and back when you'll recall and they still try the left tries to call the GOP the party of no N-O, as in, we don't stand for anything, we're just always against everything. Well, I created the talking point and, through Thaddeus McCotter for a while, it got adopted in Congress. On the right, we are the party of K-N-O-W. We say N-O to your leftist idiocy because it is unconstitutional, and we K-N-O-W better. We're for things that are constitutional. We're not going to go with your leftist agenda. So what kind of talking points, indeed, had permeated the right side of Congress out of your materials?

Speaker 2: 22:26

Yes, so I do agree that it's good to have have a proactive agenda against the left and just the political establishment, because I think the political establishment as well is a big threat.

Speaker 1: 22:42

I'm glad you said that, because I need to make clear here. I don't wear the red Republican hat. I consider myself a Republican, a real one. I speak out every bit as much against rhinos and senos, conservatives in name only, who are often siding with leftists, destroying our republic too. So I just wanted to make that clarification. You strike me as the same wanted to make that clarification.

Speaker 2: 23:16

You strike me as the same. Yes, and this goes into the point I'm a firm believer of, like a proactive agenda where I want to roll back a lot of the excesses that we've seen over the last century of the government growing and bring more power back to the states and, ultimately, the people local government and have stuff like much less closer to constituencies and not concentrated in DC, because concentrated power is the enemy of liberty and economic stability in this country. So it's best that we work to have a proactive agenda where we get locally engaged and stop corruption and also provide an alternative framework where we focus on localism and reactivating our communities.

Speaker 1: 23:59

I'm with you 100%. Are you familiar with the 1800s Norton v Shelby Township case?

Speaker 2: 24:10

No, not that I'm aware of.

Speaker 1: 24:12

I highly recommend you and everybody else go back in the CTP archives and listen to the show on Norton v Shelby. The Supreme Court ruled long ago and the case has been ignored on purpose by many, of course, who want a deep state, sino, rhino, leftist, liberal, progressive, commie fashy sociies, deep state establishment, hat control of everything that ruled. Indeed, there has been government usurpation and exerting unauthorized power, and that case is there to help roll some of it back, been rediscovered and starting to be used in court case arguments as we have the precedent. We have the Constitution, the number one overriding precedent, and then we have Norton v Shelby, which the court before Chief Justice Rob Turds, as I call him, chief Just Ass, he's not a constitutionalist, he's a political hack, a lot of times moderating the court and trying to keep limited scope rulings and said all of this unconstitutionality is indeed unconstitutional, has no valid authority and must be rolled back.

Speaker 2: 26:01

Yes, yes, I'd even say that the courts themselves, especially the Supreme Court, especially when it's under liberal, progressive control, has accumulated too much power, and this is part of my theme where I think that we need to really empower state governments and local governments now and obviously downsize the federal government, because this is going away from the foundational principles of the country.

Speaker 1: 26:31

Absolutely Positively. Agree, 100% there. And, as I said, wow, times time floating by. I try not to have shows that are very long. I call it today's Twitter attention span. Everybody, you know, can't see beyond the nose on their face. They, everybody wants. Give me the short, condensed version, so do you let's start to wrap things up Do you yourself, other than the gumroadcom where they can find those PDF books? Do you yourself personally have a website of your own or anything like that?

Speaker 2: 27:14

Yes, so I'm active on social media, first up on X slash Twitter at Jose Alnino A-L-N-I-N-O, and then you can find me on Substack, where I'm mostly active publishing articles, and that Substack is called Jose Nino Unfiltered and that's J-O-S-B-C-F dot Substack dot com. My podcast, el Nino Speaks, is there as well, and that is also on iTunes, spotify and it's also on YouTube as well.

Speaker 1: 27:48

Good stuff, good stuff. Thank you, jose. Good stuff, good stuff. Thank you, jose, al nino. That el nino. Like the weather phenomenon, so is al your middle name no, well, partially yes, technically yes, because it's alber. Yes, Okay yeah, and hence the J-O-S-E-A-L-N-I-N-O on social media. Okay yeah, you better start using the A in there to distinguish yourself from that imposter.

Speaker 2: 28:26

The namesake yeah.

Speaker 1: 28:29

Thank you again for coming on. Take care, god bless. Available anywhere, books are sold. If you have a locally run bookstore still near you, they can order it for you. And let me remind, over time the fancy high production items will come. But for now, for starters, it's just you, as a very appreciated listener by me. All substance, no fluff, just straight to key discussion points. A show that looks at a variety of topics, mostly politics, through a Christian, us constitutionalist lens. So again, thank you from the bottom of my heart. Take care, god bless. Like and subscribe to Constitutionalist Politics Podcast and share episodes. We need your help.