ChristiTutionalist Politics | Christian Perspectives on Constitutional Issues

CTP (S3ENovSpecial3) A Constitutional Call: Free Will, Debate, And Duty

• Joseph M. Lenard | Christian Activist & Author in Politics • Season 3

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CTP (S3ENovSpecial3) A Constitutional Call: Free Will, Debate, And Duty
We explore what “We the People” really means, why constitutional literacy matters, and how honest debate sharpens public life. Michaela Cox shares her path to TEDx and a multi-book series, connecting history, incentives, and the hard work of informed citizenship.
• Michaela’s Texas–Louisiana roots and path to authorship
• Why TEDx and writing to build influence and clarity
• The aim of We the People Are as a constitutional series
• Sports-rule analogy for civic understanding
• Article V and why amendments are intentionally hard
• Property, incentives, and lessons from early colonies
• Free speech, media incentives, and balanced debate
• Outcomes over intentions in public policy   

A Short Story: A Lasting Legacy? book Trailer

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SPEAKER_00:

Hello, welcome to another episode of Pristitutionalist Podcast. I am your host, Joseph M. Leonard. That's L-E-N-A-R-D. It looks French. It's not, it's Leonard without an O. Thank you for tuning in. As Graham Norton used to say on his show. Let's get on with the show. Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Christitutionalist Politics. I am Joseph M. Blonard. Joining me today is Michaela Cox, and she's involved with a project series. She's also a TEDx speaker. We the people are question mark. But before we get to any of that, let's do the quintessential first question. Who the hell is Michaela? Right? Where were you born? Where were you raised? Where are you now? How much time did you spend in prison and for what offense?

SPEAKER_01:

Some people might wonder if I had. No, I'm kidding. Um, I don't know.

SPEAKER_00:

You you look you look like a criminal. Yeah, actually. It's just a joke. Just a joke, people. Just a joke.

SPEAKER_01:

Lighten up. For anyone that can see this, I'm obviously uh redhead, so I'm a southern Texas girl. So I was born in Houston, Texas. And I moved from Texas in 88 when I was a kid with my parents to Louisiana. I lived in Louisiana to 2007, went north for 10 years uh with my husband at the time, and then had to move back in 2017 back to Louisiana. Was not what I thought the plan was gonna be, but that is what it is as it may be. And I'm figuring things out living down here again in the south. So, which I love the south.

SPEAKER_00:

I just I don't detect any particular regional dialect though, because you've moved around enough that y'all, I I go to East Texas, and my friends know when I come back, they're like, You went to East Texas, didn't you?

SPEAKER_01:

I can pick it up quite easily.

SPEAKER_00:

So you fall back to old habits when you go back to Texas.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah, I know. But I live here with my two kids and doing life, enjoying the summertime, and so you know.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I'm here in Michigan. I'm not fond of the winters, but I oh I'm not either.

SPEAKER_01:

I that was the one thing I didn't like about up north. I can't, I'm too southern for all that winter crap. I'm like, I can't do this.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, but I choose to stay. I I would prefer to be living in like Vegas, you know. It does get cold. People don't realize if they've never visited Vegas. I used to vacation there a lot. Uh it does get cold in the winter. You don't realize, you know, the dry heat matters, and at night it does get cold when that sun goes down. Vegas itself stays a little warmer because it's kind of in a skillet. I always joke they should change the name from Clark County to Skillet County because you got that cook effect from all the surrounding mountains.

SPEAKER_01:

It's probably to fry an egg or scramble egg in the concrete like you can in Houston.

SPEAKER_00:

So yeah, oh, definitely in the summer. I've been in uh Vegas in November. Wonderful, but again, it gets cool at night. I've been in Vegas in July, also, and oh, no relief from the heat except to be in the casinos.

SPEAKER_01:

It's hot in Venet too, but we have the double whammy of the humidity that's ridiculous.

SPEAKER_00:

Humidity, people don't understand Michigan has a whole lot of humidity, too, because way back when Michigan was mostly swamp, like Florida parts drained. We drained most of Michigan, we got a bunch of lakes still, so we still have that high humidity. At any rate, let's talk about how you got into TEDxing first. Let's let's go there.

SPEAKER_01:

Um, I wanted to. I heard about it was a great way to get social credibility, and I thought that it would be a way to leverage influence and impact, kind of a one and done, but then have a bigger stage to do it in one fell swoop. So I sought it out and went for it.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it makes sense. I've not sought to do that. I I'm a former IT guy, I could do IT TEDxes also as an author. I've one of my books is how to write a book and get it published since tips and techniques to help others write, so I could do a TEDx on that, but I've never gotten around to looking into it. So, where did this we the people are question come into being?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I'm an author and I have written 14 books, and many I'm writing one right now, and many more to go in my sixth series that I'm building out, including probably two more series that'll be added to that. It's what I've always done, it's what I who I am, it's what I feel drawn to. Um I I've warned my mother when it comes to politics, she gets blamed for this, and she knows it. So I'm not saying anything she hasn't heard.

SPEAKER_00:

You're not talking behind her back.

SPEAKER_01:

She knows. Um I grew up with a mom who watched C-SPAN and Capital uh Capital Gain back in the day, and you know, listened to Crossfire and Pat Buchanan and who I forget all the guys were on it. I was a kid, I didn't pay attention back then.

SPEAKER_00:

Um and I remember Alan Keyes, the left winger, and Pat Buchanan, the right wing. Right. There a show on CNN that actually used to have balance then, unlike now. Right.

SPEAKER_01:

And I remember being in Dallas, summer of 87, and she had to watch the hearings on the Oliver North Contra, or whatever it was called.

SPEAKER_00:

El Rand Contra, yes.

SPEAKER_01:

Couldn't leave the house until she got her fill of the hearing. So, and then when Thomas uh Clarence was getting his Senate hearing confirmations, I grew up watching her, watching that. And I okay, I'm gonna tell on myself a little bit, I was a little bit of an odd duck. Um, when I was about that same time, actually, probably 86, 87, I'd have to look it up in my book. We were living in Longview, it's a town uh, you know, on the to the east of Dallas on I-20. But um, I think it was there must have been a Supreme Court case going on that dealt with the scope of whether the right to burn the American flag fell within the scope of the First Amendment right of freedom of speech. Don't even get me started. Um, and I was mad and ticked off, and I had something to say about it. And my mom said, Well, write an editorial. So I wrote an editorial at eight. I mean, what what who in the hell kid does that? But apparently I do. So politics, Apple doesn't fall very far from the tree. In college, I debated between, you know, I was originally in elementary ed, I switched majors, thank God. Thank you, Lord Jesus, for that protection. Uh, from the stories that I'm I respect teachers, don't get me wrong, but I hear my friends talk about their I'm like, yeah, that wasn't gonna be for me.

SPEAKER_00:

Like, like in law enforcement, like in any IT, like in anything, there's good apples, there's bad apples, right?

SPEAKER_01:

And so I went, I switched to liberal arts because the thought process was at the time in the education field that if you want to do secondary, you should get specialized in your content and then not worry about being taught how to taught. You just learn your material. So I went back and forth between history, English, poli sci. I ended up dropping the poli science.

SPEAKER_00:

Actual core curricula, unlike today. Right. Yeah, imagine that. I call it the new core R's radicalism, bronch, and racism through CRT. Reading, writing, arithmetic, history, all the core R's are all out the window. They're peddling Colleen Hoover soft core porn instead of tequila mockingbird to talk about equality and the you know the Christian value of not bearing false witness and all, yeah, all the moral stuff is out, all the immoral stuff is in. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

So when I got my master's, I did political science and American government, and I felt like I wanted to write a series about it. I do personally have opinions. I don't know if that's apparent yet. I do have my own opinions and beliefs, but the purpose and and I know where I stand and I know what I believe, and I will admit I am on paper a Republican conservative, but that's not necessarily because I always agree with the party. That's just I want to be able to vote in the primaries to pay because of the way that each law state does their primaries. Oh, I'm with you there. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00:

I um I don't wear the red Republican hat always, although I consider myself a Republican rhinos and sino's conservatives in name only. I oppose every bit as much as I do the commie, fasci sociocrats left.

SPEAKER_01:

But the the way our country does primaries is so confusing. I want to be able to vote what I need to vote in, and that's a whole nother part of academia and that I don't really think is something we want to get into the weaves about today.

SPEAKER_00:

But my point is But from all this is where we derived we the people are like I've got a petition at change.org. Uh remember the old contract with America that was you know, only partially implemented. I wrote a new we the people demand list that's available at change.org. All those things we talked about that we've ignored after Clinton and Gingrich were out of office, and we've gone back to spendaholics bankrupting our nation again. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

But um, so I'm a constitutionalist first and foremost. So the point is, I wanted to write a series explaining what we need to be paying attention to. I don't care whether someone agrees or disagrees with it, if you don't understand the constitution and the fundamental three-word expression that is the cornerstone and crux of that whole document and our way of life and our government. We the people, if you can't get that and understand the constitution, then you don't understand what America's supposed to be about. You don't understand what we're supposed to be protecting and defending. And if we can't understand what we're supposed to protect and defend, then we don't know what we're supposed to be defending, and we will lose it because we don't know.

SPEAKER_00:

The whole point of the show creation, prostitutionalist, biblical community, free will, charity, choice. We are to want to be our brother's keeper, not worldly bastardization, communism of biblical community where it's by force and theft and at the barrel of the gun. Those are two different things. Jesus was not a socialist communist, he believed in God gave us free will. We are to want to do these things, not be forced to do these things. And the Bible makes the distinction between those who are unable to do things and no obligation to you who are unwilling to bother to do things for yourself. Right?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, those are important distinctions. So my point is I feel like all Americans need to be informed and educated as to what is okay. You I'll use this analogy, and I say this a lot. You play a sport, I don't care, pick one football, be it soccer, be American football, be basketball, be baseball, hockey, I don't care. You're not, or tennis or golf or whatever, or any other ones I can't think of off the top of my head right now. The list is endless. But the point is volleyball, let's throw that in there. The point is, in any sport that you play, if you don't understand the rules of that game and you walk onto that field or that court or whatever is the area of which you play in, the ice or whatever, the baseball diamond, the football field, if you don't understand the rules of the game of which you are supposed to be playing, you're not gonna play it very well, and you're gonna have a world of problems, and it's not gonna go your way. You're not gonna be able to win it.

SPEAKER_00:

So and also while we're individuals and we try to excel as individuals, short of singles, tennis, and golf, most games are still a team sport, and you have to learn to work and cooperate together for a collective. But again, that's not communist collectivism, that is personal individual free will coming together collectively for the benefit of ourselves and others in free choice to do so, not forced to do so.

SPEAKER_01:

I wanted to create a series that walk the individuals of our country that individually end up collectively creating the we the people, so that it's not an issue of whether you agree or not, it's an issue of you're informed and understand and educated on what this country is supposed to be, so that you can know how you are to contribute to the collective individually and collectively, we the people, so we can um preserve, maintain, defend, and protect what we are supposed to be.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, like our founder said, right? We all hang together or we all hang separately. We have to come together as we the people, or uh but again, by choice and focusing on things we can agree on. People didn't learn the lesson. That's why I back to the core ours. They don't want to teach history in school. People don't learn from the Bradford Colony, the communist compact, the Mayflower Compact was a Commonwealth Communist Commune Compact, and they all almost starve to death because it's human nature, it fails to take into account human nature, and people will get more and more lazy, and eventually there's not enough people to pull the cart of all the people who are wanting to sit in the cart. They almost all starve to death. Bradford had to pivot from communal property to private property ownership, from collectivist rights to personal, individual, free will, choice, biblical community rights. But we don't teach that. People know, oh, Mayflower Compact, yeah, uh, it's what America was founded on. No, it's failing is what we were founded on. What Bradford did after it failed is what we're founded on.

SPEAKER_01:

So that's how we the people are. And I did the question mark so that people would think, okay, what is she going to tell us? What is she going to explain? Let's explore this because we need to learn and have an understanding and a comprehension of what we need to understand. And even if you want to change the rules, whether you do or don't, you still have to understand the rules in order to know what you may choose to or not choose to the correct way, which is why our founding fathers were wise and smart enough to include. I believe it's article five. I get it flip-flop with seven, but I believe it's article five. You can look it up. If I messed it up, I apologize. Article five to provide the correct, very carefully, wisely, should not be done lightly or willy-nilly all the time, and to be thought through properly through the proper channels that are hard to do because it shouldn't be changed every other day. A channel and process for doing so when needed.

SPEAKER_00:

And so exactly. And the constitutional amendment was made hard for a reason, right? We were a republic, not a mobocracy, not an ineptocracy, not a kleptocracy, like the left keeps trying to push on us. We are a republic to make it harder, as you said. So you can't just willy willy, willy-nilly on a whim, change everything overnight. The mobocracy mentality of two wolves and a sheep voting what's for dinner. No, the sheep is protected in a minority status. And when we say minority status, we're not talking skin tone, you morons.

SPEAKER_01:

Or actually the loudest minority that seems like the majority when it's really not, which also can happen.

SPEAKER_00:

Especially given today's social media environment and left-wing media, though the smallest voices appear to be so loud, and the majority, and they're not like you know, not to single out any particular organization or uh or grouping, but one percent of society is trying to wag the dog, as the saying goes.

SPEAKER_01:

Yep. So that's how I've created the series, and I'm in the mid. Well, I was in the middle of writing book two, which is straight up constitutional, and I'll be back to that later this year.

SPEAKER_00:

I I I like you, and I take back you look like a criminal, but it's clear there's a whole lot of people on the left who would like to lock you up as a criminal, and me in the cell next to you, because we talk biblical Judeo-Christian ethos, foundations of our nation's truths. Uh the Magna Carta before that. If you don't want to be religious, right? We are an evolution of a systems of governance never before seen on this planet. And as Reagan says, if we lose it here, it's gone again forever. We're back to the tyranny of kings or fascists or socialists or communists who want their minority controlling the majority, pretending it's a democracy by lying to people and fooling and tricking people into voting for their own tyrannical underpinnings, underminings.

SPEAKER_01:

I mean, you're not wrong, because we've seen over arguably, at least since probably, I don't know if we went far back as 2008, uh 2008, but at least starting in 2012 and 16, I would argue this whole movement of wanting to um what's the word I'm looking for, criticize and bully and uh uh discriminate against and have horrible names calls for the conservative right with um being the deplorables, the self-censorship, right? They can't I I have and I'll try to remember the party, the tea bag party I'll try to remember the pull up the teabag party, and so we've seen these cycles of them villainizing and you know demonizing, so you're not wrong, and them wanting to censor and silence exactly, and it's twisting and warping of language.

SPEAKER_00:

I have several pieces I've written on that, right? They cannot win an argument telling you what they really truly want to do, what they really truly want believe. They have to lie about it, right? As Barnum said, a sucker born every minute, they fool people into voting for their own chains.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I agree. You see it all the time in many different ways. There's a lot of that.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I knew immediately when I saw We the People Are that we were I because I don't demand people be of uh absolute like mind on this show. I I I've had atheists on my Christian show, I've had communists on my pro-cristitutionalist constitutionalist show. You have a right to your opinion, you don't have a right to your own set of facts, however. And right, if you're being honest about what you're wanting and saying you're going to do, okay, you can have that opinion. You don't get to base your opinion on delusion.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I agree with you because another thing that's gotten lost, I would say, in more recent years in our the great experiment of American, our country, and the the political system and the formula which we live under, because it was it is still a great experiment. And that actually takes me back to another point you were talking about. People have debated the issue as to whether the constitution is a living or a dead document. It's very much living because it is evolving, it can change it has to be. Amended, yes, and keep up with current society that long has thankfully surpassed and like slavery, fathers. Like Frederick Douglass.

SPEAKER_00:

A lot of leftists like to quote an old Frederick Douglass paper about once a slave, always a slave. That was when he was dumb. It by his own admission, he was ignorant. When he educated himself, he became a Republican who loved that when he understood what the three-fifths clause was really about, limiting power of slaveholders, not promoting it and helping keep it, because slavery was going to end here eventually. But the great compromise of the Constitution, only way to do it was to allow some slavery for a while and the three-fifths clause to limit the power of slaveholders, not embolden them. But I it again, from that standpoint, yes, a living document, and hence the Republican amendments 13th, 14th, and 15th following the Civil War, freeing the slave and giving more people the right to vote.

SPEAKER_01:

That's right. And I like that the fact that you do what you do, because and this is going to be odd, maybe what I bring up next, is part of the biggest thing that makes America great that we have often forgotten in current times in American and political debate, is we are supposed to be a dialogue. We are supposed to be in a society that can share and talk about ideas the back and forth in a banter or in a discussion forum. And so some of my favorite things, I don't know if anybody will remember this in the audience. So you having on different guests of opposing views, that's supposed to be what we do. That's how we came up with the agreements, the compromises, because we talked about the ideals, we hashed them out. We came up with solutions because we wanted to do the best solution, and that can only come from debate and discussion and discourse and dialogue and conversations and have a forum for that.

SPEAKER_00:

So your but today's modern left wants to shut down speech and that continual twisting and warping of language so they can lie about what their real intentions are, make their agenda go through without much opposition or right. Yeah, we're supposed to be about speech, it's why it's the first amendment, but it's why the second is there to back up the first.

SPEAKER_01:

Exactly. Thank you. So I've always appreciated forums such as this, or I don't I do watch a lot of news, but some of my favorite ways to digest the news of the day is back in the day, I don't necessarily always agree with him because he is more liberal, although it could probably be said of him, he is probably an FDR crap more than anything, especially in his older age, is Bill Maher. I'm not saying I agree with Bill Maher. What I'm saying is he had a show on ABC back in the day called Politically Incorrect. But what that what I appreciated and respected him for doing is he provided a stage, a place of discussion, a forum to dialogue and debate, yeah, hash out the issues, just like on the other side of the spectrum now. When you go to Fox and I don't get to watch it every day, and I tend to tune in more when things are happening, like during the election, um, because I am a busy person and I have lots of aspects of my life. But if it was up to me, I would watch it every day. The five, they have a panel discussion where they get passed out.

SPEAKER_00:

The only shows I watch on Fox are five, the five and gutfeld. Right. Because there's balance on those programs. The comedians on late night TV, why uh what's his face, uh Colbert is getting canceled, is because it's all one-sided drivel. Gut felled, they're mainly right-wing panelists, but they make fun. They make fun at the right, also at the all the Chris Christie jokes endlessly about his weight, as well as jumbo fatsker. Yeah, but yeah, they'll make fun of both sides, whereas the other late night show hosts won't do that. And yeah, I don't watch the Fox News programs, I watch OAN and sometimes Newsmax, but Newsmax has also got some people with TDS there. I I want some fairness and balance. I want to explain both sides and why this side, the I don't care what your intentions are. I don't give a damn. Shut up, show, don't tell, right? You shall be known by your fruits. You can tell me all day your intentions are to help poor people, but when your policy on the left always hurts poor people the most while trying to steal money to give to poor people from people who are successful, your policies are failure. I don't care what you say, I care what you've done.

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. So actually, the I support any opportunity that allows for a forum for balanced debate and discussion and exchange of ideas. But actually, when you create uh I'm getting tongue-tied, I'm sorry, I promise I can talk. Uh, Frederick Douglass's once a slave, always a slave, while he changed his position. I almost wonder, I maybe not reading the whole context of that statement, so I don't want to take it out of context. It actually may have been somewhat prophetic and um apropos in the future without him knowing it, because in some ways, some aspects of our culture, maybe not in literal slavery, but in metaphorical slavery, they have found themselves still in chains of their of the policies of which, like you said, they're the the policies voting for our own chains, yes.

SPEAKER_00:

Right. So yeah, so in a way, you are correct. What uh what I mean you're hard by that, and I'm not trying to do that. No, you're absolutely right. What Douglass wrote made sense in a different uh meaning than what he was portraying at the he was indeed genius in that, and but again, the whole point is the left want to take the one piece out of complete context, refusing to talk about his corrections to what he wrote prior. They want to ignore all that.

SPEAKER_01:

So there is something to be said about the metaphorical and the modern day version of well, yes, we literally don't have that as an aspect of our society, but there are things, and it could be argued that even sometimes in our Christian lives, that if we're still um look at taxation, we're slaves to the state in that sense.

SPEAKER_00:

We're constantly working and giving how much being stolen from our wealth to redistribute to others. So, yes, so that metaphorical. Or as I like to say, I'm far too clever for metaphors. I use meta sixes, but I'm pumped. Right. But yeah, in that metaphorical state, absolutely it applies. A more modern, different kind of chains, but we still have them. And a lot of people want to vote for their own chains. Well, time flew by. Do you have a website we could drive people to? Um, I feel like we could have conversations for hours on everything. It's true with all my guests. We could talk for three hours, three days, three weeks, three months, then no one would tune in.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. But um, I would love to continue the conversation if that ever is opportunity for such. It's been great, and I've been grateful to be here and appreciate it. But yes, all of my books are on Amazon.

SPEAKER_00:

So oh, okay. So mainly people should look for your books via Amazon. You don't have a Michaela Cox.info or I do, but right now it's there seems to be technical issues with it that I haven't figured out yet.

SPEAKER_01:

So I've had so much on my plate I haven't addressed yet. So I don't want to send people to it currently until I get it resolved. But um I understand, yes. But as soon as it's up and running, I will be directing people back to that.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, 80% of all books nowadays are basically sold through Amazon. Whether you like Bezos or not, yeah, Bezos is an asshole and he's got far too much money. But that's where most books are sold. That's where you gotta have your books.

SPEAKER_01:

I hope to expand into um what's called in the publishing world, um, expanded distribution outside of the Amazon bubble at some point, but I have to learn another website to do that that I hope to be working on later this year. But right now, that's where it's at, and I'll keep doing the next thing and try and grow it. So, anyway.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, all right. Well, thank you, Michaela Cox. I didn't say your name enough, of course. In the final version of the video, for those looking on BitChute, Bright Eon, Daily Motion in France, Rumble, or YouTube, I do broadcast behind the scenes video on uh those five platforms. Your name will sprawl on the bottom, and it's carried mostly though on 25 plus audio platforms. So when the show airs, I can't promise when it will. I will, of course, reach out so you can share it across your social media and all that.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, thank you so much for a delightful um exchange of ideas.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it was a great discussion. I loved it. Yeah, uh we could go hours, but again, I call it today's Twitter attention span. Everybody wants the cliff notes, yeah. Right? Just just even though the headline nine times out of ten is misleading, if details matter, nice paragraph in the story, they basically tell you that headline was complete manure to mislead you because people won't read the details. Yep. Thank you again, Michaela Cox. Take care, God bless. Great, bye-bye. Like and subscribe to Christitutionalist Politics Podcast and Care Episodes. We need your help. Thank you for having tuned into another Christitutionalist podcast show. I really appreciate that you stop by. Again, please like, share, subscribe. We need you to help spread the constitutionalist movement. Thank you again. Take care. God bless. Love you all.

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Joseph M Lenard

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