Welcome to part one of our fourth conversation with our friend Mark Fischler, lawyer and constitutional professor. In part one, we explore the deeper roots of our endangered and faltering democracy and how we got here. Welcome to Deep Self, Society, Spirit, Life enhancing, paradigm rattling conversations with cutting edge thinkers, contemplatives and activists with Dr. Roger Walsh and John Dupuy.

Welcome to Deep Transformation, Self, Society, Spirit. I'm Roger Walsh and our co host is John Dupuy, author of the text Integral Recovery. And our guest today is Professor Mark Fischler. Mark has the distinction of being other than Hameed Ali, who we're doing a year long series with, of being most frequent guest, the only person we've had on four times. And that's a tribute to Mark, who's a remarkable human being and it's also a sad statement about our times that we really have sought his counsel as a legal scholar and expert on our contemporary situation or guidance and understanding in this very strange and in some ways many really tragic time we're facing. Mark is a professor of law and Criminal justice at Plymouth State University. He's the recipient of the university's Outstanding Teacher Award. He's also co host of the podcast Integral Justice Warrior in which he explores justice and contemporary issues from an integral that is an encompassing integrative perspective. And he's a dedicated contemplative practitioner. So, Mark, it's privileged to have you back with us and maybe since we are now a year into our current presidency or over a year, perhaps we could start by asking you to give us your kind of big picture perspective or reflection on this year and this administration.

Yeah, well, first off, honored to be with both of you. Thank you for the kind introduction. And you're both wonderful human beings with such wisdom. So it's a true honor to be back on your show, albeit in strange times. Good words, Roger. Yeah. To think back, right, a little over a year ago, Donald Trump was reelected to the presidency and came in on January 20th and really, really went at things with a directionality and purpose really unseen in a very long time, certainly in my lifetime. And of course with that there comes some good and some bad. But I would have to say the overall trajectory of Donald Trump's presidency is a kind of a devolution from democracy towards an authoritarian approach to governance. I'm not saying that we're there, but there are a whole lot of signs that that's the directionality. And so that kind of devolution has been, I think, the center of gravity of the reality that we in the United States have to grapple with, understand and deal with for those of us that cherish the principles of a democracy. Because those principles of a democracy really not only reflect, you know, shared governance, but it also, there's a spiritual aspect to it in the sense that there's a recognition of the interconnection of beings and the interconnection of perspectives and the value of hearing those perspectives. And so, you know, I'm concerned.

Mark, can I share something here? I just looked this up before we started and it was ChatGPT and I asked about the bullet point characteristics of fascism and she. I use a pronoun for her. She said this is this characteristic to Mussolini and Hitler that was not applying it to United States. But I'll just read through these quickly or not so quickly. Core ideological features. Ultranationalism. Myth of a national rebirth. Make America great again. Scapegoating an enemy within. Immigrants, Dems, liberals, Militarism and glorification of violence. The Department of War. Kill them all. Authoritarian one man rule. That is Donald's wet dream, I suppose. One party or dominant party state they currently control. Seems like the Supreme Court in both houses of Congress. Abolition of liberal democracy. Elections, independent courts. They're working on that. Police state repression. Does that bring up any images? You know, National Guard all over the streets. These ICE people that come in with the covered faces looking like a bunch of upgraded gestapo agents. Social and cultural patterns. Cult of tradition. Reaction against modern liberal culture. Anti intellectualism. Let's take out Harvard. Rigid hierarchy of patriarchy. Belief in natural social rankings by gender, race, class, glorification of masculinity, youth discipline and obedience. Mass rally politics. Have we seen that? Few and state directed capitalism is another point. Private property and big business remain, but unions are crushed and the state directs the economy toward national goals. The alliance of elites and a mass movement like why are the working class people supporting all these things for the ultra rich, for the oligarchs in our country, a good trick. Exploitation of crisis and humiliation. The immigration crisis comes to mind. The use of legal means plus violence. He has been so incredibly vindictive with the legal means at his disposal. Using the DOJ and the FBI just to go after people that committed the sin of opposing him being political opponents. Right, and I think that's a good stuff there. So if it's not fascism, it's darn close.

Yeah.

Well, to work off of what you said, the New York Times at the end of October ran a major editorial that was entitled is our democracy in decline and it then went through 12 aspects of what authoritarianism looks like and you mentioned many of them. But let me go through them in a kind of meticulous way with some of the evidence that you actually touched on so that we can kind of see where exactly we are with this, which I think ChatGPT did a great job with. So thank you for that, John.

So, and Mark, can I just ask. Maybe just start with the elementary.

Absolutely.

How would you define authoritarianism?

That's a great question. I think authoritarianism is when, you know, kind of I can define it in terms of what it isn't. It doesn't honor. It's more of like a dog eat dog. The best survive. It's quite futile in its orientation. It doesn't want to honor different perspectives. And it's, you know, it's an approach that takes the spoils and certainly tries to dominate its perceived enemies. And those are some, I think, hallmark pieces of authoritarianism.

Yeah, and so please.

Yeah, so with that. So one piece from the, you know, I'll go through all 12 and just mention some pieces that reflect sort of what John said. So one, Authoritarianism stifles dissent in speech. So using the Federal Communications Commission to stifle Jimmy Kimmel to pressure different TV stations to act in certain way. Revoking visas on college students who were outspoken on the issue of Gaza, you know, criticizing judges that rule against him and then make them targets of their MAGA crowd. In fact, 11 federal judges and their families have been threatened. That's one. 2. An authoritarian present persecutes political opponents. So to John's point, he secured indictments against James Comey and Letitia James. Those indictments have been dismissed because they hired the prosecutor who was hired, went about their job in the wrong way. But he's ordered investigations of Adam Schiff, Senator, and he's outed. He's gotten rid of employees in the FBI and the prosecutors, various prosecutor's office, Attorney general's office who were part of investigations on him. Three, an authoritarian bypasses legislatures. So they say when a democracy slides towards autocracy, the leader finds ways to neuter the legislature. We've seen that, you know, he's basically Congress has given themselves up with Republican rule to his authority. So he's bypassed Congress for tariffs, where tariffs are supposed to live from, and.

Ignoring court orders, I might add, doesn't do it.

We're going to get to that.

Oh, sorry, I'm jumping ahead.

No, that's actually one of the hallmarks of an authoritarian. Authoritarians 4 uses military for domestic control. John, you mentioned this using the National Guard in LA and attempted the same in Chicago and Portland. He's fired high ranking officials that have shown disagreements with him in the military. He summoned hundreds of military leaders to Virginia for political speech and rally. 5. An authoritarian defies the courts to John's points. And he started to do those things. He ignored a federal judge's order to turn around planes that were deporting migrants to El Salvador. When he was blocked by a judge for bringing in the Oregon National Guard to Portland, he went around that and deployed the National Guard from other states. 6. An authoritarian declares national emergencies on false pretenses. The whole thing with tariffs is based on this idea of a national emergency. And that's now before the Supreme Court. But historically presidents aren't able to make tariffs on their own. They have to.

They can't levy taxes according to the Constitution and tariffs.

That's right. 7. An authoritarian vilifies marginalized groups. John, you mentioned this. He just did it the other day with Somalians. He's blamed immigrants for destroying communities, fired women and people of color for leadership positions, attempted to erase parts of black history books that deal with slavery and segregation from military libraries. 8. An authoritarian controlled information in the news media. We've seen he sought to manipulate government information. He fired the head of labor statistics, pushed Congress to end funding for public radio. You know, forced and obviously some of the force with the media, with the FCC that we talked about with Jimmy Kimmel and beyond. Number nine. An authoritarian tries to take over universities. John, you mentioned this. He's cut millions of dollars of research funding and tried to dictate the hiring and admissions policies at various universities. Even was able to force the resignation of the president of the University of Virginia. An authoritarian. Number 10 creates a cult of personality. He had that lavish military parade on his birthday, memes with crowns on his head, etc. Number 11, an authoritarian uses power for personal profit. He actually charges The Secret Service $1200 a night to stay at his hotels. While protecting him.

I didn't know that. Oh, dancing.

That's really bad.

Amazon paid $40 million for the rights to Melania's documentary. Solicits favors from four governments like Qatar with the plane.

Yeah, $400 million airplane. Right, that he gets to keep with him after he leaves and goes to his library.

I mean seriously, all the pardons that he's done with crypto, people that went to jail, that have promised to profit his cryptocurrency involvement, and then an authoritarian manipulates the law to stay in power. So we see as Judge Michael Ludig wrote a piece in the Atlantic called the president for life as he has threatened to try to stay in power beyond and the lengths that he's gone to gerrymander various states so that he can maintain power even if he loses an election, as JD Vance has already pledged to do, what Mike Pence didn't do, which was to not accept the electors from the various states. So Those are the 12 hallmarks and those are some examples of where Donald Trump is pushing us in that direction. And, and I don't want to say that we're there because we're not there. We have a strong press. We're seeing some pushback in various areas. We're seeing elections that are running smoothly and fairly. We just saw some, you know, 10 Democrats win in November, close elections in Tennessee. Nobody's questioning those elections. States are still running as they are. We're even seeing some Republicans now pushing back at Peter Hegseth and some of the acts, international waters, they're holding some hearings. So, you know, I do want to emphasize that as well. But, you know, the evidence isn't good and it's certainly unprecedented in our lifetimes.

To see this on a positive note. Congress and Senate, the House almost voted unanimously to release the Epstein files. And that was the first, I never thought they'd do it. That's the first time that Republicans really voted against something that he was very, very scared about or really wanted to happen. And my, my fear is as more smoking guns. I mean, how many smoking guns do you need before, you know, there was a gun battle? Right. It's just getting so thick. But I think because of his fear of that, he'll try to do things to distract from that overwhelming issue that comes up day after day, like going to war with Venezuela or some other crises to just make it about something else besides him and his past crimes, associations and sins. It's a thought.

Yeah, I think that, that I do. I'm open to talking about the Epstein situation a little bit because I think actually it's somewhat emblematic of our issues that we're facing and why we're devolving in many ways as we get caught up in conspiracy theories and our distrust of government. And so there's some issues there. There's some real issues there because Epstein is a part of these elite circles and some of these elite folks did some really terrible things. But the kind of conspiracy, the QAnon based conspiracy, theft stuff, I'm going to get into a little later is kind of part of our problem that we need to face. But just to finish on the democracy front, I wanted to, like, talk about how we internally see ourselves in terms of our democracy and so that, you know, there's the objective, outside evidence. But what. How do we see it ourselves in terms internally? So half of us believe democracy is functioning poorly in our country at this point, and a quarter of us think it's performing well. But fortunately, two thirds of us think it's the best form of government. But 4 in 10 of us don't believe our leaders are committed to the principles of democracy. And only one in four of us believe that government decisions reflect a majority of what the people want done. So there is. On the internal side of us, we're struggling with democracy and feeling like it's actually representative of who we are. And. And that's important, too, because that leads to the distrust that I just mentioned and distrust of institutions and the ability to solve our problems, which is leading us towards this kind of devolution that I talked about. I'll stop there and see if you guys have any questions.

Yeah. There's an awful lot in what you've said, Mark, and I wonder if you. If you step back, what surprises you most?

I'm shocked and surprised at how our mode of conversation has devolved, how the way that we treat each other has, in terms of this polarization, just the complete lack of trust to have a civil conversation to solve our problems. And so, just as an example, there was a great article in the Atlantic by Tom Nichols. He was describing how many of the people in the Trump administration act like toddlers. And so here's just some of the examples of that and how it leads to the corrosion of our democracy. The White House press secretary is asked about who planned a meeting between the Americans and Russian presidents. And she answers, your mom did. And the Secretary of Defense cancels DEI and other policies by saying, we're done with that shit. And the vice president, United States calls a person on social media a dipshit. And, you know, we have countless examples of Trump calling a reporter Miss Piggy and Sleepy Joe.

He has an insult for everybody that comes his way. It's just on and on. We've never seen that before in our politics from the president.

Yeah. So, you know, the dangers of kind of crash, crass deflection. Right. And allows this kind of immaturity, and in the process, it kind of numbs us to seeing how kind of corrupt, wrong, and gross it is. And so we kind of get numb to all of this. And so you have a president that's so crude and surrounds himself by sycophants that are equally as crude and probably not meritorious in terms of their ability to lead, to take on these roles, that they actually gain these roles not out of their ability, but out of their willingness to do and abide as the President wants. As you see in his cabinet meetings, which are basically sessions where everybody talks about how great the President is.

Oh, God.

And.

It was like a Saddam Hussein cabinet meeting, you know, oh, glorious leader.

You know, I think the last one, Kristi Noem, you know, thanked him from preventing hurricanes on her watch, that he was the blessed one that was able to prevent hurricanes. Really?

That's impressive. I didn't know that.

Yeah, yeah.

If he can do that, that's actually pretty cool.

You know, just to his credit. To his credit, Mark, I want to suggest a still larger perspective here, and that is you're talking about the tragedy of the decline in civil discourse and trust and what would be called social capital. And yes, that's clearly marked in the administration, but unfortunately, it's a symptom in our larger culture, which is, you know, and there's been this deterioration over the last decade or more, of which there are many causes, but certainly social media, with its algorithms which reward inflammatory comments and attacks and grievances and righteousness, et cetera, and polarization. You know, social media wasn't designed to treat political divisiveness and even massacres, but as it has in other countries, but it does. And so there's this larger issue which is being in some ways used rather skillfully by the current administration.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's certainly. I think there's a lot of factors, Roger. I think social media is one of them. I think I want to talk about our lack of achievement in education as another piece, our lack of civic understanding. And want to talk about David Souter a little later, a late justice who really foretold about 12, 13 years ago, some of the problems that we might be facing without a lack of civic understanding and taking on that responsibility. So I think it's. There are cultural pieces, there are systemic pieces, there are economic pieces, and there is, you know, a spiritual deprivation. I think in some ways where that the space to find deeper meaning is sometimes. It's certainly for a large part of the population not having the opportunity to do that while they face economic hard times, while they face the polarization of. Of cultural issues. And frankly, you know, when I. When I start to get down to the responsibility For a lot of this, you know, I, we start to point towards the elites and towards cultural elites and really paving the way for this Donald Trump reality that we face. I certainly don't think that's the. The whole part of the story, but it's a crucial piece that we need to deal with to kind of get at what our friend and mentor Ken Wilber talks about, the Prime Directive, which is to allow all stages of human consciousness to thrive and to be at healthy places to move forward. And unfortunately, some of our higher first stage places like postmodern, what some call the green meme, the mean green meme, has created, has stifled that space. But I do want to get into that a little bit later. But, you know, yes, social media is a part of this, and it's a part of, I think, our lack of achievement as well that I want to talk about. But I want to finish a little bit more on if this is okay with you guys on this idea, you know, this crassness, because there's another piece of it, too on a. Sharon wrote a piece called about whataboutism, and in that she talked about this logical fallacy called tu quoc, which means that I may have pronounced that wrong, but U2. And so the U2 fallacy is that if I talk about, you know, Donald Trump and the salacious nature of his misogyny and the gross way that he's dealt with women, the immediate answer Trump or his supporters come up with is, yeah, well, Bill Clinton. What about Bill Clinton?

Yeah, and they never answer a question. They go, yeah, what about that?

Right.

And, and, but that this has become a part of how we operate and not really speak to each other, speak over each other. And so, you know, these improper pardons and how awful it is and illegal and, and the taking of this. Yeah, well, what about Joe Biden and his son's computer? And what about Joe Biden pardoning his son? And on we go again.

The scapegoat issue. We talked about fascism. Anything that goes wrong during this period, he's the president. It's Joe Biden's fault. I mean, ad nauseam. It just keeps over and over. Biden did it. We're great. And let me just add one thing, and I think it's a really important issue, is that the propaganda power of organizations like Fox News are amazingly powerful. And if you live in that bubble, that's what you watch. You're going to go away thinking that Donald Trump is really a great president and everything he's doing is absolutely right. And I went to stay with my father last couple of years of his life, and he would watch Fox News five, six, seven, eight hours a day. And I just saw how that just really made him angry and scared and just, it's very, very powerful. And if that's the bubble you're in, you're never going to hear stuff like we're talking about.

Right.

You know, and how do we pop the damn bubble? How do we get discourse going and. Yeah, you know that. Go ahead, Mark.

Well, you know, so if you kind of do this deflection thing that they do, it breeds cynicism and it kind of breeds the idea that they, to your point, that, well, you know, if everybody is doing it, then it must not be so bad. Right. So it's like the Mafia boss who explains to his daughter why all the things they're doing isn't so bad because it's a jungle out there and everybody's so awful and everybody's so gross that therefore it's okay what I do. And that justifies the actions. And that's really what happens, I think probably on Fox a lot of the times, which justifies the behavior. But, and so that corrodes democracy because it corrodes our belief in our institutions, in our institutions ability to solve problems and to work together to actually build for a better tomorrow and to come together with different perspectives to do that. And so, you know, the part of the answer to this is that to answer eloquently and honestly, that that's not answering the question. You know, it's, it's no, no different than when I was a trial attorney many moons ago and someone would not answer the question, I learned the ability to say, excuse me, I'm sorry, Mr. Mrs. Stenographer, can you read back the question and then ask the question again? And until we get an answer and, or a process that allows us to have a dialectical discussion, but to kind of accept that this is okay, that this U2 logical fallacy is kind of allowed and okay, then we're kind of supporting this approach. And I think to be a part of the solution to your point, there's a lot of other places where we can talk about as part of the solution, but at least part of the solution is to not to play the game is to not be a part of that game. You know, I think that there was a reporter who didn't play that game who just kept asking the question. There was a, a situation where the press secretary where they were asked this question and they did that like you know, your mom. And they said, well, okay, I appreciate that, but where did this happen? And they just kept pressing the issue. And even though that they were laughed at on X and made fun of and they just kept at it. And then they finally got the answer to the question. They just said, thank you very much. I appreciate you answering the question. And so they answered their snarky way of kind of dehumanizing us, dehumanizing people by still honoring their humanity and asking for a higher level clarity of process. And we must demand that we must not shirk our responsibility of moving away from that elevated way that a democracy demands to function, which is to talk to each other civilly, to have different perspectives, to have real debates, to have real processes, to listen to factual evidence and then decisions that we the people can hold them accountable for. And so, you know, this. To go back to Roger's point that we kind of devolve so fast to, to kind of move in this direction of that logical fallacy to dehumanize each other, to live in the space where, you know, to Tom Nichols point that people are just acting like toddlers and we're all accepting it is okay. Has shocked me. Roger.

Yeah. And I really appreciate what you're doing here, Mark, which is you're calling us, all of us, to a. I know I can't quite come up with the right word. The higher. A better way of relating and to communicating with each other, which is based in human respect and a demand for the truth.

Yeah. And, you know, the. The utter, deepest reality is the interconnection of all beings and the oneness of our experience. And so when we do this, we're, you know, we're sowing the seeds of suffering. Because the truth of the matter is this self that we're protecting this, or on the other side, this self that we're dehumanizing and we're making fun of and treating as an. It is a sentient being that we're connected to. And so, you know, we must be a part of the solution of sowing the seeds of recognizing the humanity of our brothers and sisters on FOX and all the listeners that believe in exactly what's being said and being willing to enter into the arena of the dialectic, to have conversations, to listen, to understand fully where they're coming from. I mean, that's the directive of an integral being, is to really accept people for where they're at and understand where they're at. Doesn't mean we have to live from that space, but to Honor that space to see their inner dignity is part of the solution. And I'm afraid that some parts of the cultural elite, some of our progressive brothers and sisters, are not at that stage or aren't willing to do that. And that's exacerbated some of the crisis that we're in today.

Yeah, yeah, we developed a politics of divisiveness. I mean, that's where this gets all its juice and energy is from dividing us for just getting out and saying. And I remember during the COVID crisis, Queen Elizabeth, the late Queen Elizabeth, she did a speech to the country and it's like we're all in this together. You know, it was just, it was just a wonderful speech that was bringing us together. When we had that crisis, they used it to divide us again. There was just more fear and more, more hatred. And that has such. So much power in that darkness. But what you're talking about is how do we, how do we begin to bring this back together again?

You know, I know we talk about the right and, or box and divisive, but I mean, to some of Donald Trump's point on universities that universities are quite divisive with the right and there is real truth to the fact that it's very hard to be a conservative on a college campus. And there's just not a whole lot of space for those voices to be heard and not marginalized. And so that is, you know, I think how he's going about it is completely wrong. But bringing recognition to the fact that there is a dominant voice at universities that marginalizes the other side is there's some real truth there.

And so that's a really good point, Mark. I've seen the same thing. This kind of over hyper wokeism that just gets, at some point gets ridiculous and it has, has fueled the fire of the right and deservedly so in cases given him another issue just to again, to divide us more. But how did we get there? How did we get to this? You know, just one side in our academic systems and our great universities. What happened?

Well, you know, my mentor and our friend, I think Ken Wilber many years ago, really nailed this. And I think he will be remembered for kind of seeing how I think that, you know, the, the cultural elites kind of have kind of taken over the space. So, I mean, I think I read a really great piece by David Brooks who. It was a piece from 223 and it was like, you know, maybe we're the bad guys. And he was talking about himself as being a part of the Elite. And what he talked about was that, you know, we talked this great game of, like, you know, on the progressive side of everybody being on the same team and supporting the marginalized. But, you know, when it came to the Vietnam War, the elite got to stay home and got to go to college and they got to stay out of that war. He mentioned, I think, you know, when we just watched this in my constitutional law class as we looked at busing, the busing crisis in Boston, where Judge Arthur Garrity, an Irishman, you know, created a federal district court judge, saw the obvious segregation of the Boston school system and created a busing plan to deal with it. But guess who didn't have to be a part of that? Wellesley Newton. And for those of you that don't know, those are wealthy communities that are outside of Boston. They didn't have to be a part of. Of that process. And so you kind of see that there's this idea of this kind of meritocracy, but really it's only for the elite to kind of play in these circles. And so, you know, there is a trajectory of postmodern philosophy, which is kind of the apex of first tier thinking in using spiral dynamics as a model here. But universities are really overrun and dominated by postmodern philosophy, which, you know, believes in relativism and really has an allergy to science and business. And so those sociological, those kind of more subjective ways of seeing the universe, which are absolutely important, you know, become the dominant way. You know, you can't work at a university without DEI as being a central part. You can't write without having him.

Her.

His as part of your title. If not. And I'm not saying this is like, absolutely for everybody, and I work at a place where, you know, we're a state school, and I think it's a little bit more. Relax. But there is. There is those pressures and there is that kind of orientation. It's across the board. When you go to lunch, you kind of expect your colleagues to be voting Democrat and not Republican. And the only folks that do that are the people over in business and. And those folks. Be honest.

Well, also in medical schools.

In medical school. Fair enough.

So.

So, Roger, please talk, because I don't have a medical school at my school, so we only know colleagues over there.

Well, I'm kind of trying not to laugh when you say postmodernism's taken over. I don't think anyone in my medical school's even heard of postmodernism, but I don't want to detract from an important theme here, and that is you're pointing out that there are issues on both sides and that in some ways, some of the. I think Trump is a master of picking up intuitively some of the discontents and cultural issues and mining them in with incredible skill. And that's sort of acknowledge your point that there have been excesses on both sides and part of a post partisan position would be doing exactly what you're doing, acknowledging that and looking for how can we move forward as fellow humans. But I want to step back here, and clearly you've done a lot of work in preparing for our dialogue, and I really, I think both of us really appreciate that. And you have a lot of ideas you want to cover. So let me throw it. Let me give it to you and say, what would you next like to address here?

Yeah, well, I think John had, you know, where do we go? Or what's the problem? And I, I think we've touched on it a little bit. This kind of what about ism. This, this crass way that I think is reflective of what I talked about in our last meeting. That kind of this. The red meme and spiral dynamics, which is. It can be. You know, in fact, I was reading Boomeritis again a little bit, and, you know, there was.

Which is one of Ken Wilbur's books.

Yeah, yeah. And there was a section on the stage, Red and, and it said, you know, we're seeing the Terrible Twos, rebellious youth, frontier mentality, feudal kingdoms, epic heroes, James Bond villains, soldiers of fortune, wild rock stars, Attila the Hun. And then the character in the book says, everybody knows somebody who's Red meme. Kim said they can be like, so effing obvious. Sometimes they're really heroic, like a test pilot or a firefighter, but sometimes they're big, obnoxious, foul, loudmouth, just jerks. And, you know, I think we kind of can see that kind of mentality kind of taking place. And so that's, that's different than some of the sturdy things that we kind of have worked so hard to earn, which is a more modern, you know, that's below modernism. And some of the things I was talking about with postmodernism, where modernism really honors democratic principles. And, and then postmodernism wants to make sure that everybody is included, to make sure that those democratic principles are really honored for all beings. And so they make sure people with disabilities and transgender and, and more marginalized minority populations are part of it. So, you know, we have this potential problem. And so what has kind of exacerbated the situation. And if I think if we see what is exacerbated it, then we can start to talk about how do we kind of solve this. So David Suter, I mentioned him earlier, he was a late justice on the Supreme Court. He's actually from the state of New Hampshire. And he gave a talk in 2012 at the University of New Hampshire Law School. And it was towards the end. And it's something that actually stuck with my students because I had them watch the presentation at the beginning of the semester and it was talked. The question was like, the importance of civics in our educational system. And so I kind of want to just read what he. My notes on what he had to say and how he kind of foretold the problem that we're facing. So this is Justice Souter, he said, I don't think there's any problem more significant today than the problem of pervasive civic ignorance of the Constitution of the United States and our structure of government. We know that two thirds of the people of the United States don't know we have three branches of government that a majority in a survey believe that the Supreme Court was a committee in Congress. And I went to school, he said, I had two civic courses. It gave us a greater sense of our responsibility, et cetera. And he went on to say that the reason why it's a most significant problem is because if people don't understand how government functions, then that civic ignorance leads them to not know how to solve the problems that we face. And so he quoted Jefferson that an ignorant people can never remain a free people. And then went on to quote Franklin, who was asked after the 1787 convention that created our Constitution, what kind of government will we be getting? He was asked, and he answered, a republic, if you can keep it. And he went on Suter to say that you can't keep it with ignorance. And so then he this is the part that is kind of scary. He goes, I worry about the fact that if these problems aren't addressed, that people will not know who is responsible. And when the problems get bad enough, someone will come forward and say, give me total power and I will solve your problems. That's how the Roman Republic fell. Augustus became emperor because he promised to solve the problems that the Roman Senate weren't able to solve.

Stay tuned for part two of this compelling conversation with Mark Fischler, in which we move from the roots of how we got here to how we can evolutionarily get out of here and create a more noble and beautiful body politic to help heal our country and from there the world. Thank you very much for being a part of this conversation. We hope that you were moved as we are moved being part of it ourselves. We'd also like to say that this is being funded by Roger and myself. It comes out of our pockets. So if you would like to help us to mainly to get this podcast out to more people because the bigger audience have which is steadily growing but the more people we can reach and the more marketing we can do the more positive effect we can can have on the world. So we've done a couple of ways but we'd like you to buy us a cup of coffee very simple and I do that with podcasts that I support and I find it's very satisfying. So thank you for your help, thank you for your presence and thank you for all you are and all you do. We love you.