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But you are obviously a patriot and you have great respect for your fundamental institutions. And so it’s necessary to separate those things out because otherwise, especially young people, they don’t know what they can trust. And they need to trust something. You know, it’s really important. Yes. Yes. And another way of I put it, I take exception to one thing you said where you suggested that I trust government as evidence by the fact that I carry on the Constitution and I seek to follow it. I turned that precisely on its head. In other words, the Constitution reminds us that we don’t trust government as an institution. We trust people, but not the government. The Constitution is our key to making sure that we unlock unlimited human potential by recognizing the inherent dignity and infinite worth of every human being. And that we show that respect by saying that when we use force on you, as we do whenever government acts, we will do so respectfully and in a way that’s measured, restrained, exercised at the appropriate level and is geared specifically toward protecting life, liberty and property. If it’s not those things, we won’t do it. We need to have trust and confidence in human beings because they’re God’s creations and because we are all created equal. When we put trust in government itself, we’re putting trust in force. Now, human beings, while redeemable and basically inherently good, are themselves flawed and flawed specifically in the sense that they are covetous and powerful. And we’ve learned through sad experience throughout human history that when someone acquires power, especially power in his or her own estimation, that person will eventually begin to abuse that power insofar as that person is allowed to abuse that power. And so we have to compel the government to work for us and remind the government that it is not the sovereign we are. Otherwise, people get hurt. That was exactly the kind of definition that I was hoping for. Because, of course, we have finite time, I would like to turn our attention to a couple of other things. We talked a little bit about this rising tension and you described some of your theories about why it’s occurring. What else do you see as characteristic of this rising tension? What worries you when you look at the United States right now, or maybe the Western world as a whole, but let’s stick with the US. What concerns you? What keeps you up at night? And then maybe what do you think should be done about it? I tend to believe that the erosion of civil society is concerning, meaning the voluntarily associating, the voluntary associations that free people form when they’re allowed to be free and that they form in the absence of any government telling them that they must or that they may or that they may not. They just do it. And by that, I mean churches, mosques, synagogues, fraternal orders, charitable foundations, universities, neighborhood watch associations, all of those things that operate as an organized entity outside the force of government. Those are things that have really helped us. I’ve often said that the twin pillars of the thriving of the human condition, whether in American society or anywhere else, it tend to be built on robust institutions of civil society and free markets. You have those two things, human beings can thrive. They won’t always choose to do so. Sometimes they will make choices that will put them on a path of self-destruction. But if you’ve got those things in place and people make the right choices, human beings will thrive. You’ll lift people out of poverty. I worry that as we’ve put more trust in government, we’ve allowed the muscle of civil society and the muscle memory of free markets to atrophy. And so it’s not just what we’ve created through a bloated government that is the problem. It’s also what we lose, what we give up in the process. People become less connected. The more brooding the government’s presence is in their lives. And that worries me. As does some of the things that go along with that include religious associations and religious beliefs. And I worry that in many cases, we have traded faith either in an all-knowing, loving, all-powerful God who will judge us at the end of this life, or even if not that, faith in a set of principles by which we guide our lives has in many places been replaced and supplanted by an almost religious faith geared toward government. This is, in a sense, the new idolatry, the idolatry of our time. Whenever I study the Old Testament, I’m struck by how much they focus almost obsessively on idolatry. And I thought, well, that’s weird. We don’t really see a whole lot of that here. In a sense, we do. We worship mortal institutions, mortal institutions with immense military power, aircraft carriers, government offices, $4 trillion in annual outlays. That’s an almost religious amount of faith toward something that is not God and that doesn’t bring us closer together. You’ve also said in your own personal experience that you can feel the temperatures rising in the Senate, say. And one of the things I was struck, I was struck by a number of things when I went to Washington on the several occasions that I did. I was struck by how absurdly busy senators and congressmen were with their multitude of duties. And it was completely mysterious to me how any business ever got done given that. I was also struck by the lack of personal communication between people within political parties in the Senate and in Congress, but more particularly across. And so, well, you said that you’ve seen, you’ve felt this rising tension. And so, how have you experienced that and what’s the consequence of that as far as you can tell? Well, it’s not good across the board. The more issues there are where the parties are inextricably or unavoidably at odds with each other, it gets more difficult. And I’m not one who believes that we have to manufacture or contrive unity where it doesn’t exist. There are some issues on which the parties really are in genuine disagreement. This doesn’t reflect mere petulance on the part of politicians. Sometimes it can do that. But more than anything else, it reflects a genuine disagreement among those we represent who feel passionately one way or the other. So, but sadly, as we push more power up to the federal government, it seems like the more areas there are for these potential conflicts that are almost irreconcilable between two competing political worldviews. Well, that makes perfect sense if what you’re saying is correct, because those conflicts should be resolved at a local level and maybe in a multitude of ways. If they’re not resolved and popped up, they’re going to affect more people and the conflicts themselves are going to aggregate. Right, right, right. Exactly. Just as the saying goes, if everyone’s family, then no one is. If everything is an emergency, then nothing is an emergency. And so too here. If everything is federal, then the federal government’s not even going to be able to do the few things that only it can do. Things like immigration laws, trade policy and, and war powers and so forth. And so, you know, the way I’ve tried to deal with this in my own life and my own service in the Senate is to find, scan the horizon continuously to look for areas where the parties are not unavoidably at odds with each other and to identify allies and done this in a whole host of areas from war powers to criminal justice reform, Fourth Amendment, government surveillance, due process protections and things like that. Some of my very favorite people in the Senate, many, many of them happen to be people who are at the opposite end of the political continuum from me. I’ve found, I don’t know whether everyone’s experience is similar to mine, but in the Senate, at least we have more of an ability to get to know each other than members of the House of Representatives. There are 435 of them. There are only a hundred of us. I don’t get to know all of my colleagues equally well, but I have the chance to get to know most of them. And it really is a great experience. And I’ve also found that my personal life- Why is it a great experience? I mean, politicians don’t generally have a good name, so to speak. You know, I was very impressed on a personal level with the people I met when I went down to Washington. I mean, they all seem Democrat and Republican-like. Their stories of motivation for involvement in politics were so similar, they wanted to serve their country. I had no reason to believe that that sentiment was false. They, without exception, seemed like admirable people to me. You’re talking about your admiration extending beyond the limits of your political party. I mean, why is that? What are these people like, apart from the media depiction of them, let’s say? They’re great people. They’re fascinating people. They’re people who love their country. They’re people who, in many, many respects, want the same outcome that I want, which is opportunities for a thriving of a human condition, globally, certainly, and especially here in the United States. Those ultimate outcomes are shared by, I think, all 100 of us. We do have different theories and different approaches about how to get there. The minute I’m able to see on any particular issue how that particular senator, no matter how much I might disagree with her or him on a particular issue, if I can see why it is that they believe that their policy, competing with mine or at odds with mine, really gets to the same nirvana-like outcome, the same positive outcome, it’s easier for me to try to figure out whether there is a way to reconcile the two approaches. There isn’t always. In many cases, there is not, but in a whole lot of cases, there are ways to get there. That’s an especially rewarding part of the process. There’s something especially rewarding about unexpected success, about something working when you don’t expect it to from the outside. Yeah. Well, that makes you smile. There’s something about that that must keep you going. Are you thinking about something in particular, a concrete example of that kind of success? Referred a few minutes ago to invoking the War Powers Act that it adopted in 1973. Bernie Sanders and I got together to try to get us out of civil war in Yemen. The first time in the history of the War Powers Act, we got something passed in Congress before last. Unfortunately, it didn’t make it through the House of Representatives before that Congress ended. We got it passed again in the next Congress. Then we got the House to pass the same thing. It got to President Trump’s desk and unfortunately, he vetoed it. We tried to override the veto. We didn’t succeed. Have you got a chance now? Yes. Not only have we got a chance, but President Biden has in the last few days announced that he’s going to get us out of Yemen. Assuming he follows through with what I expect out of that, the entire issue, we mercifully have come to the right conclusion. When I first started in the Senate- That must be really satisfying. Oh, it was fantastic. It’s a really fulfilling moment. It’s a minor victory in a sense that it’s small compared to other disputes and compared to the number of people who are aware of it. But it’s a huge issue. It’s a big issue. Criminal justice reform, something I identified as a brand new Senator about 10 years ago that I wanted to achieve. I saw too many people within our federal criminal system in the United States being sent away to prison, sometimes for decades at a time for a relatively minor nonviolent offense. We had a case in Utah that I became aware of nearly 20 years ago. It’s an individual, a young man who has become a dear friend since then named Weldon Angelos. Weldon Angelos was caught selling three dime bag quantities of marijuana over a 72-hour period to a person who, as it turned out, was a confidential informant of law enforcement agency. Because of the fact that he was carrying a gun at the time, a gun that was neither brandished nor discharged in connection with the offense, Mr. Angelos was sentenced to 55 years in prison for selling three small sandwich bag quantities of pot. It’s ridiculous. The federal judge who sentenced them said that there are hijackers, murderers, rapists, terrorists who don’t get this much time, but I have got no discretion on this case and only Congress can fix this problem. Those words were still echoing through my mind when I got to the Senate, or started reaching out initially to some fairly liberal Democrats. And Dick Durbin and I teamed up. Cory Booker came to the Senate a short time later. He joined up with us. We ended up passing the most sweeping criminal justice reform law in an entire generation in December of 2018 with the First Step Act. And we brought judges more discretion. Dick Durbin and I are still working on another bill to finish what we started there. There are example after example of things like this that we’ve gotten done that are gratifying, that are rewarding. It makes it all worthwhile. It makes it so much more fun. Yeah, I can tell. I mean, you light right up when you talk about those things and it looks like 10 years falls away from you instantly. It’s really something to see. So I can see that enthusiasm, untrammeled enthusiasm and still belief that the system works, which is so lovely to see in an age of cynicism.