Episodes

There is no one in Southern California quite like California fishing and hunting expert Wendy Tochihara. This delightful daughter of World War 2 Japanese Internment Camp parents calls Huntington Beach, California her home, where she raises chickens, her own vegetables, and has five freezers full of meat from various hunting expeditions around California (and sometimes beyond). And she’s not afraid to wear her MAGA hat, either. Nor is her mom.

She’s pro-Second Amendment, pro-sustainable fishing & hunting, passionate about the outdoors and about how California once was and could be again if the politics reversed course.

(Although the Second Amendment is about self-defense and protection of innocent human life, not about hunting and fishing).

The Republican Professor is a pro-Second-Amendment, pro-hunting-&-fishing, pro-optimistic-MAGA-hat-wearing-former-Japanese-Internment-Camp-Prisoners’s-daughter podcast.

By the way–it was the Democrats who issued that military Japanese-US-citizen exclusion order during World War 2, you know that, right ? She does.

Therefore, welcome Wendy Tochihara !

Join our warm conversation with local, vintage bestselling author Cliff Shiepe, author of the novel, “Cliff Falls.”

Self-published over a decade ago, it’s touched many lives in many different contexts.

We talk about LA, his writing process, and true spirituality. Ultimately, we are all looking for True Belonging, True Acceptance. These ultimate issues are what his book is really about.

He’s coming out with a second novel next year. But he doesn’t give any hints as to what it might be about , so you’ll just have to keep checking Vromans in Pasadena or your local bookshop to satisfy your curiosity.

If you prefer to shop online because the last two years of public health panic has devestated small businesses, including bookstores selling books, you can find the book on the Nile, the Ganges, or any other huge river from which one can buy books, e.g. :https://www.amazon.com/Cliff-Falls-C-B-Shiepe/dp/0982702027/ref=sr_1_1?crid=123SEGIYJZ5DY&keywords=cliff+falls+shiepe&qid=1649372022&sprefix=cliff+falls+shiep%2Caps%2C336&sr=8-1

The Republican Professor is a pro-creative-writing, pro-self-publishing, pro-True-Spirituality podcast.

Therefore, welcome Cliff Shiepe !

Logicians are trained to pay close attention to the definitions of terms. For instance, in Patrick J. Hurley’s Concise Introduction to Logic, chapter 2 is entirely about definitions. Definitions are a big deal. (Logic is a field of the discipline called Philosophy. Definitions are very important for the other fields, too).

In law (I have a Masters in Philosophy, a Ph.D. in Public Law & American Politics, taught both Con Law and Logic), philosophy’s love for definitions helps.

Here is a conversation about what the word “woman” means. We could have picked other terms. Unlike all of the other words here on this description, some people think we need to redefine the term for political and/or moral reasons.The best correct definitions are those that provide necessary and sufficient conditions (in non-stipulative contexts). (A “stipulation” is just an agreement, like on a contract, or statute, of what a word means in a technical, limited sense). New gender terms that aren’t merely stipulative suffer from a basic deficiency: they have trouble on their own terms respecting their own goals of inclusion and diversity rooted in self-identification . This is a pretty basic problem. And a lot of people can easily see it for exactly what it is. 



Let’s call this revisionist view the Self ID view. This new attempted definition of an old word, says Logic Professor Dr. Tomas Bogardus, Ph.D., gives neither necessary nor sufficient conditions for being a real woman. And no matter how you feel about social justice or moral requirements, this is a persistent problem for the revisionist Self ID view of what a woman really is. 

It does no good to try to manipulate people out of seeing this problem for what it is using shame techniques that are themselves as old as time. People can think for themselves. People can see the manipulation for what it is, and false shaming is no true key to a correct definition of any term.

This new movement to incorporate Self-ID into the cutting edge definition of the term “woman” inevitably doesn’t satisfy necessary and sufficient conditions. The classical definition for woman in classic, standard hard-copy dictionaries says a real woman is an adult, human female. Let’s call that the Classical View. English is very old. That old definition does give a plausible, internally consistent set of both necessary and sufficient conditions for what all and only women are, but is considered defective by recent revisionists for alleged reasons of ethical failure. 



We’re in a real pickle if the classical definition meets the philosophical requirement for a good definition, but we are morally prohibited (we are told) from continuing to adopt it. 

Doesn’t morality require us to be sensitive to truth in definitions?



Or does morality require us to change definitions, even if they don’t provide truthful cognitive connection with the meaning of the term ?

Because the new, cutting edged proposals for revising what the term “woman” means fails a standard test of the best, correct definitions, doesn’t it suffer from a fatal flaw? That flaw would be: the Self-ID revisionist view doesn’t tell us what the word really means. It doesn’t pick out all and only women in an internally, logically consistent way. 



Revisionist gender theorists are working to avoid the classical definition, but at what philosophical cost? 

How do we know these new, alleged demands of social justice really are binding on our old definitions in the way asserted ?

Dr. Tomas Bogardus, Ph.D., who teaches Logic along with other courses in Philosophy at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California, takes us through his careful writing on this topic, including a history of the debate of these matters. You can view his scholarly papers on his website here : https://sites.google.com/site/tbogardus/



The Republican Professor is a pro-understanding-reality, pro-getting-correct-and-accurate-definitions-of-terms podcast.



Therefore, welcome Tomas Bogardus !

Join our warm conversation with local school board official from rural Ohio Karen Slabaugh Humprhies. Just before she ran for School Board, she’d been in the classrooms of the district as the lowest paid employee, a substitute Teacher’s Aid. She got an up-close look at what the district was really facing, including in the Special Education classrooms.

Karen had a decade of experience prior to that as a local reporter covering the beat of the Board meetings and other issues in local politics and culture.

These first-hand experience fit like a glove with the vocational call she sensed coming from the Lord: Run, and you’ll win.

She went from a substitute Teacher’s Aid to running for School Board and winning, all with just a high school diploma.

Well, not just a high school diploma.

She may have had a little help from on high.

The Republican Professor is a pro-local-school-board, pro-parents-getting-involved, pro-true-education podcast.

Therefore, welcome Karen Slabaugh Humphries !

Join us as we talk about boundaries in emotionally healthy relationships with our special guest today, the man behind @Voiceofthe2nd on Instagram, philosopher and writer Dale Fincher.

Fincher joins us from his 200 year old home in New Hampshire to journey into some of the deeper aspects of Second Amendment activism and advocacy. He uses Instagram to prompt longer form thoughts on reality, using the medium to post quotes that call out for more careful analysis.

Dale has experienced emotional abuse himself, as well as the kind of organizational disfunction that so often causes or accompanies it. That background, plus his graduate training in logic and philosophy, has prepared him well to the work of healthy integration of our need for a coherent life in boundary-respecting relationship with others.

Part of our relationships is the relationship we have with the government. A government that does not respect the boundaries of your private space to protect yourself from harm is a dysfunctional, harmful, boundary-crossing, abusive relationship.

The Republican Professor is a pro-emotionally healthy, pro-spiritually-healthy, pro-healthy-boundary-relationships, and pro-Second-Amendment podcast.
Therefore, welcome @Voiceofthe2nd on Instagram’s Dale Fincher !

Join our conversation today with Jeffrey Tucker of Acton Institute, formerly of the von Mises Institute, founder of The Brownstone Institute, and author of “Liberty or Lockdown” with forward by George Gilder, available at your local bookstore, meaning Amazon, since the lock-down killed a huge percentage of small businesses, but it’s available here : https://www.amazon.com/Liberty-Lockdown-Jeffrey-Tucker/dp/1630692123/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

We discuss the pandemic, how the response was alarming and totally at odds with traditional public health measures, economic liberty, limited government. Eventually, we discuss Bitcoin from a very simple basic starting point.

You can read a selection of Tucker’s work on Bitcoin here :

https://www.aier.org/article/why-does-bitcoin-have-value/

You can read a selection of Tucker’s work on the recent public health panic here :

https://brownstone.org/articles/the-inflation-disaster-is-collateral-damage-from-lockdowns/

The Republican Professor is a pro-liberty, anti-lockdown-for-no-good-reason, pro-deliberative-democracy, pro-Constitutional-republic, pro-traditional-public-health-that-respects-natural-rights podcast.

Therefore, welcome Jeffrey Tucker !

Join our conversation with Dr. Michael Rectenwald, Ph.D., former full Professor at NYU. Dr. Rectenwald authored last December’s (2021) Imprimis piece called “The Great Reset” published by Hillsdale College.

Michael takes us through what it was like teaching at NYU (which is in New York). He was there for over a decade.

But the wokeness and PC stuff began , slowly, to make him feel like he was under the thumb of a totalitarian culture crushing free thought. He began to realize it took more and more courage just to believe his own beliefs instead of the beliefs that he was supposed to believe.

This came to a head in 2016, the Fall. That semester, he was punished for his beliefs, for his commitment to academic excellence, which requires Free Speech. He was removed, without adequate cause, from the classroom 4 weeks into the semester. This mistreatment at the hands of the woke Leftists who run the campus spurred a conversion in every way.

In his words: “Let me just say this,” he said, describing that crazy semester, “in September I was a Marxist. By November, I voted for Trump.”

Part of the fuller story of his conversion was spiritual and philosophical (metaphysical). He went from being a metaphysical materialist (as Marxists are), or rather, functionally or methodologically one, to be more precise–he described himself as an agnostic–to a Christian believer. Part of this journey involved the healing of his son’s stage 4 cancer. This stuff we would have liked to get into more but it occurred at the very end, and we weren’t able to follow this in any more detail due to time constraints.

We discuss grade inflation, his time at the Naropa Institute in Boulder under Allen Ginsberg (yes, the Allen Ginsberg) (I asked if they were a bunch of Republicans. He said, uh, no). (Shocker).

We discuss his graduate training and what conspiracy theories are , and whether a conspiracy theory involving human actors can adequately explain the concentration and character, the phenomenology of totalitarian forces that seem to be the data calling out for explanation.

The Republican Professor is a pro-understanding-conspiracy-theories , pro-conversion-from-Marxism, pro-Free-Speech and pro-academic-excellence, pro-understanding-what-is-the-great-reset? podcast.

Therefore, welcome Michael Rectenwald !

Join our conversation with the University of California at Berkeley’s Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law John Yoo, author of the very carefully argued “Defender in Chief: President Trump’s Fight for Presidential Power.” John has been teaching Law at Berkeley for nearly 30 years !

Could President Trump legitimately have fired Mueller ? Our guest today says, yes.

What about other issues related to presidential power ? Was the 45th president’s vigorous (perhaps pre-theoretical or unconscious) defense of presidential power legitimate from the point of view of Article II of the U.S. Constitution? John Yoo says, to a large extent, yes.

John did not vote for Trump initially, but he nevertheless defends the “unitary executive” theory of the US Constitution, which simply says that the best explanation of the data of the text and history of the Constitution’s creation of the presidency is that there is one, and should only be one person in charge of the executive branch. The Executive Branch was not designed to be run by bureaucrats who are unaccountable to the people in elections. It does not matter if those bureaucrats are “experts.” Democratically unaccountable expertise is still democratically unaccountable.

Article II’s first sentence is as follows : “The executive power shall be vested in a president of the United States.”

The executive power is not defined or “herein granted”, as the text of Article I does with the legislative power.

It is vested in one person, elected by the whole nation, the president. That person alone is accountable to the American people in elections for the actions of the Executive Branch of the US government. And therefore, that one person should have control of the branch. That’s the original, wise design.

So what Professor Yoo does here is take that as a good starting point for reflecting upon Trump’s defense of presidential power and his official actions as president (not necessarily his use of Twitter). Grounded in a careful reading of Article II and the original design of the Presidency, as well as its history and tradition, John reflects on contemporary events related to presidential power. Such topics include law enforcement, immigration & the wall, war-fighting and the conduct of war, Trump’s approach to executive branch agency rule-making, his demand for the loyalty of the Executive Branch administrative state (the bureaucracy, what some call ‘the Deep State”). Yoo also has chapters on the Electoral College and Trump’s prerogative to shape the federal judiciary. For John, and the proper Constitutional check on the presidency is Congress and public opinion, not the Executive Branch turned on itself. It’s not surprising that those are the levers that went into action–that’s the proper design of the US Constitution.

So could Trump have fired Mueller ? Yes, because Mueller was in the Executive Branch, performing executive functions, but only the President has a duty to “Take Care that the Laws be Faithfully Executed.” There is no rival, junior varsity chief law enforcement officer of the United States.

John gives us a glance as to what it’s like teaching in Berkeley, what it’s like to live there, whether and to what extent there is grade inflation there and at the Harvard he attended before.

And how ought we understand some issues related to January 6th of last year ?

Join our warm conversation here.

Professor Yoo’s book is available for purchase on the Nile, the Ganges, the Mississippi, or whatever other great river from which one can purchase books, e.g., here : https://www.amazon.com/Defender-Chief-Donald-Trumps-Constitution/dp/1250269571/ref=sr_1_1?crid=28CNPDQK32LUZ&keywords=john+yoo&qid=1647988347&sprefix=john+yoo%2Caps%2C141&sr=8-1

Be sure to subscribe to our Youtube channel for more episodes in the future.

The Republican Professor is a pro-Article-II, pro-correctly-understanding-Presidential-power podcast .

Therefore, welcome John Yoo !