Contemporary Application Podcasts

This contemporary application episode examines how American regime change evolved from covert CIA operations denied for decades to open presidential assertions of authority over foreign governments. Tracing the trajectory from Korea through Syria, we analyze how President Trump’s statement that he “must be involved” in selecting Iran’s next leader represents the culmination of seven decades of executive aggrandizement and congressional abdication. We examine the Venezuela mod

As American military operations in Iran continue, this contemporary application episode examines how the national security state—built for the Cold War, expanded for the War on Terror—has delivered the very outcome the Old Right warned against and Donald Trump himself promised to prevent. We trace the War on Terror framework that enables executive war-making without congressional authorization, the transformation of campaign promises into regime change, and the global applica

This contemporary application episode examines how the rhetorical techniques used to silence the Old Right in 1940-1941 continue to be deployed against critics of intervention today. We analyze the function of labels like “isolationist,” “Russian asset,” “antisemite,” and “conspiracy theorist” as tools of exclusion rather than argument. We document how the Old Right’s predictions about war’s consequences for the American republic have been vindicated by eighty years of eviden

This contemporary application episode traces the direct line from the 1917 Balfour Declaration to present-day Gaza and the West Bank. We examine Balfour’s explicit calculation—his refusal to consult “the wishes of the present inhabitants”—and trace how that imperial logic persists in the current “ceasefire,” the Board of Peace reconstruction framework, and the accelerating annexation of the West Bank. We present data on ceasefire violations and casualties, analyze the Kushner

Contemporary Application to the Empire of Liberty: America's Foreign Entanglements from the Founders to the Forever War - Ep. 05

This contemporary application episode connects the alliance dynamics traced in Episode 4 to current events in Ukraine and Iran. As peace talks continue in the UAE and the USS Abraham Lincoln positions off Iran’s coast, we examine how alliance commitments—NATO’s Article 5, the Russia-Iran strategic partnership, the Russia-North Korea mutual defense pact—create the same escalation dynamics that produced World War I. With 200,000 Ukrainian soldiers AWOL and President Trump threa

This contemporary application episode connects the yellow journalism that drove America to war in 1898 with modern legacy media’s coverage of interventions from Iraq to Libya to Syria. It examines the commercial incentives that shape foreign policy coverage, the repeated pattern of uncritical amplification followed by post-hoc acknowledgment of failure, and the great migration of audiences from cable news to streaming platforms where anti-interventionist voices can reach thei

This contemporary application episode applies the historical template from Article 2—the Mexican-American War’s pattern of manufactured casus belli, executive manipulation, and marginalized critics—to current events in Venezuela, Iran, and the renewed discussion of American territorial expansion. We examine how the DOJ’s “Cartel de los Soles” claim dissolved when it had to be proven in court, how American objectives toward Iran have continuously shifted, and how current annex

This contemporary application episode examines how the founders’ key insight—that foreign policy and domestic liberty are intimately connected—plays out in a current case study. We trace the chain from America’s ongoing undeclared war in Somalia (over 100 airstrikes in 2025 alone) to the refugee crisis it has fueled to the fraud scandal now dominating headlines in Minnesota. The founders warned that entanglements abroad would have consequences at home. This is what those cons

On January 3, 2026, the United States launched military strikes against Venezuela and captured President Nicolás Maduro. This special episode—released alongside our series introduction—applies the founders’ framework to these events in real time. We examine the facts as currently known, compare the operation to historical precedents (Panama 1989, the Escobar manhunt), analyze the constitutional questions raised by unilateral executive military action, and ask what precedent h