Welcome to the podcast. This is episode 385. I'm Douglas Wilson, and you are not. You or somebody else.

But regardless of that, thanks for joining us. Good to have you. A few weeks ago, I talked about the American strike on three nuclear facilities in Iran.

And that brings up the whole topic of regime change, which I

mentioned then. But I want to talk about, I want to talk about that as just sort of a topic that

was prompted by this foray into Iranian airspace, but is not limited to it.

American foreign policy has been much addicted to regime change and nation building and

that sort of thing.

So after the Iraq War, basically, this has been a very Western superstition, which is that you can go into a third

world country or go into a second world country, win a war, give them a piece of paper

that models our form of government, like a knockoff of the American Constitution and expect anything to happen.

Constitutions are written in the first instance in the hearts and the minds of the people.

So if you just took the American Constitution and won a war with some backward third world

country, decisive military victory, established a government, gave them a piece of paper.

So here's, and even built their Congress for them and built their White House for them and

built their Supreme Court for them and gave them a map and said,

these are the entities, and here's your piece of paper, and you left. The reason that would

descend into chaos almost immediately is because the constitutions are unwritten first. In other words,

another way of saying this is that written constitutions are unwritten first. In other words, another way of saying this is that written

constitutions are useless by themselves. Written constitutions are just paper by themselves.

Now, the reason our constitution took hold, even though it was, there were aspects of it that were a novelty,

that were new to Americans, the basic principles of it, protections of liberty, the Bill of Rights,

the separation of powers, all of these principles were very familiar.

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