Leighton Smith Podcast #305 - October 8th 2025 - Patrick Basham - The Leighton Smith Podcast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're listening to a podcast from news talks it be
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It's time for all the attitude, all the opinion, all
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Speaker 2 (00:27):
B Welcome to Podcasts three hundred and five. For October eight,
twenty twenty five, Patrick Basham returns to this week's podcast
to a pine on the New York mayoralty race, which
is looking dangerously close to a disaster. How could a
city in a country renowned for its freedom be about
to elect a Marxist Muslim to a position that some

(00:50):
say ranks second only to the presidency. Patrick is in
full flight in what We'll follow, and it's a conversation
we both enjoyed immensely covering multiple issues. So as a result,
I've slimmed down the additional commentaries that we that we use.
They include Ramash the Khur, who was well known to

(01:12):
anybody who listens to this podcast regularly, has written a
piece that deserves to be spread wide and far. The
WHO pandemic accords are badly flawed. I'm going to select
a few lines out of this because it's something you
really need to read yourself. The decades old international Health Regulations,

(01:33):
as amended last year, came into effect on nineteen September.
A new pandemic agreement adopted in May, will be opened
for signature after a pathogen's access and benefit sharing deal
that is expected to be reached next year. The WWAHOW
Pandemic Accords, as the two documents are known, are a

(01:54):
good example of the type of global governance initiatives on
which there is a consensus among technocratic elites, but against
which there is a rising populist revolt. Two other examples
that were mentioned by President Donald Trump in his un
address on September twenty three, our Immigration and Climate Change.

(02:15):
The speech was a wide ranging defense of national sovereignty
against globalism. And if there's one thing that we are
very keen on on this podcast, one thing. There's more
than one, but if there is one thing for the moment,
it is national sovereignty. First subheading is flawed assumptions. The
assumption of increasing pandemic risk is also undermined by work

(02:37):
from the University of Leeds. They show that the reports
of the World Health Organization, the World Bank, and G
twenty that back the pandemic agenda do not support the
agency's claims expanded powers and increased resources for the Who's
the next subheading, COVID saw a successful bureaucratic coup that

(02:59):
displaced elected governments with unelected experts and technocrats as de
facto policymakers, and boy did we experience that in this country.
The Pandemic Accords provide the WHO legal authority to declare
an actual apprehended emergency and the power thereafter to common

(03:20):
deer resources for itself from sovereign states and redirect resources
funded by the taxpayer of one country to other states
on the basis of what the WHO chief alone, the
WHO Chief alone considers simply a risk of potential harm.
If we get to the judgment of history, it is

(03:41):
impossible to know how the COVID experience will be assessed
by historians in the fullness of time. On the creation
of informed consent, a bedrock principle of medical ethics, on
a very real sense, selective and manipulated release of data
ensured that informed consent was corrupted into misinformed and disinformed compliance.

(04:06):
The steep age gradient of the mortality risk profile from
the disease was known or should have been known by
any diligent public health authority, an expert deliberately ignoring that,
and the attendant strategy of policies targeted toward the high
risk groups. Universal fear was ramped up to off the
chart on the Richter scale of panic, with breathless daily

(04:29):
press briefings on new cases, hospitalization, deaths, and containment measures.
Now out of a four page report from Rummish the
Cur that that is all I'm going to quote, but
you'll find you'll find the piece on Brownstone, the Brownstone Institute,
of which Rummish the Cur is a senior scholar. But

(04:51):
don't forget that he is also a former United Nations
Assistant Secretary journal and emeritus professor in the Crawford School
of Public Policy at the Australian National University. Now I'd
ask you to please find it and read it, keep it,
show it to people, send it to people, and in
a moment. Patrick Basham. Leverrix is an antihistamine made in

(05:18):
Switzerland to the highest quality. Leverix relieves hay fever and
skin allergies or itchy skin. It's a dual action antihistamine
and has a unique nasal decongestent action. It's fast acting
for fast relief, and it works in under an hour
and lasts for over twenty four hours. Leverrix is a

(05:39):
tiny tablet that unblocks the nose, deals with itchy eyes,
and stops sneezing. Leverrix is an antihistamine made in Switzerland
to the highest quantity. So next time you're in need
of an effective antihistamine, call into the pharmacy and ask
for Leverrix lv Rix Levrix and always read the label.

(06:00):
Take as directed and if symptoms persist, see your health professional.
Farmer Broker Auckland.

Speaker 3 (06:14):
Layton Smith.

Speaker 2 (06:17):
Now, normally I introduced Patrick Basham as the founding director
of the Democracy Institute, I want to go further because
I don't believe I've ever done it and I want
to give him full credit. So Patrick Basham was an
adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute for Representative Government. Also
served as the founding director of the Social Affairs Center

(06:37):
at the Fraser Institute, which is Canada's leading free market
think tank. He has edited and written on a variety
of policy issues, including campaign finance, term limits at election law.
His articles have appeared in The New York Times, The
Washington Post, USA Today, and New York Post, and The

(06:58):
New York Daily News, News Day, the Chicago Sun, Times,
the Baltimore Sun, Canada's National Post, and The Globe and Mail.
He has also appeared on ABC, CBS, NBC C and
N Fox News Channel, PBS, NPR, BBC, and Radio Free Europe.
Patrick Basham has studied political science at the University of

(07:21):
Houston and at Cambridge University, where I was about six
weeks ago. Anyway, it's great too. It's great to have
you back after a bit of a gap. We've we've
been traveling, we've been doing all sorts of things, and
people keep saying, I've said this to you before, Wes
Patrick Basham gone. You haven't spoken to him lately. So
here we are.

Speaker 4 (07:41):
It's great to be with you late now as always,
But as always, I'm a little anxious whether I'll be
able to hold up my end of the conversation.

Speaker 3 (07:48):
But I'll give it my best shot.

Speaker 2 (07:50):
He is if you're if you're a little anxious, I
should be shaking in my boots. Look, the main cause
for wanting to talk to you was to do with
the election of the New York Mayor. But of course
there are so many other things going on. I want
to start with I want to start with the mayoralty

(08:11):
because to me, it's it's intriguing. It's intriguing. And I'll
tell you why it's intriguing to me, because I struggle
to come to grips with the fact that America, home
of the brave and land of the free, could have
so many stupid people in it, as they seem to
in New York being expressed in what the polls are

(08:34):
showing as far as who the newly elected candidate will be.

Speaker 4 (08:41):
Yeah, well, there has been a declining ratio in America
of wise people to stupid people.

Speaker 3 (08:49):
For some time.

Speaker 4 (08:50):
By that, I'm not referring to formally educated versus formally
uneducated people, but people with common sense and wisdom, people
who understand how the world really works, who people who
have traditional values, etcetera, etcetera. And New York City is
a prime example of that. Now, of course, New York

(09:10):
City it's thought of internationally correctly as they arguably the
finance capital of the world. Some of my family and
friends in London might care to disagree, but it's right
up there. Obviously, it's seen as a place of, you know,
source of global television shows and movie sets and all

(09:31):
the rest of it, fashion and all these things, all
of which is true. But of course, like so many
cities and perhaps London's and other analogous here, the city
is full of people who think local terms is much,
if not more than they think of in national or
international terms. So they're focused on things like how they

(09:54):
transit themselves to work, who collects their garbage or rubbish,
what's the crime situation, like, what the tax is like,
and all these sorts of things. And for quite some time,
New York City has been in American terms, a very liberal,
leftist center place in contrast to much of the rest

(10:18):
of New York State. Not all, but most of New
York State is comparatively conservative.

Speaker 3 (10:25):
It's smaller towns, much more rural.

Speaker 4 (10:30):
And those folks pretty consistently vote for conservative candidates at
whatever level you care to name, outside of one or
two of the sort of eastern sized cities in New
York State in the north. But New York City overwhelms
them in presidential elections. And so when New York City
just gets to vote for itself, it's pretty overwhelming, with

(10:52):
a few notable exceptions that they vote for the Democrat
who is usually pretty liberal. I mean, the most notable
exception would be Rudy Giuliani in the nineteen nineties and
arguably Michael Bloomberg at least for a while to two
decades ago. But New York City is, like most urban

(11:14):
centers in America, increasingly a diverse one demographically, a higher
and higher ratio of immigrants to native born, a higher
ratio of non white to white residents, and a younger
increasingly younger population. And what you see when you know,

(11:37):
what you experience in cities such as New York City
and others in America, that kind of demographic evolutional trend
is that generally speaking, the more left wing candidates parties
do better, even better than they did before. And in
New York City and arguably in New York State is

(11:57):
exacerbated by the fact that New York State and New
York State and California are the prime examples over the
last several years, parting really with the COVID year the
last year of Trump's presidency and then running picking up
speed right through Biden's term in office. As states where

(12:18):
many many people were talking. Millions of people collectively voted
with their feet and left York's New York for Florida principally,
or California principally for Texas because they could no longer
stand the high crime, the high taxes, etc.

Speaker 3 (12:33):
Etc. All the woke madness, all of that.

Speaker 4 (12:37):
Which is great news for the states and the towns, etc.
That those folks moved to. You have this sort of
influx of saner wis of people in terms of voting terms.
But what it means is that a city like New
York City has an even smaller percentage of people who

(12:59):
are going to look for pragmatic, realistic, sensible, arguably sane
policies emanating from their politicians and the parties there the
position to choose from on the ballot. So you put
all that together and you end up with a situation
where New York City was either, you know, a few

(13:19):
months ago, was either going to vote for a long
standing liberal establishment figure, however tarnished like Mario Cuomo, the
former Mario Cuomo, his son, the former governor of New
York State, as was his father, or they're going to
sort of uh meet the moment.

Speaker 3 (13:41):
And go for someone quote unquote.

Speaker 4 (13:43):
Very progressive, uh and very left wing, as they have
done in selecting over Cuomo for the Democratic candidacy, Mam Danny,
who is a young far left not a communist, but
a very very serious radical socialist.

Speaker 3 (14:02):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (14:02):
And it looks like on November fourth, if the polls
are correct, and we know they aren't always, but it
looks like I'm nomber fourth, ma'am Danny will be elected
mayor of New York City and will be in New
York City's first overtly, explicitly, proudly enthusiastically socialist mayor.

Speaker 2 (14:21):
You say that he's not a he's not a communist.
He says that, he claims he's not a commonist. I'll
claim for him that he's a Marxist.

Speaker 4 (14:32):
Okay, Well, he I think I mean it's I mean
as a as a very serious by that, I mean
hard line not necessarily not necessarily serious thinking socialist. But
as a hardline socialist, he is naturally, unavoidably heavily, heavily
influenced by Marxist thought, Marxist philosophy, et cetera. And but

(14:58):
I don't think we can claim that he is actually
publicly advocated for the more obviously undemocratic instruments and elements
of Marxism, communism, communism more broadly, unless less I've missed it.

Speaker 2 (15:16):
Well, how about how about this then for a response
that his talk about supermarkets and who will own own
them and the and the state, the government will own them.
That's that's that's just the start. Now take take that example,
and and then there are others, and I've seen them
debunked line by line, and there is there is no

(15:39):
way on this planet that any virtually anything that he
that he intends to do if he gets there, will
will hold. It's simply, it simply can't because it doesn't
work that way. Now, you said, you said something about
people who leave, the leaves the state, and people who

(16:00):
live in other parts of the the country, et cetera.
You've got the you've got the center of this, and
I'll continue to call it Marxist Muslim headquarters in New York.
There is a word that you didn't use that I
want to, and that's common sense. Whether you're whichever party

(16:20):
you're in, common sense comes into play or it should.
My question is, how has it happened that common sense
has virtually disintegrated when it comes to voting.

Speaker 4 (16:32):
Well, I mean, obviously only a great question, but an
incredibly important question, maybe one of the most important questions
anyone can pose, which means.

Speaker 3 (16:40):
That in this case, at least, you know, it's.

Speaker 4 (16:43):
Extremely long and obligated answer.

Speaker 3 (16:46):
But I think the.

Speaker 4 (16:48):
Two things, if I had to just choose two out
of the list of probably over one hundred of variables
and factors and influences on why it seems there are
more people who not just vote differently to how one
would wish, but vote on the basis of the most inane,

(17:08):
arguably insane factors and reasoning or lack of reasoning, that
those the two things I think most of all are.

Speaker 3 (17:18):
One is the one that's most obvious to.

Speaker 4 (17:23):
People, regardless of their their their age or in life,
or their sort of family status, which is the media, right,
the mainstream media, which is in the in modern area.
You know, I'm saying that sort of since the age
of television took off in the fifties, you're talking about
a media that was always pretty much populate, mostly populated

(17:45):
by people on the left and who had an inherent bias,
but who were primarily dedicated to being good reporters and journalists.
They tended to be blue collar, working class people, before
journalism became something you needed a degree or a degree
or even a graduate degree in, and so they were

(18:08):
sort of looking for the story, looking for the answers,
looking for the facts, and whether from time to time
there lefty bias came in.

Speaker 3 (18:17):
That was something that was sort of pretty much reserved.

Speaker 4 (18:19):
For the editorializing, the official formal editorializing.

Speaker 3 (18:22):
But of course, over time, as.

Speaker 4 (18:25):
In so many professions, the professions became overcredentialized.

Speaker 3 (18:31):
Journalists became middle class.

Speaker 4 (18:33):
People and people who went to fancy universities and got
fancy degrees, and these people were more political and more geological,
and more interested in telling the world what they thought
rather than what they had found. And so media bias
is no longer hidden in the corner in the cupboard.

Speaker 3 (18:55):
It's not the elephants in the room.

Speaker 4 (18:57):
You know, it's right, it's right in your face at
all times. And so there are very few people, let's say,
under forty, under thirty these days in America who haven't
grown up having having this this incredible left wing bias

(19:18):
just wash over them. Now increasingly they recognize that and
avoid it because of independent and alternative media, podcasts, et cetera.

Speaker 3 (19:29):
May increasingly people under.

Speaker 4 (19:30):
Forty, particularly those under thirty, are getting their information from
more reliable sources and a great variety of sources, which
is always important. But that's sort of number one. Number two,
which has only become evident to I say, a critical
mass since the insanity of education under the COVID regime.

(19:53):
And that is how terrible America's educational system has become
at the what Americans referred to as the Great School
junior school level and right up through high school.

Speaker 3 (20:06):
But what parents discovered when they were.

Speaker 4 (20:10):
Those who were trying to help their kids do their
online schooling during the COVID lockdowns was not only how
how pathetically simple so much of what it was they
were being asked to do, but how politicized it was.
And so you've got you know, you've got these two
forces that have been working for it for decades, and

(20:34):
you've we've ended up none that this is the end
capital T capital E. But we're at a point now
where so many people know nothing of the country's history. Uh,
they don't understand the first thing about economics more importantly
than nothing about business. And what they do know about

(20:55):
these things that about the world beyond America's shores.

Speaker 3 (20:59):
Now that's not new.

Speaker 4 (21:00):
But in each of these cases, what so many Americans
know is untrue, incorrect, accurate, because they've.

Speaker 3 (21:09):
Been fed this very very left wing line on some things.

Speaker 4 (21:12):
And obviously this is something which crudely stated, you know,
has been the case throughout most western nations for a
couple of generations at least.

Speaker 3 (21:21):
But you know, that's where we are.

Speaker 4 (21:23):
And then you put that, you take that the New
York City case. And in New York City, you know,
you have to say this urban you know, one of
the largest urban areas in the world, geographically very very concentrated.
You've got huge minority populations, you've got a disproportionate number

(21:45):
of supremely wealthy, highly educated folks in tech and finance
and the arts and entertainment and television, et cetera. And
these are people who, with the exception of the arts
and television, until relatively recently, could have been relied upon

(22:06):
to vote conservative to the right, even if some of
them felt a little guilty about it. But these days
these are the most reliable liberal voters in America, particularly
the female ones. And so you put that all together,
so many more left wing young young people than were

(22:26):
to the far left newly left leaning, socially liberal wealthy people,
particularly white people, and not as many but still disproportionately
black and Hispanic voters sticking with the Democrats.

Speaker 3 (22:43):
So it's, you know, it's the arithmetic is.

Speaker 4 (22:47):
Just overwhelming in terms of why someone like ma'm Danny
would would be able to put himself forward and not
just be taken seriously, but to actually be the person
who's apparently about to win.

Speaker 2 (23:03):
Well, there's a very good article that I pulled offline
from City Journal dated October five, which was yesterday for you.
It breaks things down pretty well for a novice. It
points out some good stuff. I think the governor's stance
next to you will be critical to New York's future

(23:24):
since it's total, isn't it will hold power over one
of Mandani's most significant proposals, sharply raising taxes and spending.
Mandani's affordability pitch is simple, ten billion dollars in new
annual city spending, funded almost entirely through new taxes on

(23:44):
the wealthy and corporations. He claims that nine billion could
be raised at a glance by taxing the wealthiest New Yorkers,
including five billion from a higher state corporate tax and
four billion from a new two percent surcharge on city
income over a million, and the remaining one billion, he
says would come from that perennial Holy Grail efficiencies. Most

(24:10):
of this revenue, about six million, would finance his biggest initiative.

Speaker 3 (24:13):
Do you know what that is? Not a trick question?
He has so many Well, arguably it could be the.

Speaker 4 (24:24):
Green madness, but there's so many things that he is
going to throw a huge amount of money at.

Speaker 3 (24:30):
It could be wrong about that.

Speaker 2 (24:31):
So let me tell you. Free childcare for every New
Yorker age six weeks to five years at but wait,
at pay parity with public school teachers. Mandani is so
confident in his premise more taxes on the rich will
make life better for everyone else that he offers or
offers almost no details. His childcare plan gets just one

(24:53):
hundred and seventeen words on his website. Basic questions go
and answered. Why should infants in toddlers who mainly need
to be fed, held, and supervised that play require care
from staff trained and paid like public school teachers who's
every salary before health and retirement benefits as of twenty
twenty three was about one hundred thousand dollars, so he

(25:14):
got to pay you know, baby holders the same sort
of money. Bottom line is, if that's his starting point,
then it's headed for collapse, I think, very quickly. But
along the way he'll try and desperately try to keep
it going and try and raise taxes more than he

(25:35):
already has.

Speaker 3 (25:36):
Oh, no, no doubt.

Speaker 4 (25:37):
I mean his plan, which is I mean, as you
point out, is not always fleshed out to everyone's satisfaction,
but is you know, to be fair to him, he
has said what he wants to do, right, I mean,
the scary part is that he has said what he
wants to do, and so whether it's the universal childcare,
whether it's the freezing rents for a million plats and apartments,

(26:04):
whether it's bringing in the government owned run grocery stores
that are going to sell their goods at wholesale prices,
whether it's the free bus and subway fares.

Speaker 3 (26:19):
As in there are no fairs who just travel for free.

Speaker 4 (26:23):
All of these things are a combination of unaffordable and
unwise as policies. You know, even if there are some
things over the years that some people on the right
have said, well, you know, okay, that's probably a good idea,
but we can't afford it. But in the case of
what ma'am Danny is proposing for New York City, everything's

(26:45):
a bad idea and even and it's and it's unaffordable
to boot right. And of course, as you say he's
going to quote unquote pay for it, he's he's done
the other side of the ledge, gone to the other
side of the ledger and says, you know, we can
pay for it by soaking the rich and the corporations.

(27:06):
And he sees teams completely unaware that New York City,
however unique a jurisdiction it is, it does not exist
in isolation, either from the rest of the country economically,
or from financially, or from the rest of the world.
And so, as I was touching on earlier, people from

(27:26):
all over New York State, including especially in New York City,
have been fleeing for reasons, you know, personal and professional.
Once he gets in and starts jacking up, everyone's because
we know how this works. It's always going to be
the billionaires and the corporations who will pay, And of
course it ends up being they don't. There's not enough

(27:48):
money there, and so many of them have left anyway,
So you start taxing middle class people at higher rates,
and that's when the rubber really hits the road.

Speaker 3 (27:55):
So people will leave.

Speaker 4 (27:58):
Businesses will leave, larger and medium sized and small, and
there will be fewer jobs, and the tax revenue will decline,
and those who the productive people, the number of them,
the ratio of proportion of those will go down, and
they'll start having to squeeze more and more from a
smaller population. And this is the way it always goes.

(28:20):
But when it's pointed out to him that some of
his proposals have been tried else fact, most of them,
all of them be tried somewhere, often in America, and
they've failed, he responds the way he did when it
was pointed out to him the government run grocery stores
have been tried elsewhere and failed miserably, And he says, well,
I get that, I understand that, I recognize I appreciate that.

(28:40):
But we're going to do it different, and we're going
to do it better or work fine here. And in fact,
he thinks that New York City are after his tenure,
will be a sort of a beacon and.

Speaker 3 (28:51):
A role model for the rest of the country.

Speaker 4 (28:53):
And you know they used to say back in the
good old days that you know, California led the way.
What happened in California culturally and economically politically eventually swept
across the entire country. Well, Ma'm Danny believes that it's
going to go from east to west, this time from.

Speaker 3 (29:08):
The socialist mecca.

Speaker 4 (29:11):
No pun intended, well slightly intended of New York City,
and you know the rest will be history as it were.

Speaker 3 (29:18):
Of course, many of us fear that New York City
will be history.

Speaker 4 (29:21):
Uh he is he where he fits, where where his
mindset fits very much fits the communist mindset. Sort of
large sea communist is as you're well aware late, and
I'm sure most of your audiences as well. You know,
throughout history when there's been a large sea communist government,

(29:42):
things have never gone as planned. Again no pun intended,
but yes intended. However, those either who were part of
that government looking back retrospectively or others inspired by communism generally,
I've always pointed to the fact that the yeah, things
didn't work out, but that because they weren't done properly.

Speaker 3 (30:05):
But there's nothing wrong with the.

Speaker 4 (30:07):
Basic philosophy, idolog ideology, the basic you know, agender and platform.
It just has to be done right and if you know,
when we get in, we'll do it right. And he
clearly is signed up to that sort of page of
the Communist Large Sea playbook. And it's just a matter
of doing things right in New York City, you know,

(30:29):
he says, for example, you know, many people on the
right have always argued that taxation is theft. He says,
taxation isn't theft, capitalism is theft. Right, So they're going
to get rid of capitalism as best they can in
New York City. It's funny if this was a there's
a small town of one hundred and fifty people, the town,
you know, small outpost, one hundred and fifty people in Idaho,

(30:50):
you'd say, well, that's rather a brave experiment to get
rid of capitalism in this little, you know, little outposts
in Idaho. But he's going to take arguably, on paper,
the most capitalistic.

Speaker 3 (31:01):
City in the world and get rid of what makes
it go.

Speaker 4 (31:07):
So it it is, as you say, mission impossible. Uh.
And it's a question I think for those of us
not of that ilk do we do we pray that
it doesn't come to pass because we don't want anyone
to suffer under this madness. Or do we say, well,

(31:30):
you know you can, you can. You can point to
the many, many cases in America elsewhere where. It seems
that when something's going wrong, it has to go really,
really wrong before a critical mass of people realize just
how bad is and are willing to do something about it.

Speaker 3 (31:48):
And so do we just knit?

Speaker 4 (31:49):
Lets need to let New York City bleed out, and
it will both wake up New Yorkers and also because
New York is such a you know, it has the
spotlight on it at all times, good and bad, it'll wait,
it'll educate many others in America and perhaps elsewhere that
you know, this quote unquote progressive moment that we're in

(32:12):
isn't progressive at all. It's quite regressive, and we just
really should have nothing more to do with it.

Speaker 2 (32:18):
Well, I don't know about you, but I would put
the foundation for whatever success has already been reached to
whatever might be. I'd put it down to the education system.

Speaker 4 (32:32):
Yeah, absolutely, yeah, it's this is this is where we are,
isn't it.

Speaker 3 (32:37):
I mean, you wish we are Sorry, go ahead.

Speaker 2 (32:41):
I was going to say, the education system such as
it is, Yeah, we are.

Speaker 4 (32:47):
A population of formally educated but in practice highly uneducated
come miseducated, principally especially uninformed people. Right, And so we've
gone from everyone who went to school, even if it
was only for a short time, have a coming out

(33:09):
with basic skills that would carry them through their entire
lives and at least a basic understanding of the country's history, values,
religious beliefs.

Speaker 3 (33:24):
Et cetera, et cetera, to.

Speaker 4 (33:27):
A population that is far far more formally educated, incredibly credentialed,
and lacking in so many basic skills that it's quite
surprising that so many people are able to function at all. Right,
because as as in America, because everyone is pushed through

(33:51):
regardless of how they perform. In fact, the worse they perform,
the more rapidly they're pushed through. That you have, you know,
people are graduating high school who are functionally illiterate. I mean,
you know, it's not a rare occur rights. So this
is you know, this, this, this is this is what

(34:12):
we're dealing with. And this is a huge reason why
the the Mamdani's, the AOC's, the Bernie Sanders. People like
this are able to sort of rhetorically hoodwink so many
people with their pseudo intellectual you know, intellectualizing of the problem,

(34:36):
the critique of America, and are able to sell a
story of America, not just its present, which people who
on the left always you know, to go back to Roosevelt,
the FDR. You know, for a century, those on the
left have said there are things wrong with America, some
serious things wrong, and we must fix them, and we

(34:58):
must make.

Speaker 3 (34:58):
Improvements, we must change a bit.

Speaker 4 (35:00):
But that was always built on a on a on
an explicit foundation. This is a great country, This is
an important country. This is an amazing country, and we
need to live up to its potential, whether you believe
it or not. Even though Obama used that kind of rhetoric,
but these characters today they explicitly state that this is

(35:21):
a bad country. It's a flawed country. It probably never
should have been a country. After all, it we just
stole somebody else's country to have our country. And the
least we can do is copy the worst of other countries,
and you know, just try to make what we can
of this, you know, of this terrible environment in which

(35:45):
so many in which we all live because of the
flaws and faults and mistakes of our racist forebears, and that,
you know, that doesn't sell to most people, although for
a few years it looked like it looked like it might.
But it sells to enough that they are able to
make enough noise and in certain parts of the country

(36:08):
carry the work, carry the day politically, and in a
city like New York City, are able to dominate politically.

Speaker 3 (36:20):
So it's it's a sad situation.

Speaker 4 (36:24):
But we have to, you know, if we're going to
improve upon this situation, we have to face the reality
the New York City is on the precipice of electing
someone who is literally anti New York City in an
historical sense. Right, just as America had a choice last
November between someone who, for all his flaws, very patriotic

(36:48):
person and a candidate in Kamala Harris who was explicitly
anti American, right now, America got that one.

Speaker 2 (36:57):
Right, doesn't do any sanity well all that.

Speaker 4 (37:02):
Well, yes, okay, excuse, it's just my my British, my
British politeness coming through occasionally, is right.

Speaker 3 (37:08):
But you know, and so it's it's it's quite surreal right.
I mean, it's it's.

Speaker 4 (37:14):
Hard to believe that the choices are the choices. And
while we have to be incredibly relieved that the anti
American candidate didn't win the presidency, we also have to
be unnerved, perhaps or at least educated by the fact
that you know, she wasn't a million miles away from winning, right,

(37:35):
And it's just just like if Ma'm Danny, if Cromo
comes back and is able to you know, squeeze out
of victory, it's still it's still going to mean that
close to almost half of New Yorkers are you know what,
will have voted for the radical socialist right? And so

(37:55):
is that is that as I'm suggesting, and I dare
to say, you're suggesting that this is about a culture
and an educational system and a lot of things that
have the media environment, a lot of things that have
gone crazily wrong, some by design, some by accident over
recent generations, or is it that's organically close to half

(38:18):
of the electorate in America and perhaps more in certain
parts are just unsalvageable in terms of how they view
their world the world, and how they the calculus that
they that they make about what it is that makes

(38:41):
life good bad, how it can be improved, how they
receive information from politicians and political parties, how they process that,
and what they spit out. As a conclusion, I hope
as hard it is to rectify the situation. Based on
my conclusion about why it's gone wrong, I think that

(39:05):
the other the other conclusion that it's organic and we
just have far more crazy people politically crazy people than
we used to. That's that's worse, because I'm not quite
sure what we do about that.

Speaker 2 (39:19):
Well, there's an old saying that goes something along the
lines of nothing changes for the better until it gets
as bad as it can. Going back to the education,
it's been rattling round inside my head when I was
when I was in high school, I did.

Speaker 3 (39:32):
I did.

Speaker 2 (39:34):
It was economics, really, and it was comparative economic systems.
There was the subject and basically was Moscow versus Washington,
d C. But they taught it straight. You know, you
had two columns. For instance, I can I can still
picture you had two columns and these were the results

(39:56):
from from Moscow and these were the results from Washington.
And you could see the difference in them. But but
not only that, of course, there was there was plenty
else involved. Because you had freedom in Washington, you had
not so much in Moscow. And freedom has always been

(40:17):
incredibly important to me anyway, And I'd like to think
to my father the bulk of people on the planet.
But what I was driving at here now was I
recalled being I don't know how well you know Sydney,
but Martin Place in Sydney, right in the center pedestrian
a pedestrian mall. Now it wasn't once, but now it is.

(40:40):
And walking down there, and this was the time of
the Vietnam War when things got pretty hot, and you
had a whole bunch of mostly university students who were
demonstrating outside the American embassy. And I couldn't help myself.

(41:01):
I was walking down there with a schoolmate. I couldn't
help myself. I had to tell some of them how
stupid they were, they didn't know what they were doing.
And I got it. I got away from it without
without injury. But the point was that I don't believe
that they'd been taught something along the lines of comparative

(41:23):
economic systems and the benefits of one and the non
benefits of the other. So that for me was my
first ever experience with revolting students, revolting, revolting on both fronts,
but it actually established something for me and I retained
it ever since. Anyway, give me your response to this,

(41:45):
if you if you would, if he if he wins,
and we're assuming at the moment that he's going to
win become the mayor of New York City, what spin
off might there be to other parts of the country
specifically specific specific some states like well, Illinois and Chicago

(42:06):
and where else? Am I thinking of.

Speaker 3 (42:11):
San Francisco?

Speaker 2 (42:12):
Maybe some Lenard, No, it's not the it's on the Portland.

Speaker 3 (42:16):
Oregon, Portland, Seattle, all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 4 (42:18):
Yeah, yeah, Well, broadly, in terms of the country as
a whole, you're going to have a brain drain, a
wealth train, an innovation train out of New York City,
probably before he's even you know, if he wins on
November fourth or November fifth, there are people and businesses

(42:39):
that are going to start sorting out how they can
get out right. So other parts of the country will
gain in various various ways. But in terms of the
places you mentioned, the Chicago's, the Portland, you maybe thrown in,
Seattle out thrown in San Francisco, these places like that,
they're actually going to be encouraged, but not that not

(43:01):
the average person living there. Arguably perhaps that's maybe that's
in We have to do a heck of a number
of good polls to find out for sure. But in
terms of the leadership of those places, which is uniformly democratic,
in the case of Chicago.

Speaker 3 (43:17):
It's very much African American.

Speaker 4 (43:20):
There's different depending on you know, where you go in
San Francisco or whatever, but they are.

Speaker 3 (43:27):
They are local.

Speaker 4 (43:29):
Governments that have done everything possible, presumably unintentionally but perhaps
not to wreck their cities because they have performed so
abysmally on the basics in terms of law and order,
prime turning turning there their cities not only into official

(43:51):
sanctuary cities for legal immigrants, but absolute sort of cess
pools of a legal activity, a good, good dollop of
which is committed by illegals, but not soaly, not exclusively,
and so they are going to be encouraged by Mad

(44:13):
Dandy's one of the on illegals. One of the things
he wants to do is to solidify New York status
as a sanctuary city and ensure that and guarantee that
there is actually no cooperation between New York City government
and law enforcement and the federal Immigration Enforcement through ICE,

(44:36):
the Immigration Customs Enforcement Agency, which gets most of the
headlines because it's doing most of the literally sort of
rounding up and arresting. So they are going to defy.
That's the plan, To just proudly defy the federal government
in that regard, and to double down on the mad, brazy, insane,

(44:58):
incredibly dangerous defunding the police that has gone on in
so many larger American cities over the last five years.
And so cities like Chicago, go and Portland in Seattle
and San Francisco who have been on the same track
as New York in terms of illegal immigration and in

(45:19):
terms of defunding the police and all of the woke
madness which Man Danny is sort of absolutely all over.
They will say, hey, you know, people say the world's
turned against us, Well it hasn't. I mean, the most
important city in the world is just voted for just
someone who you know, we're going to view as a
role model.

Speaker 3 (45:39):
And they'll do that. And so politically, that growing.

Speaker 4 (45:45):
Part of the Democratic Party, which nationally, which is arguably
it's base now younger, crazy left wingers, particularly female, especially female.
You know, they're going to make even more noise. But
the irony is that the more, as is happening already

(46:06):
with the Democratic Party since Trump inauguration, the more the
average American, the average American voter sees of how Democrats
govern and what they prioritize and what they favor and
what they disfavor, the harder it gets to the Democrats
to with to retain a hold on so many of

(46:29):
the traditional voters, including their minority voters. And so what
those cities are going to do in microcosm, as Mam
Danny will do, is what the Democrats have done nationally,
which is quite bizarre but wonderful if you're not a Democrat,
which is they They continue to tell the world that
the following are the issues that we care the most about,

(46:51):
that we really matter to us, that we will go
to the wall about what we will plant our flag
and say this is you know, this is what we
stand for. And those are the legal immigrants, criminals, government bureaucrats,
foreign aid not recipient foreign aid organizations, right, I mean

(47:12):
this is and transgender folks, uh, and the the LGBT
community more broad In now, ma'm Danny's talks about He's
very he wants to equalize everything in terms of what
he refers to as LGBT I A plus that's his
particular letter combination. But that those five to six things

(47:37):
that he cares the most about, that the Chicagos and
Portlands of this world care the most about, will continue
to wreck those cities.

Speaker 3 (47:47):
However, they will continue to wreck the.

Speaker 4 (47:50):
National hopes of Democrats because you know, the you just cannot,
you just cannot hide your true beliefs and your true priorities.

Speaker 3 (48:02):
Any longer.

Speaker 4 (48:03):
When this is what you run to the microphone, run
to the cameras to to proclaim to the world, bizarrely
expecting most people to say.

Speaker 3 (48:15):
Wow, that's fantastic.

Speaker 4 (48:16):
I'm with him, I'm with her, or should I say
I'm with they or them?

Speaker 3 (48:20):
However one is supposed to put it, and it's so,
you know, this is again the this.

Speaker 4 (48:28):
Is the upside of the downside, right, This is the
this is the glass half full if you ignore the
poor people in Chicago, Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, in New
York City who have to live through this not just
financial economic nightmare, transportation nightmare, but they have to literally
attempt to live and survive in what has become in

(48:49):
those cities, as in Washington, d C. Until Trump's send
in the military, a physical nightmare right where things are
so bad, so badly run that your yours and your
family's physical security is under threat. But as you've touched
on with you, you put much better than I did
late with your your turn of phrase, it's you know,

(49:12):
how bad do things have to get before most people
start taking not taking notice?

Speaker 3 (49:16):
People start taking.

Speaker 4 (49:17):
Notice quite early, but actually be willing to do something
about it quite so.

Speaker 2 (49:23):
Now you don't live in New York. Can you live
in Washington or out just out of Washington, DC? Here's
the question of the day. Is it safer in Washington now?
Can you go out at night, go to a restaurant?
Can you walk the streets of Washington, DC? Without fear?

Speaker 4 (49:42):
It's amazing how things turned around, one is tempted to say,
almost overnight. Right Washington had become, under the local government
encouraged by the Biden administration, had become by early in
the Trump administration, an absolute living hell in terms of

(50:06):
putting yourself at risk, so stupid to go out at night,
restaurants closing, leaving, businesses closing leaving. I mean, just a
ghost town at night, and just an unpleasant in all
senses place to be outside of the wonderfully subsidi sized
enclaves and oases of the federal government and some of

(50:29):
the local government stuff. But Trump achieved something very quickly
and very importantly in actually acting to prevent and prosecute crime,
right and guess what, it made a difference.

Speaker 3 (50:49):
And it made an unbelievable difference.

Speaker 4 (50:51):
And we don't know how lot will go on because
the wash that we don't know what the local government
will do. But it is a much much safer place
at the moment than it was.

Speaker 3 (51:02):
Is no comparison. It's like a different city now.

Speaker 4 (51:05):
So therefore, if you take the comparison today with New
York City, then it's very different. I happened to be
in New York City got two weeks ago for the
first time in a little while. I was only in Manhattan,
which is the you know, the sophisticated, cosmopolitan elite part
of it. Believe, even if financially I could claim that,

(51:29):
which I sadly cannot, I don't think those folks would
particularly want me as a fellow member of the club.

Speaker 3 (51:35):
But there you go.

Speaker 4 (51:37):
And I mean it's you know, the homeless, the vagrancy,
the aggressiveness, the crime. I mean, the subway is you know, boy,
don't you know you really got to need to use
the subway, lacking in options to use the subway, all
the rest of it. That's been well publicized, at least
outside of CNN. And so, yeah, New York City is

(52:01):
a bigger problem today. But if you'd ask me a
few months ago, I'd have said, well, New York's larger,
and therefore the problem's larger affects more peace. But Washington
has been in this bad situation for a long time
and we can't see any daylight but.

Speaker 3 (52:16):
Things.

Speaker 4 (52:17):
You know, it was darkest before the dawn in that terms,
but in that sense, and Trump actually did something about it,
which is now threatening to do, uh do to Chicago,
which is the Chicago government, like the Washington government, very very
upset about.

Speaker 3 (52:30):
But I think I rather think there's.

Speaker 4 (52:32):
Quite a few people in Chicago hiding, you know, behind
their sofas in the evening with their curtains drawn, who
were rather hoping that the military come in sooner rather
than later.

Speaker 2 (52:44):
I think it was a few underground too, who would
like a second chance. Indeed, why is it then, Well,
this is a silly question because the answer is obvious,
but I'll ask it anyway. Why is it then that
so many politicians, like the mayor of Chicago and lots

(53:05):
of other people in positions that approach it, claim that
there is no problem in Chicago. We don't have violence here,
We don't have there's no call for them. The only
the only people causing the problem here are the the
the guys who've been sent in by the president. We
all know, we all know that that's a BS So why.

Speaker 4 (53:29):
Well, I think it's because they think it's their only
chance to survive politically, and sadly, perversely, they're often proven correct.

Speaker 3 (53:38):
Right, So you have so to talk about.

Speaker 4 (53:42):
I mean, just talk about Washington quickly, and then Chicago.
You have the local government and the local police leadership.
I'm not talking about your average average cop. I'm talking
about the political people who found their way at the
top of the police department, who happened to be who
happened to be cops. You know, they're saying that what
is going on this is ridiculous. Trump, Why would he

(54:02):
do this. Apart from the issue of whether, from their
point of view, whether he had the authority and the power,
we don't have a big problem, right. And of course
it turns out that one of the neat ways in
which they were able to present this is by simply
fabricating the crime stats. It's just like last year Trump
during one of the debates, I think it was the

(54:22):
ABC debate. They they said to him, you made this
big thing about big case about crime being on the
on the rise, violent crime, but the stats from the
FBI say it isn't. And of course it turned out
that the major cities, the Democratic cities where most of
the violent crime is had stopped reporting their stats. Right,
they're just you know, so this this is this is

(54:44):
what this is the game that's played.

Speaker 3 (54:48):
And its Chicago.

Speaker 4 (54:50):
A couple of years ago, the lady mayor, who had
done an abysmal job on all things, including crime, she
lost her position in the same way that the only
way that Democrats lose their positions of power in these cities,
which is they lose the primary. Right, because the Republican
is always a no hoper in the general election.

Speaker 3 (55:12):
You win the primary, you win the election.

Speaker 4 (55:14):
The general election, you're the next mayor, senator, of congressman whatever.
In Chicago, Mayor Lightfoot lost the primary because things were
going so badly under her watch. Now you think to
yourself from a distance, well, okay, it's really bad that
things got so bad in Chicago, particularly on crime and
poverty and homelessness and all the rest of it. And

(55:35):
she did a terrible job on COVID. At least they've
come to their senses. Wait a second, who beats her
in the primary somewhat even further to the left. Right,
it's just like Cuomo, because it was a failed governor
and a tarnished and a scandal ridden governor by the
time he put his name forward as the establishment candidate
for mayor of New York for the Democratic mayor's position,

(56:00):
Democratic candidate for mayor's position, and he lost.

Speaker 3 (56:04):
Say, well, okay, that's I mean, I can handle that.
That's probably a good thing.

Speaker 4 (56:07):
It is a good But he lost to someone far
far crazier than him, right, And so it tells us
two things. One was, we've already gone over in terms
of why and how there are so many more people
who just don't get it, especially in those cities with
those compositions demographically, economically, et cetera. But it also tells

(56:31):
us what has happened to the Democratic Party itself. Right,
the Democratic Party is so far removed from its working
class even labor union roots. You know, it's not funny.
In fact, it's a crying shame. So it is now
locally and nationally it's a middle to upper class party

(56:53):
run by left wingers and liberals, many of whom are white,
many of whom are African American summer Hispanic, you know,
in certain states. But it's an up market crowd who
are power mad authoritarians, particularly on social issues.

Speaker 3 (57:14):
Authoritarians.

Speaker 4 (57:15):
They're anti capitalists, they're anti American, and they exist in
a bubble that doesn't allow any penetration from what rests
are called the real world or even sort of real information.
And so they they spout to one another, and they
and they spout publicly this these crazy things which are

(57:39):
demonstrably untrue. It's like Kamala Harris the few times that
she answered a question during the campaign about illegal immigration
and the invasion at the southern border and to simply
denied that that had or was going on, and said
that she and Joe had done a great job, right,

(58:00):
so they just they is to some extent, some of
them are lying on occasion, and others literally do not
have a clue what's going on, but because of the
nature of their respective electorates, they are able to often
survive it. And those who are more extreme and more

(58:23):
further disconnected from reality and from the lives, the real
lives of ordinary people that they quote unquote represent.

Speaker 3 (58:32):
Are the ones who prosper politically.

Speaker 2 (58:36):
Let me change direction here just for a minute, to
something that's connected to what we've been talking about, but
from a different angle. The headline is this isn't progress,
it's punishment. And it's written by an Australian academic from
Canberra who I'm familiar with. In the shadow of our

(58:57):
sunburned country and insidious forces at work dismantling the very
fabric of what it means to be Australian, it's not
the bushwires or the floods that threaten our identity. Those
are the battles we've always thought. No, the real enemy
is the creeping tide of modern communism, disguised as progressive
virtue and unchecked mass migration that seeks to erase our

(59:20):
unique cultural heritage in favor of a homogeneized globalist to
gray from the demolition of our Federation houses to the
silencing of political opinion, and now the swamping of our
suburbs with endless arrivals. This ideology doesn't just hate Australia,
it loathes the rugged individualism that it built. And I

(59:41):
skip a few paragraphs. Modern commonists, those self appointed guardians
of the greater good, view our sprawling suburbs as symbols
of inequality. Yet their solution is to level everything to
the lowest common denominator, importing waves of newcomers to justify
concrete jungles. Gone are the Federation houses bulldozed for soulless

(01:00:03):
walk up apartments that could be in communist Eastern Europe,
indistinguishable in the sterility. Our architecture, once a celebration of
Australian ingenuity, is now a casualty of this ideological war,
with immigration's pressure cooker effect on housing prices ensuring the
old ways are priced out forever. That's only a very

(01:00:27):
small part of it. But because I know the story
only too well, and I can connect it to here,
Except we don't have people in this country that can
write like that, we don't have people in this country
who are intelligent enough to know really what's going on
because we are under in a smaller way, because we

(01:00:48):
are a smaller country. We are under the same sort
of pressures both in education, specifically in education and in governance.

Speaker 3 (01:00:57):
And it's.

Speaker 2 (01:01:00):
Insanity. But there is still not the number of people
in the country who have latched onto it and connect
did it to what we've been discussing about what's happening
in America. Therefore, therefore there's nothing to be done really
as a As one last example, at the moment, we're
having a postal ballot local council election which goes on

(01:01:25):
for about five weeks or something, and there there is
such a low turnout that it's an open house for
for anyone was with great ambition along the along the
Socialists through railway track.

Speaker 3 (01:01:40):
The Yeah, I mean, it's that's what you read. I
mean obviously that I mean.

Speaker 4 (01:01:44):
I'm somewhat familiar with the Australian context, but obviously the
author is there was a million times more than I do.

Speaker 3 (01:01:51):
But to me, to me, what he said, what you read,
what he.

Speaker 4 (01:01:56):
Wrote, what you read rings true across every Western certainly
English speaking Western country, right, the same forces, because after all,
this is a global this is a global campaign.

Speaker 3 (01:02:11):
And we're all, you know, we're all our countries are
pieces on pieces on the board.

Speaker 4 (01:02:18):
Uh. And because one of the great ironies of all
of these progressives, whether you whether they are or are
not communists, there's certainly mostly very hardline socialists that these progressives,
what is the thing that they claim to be in faate?

Speaker 3 (01:02:33):
I mean, they're against all kinds of things, racism.

Speaker 4 (01:02:35):
Capitalism, you know, whatever, whatever, but they they the things
they're for. The thing that they hang their hat on, right,
is the most positive thing they have to say, is
that they're pro diversity. Right, Diversity is the answer to everything.
It would be the answer to our prayers, except we
will eventually all be atheists so that they will have

(01:02:56):
to stop using that phrase. But diversity is everything, it's
it's how we have a better society, a fairer society,
our economies grow, et cetera. And yet the counterintuitively may
maybe ironically it is a better way of putting it

(01:03:16):
is this homogenization which the author was touching on there
painting a picture that that Eastern European grayness uniform uniformity
of grayness. That is actually what they are, what they

(01:03:36):
are achieving, and what they want to achieve globally, certainly
throughout the West, where all of our societies are no
longer nation states, right they are. You could be in England,
fly to America, fly to Australia, hop over to New Zealand,
and demographically you would find each one of them more

(01:03:57):
or less as diverse as the other, right, any of
the others. That's the goal. We're just this multicultural mix.
And so it's sort of actually they want diversity, but
they don't want diversity between nations.

Speaker 3 (01:04:14):
It's just within a nation. It's it's a very interesting.

Speaker 4 (01:04:18):
Thing that they're they I'm not sure they're aware of
how sort of the kind of intellectual cul de sac
that they've they've brought themselves into, but there is you know,
you could say, well, there wasn't a few years ago
at all.

Speaker 3 (01:04:33):
But there is a some reason for hope in all
of this in terms of what.

Speaker 4 (01:04:39):
We're talking of describing, I mean, bottom line, we're describing
the cultural decay, right, the cultural decline that permeates every
aspect of our lives and is a if you like,
if like myself. You think that politics is downstream from culture,
then we should, we should have always and we should
going forward be as be far more wide of what's

(01:05:01):
happening culturally than what is happening politically in the moment.
And I say all this with a tinge of optimism
because we're in America, for example, you've had this quite rapid,
really dramatic, drastic change in opinion among the youngest adults. Right,
we knew the millennials came up and it was Obama

(01:05:23):
and the Democrats knew they'd be in forever because no
on knew all the minorities and the growing number of
minorities to vote is going to people were going to
vote for them always. But everyone under thirty, everyone under
thirty five, they hated. They were like socialism. They hated
the Republicans, all the rest of it. Now, millennials are

(01:05:44):
not quite as uniform today in their late thirties and
forties as they were fifteen twenty years ago as younger adults.

Speaker 3 (01:05:53):
But the Zoomers, the.

Speaker 4 (01:05:55):
Generation Z, these folks when they were sixteen or eighteen,
they might have thought or default lefties or Democrats. They've
a lot of them. They've gone through college, university, and
or they can't find a job and they can't get
out of their parents' basement, and they don't understand why

(01:06:15):
feminism hates men and all the rest of it.

Speaker 3 (01:06:19):
And they are not only too many.

Speaker 4 (01:06:22):
To many of neutral observers, surprisingly right wing, but they are,
depending on the issue, the most right wing group of
any any age group, any age cohort you care to name,
especially on matters of culture, hatriotism, religion. Right they are.

(01:06:45):
And this is Exkew's male. But it's not by any
means exclusively that you know the same. The point I'm
making is still still it's still apparent. The data still
are quite clear if you leave in a look at
sort of female zoomers. So things have happened, both in
terms of their lives and in their own daily lives,

(01:07:06):
and then what the larger culture and the world has
been telling them and what they've learned, whether that was
the intended lesson or not. And so they are looking
at their futures and they are looking back as best
they can and thinking, you know, this country has lost something.

Speaker 3 (01:07:29):
You know, they recognize it in a way that many
people my age.

Speaker 4 (01:07:33):
Your age, older latent are appreciating, often belatedly. So I
don't know to what extent this is going to. This
is a phenomenon throughout the West. I think there's some
indication is there in Canada, it's there in the UK.
I can't speak to New Zealand or Australia, but it
does tell us one that younger people they're not only

(01:07:56):
you know, to use the old cliche, they only are future,
but they're also the nature of that future that they are.
They are it is possible for them to be re educated,
often more by personal experience than by formal education. That's possible,

(01:08:17):
and it can happen quite quickly. I mean, I'm sure,
as you well know, most political trends and changes, I
mean is evolutionary, not revolutionary. But what's happened with the Zoomers,
at least in America, is really.

Speaker 3 (01:08:32):
Quite quite stark.

Speaker 4 (01:08:34):
And the Charlie Kirk assassination is their JFK moment, right,
It's they will always remember where they were when they
heard that, you know, they will always remember watching every
moment of that memorial service from Phoenix, right. Their lives

(01:08:59):
are affected by that and changed by that, just as
so many people were in the early nineteen sixties and
for the next generation. So there is amidst all of
this madness and all of this decline and arguably decay,
there are threads of hope.

Speaker 3 (01:09:20):
And you know it is.

Speaker 4 (01:09:22):
I can't claim to have that one percent positive outlook
that someone a better person like Charlie Kirk had portrayed
and genuinely, genuinely felt, but there is there is some
reason for hope amidst all of the darkness.

Speaker 3 (01:09:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:09:38):
So I can tell you that the age group that
I'm that I'm talking about in late twenties to early thirties, right,
and when Charlie Kirk got assassinated, there was distress amongst
a bunch of young people.

Speaker 3 (01:09:59):
Younger people.

Speaker 2 (01:09:59):
I know, they're not young people anymore. They're they're adults.
And that surprised me because I was unaware of the
the effect that he was he was having. I had
no idea that they even knew of her, but they
they were very keen on Charlie Kirk. So the only

(01:10:20):
thing that is disappointing about it, the only the only
gap that's left is that they couldn't understand why, why,
why why do people do this? Why why did they
have to kill him. Why you know that that that
was that was a that was a real buffer for them.

Speaker 4 (01:10:41):
Yeah, well they I mean, you've probably heard more than enough,
more than you wanted to hear from me on Mam Danny.
But tying it back to New York City and what's
going on there, you have in Mam Danny, you have
someone who is at least implicitly supportive of a global
into fader, right. This this is someone who is one

(01:11:07):
full of not only anti American, anti anti capitalists, but
anti Israeli, anti Semitic, all the rest of it. I mean,
somewhat person can have whatever well reasoned, constructive critique of
Benjamin Nutt and Iow's government and Israeli response to the
Hamass attacks from October twenty twenty three, whatever, Fine, but

(01:11:30):
we're talking here about someone who is simply.

Speaker 3 (01:11:35):
Doesn't like those people, right.

Speaker 4 (01:11:38):
And I don't know if it's because you know, he's
a Muslim from Uganda or not, but he and those
who support him, and both in terms of votes and
in those in terms of give him the largest donations,
they do not seem to like this one of the
smaller countries in the Middle East at all, as much

(01:12:01):
as they dislike the country in which they live and
have done very well. So I'm saying all this because
they represent a change in the mindset of political leaders
on the left seemingly everywhere, but certainly throughout the West,
and especially I think in America, and the Charlie Kirk

(01:12:24):
assassination brought that out. I'm not talking here about trying
to drill down into sort of who did what to whom,
but in terms of the response to it and the
the place the value that people place on human life.
So I mean it's a crude as a sort of
a crude historical sort of lesson.

Speaker 3 (01:12:46):
What I would say is that until fairly recently.

Speaker 4 (01:12:50):
Both publicly, and I would also argue often privately, those
leaders on political leaders on the left, they did not
actually want to advocate their opponents' demise, death, assassination, murder. Okay,
they recognize their ethics, they're values prohibited that, and they

(01:13:11):
recognized also that you know, uh, what's good for the
goose is good for the gander too.

Speaker 3 (01:13:16):
Is that appears to have gone. Okay, that appears to
have gone.

Speaker 4 (01:13:20):
And so not only do our political leaders on the
left not join in in a moment of truly national
mourning for a non politician, the case with Charlie, a
non politician who, whether you agree with them or not,
has lived a very good life, arguably in the best
sense of very Christian life. But some of them actually

(01:13:40):
cheer on his assassination. And so you have a mad
Danny types that that that headspace says that everything is
so important to whatever we think is important, is so
important that not only do we no longer believe in
free speech, not only no longer wish you or need
to debate our opponents, but we actually don't even need

(01:14:03):
our opponents, and the world would be a better place,
you know, without them.

Speaker 3 (01:14:08):
And I think what.

Speaker 4 (01:14:10):
Further to what we've been talking about in terms of
the cultural origins of all of this, the cultural influences,
I think where this comes from is that on the left,
more so than on the right. There are obviously there
are people on the right completely obsessed with politics. But
on the left, I think because government, the role of government,

(01:14:31):
the importance of politics political power is so central to
their philosophy and ideology and their value system that there
is nothing more important than advancing their political goals or
preventing the advancement of their opponent's goals, right, so you

(01:14:52):
can assassinating Donald Trump is unfortunate but understandable, even applaudable,
because after all, he's another Hitler, right, and the world
is better off, would have been better off if someone
had killed Hitler, you know, pre nineteen thirty three. It's
you know, and this is just how they This is
their dark, harsh, bleak and scary, dangerous view of the

(01:15:20):
world now. And you know it's it's why on a
more gentle but still serious level, it's why they don't
have friends who don't vote the same way. It's why
so many liberal women dump their boyfriends when they found
out they voted for Trump, or separated into divorcing their
husbands because they voted for Trump, or are refusing to

(01:15:41):
have sex with anyone who might have voted for Trump
over the next few years, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 3 (01:15:47):
You know, people are.

Speaker 4 (01:15:48):
Acting in all kinds of bizarre ways, and the logical
extension or illogical logical extension of an illogical mindset, we've
found it in these folks who politicize everything to the
point where there are no limits, Right, there are no limits,
and you can do whatever you need to do to

(01:16:11):
eliminate the threat from the opposing voice, person argument, et cetera.

Speaker 2 (01:16:17):
This is something to ponder in that isn't there? If
I may, I'm going to ask you one more your
opinion on one more thing. Anti Semitism?

Speaker 3 (01:16:27):
Have you?

Speaker 2 (01:16:28):
Have you witnessed much where you are.

Speaker 3 (01:16:31):
I A little, A little? There is there isn't.

Speaker 4 (01:16:35):
A particularly large Jewish community, but there is a sort
of a fairly affluent, politically liberal Jewish community that is
quite homogeneous, quite orthodox, quite self sufficient.

Speaker 3 (01:16:53):
And they are, like most liberal.

Speaker 4 (01:17:00):
American Jews are, I don't know, reluctant, reluctant to such
stand their ground would be unfair, but reluctant to voice
voice their fears and frustrations publicly. I mean, they might
do it personally, right, that sort of a thing. But
there's no I mean no question. I mean it's this

(01:17:22):
is the thing, right, is that anti Semitism has never
gone away. I would argue that over the last century
it appeared to have have declined quite a bit, thank goodness,
along with you know, most racist sentiments, et cetera, et cetera.
But where we are today is that there's no question

(01:17:42):
in the UK, I mean Canada. It's unbelievable how many
incidents of anti Semitic violence. It's just I mean, proportionately,
it's just stunning, absolutely staggering. Problems obviously just you know,
killings last week in the United Kingdom. Definitely problems in
the United States as well. But along with the rise,

(01:18:06):
maybe it's it's it's it's it's because of the rise,
the result of the rise, consequence of the rise, I
don't know. But where we are is that people are
quite comfortable voicing their views against not just against Israel,
but against Jewish people generally. I mean for those of

(01:18:27):
us who you know, went to school in another century,
something that was just drummed into you again, you know,
was what you the one you shouldn't have views that
are against people of another race or religion, et cetera.
But the last thing you would ever do is voice
any of them, right, I mean, the social the social discipline,

(01:18:48):
the social controls in place with such to prevent unpleasantness
from people who who didn't know better. But now we
have so many people seemingly are quite comfortable, I mean,
in fact, quite proud to voice there in this case
anti submissive Semitic views and I think it's it's a

(01:19:14):
it's you know, it's a thread, or at least the
parallels what I was saying there about, you know, the
extreme version of the extream of it being you know,
quite happy to say, yeah, I think the people I
disagree with should be dead and their and their families.
And it's it's a similar thing. Uh, And it has
been it's been exacerbated by the immigrant groups who have

(01:19:39):
been prioritized and favored into Canada, the.

Speaker 3 (01:19:45):
US, the UK. They New Zealand, they have brought they have.

Speaker 4 (01:19:51):
I sorry you probably you know, your audience probably isn't
prepared for this.

Speaker 3 (01:19:54):
This news flash is breaking newsflash, latent.

Speaker 4 (01:19:57):
But I can tell you and your audience that when
people come from a very different culture, they bring some
of that culture with them, good and bad, and they
don't immediately become one hundred percent and Australians, New Zealanders, Canadians, Americans,
Brits and so, you know, we're seeing that in our politics.
We're seeing that in the young people rallying for man Dani.

(01:20:20):
We're seeing that in the people who've been the white
liberal college students who have been so miseducated that their
whole you know, the more diverse among them, you know,
hold up these Queers for Palestine banners at the anti
Israeli rallies. You know, So where do you begin to

(01:20:42):
disentangle the logical nature of all of that.

Speaker 3 (01:20:46):
So it is quite unnerving.

Speaker 4 (01:20:49):
It's as if we're living the nineteen twenties early thirties.

Speaker 3 (01:20:55):
Again in much of the West, in that we are.

Speaker 4 (01:21:00):
Separating into camps into people are feeling like many young people,
from what I've read and I've people I've talked to
who were sort of you know, who were president at
the time in the late twenties and early thirties, many
young people, particularly educated young you know, formally educated young people,
they felt the world was on was in such trouble

(01:21:24):
and could go was going to go one way or
the other, and it was going to be ugly that
they had to pick a side, so they went to
Spain to fight Franco or you know, whatever it might be.
You know, they in the case of the famous you know,
the the the Cambridge Spies, you know, they spied for
the They spied for the Soviets because they thought that
was the way to keep the fascists out and all

(01:21:44):
this kind of thing and I think there's a lot
of there's a lot of that. I've got to pick
a side. We we have to be hardline and doctrinaire,
and it's all black and white.

Speaker 3 (01:21:54):
Because the steaks are so high.

Speaker 4 (01:21:56):
Just why we can we can assassinate Trump, we can
kill Charlie Kirk, we can assassinate net Nau if we
get a chance, because the steaks are so high. This, this,
this so much to play for. And so it means
both I have to defend my corner to a to
a degree and to an extent that I wouldn't have

(01:22:17):
imagined doing so, especially or admitting to before.

Speaker 3 (01:22:21):
But it also means that.

Speaker 4 (01:22:23):
I have to be on the front foot and aggressive
towards those I disagree with, those who I not simply
disagree with, but I think are actually pose a threat
to me.

Speaker 3 (01:22:33):
Right, And so you've you've got this.

Speaker 4 (01:22:37):
I think you've got all these things going on, And
the most obvious one right now is, of course the
uptick sounds sounds a bit you're formistic to prove that way,
but the clear growth in antimi anti Semitism, and most
notably anti Semitic.

Speaker 2 (01:22:56):
Violence, and it's frightening, absolutely so on that happy note.
I think we will go away and think about all
of this, because there has been much to think about this.
It's been you've been generous again with your time, and
it's appreciated or was.

Speaker 3 (01:23:12):
My pleasure late?

Speaker 4 (01:23:13):
And I appreciate the time and the care you spend
talking with me, and it's both an honor and a privilege.

Speaker 2 (01:23:34):
Another mail room for podcast three hundred and five, missus
producer Hi Layton, how are you It comes after three O.

Speaker 5 (01:23:40):
Five three O six?

Speaker 3 (01:23:42):
Would it be speaking of a holiday? Hey, I'm with
you all right.

Speaker 2 (01:23:48):
The judiciary and avoiding ivory towers of hubris and nippotism.
I agree with mister Partridge while engaging the metaphor that
the Empress slash Emperor and their new clothes clothes close
quote esconced in potential ivory towers and hubris. Being a
small country, New Zealand all so needs to be mindful

(01:24:09):
of potential nepotism and cliques of familiarity that can hinder impartiality.
New Zeald also needs the security of one unifying system
of law, namely the Westminster system to avoid a Hodgepotch
of miscellany. Too many cooks can spoil the Broth. Also
the phrase to sell one's inheritance for a mess of

(01:24:31):
pottage harks back to the biblical Esau, who sold his
birthright for a plate of lentils. For the sake of
social cohesion and clarity, New Zealand needs to remain secure
under one rule of law and one system of government.
Banana Marxism would simply destroy our inheritance of democracy and
human rights. These are my thoughts for the future safety

(01:24:53):
and security of New Zealand. Ileen, I think that that's
quite agreeable.

Speaker 5 (01:24:59):
Laton Gin, says Guy Hatchild. Reminded me of how willingly
I allowed gene altering COVID mRNA vaccines to be injected
into my body. I need to cause significant changes to
my genetic functions. The majority of us who were vaccinated
now carry with us the guilty scars that remind us
of how easily we can succumb to opportunistic totalitarianism. Perhaps

(01:25:23):
that was the turning point that led to the ousting
of Jasinder rah Dern, the reelection of Donald Trump, the
rejection of trans ideology, the surgeon Charlie Kirk's movement, the
pushback against Keir Starmer's no Digital ID, no job policy
and the JK Rowling takedown of Emma Watson that ungrateful
brat rolling made famous and filthy rich. There is some

(01:25:47):
change in the air. Guy rightfully mentioned that we are
actors on the cosmic stage, and perhaps something cosmic is
indeed afoot. But I challenged Guy with this. If we
are actors on the cosmic stage, then who is the
producer and director of the cosmic stage? I chuckled when
Guy tried so hard to articulate God without using the

(01:26:08):
word God. Perhaps it's time to get back to the foundations.
Perhaps it's time to sing anthems like God Defend New
Zealand or God Bless the USA. Perhaps it's time to
share the good things in life with each other. So
before I forget, can you please tell me what was
Leyton's granola that was endorsed by missus producer. My wife

(01:26:30):
and I both love granola. God bliss both of you.
Gin I can't remember.

Speaker 3 (01:26:35):
I did know.

Speaker 2 (01:26:35):
It's Vogels. It was Vogels.

Speaker 5 (01:26:38):
Well, it was the one with the least sugar that
I could find, Because you come back from the supermarket
with the really sugary ones, and I come back for
you from the supermarket with the least sugar.

Speaker 2 (01:26:48):
And that was the bogels, and that was the nutty one.

Speaker 5 (01:26:53):
Oh coconut and nut or something.

Speaker 2 (01:26:56):
Yeah, yeah, I'll go out and get some and vogels.
Homie Layton's favorite.

Speaker 3 (01:27:01):
Hm.

Speaker 2 (01:27:03):
This is from Steve Leyton and missus producer with the
loveliest voice in broadcasting. You're rather sick.

Speaker 3 (01:27:09):
That's you, not me. Oh thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:27:11):
Your rather significant mention of coincidence in the above podcast
prompted me to relate my own significant coincidences in relation
to Guy Hatchard's views. After having two COVID vaccinations and
before actually contracting COVID, I was diagnosed with bowel cancer.
It was diagnosed early, so all appears to be well now.

(01:27:32):
About ten months ago, I was diagnosed with tachycardia with
a heart rate of around one hundred and seventy bpm
and hurriedly sent to the local accident and emergency ward
of the local hospital. Whilst being treated, the head doctor
told me that in the last three years or so,
heart related problems had increased dramatically. Quote gone through the

(01:27:56):
roof was the term I think he used. After being
sent home, I had to visit my local clinic for
an urgent prescription change. I could not get an appointment
with my usual doctor for over two weeks, but a
new doctor had started that very day, so I got
an appointment straight away. During our discussions, I asked if
she thought there had been an increase in heart problems.
She replied with a definite yes. I asked if she

(01:28:19):
thought they were related to COVID vaccination. She said that
she had to be very careful how she responded to
that question, but said that she thought so, but was
unsure of whether it was related to the vaccinations or
actual COVID because nearly everyone who had been vaccinated had
contracted COVID. Anyway, she had strong views of which was

(01:28:43):
the cause. So Layton, I thank you for this particular podcast,
but also congratulate you on your excellent choice of subjects
and guests. I look forward to your program every week,
so keep up the good work. You can read the
last two lines, please, I can't bring myself.

Speaker 3 (01:29:01):
To do it.

Speaker 5 (01:29:02):
Mike Hosking and yourself are lights in a rather gloomy
media broadcasting scene thanks to That's.

Speaker 2 (01:29:08):
Loving You, and it's amazing how many medicos are quietly
able to address that question Leyton.

Speaker 5 (01:29:21):
Bronwin says, ah Leyton, you keep asking questions that we
Christians cannot help but answer, how can you know you've
forgiven someone that you really meant it. Christianity actually changes
your worldview and you begin to see things more as
God sees them. There is a constant spiritual battle going
on around us that most of us are completely unaware of.

(01:29:43):
Tyler Robinson is a young man that God made, who
was knit together in his mother's womb, and he has
been influenced by the spiritual forces for evil. Regardless of
whether he asks Erica for forgiveness or not, she can
still know that this is a young man whose potential
has been lost, and she will hope that he can
find a new path before he faces his creator. She

(01:30:07):
will never forget what crime he committed, but she can
recognize the greater forces at play than just Robinson himself.

Speaker 2 (01:30:15):
Well, I think that's an interesting interpretation. I do appreciate
the input now from Brett. A simple quote anonymous said,
pay the servants of the state enough and they will
control the masses for their masters without question. And then
there is another longer quote. If you wish to keep slaves,

(01:30:39):
you must have all kinds of guards. The cheapest way
to have guards is to have the slaves pay taxes
to finance their own guards. To fool the slaves, you
tell them that they're not slaves and that they have freedom.
You tell them they need law and order to protect
them against bad slaves. Then you tell them to elect
a government, give them freedom to vote, and they will

(01:31:02):
vote for their own guards and pay their salary. They
will then believe they are free persons. Then give them
money to earn, count and spend, and they will be
too busy to notice the slavery therein. That's from Alexander Warbucks,
How I Manage My Slaves nineteen seventy eight.

Speaker 3 (01:31:23):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:31:24):
I'm going to have to do some investigating it.

Speaker 5 (01:31:28):
After this, laden Alan says, I have been wondering recently,
in light of the cost of living crisis, how much
the climate change hoax is costing us all. In your
recent podcast with Muriel Newman, she also referred to this issue,
and now Heather Duplici Allen is suggesting there could be
major savings in our energy costs if carbon credits were

(01:31:49):
abolished in this sector. Do you have an expert you
could interview who could provide an estimate of how much
is being added to the cost of living because of
carbon credits and other ridiculous green charges. Thanks again for
your wonderful, truth revealing podcasts, which I look forward to
each week. By the way, says Alan, I think you

(01:32:09):
know the source of Erica Kirk's ability to forgive. Try
looking above. It's the same place you and your listeners
will find hope despite the depressing topics you must regularly cover.
Mm HM.

Speaker 2 (01:32:22):
And finally from Malcolm, So enjoyed podcast three oh three
with Muriel Newman. It's frightening how far off course we
are and how much effort is needed to get us
back on track. Totally agree with you and Muriel. Keep
up the great work. Thanks Malcolm, frecure and.

Speaker 5 (01:32:37):
Brett says finally from me late and I couldn't resist
listening to your podcast from a couple of weeks about
Muriel back again. What a shame we don't have a
system that would allow Muriel Newman to independently run for
the Prime Minister of New Zealand position. New Zealand might
well have benefited greatly from a dose of reality. That's
from Brett.

Speaker 2 (01:32:59):
They just passed me that I want to have another
read of it. What a shame we don't have assistant
would allow doctor Muriel Newman to independently run for the PM,
run for them of New Zealand position. New Zealand might
well have benefited greatly from a dose of reality.

Speaker 3 (01:33:16):
I think.

Speaker 2 (01:33:16):
I think the simple response is I really like the
idea of voting for people in certain positions individuals. If
you only did it for if you only did it
for the PM, I think we'd have shambles. As his producer,
back for three oh six in a week or so.

Speaker 5 (01:33:34):
See you then, lovely, Thanks Layton.

Speaker 3 (01:33:36):
All right.

Speaker 2 (01:33:50):
Now, before we depart Podcasts three oh five, a note
from someone I have grown to admire for a variety
of reasons. He is a columnist, but he's also been
a lawyer for a long time, and a whole bunch
of other stuff. So let me let me introduce you
to Kurt Slichter. Don't argue with leftist idiots. When I
stopped lawyering full time last December, I stopped arguing. It

(01:34:14):
wasn't just because I wasn't getting paid my ALI rate anymore.
It was because the whole concept of an argument has
become pointless. Arguing presupposes and requires a good faith opponent
who will examine facts and evidence and potentially change their mind.
That means an audience, an opponent, or an observer who

(01:34:34):
will examine and accept evidence that leads to conclusions that
are potentially at odds with prior beliefs. Well, take a
look around you now. Do you see a lot of
people who are open to argument. Do you see a
lot of people whose minds might change? Do you see
a lot of people who will look you straight in
the eye as the sun rises in the east and

(01:34:56):
tell you that not only is the sun rising in
the west, but you're a transphobe for refusing.

Speaker 3 (01:35:01):
To admit it.

Speaker 2 (01:35:02):
Don't argue with leftist idiots. It's a waste of your time. So,
having got that out of the way, if you would
like to correspond with us who want to write Latent
at NEWSTALKSIB dot co dot nz please do or Carolyn
at newstalksib dot co dot nz. As always, thank you
so much for listening and we shall talk soon.

Speaker 1 (01:35:30):
Thank you for more from News Talks B listen live
on air or online and keep our shows with you
wherever you go with our podcasts on iHeartRadio,

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Leighton Smith Podcast #305 - October 8th 2025 - Patrick Basham

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Leighton Smith Podcast #305 - October 8th 2025 - Patrick Basham