Leighton Smith Podcast - Best Of: James Bovard - February 4th 2026

Leighton is on summer break, so we are highlighting some of his favourite guests from 2025.

James Bovard is a Libertarian Journalist and Author. Thirteen books published. In his first ’The Farm Fiasco’ (1989) he referenced NZ as a world leader in farming.

In 1994 came ‘Lost Rights; The Destruction of American Liberty’ We interviewed in April 2021 re Covid.

Now thirty years after Lost Rights, comes ‘Last Rights; The Death of American Liberty”.

We arranged the interview moments before the 1st Presidential Debate.

Between the book and the political crisis in the U.S. there was never a dull moment.

And he’s quite amusing. Bovard is a “character”!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're listening to a podcast from news talks it B.
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Speaker 2 (00:28):
Here we are for the last of the best of
for twenty twenty five. And I'm cheating because what I'm
about to tell you is not from twenty twenty five.
So let me just do this quickly. I did a
search earlier. I was looking for a list of all
the guests that we because we don't maintain one as such,

(00:49):
all the guests that were on in twenty twenty five,
And somehow a name came up that I knew wasn't
part of twenty twenty five. Name's Jim Bobart or James Bovard,
and I thought I haven't interviewed him in the last
year What's going on? Turned out that it was referredring
to twenty twenty four when I interviewed him on his

(01:12):
book Last Writes. And even that came about in a
strange way because I emailed him just as they were
about to go to air with the first presidential debate.
Everybody remembers that debate and what they were doing when
it was on, and he emailed me straight back soon
as it was over, and he said, of course I will.

(01:33):
So we did the interview, and it's all. It all
becomes self explanatory, because there are things that need to
fall into line into place for this to understand my attitude.
So what I did was turn on that interview so
I could listen to the first little bit of it
and see what I thought. And immediately I got this
warm feeling, and I listened to maybe five or six

(01:56):
minutes I turned it off. I knew what I was
going to do, and that is included in this year's
best of because it deserves it.

Speaker 3 (02:05):
Now.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
Perspective is a very important part of this Wait till
you hear the beginning of it, and perspective will make
itself obvious, simple as that. I love Jim Bobart, I
have for decades. So as the final of the Holiday
Break replays, here is Jim Bobart. James Bovard. James is

(02:40):
the author of eleven books, including the nineteen ninety four
bestseller Lust Writes The Destruction of American Liberty Now just
so happens that when I made contact with Jim to
do this podcast, because we spoke first of all, back
in twenty twenty one, and we will make mention of that,

(03:00):
I'm sure in a moment. But I got in touch
with him as the debate of last Friday Our Time
was about to get underway, and I invited him on
to the podcast, and after the debate was over, he
sent me an acceptance and one of the first things
he said to me was I've got a new book out,

(03:21):
and I thought, well, that's great. The new book is
called Last Rights, and it's published thirty years after a
book called Lost Rights that we discussed with James the
first time we spoke, and I'm looking at it now
and I've got green ink all over it where I
have marked it for that particular interview. Thirty years between

(03:44):
those two books, Lost Rights and Last Rights. Jim Bovart,
it's great to have you back on the podcast. I'm
thrilled that you were able to do it, and thank you.

Speaker 3 (03:55):
Hey, thanks so much for having me back on. I'm
just glad that since we talked last time, that you
were able to persuade your Prime Minister to leave the country.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
I think that she got persuaded by all and Sundry
to be honest.

Speaker 3 (04:08):
Yes, yeah, she's certainly left a void in the hearts
of people like you.

Speaker 2 (04:15):
Yeah, there's no room in my heart, I'm afraid. But
she but she she claimed that she had run out
of gas and didn't have enough to carry on at
the time, something which I think proved itself to be incorrect.
That was the reason that she gave, and that's what
That's what they accepted, well, most people. But I think

(04:35):
I think we've seen otherwise. I would I would prefer
to suggest that because of the policies that she followed,
the price of petrol went so high that she couldn't
afford it to fill it up anymore.

Speaker 3 (04:48):
That's a good line. That's a good line.

Speaker 2 (04:50):
Now, Lost Rights and Lost Rights, the second book, which
is new, was based as a follow one to the
first book, Lost Rights, Was it not?

Speaker 3 (05:02):
It's fairly obvious to me. Yeah, well, you know, it's funny.
Back when Last Rights came out in nineteen ninety four,
people thought I was cynical. But you know, here we
are thirty years down down the road, and the nineteen
nineties looks like practically a golden era for American liberty
compared to nowadays, because so many things have gotten so

(05:25):
much worse. It was like it was like the politicians,
both parties, presidents see so much power after the nine
to eleven attacks, starting wars, setting torture loose around the world,
and then we had COVID, and it was a sign
that the politicians could destroy far more rights and liberties

(05:46):
than they ever thought possible. And there are so many
dangerous precedents from that. There are me biting Americans in
the backside for a long time.

Speaker 2 (05:55):
The other book that I have enjoyed of yours, not
that there aren't more, I was or is Freedom and Change,
The Rise of the States and the Demise of the Citizen.
So this was ninety nine from memory that you published
that twenty five years ago, and I look across to

(06:15):
my bookshelf and I see won by Victor Davis Henson,
The Dying Citizen. So we've got the Rise of the
States and the Demise of the Citizen, The Dying Citizen
twenty five years later. How much of things changed in
that twenty five years.

Speaker 3 (06:33):
Well, things have gotten a whole lot worse. And part
of what's frustrating to me is here I am toub
thumping on this issue going back forty years now. But
what's striking to me is that there was at the
time I was coming of age in the seventies, maybe
the eighties as well, there was still it was like

(06:54):
a trade market of Americans. They were proud of their
love of freedom and independence and basically telling the government
to go screw itself. I mean, that was it was
almost an American trademark. Maybe it was already fading a
lot by that point, but nowadays folks have got a
lot more docile attitude. There was a survey, a recent

(07:16):
survey show that over a recent survey that showed around
thirty percent of young adults support mandatory government surveillance cameras
inside the home to prevent domestic violence or other violations
of the law. Now, if someone is so boneheaded that

(07:37):
they want to have a government surveillance camera in their
own home, they are lost souls. I mean, I guess
I try to I try to use intellectual triage in
this sense. There are some people who can recognize this,
or some people have got the instincts or the values.
But when someone's in favor of having government surveillance cameras

(07:57):
in their own home, just to make sure that they
don't misbehave. It's like, I mean, this is like a
parody of a free society, of a free citizen. And
it's interesting to see how this came out. During the
COVID pandemic, I followed the government advisories closely, and I
got a lot of laughs. And thanks to Anthony Fauci,

(08:18):
I never had any rust build up in my cynicism.
It was always out there. But something which I would
do almost every weekend during the pandemic. I was out
leading hikes because hey, we're outside. People need to get
out and breathe and banter and joke and scoff at
the government. And so there was a there was an
old canal towpath from the eighteen twenties nearby here along

(08:41):
the Potomac River, the Snow Canal towpath, and so so
I'd be leading hikes out there, and you know, I'm outside,
and so I wasn't wearing a mask, and I literally
had people screaming and cussing at me because I wasn't
wearing a mask. And this this is a towpath. There
was wide enough for a team of mules, so it

(09:03):
was basically wind enough for an eighteen wheel truck. And
there was there was one guy. Actually it was about
three years ago. I was I was walking along with
the group and I was in front of the group
and guy points at me like he'd seen Dracula and
he holds his coat up above over his face and
points at me. He says, you're not wearing a mask.
And I felt like saying good one, Sherlock, and I

(09:26):
just said yep, and then just kept kept walking. And
then he turns and shouts, you know, so you think
your beard is a mask. And I just kind of
shrugged and kept walking. And then he shouts, your beard
is ugly. So here I am. I'm walking along. There's
simping to do on a hike, and I'm getting heckled
for my beard because I'm not wearing a not wearing

(09:49):
a COVID mask. But the mask didn't work. You're outside
your sunshine. There's when but it was like it brought
out the cravenness and so many people, uh there was
there were so many, so many governments were encouraging people
to become narcs, to be a phone in reports violators.

(10:10):
A favorite example, mine came from Massachusetts. Somebody went to
a strip tees bar and filed a complaint that the
stripper did not have a face mask.

Speaker 2 (10:19):
Did any of these people get put through i Q tests?
You know, you could have. You could have come to
New Zealand. You could have spent you could have spent
a couple of weeks in a hotel, and then you
could have gone walking on some of our beautiful tracks.
They're world famous, and you could have caught the same abuse.

Speaker 3 (10:37):
Really yeah, wow, I would have thought people in New
Zealand would have been more reasonable. But obviously I'm ignorant.

Speaker 2 (10:45):
Well, you've never been here, so you can be excused
for being underinformed. I want to go back now and
start with the because this was the reason, and then
we'll come back and we'll spend plenty of time on
last rites, the death of American liberty. But come back

(11:06):
to the to what I said at the beginning, and
this was all about the debate. You watched it. I
would imagine, Oh, how I suffered, didn't we all? I
had to get up and walk around from time to time,
which sort of relieved the shortness of breath that I
was experiencing. But out of that. And I don't want

(11:28):
to spend too much time on this because I had
plenty of discussion already. But what was your take once
it was over, or if you prefer, soon after it began?

Speaker 3 (11:40):
Well, actually I enjoyed watching it, so it was cat
and ep percentics. People have attacked me for the last
couple of years because I've written a bunch of articles
for New York Posts and other places pointing out that
Biden is losing it, pointing out that Bien can't walk
across the stage without falling over, sometimes pointing out that
Bien did this five hours of interviews with the Special Council.

(12:04):
Over his five hours over the the his crimes with
federal documents were classified. And the Biden administration is fighting
tooth and nail to prevent Americans from hearing the audio
tapes of those interviews because they show how incredibly out

(12:25):
of it is. But there were there were there were
a lot of comments in there, which which I found,
you know, fascinating. I mean, Biden was at one point
was attacking Trump for his position on abortion, and Biden
talked about the huge problem with the young women who
were raped by their sisters and therefore would need to

(12:46):
have access to abortion. And this is not a problem
I'd heard of before, So there was it was interesting.
It was interesting Biden. Twelve years ago, Biden was a
vice president. He debated Sener Tim Congressman Paul Ryan, who

(13:07):
was the nominee for the Republicans. Biden was very quick.
Biden put on one of the best performances of any
president or vice president in debates, uh since since the
turn of the century. Very good, but I mean, he
was Biden was. Biden in that debate was just kind
of pawing and he wasn't able to fall up. And

(13:30):
the worst news that he got from the host at
one point is you still have eighty seconds left. And
it's like he's this and he's just kind of struggling,
and it was, I mean, and it was he was
so badly couch a coach by his White House staffer,
his campaign team. There was there was a line he

(13:52):
was doing his closing statement, he suddenly starts talking about
lead pipes, and I'm thinking, you know, not a good
idea to bring a lead pipe to a closing After
how he performed tonight, it was a surprise.

Speaker 2 (14:04):
So it appears so they claim to any many people
Democrats specifically, I wasn't surprised in the slightest.

Speaker 3 (14:13):
Were you I had. I was expecting Biden to do
a little bit better. I was. I was thinking that
they'd be able to get him, you know, pumped up
like they did for the State of the the for
the State of the Union address. Uh, I guess four
or five months ago when he actually performed much better
than expected. I wasn't surprised that Biden did badly. Uh.

(14:38):
And but it was clear from the first five minutes
that he just wasn't talking well.

Speaker 1 (14:43):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (14:43):
There was there was someone who was kind of saying,
well that that Biden had actually Biden had Biden had
won the debate. If you looked only at the transcript, Well,
it's hard to have a transcript when the guy's mumbling
and just simply not enunciating well at all. So it's
just it didn't make any sense. I mean, there was
there was an answer he gave it about Roe versus

(15:04):
weight and the rules for the final Trimster final amester
of abortions that he just pulled it out of his backside.
It was there were so many things that were just
completely wrong. He was claiming that no US soldiers had
died abroad during his term of office, and tell that
to the widows of the Afghanists the Americans killed in

(15:27):
the Afghanist Cemrawal. It was just, it was so out
of touch, and it's it's actually kind of amusing to
see the anguish of folks who have been covering for him.
But there are so many folks, so many of these
pundits and these big donors. They aren't upset by how
Biden did. They're upset that Americas now saw it because

(15:48):
it had been covered up to I.

Speaker 2 (15:50):
Want to ask you about lies, the lies that we've
lived through. Actually it's a Victor Davis Hanson peace from
July one, which is well for us. It was yesterday
after last Thursday's debate, Biden himself laid to risk the
democratic lie that he was that he was robust and
in control of his faculties. In truth, he demonstrated to

(16:13):
the nation that he is a sad, failing octogenarian who
could not perform any job in America other than apparently
the easy task of presidents of the United States and
the commander in chief in charge of our nuclear codes.
Everybody is accusing everybody else. And this has been a
growing plague of lying. He's a liar, He's a liar.

(16:34):
Now you're a liar. How did it get to this
point where people fail to understand who's lying and who's not.

Speaker 3 (16:43):
Well, perhaps the real problem is that people ever expected
politicians not to be liars, because it's possible turn back
the clock twenty five hundred years to Aristophanes and ancient
Athens making jokes about politicians just being the biggest liars
and scant scoundrels, scoundrels around, and that's certainly that's our

(17:07):
experience in this country. I think it's the experience in
most countries where they have fairly open elections. Contested elections
might be a better term. There was a there was
a piece I did in October twenty twenty one month
before the when Biden was first elected. He run against Bush,

(17:27):
and I said Americans had to choose your liar election
because both both Trump and Biden were just lying up
and down and back and forth. It's still the same thing.
Trump is not as dishonest as Biden, but I mean
a lot of his ideas, a lot of the things
he says are simply not accurate. But Trump can sound coherent,

(17:51):
and that's you know, that's a big advantage when you're
trying to convoters.

Speaker 2 (17:55):
I want to give you my opinion, Trump actually doesn't lie.
You touched it then and now I've forgotten already what
you what you said. But Trump exaggerates, he embellishes, but
I don't think he sets out to tell a lie,
whereas others, and Biden's one of them, obviously, go back

(18:19):
to that first debate and that question was regard to
the to the to the laptop. Lied through his teeth
and did it again and again, and it's only one
example of thousands of them. Would you agree with you
with with my definition of each.

Speaker 3 (18:40):
I would agree with your definition on Biden, I mean,
folks forget and the final debate in October twenty twenty
with Trump, Biden insisted that his family had never gotten
any money from China. And this is just the biggest
load of crap. I mean, at that point, it wasn't
a question of bribery or kickbacks or anything like that,

(19:02):
but there was all kinds of money flowing from Chinese
companies to various members of Biden family, perhaps Joe himself.
I'm not sure, but you know, Trump is okay. Back
in the nineteen nineties, Back in the late eighties early nineties,
I wrote a lot about agriculture policy and trade policy,

(19:23):
and that was where I first learned that the things
were special and that in some ways New Zealand was
one of the world leaders as far as moving the
free market agriculture. I'm not sure if it's still the case,
but they were doing far better than the US agriculture
policy makers were Trump's comments about tariffs. So Trump wants

(19:44):
to have a ten percent across the board tariff, which
is just the dumbest damn idea around because if you
put a tariff on products which the US never produced
and never will produce, it simply attacks which which multiplies
as it's passed through the economy, and it costs businesses

(20:06):
and consumers far more more than a benefits government. And
if you look at the impact of Trump's tariff policies
in his first term in office, they were a disaster.
But it's it's it's almost and it's sad because there's
a big swath of conservatives now in America who are
who are basically going back to you know, John Maynard

(20:29):
Keynes as a guide for economic policy. And and it's
the same people who have no faith in politicians in general,
somehow think that the US Commerce Department should be able
to accept prices for practically anything in this country by
controlling and penalizing imports. And most of these folks have

(20:50):
never even been to the Commerce Department. I was, you know,
I spent I did a book on early nineties, and
so I spent quite a bit of time there. And
there we was just all these bureaucrats walking down the hallway,
and you could tell that it was possible to tell
how many years it worked for the Commerce Department by
how low the seat of their parts hung.

Speaker 2 (21:15):
Intriguing.

Speaker 3 (21:18):
Maybe not, Okay, maybe I'm telling too many jokes.

Speaker 2 (21:21):
Go ahead, No, no, no, no, no, it was. I
was listening intently.

Speaker 3 (21:24):
I was.

Speaker 2 (21:24):
I was disavoided.

Speaker 3 (21:25):
When you stopped, they said, there, okay, waiting, where's the punchline? Okay,
he's leaning up. Is there going to be a punchline?
I hope there's a punchline.

Speaker 2 (21:35):
Were you in fact making reference there to the administrative
state in part at least?

Speaker 3 (21:41):
Yeah? So it's it's Trump has made some very good
comments condemning the deep state, and it was a deep
state that had a big role in his defeat in
twenty twenty. There was there were so many dirty tricks
by the FBI, by the CIA, by other agencies. A
lot of that stuff we have never yet learned. Part

(22:02):
of my frustration is that Trump did not pull back
the curtain behind hiding the whiz of Oz. Trump. Trump
talked tough, but when it came down to it, Trump
put in. Trump put as the UH his chief of
the c I A A. Gina Haspellhood had had been
a leader in the destruction of evidence of the US

(22:25):
torture during the Bush administration. As and it was Trump
who appointed the FBI chief who utterly failed to curb
the FBI agents from trampling the Constitution, especially the Fourth Amendment,
which prohibits warrantless seizures. There were a lot of appointments
that Trump made. John Bolton, that's that's okay. You're talking

(22:48):
about the need for peace and you bring in the
biggest warmonger in Washington, John Bolton. The liar is John
Bolton a liar?

Speaker 2 (22:59):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (23:02):
Maybe he's just very very badly informed and has a
very bad memory.

Speaker 2 (23:07):
It's interesting, So back to back to the debate, or
more specifically, now the results of that debate. The world
was in meltdown. At least half of it was in
your country before the debate even even finished. For a start,
I spent quite a bit of time the following day
on CNN, and I'll do it. I'll dip in and

(23:32):
out of CNN occasionally when when there's something that warrants
it and there's an AD break on my preferred channel.
But I left it there because because they were crying
all over the screen, and I wanted to know how
long they could keep this this fraud up for. I
can't I don't believe it's not I can't believe. I

(23:55):
don't believe that any of them did not understand what
they were dealing with in the first place. That they
covered for as much as they could and successfully for years,
and all of a sudden that curtain was rent asunder
and the exposure was there for everybody to see, and

(24:16):
it was actually very entertaining because they didn't know what
to do. And then following that, I suppose that the
day after that, it was it was a case of well,
who who was going to replace him? So they were
debating that and not one, not one decent suggestion was
put forward, of course, because there is no decent suggestion.

(24:38):
But the very latest when I went to bed last
night was Michelle Obama was was was on the make,
and she was being she was being set up for
the conference when it happens. Do you think that's likely?

Speaker 3 (24:56):
I don't know, but I mean, folks are forgetting that,
that the that the Democrats already have someone who could
be called in who is mentally sharper than Biden and
has experience dealing with international crises. That's former President Jimmy Carter.

Speaker 2 (25:12):
Isn't he dead?

Speaker 3 (25:14):
No, No, he's not dead yet. I think he's in
a hospice. But you know, I bet he would have
done bearn the debate that Biden did. So I don't
know about Michelle Obama. I've heard, I'm hearing that. I'm
hearing that more. I wrote about her. I think in
twenty twenty and before she was leading a leading a

(25:37):
crusade in childhood obesity. And as part of this crusade,
the Obama administration pushed through a new federal program to
give children free breakfasts in the classroom, and it was
important to sway the kids to eat the breakfast, so
they had a lot of donuts and chocolate milk and

(25:57):
sweetened cereal and it was a huge sugar bomb. It
was sort of like Homer Simpson was a patron saint
of this program. I don't know if you've watch the
Simpsons Simpsons, but Homer Simpson, the cartoon character is always
eating a donut. So he's the patron saint of this
Michelle Obama program. And it was a disaster as far

(26:21):
as making kids healthier, but it gave her lots of,
you know, camera time, and she could be out there
getting praise to solve problems. But no, I mean, I
think that the Democrats are really desperate. H The Michigan
governor Gretchen Gretchen Whitmer is another name that's often being mentioned,
but I written about her, and folks, folks forget that.

(26:45):
People in Michigan, Michigan, refer to her as the seed Demon,
and she's called that because at the start of the pandemic,
she prohibited stores from selling garden seeds.

Speaker 2 (26:56):
Why did you do then?

Speaker 3 (26:59):
Because she said it was not essential, unlike the sale
of government lottery tickets.

Speaker 2 (27:05):
It's amazing, isn't it. I heard someone who I respect
and yesterday saying that the mocking her and saying she
was she was a straight out liar.

Speaker 3 (27:14):
Well, yeah, I.

Speaker 2 (27:15):
Mean every way, every way. Every way you listen these days,
specifically at the moment, the word liar is not infrequent.

Speaker 3 (27:25):
Well, I mean, but this, this is actually a good thing.
And as I said, you know, I felt like the
seeing that, seeing that debate, it was cat nipp for cynics,
uh and Americans. You know, Americans need to be more
cynical about their elected leaders. Part of the trouble is
so many people still expect the government to save their butt.

(27:48):
And it's like, no, I mean, this is not what
Washington does. Washington extends its own power, it sets I mean,
it's always finding reasons to uh further intrude into private lives,
to trample more of our constitutional rights. They haven't learned,
and unfortunately, more and more Americans are completely unfamiliar, are

(28:10):
completely unfamiliar with living life outside of federal control.

Speaker 2 (28:17):
Let me ask you a couple of questions regarding the
Supreme Court. You have I think mixed mixed approaches to
the Supreme Court? Am I right?

Speaker 3 (28:28):
What is the mixed approach I'm dying to hear this.

Speaker 2 (28:31):
Well, I'm sure that somewhere you've you've complimented them.

Speaker 3 (28:36):
Yeah, back in nineteen eighty six.

Speaker 2 (28:38):
It won't happened. No, no, I mean since eighty six,
what happened to change mind?

Speaker 3 (28:45):
They have made some good decisions. There are some justices
who have have made some very good calls. The first
page of the of the new book quote Supreme Court
Justice Neil Gorsoz of saying that everything has been criminalized
now by the government. So that's a huge problem. But

(29:07):
you know, sometimes they get it right, but it's it's
frustrating that that they have this fairy tale notion of
government power. There was a big decision on the censorship
cases the the FBI, the White House Centers for Disease Control, crowdbeat, Twitter, Facebook,

(29:29):
and other social media companies to censor critics of bim's
policies to censor people that were raising alarms about election fraud.
And it was a complete travesy. It's heavily documented. But
the Supreme Court said, well, we don't think we're going
to decide on this because the victims did not bring

(29:53):
signed confessions by the government agents that censored them and
it's like the First Amendment. I mean, it's it's frustrating
to me that people don't recognize if you let the
government censor during an election, then there is no chance
you're going to have an honest reading of Pollock preferences.

Speaker 2 (30:15):
Let me just quote you from that first page of
Last Rites. We live in a world in which everything
has been criminalized. You mentioned that, warned Supreme Court Justice
Neil Gorsich, there are now more than This is what
I wanted to do, because this is frightening. There are
now more than five two hundred separate federal criminal offenses,

(30:40):
a thirty six percent increase since the nineteen nineties, along
with tens of thousands of state and local crimes. More
laws mean more violators who can be harshly punished on command,
resulting in arrests of more than ten million Americans each year.
Thanks to the Supreme Court, police can lock up anyone
accused of even quote, even a very minor criminal offense

(31:04):
such as an unbackled seat belt. How did it happen
that those numbers skyrocketed like that? How did it happen
that Americans let it happen?

Speaker 3 (31:16):
Those are two very good questions. The first question, how
did it happen? You had the Supreme Court put the
government power on a pedestal, both on a political pedestal,
a legal pedestal, and a moral pedestal. The Supreme Court
has bent so far over backwards that even when there

(31:37):
are cases of police wrongfully shooting people or government officials lying,
the Court had said, well, it's important not to be
too strict here, Because I was writing about this case
a day or two ago, and there was a wonderful phrase,
which course escapes my memory, but the gist if it
was that the Supreme Court was so biased in favored

(31:59):
government officials and government intervention that they did not want
to have any rulings that would inhibit the government from
doing what the government thought needed to be done and
what the government thought was best. This ties into the
line from the Supreme Court decision last week. It was
from the oil arguments a few months ago, but you

(32:21):
had one of the Justice justices openly fretting about the
openly fretting that the First Amendment could hamstring the federal
government when it needed to intervene. And it's like, well,
you know, this is why we have the First Amendment
to hamstring the government, because if you don't hamstring the

(32:41):
government when they want a censor, then you don't have
You don't have any kind of republic. You certainly don't
have a democracy. You simply have the people in power
browbeating critics and misleading people. And that's what we had
in this country for a long time, and I got
a heck of a lot worse after nine to eleven. Unfortunately,

(33:04):
most of the American media and most of the politicians
don't seem I've learned anything about the failures of government.
In the last couple of decades.

Speaker 2 (33:13):
It has become ingrained in me that the media has
as much to answer as anybody, if not more than everybody,
that question that I asked you about, how did the
American people let it happen? The media in the main,
and I'm talking about the core media, the usual the
New York Times, Washington Post, and CNN and all the others,

(33:36):
and by extension, by the way, to much of the
rest of the world, because our media here take articles
from those particular journals. CNN is the one that they
refer to on television. In the papers, there's New York Times,
there's Washington Post articles, and I read some of them,

(33:58):
and I come very close to throwing up in disgust.
Somebody raised was Mark Levin actually a day or two back,
raised the question of the owners of these institutions because
they're all they're all businesses who have shareholders, and why
the people involved in the ownership don't start pulling their

(34:19):
administrations apart.

Speaker 3 (34:21):
That makes it the assumption that the owners are unhappy
with what the papers or their TV networks are doing.
And I think that the owners are probably felt like
they're being served very well by the kind of hogwash
that's being served up to readers and viewers.

Speaker 2 (34:38):
Well, that question could link back to another one with
regard to the debate last week. The two protagonists who
were asking the questions were predicted to lean very heavily
in favor of the incumbent president, but they have been commended,
if not praised, in some quarters for being reasonably pretty

(35:01):
well balanced.

Speaker 3 (35:02):
Your comment, Yeah, I mean, I was expecting there'd be
more biased in favor Biden. But it's funny. There was
a front page New York Times story, I guess on Saturday,
and I just passed by it in the grocery store,
and it was talking about how the silent microphone ended

(35:23):
up being really bad for Joe Biden because flashback four
years ago, Trump kept interrupting, I mean during Biden's speaking time,
and so there was I think it was Napoleon who said,
never interrupt your opponent when he's making a mistake, and
that could be the guy for how Trump played that

(35:44):
played the most recent debate, but it was the rules
that were set ahead of time. Another part was you
probably heard this is people were saying that the split
screen that most Americans saw with the debate just it
was devastating from Biden because he was there with his
mouth hanging open and his eyes kind of unfocused, and

(36:06):
you're thinking, like, you know, you know, it was probably
a mistake for him to go a decaf, a.

Speaker 2 (36:12):
Mistake to go decaf.

Speaker 3 (36:14):
Yeah, it was a mistake for him to go a
mistake for him to go a decaf needed coffee. Okay,
the joke did not translate well all but decaff means
that you're having then you're getting no caffeine and your
low energy.

Speaker 2 (36:28):
Well I interpreted that correctly. I got it right, Okay,
but but I don't think you went far enough. So
I mean, we're jumping around all over the place. But
you're very good at this, so I'm enjoying it. The
the the opinion was, and it's certainly mine that in
the State of the Union address he was spiked. Wasn't

(36:51):
just it wasn't just non non decaf or caffeated. He
was spiked to the to the gills.

Speaker 3 (36:58):
Now I know, no, so the doctors would do that.
I am shocked. I am shocked. I think that you're
one of the last people to be shocked. And who
said the doctors, who said the doctors were involved? Ah,
that's true. Well, it's important to avoid an overdose in
public if you're going to be doing those kind of supplements.

Speaker 2 (37:19):
And there and there was the other occasion earlier, and
that was the one where he did it outside outside
of building I forget which. And it was stressed up,
was well, the whole area was staged to look like
the devil was speaking.

Speaker 3 (37:34):
Oh yeah, are you talking about his speech in Philadelphia
in September twenty twenty two. Yes, yes, that was. You know,
it's always bad to take your inspiration on lighting from
the from the woman who did Triumph of the Will,
Is that what they did? This was a Nazi Yeah, Well,
it seemed that way. The Triumph of the Will was

(37:57):
a famous Nazi film of their rallies at Nuremberg, I
believe in nineteen thirty four. So but with the red
with the red coloring and just someone the very angry
type of lighting. And that was just after Biden had
said that, had said that Republicans were semi fascists. And

(38:21):
I think it was in January the speech near Valley Forge,
bind came out and said Trump was, you know, quoting
Hitler or being guided by Hitler, basically tried to tie
Hitler to Trump very tightly. There's there's certain standards there
that used to be in American politics that you don't
say that your opponent is Hitler. Okay, I mean this

(38:44):
is this is just this is bad form.

Speaker 2 (38:47):
Well that we've seen, we've seen a lot of that
in the last few years. But going back to that
decaffeinated appearance, to me, it was not fairly obvious. It
was very obvious that he was on something. The next day,
Here's a guy that they tell us can only work
between ten and four in the day. Other than that
he falls apat and he and he lived up to

(39:10):
that without without any shall we say, input from elsewhere.
But the next morning after he was out of he
was out of the waffle bar at two am. And
so how much sleep did he get that night before
going out the next day and at least pretending that

(39:30):
he was full of vibrants and energy.

Speaker 3 (39:34):
No, I think you're right that there are that he
was on some type of pharmaceutical boost, some type of drug.
I mean, I think that's happened with other presidents in
the past. Folks don't realize how much of a scandal
the president's health has been in this country ever since
Woodrow Wilson, who was incapacitated with a stroke in nineteen nineteen,

(39:59):
but his wife took over and basically ran the government
propertly for the final year of his presidency. There was
I saw on Twitter today photo of the cover of
the new issue of Vogue, and it's a big portrait
basically full size of Jill Biden, Jill Biden, and so
I had fun with Twitter. I said, Vogue has got

(40:22):
a great photo cover photo of President Biden. So there
have been a lot of lies about president's health of
President Reagan in his last year in office was pretty
much mentally shot. But they kind of cover that up,
he would babble in public, but not too much. You know.
It's but the fundamental problem is we have a structure

(40:45):
of government at this point that gives so much power
and arbitrary power and impunity to the president's I mean,
it's practically the mirror image of what the founding fathers wanted.
And this whole notion that we have to let the
president do what he thinks right, no matter what the
law of their constitution is. It used to be a

(41:07):
complete travesty of American values and American ethics. But this
is where the country has been heading. And I've been
barking at the Moon on this issue, but I haven't
had much effect on the Moon or on American politics.

Speaker 2 (41:21):
Well, next time you're barking at the Moon or going
to let me know and I'll join you down here.

Speaker 3 (41:27):
All right.

Speaker 2 (41:28):
The Supreme Court decisions that have been handed down in
the last few days, today being or yesterday actually being
the last day of the year for them, two cases
that I want to mention to you, the Chevron case
and of course the Trump case. Can you give us

(41:49):
your precise opinion of each one and the results? And
I'm asking this question now because you just made a
comment about giving the president too much power, And I'm
wondering whether or not the Supreme Court has realize that
things are out of kilter and realize.

Speaker 3 (42:10):
That Sorry, I shouldn't have laughed.

Speaker 2 (42:13):
Well, I'm obviously said something stupid.

Speaker 3 (42:16):
No no, no, no, no, no, you didn't say anything stupid.
It's a Supreme Court that it's been. But no, so
you asked about the Chevron decision. The nineteen eighty four
case canonized the notion that federal agencies deserved deference, far
more difference than private citizens or even the Constitution in

(42:37):
judging the powers that they seize and the policies which
they proclaimed. And that was that's a license for administrative tyranny,
and that's how it's played out in this country. And
the Court pulled that back last week with the Chevron
with a new decision striking down the Chevron precedence. It's

(42:59):
a step in the right direction. There is a long
ways to go back towards what we used to have
in this country. As far as the Trump case, you know,
it's it's a it's a frustrating situation here because there
have been a lot of bullshit charges against Donald Trump
in the last couple of years, Trump's opponents, including Biden,

(43:19):
are using law fair. I mean, there were you know,
there were so many, so many cases where they've simply
waved a statue of limitation. And so you're going back
several decades, and he said, she said, it's like, well,
if it was so bad, how come she didn't say
that in nineteen ninety six. And if you and if

(43:39):
you look at what they did in Georgia, I mean,
completely rigged situation, the the the the prosecution by Alvin
Bragg which Jerry convicted Trump of thirty four felonies. I
think that was a complete crock of you know bs
what I said, what about the judge judge, Yeah, yeah, well,

(44:07):
well I assue you'll get nominated to New York Supreme Court.
So I mean it was a farce. It was a farce,
and it was a farce from the get go. Having
said that, I mean, it's certainly possible that Trump violated laws,
that Trump, that Trump did commit crimes, But the Supreme
Court today basically said that a president is exempt from

(44:32):
legal liability for his official acts during his term of
office and afterwards. As I unders said, I haven't read
that closely. I was chasing some other rabbits today, and
so it's it's a very disturbing ruling. And there's I
think there were three justices that were kind of perhaps

(44:53):
barking at the moon for their cause. But if you
look at some of the rhetoric there, yeah, there's reason
to be concerned Nixon. Nixon was driven out of office
in nineteen seventy four. Nineteen seventy seven, he sat down
David Frost has great interviews with him, and one of
the h and the best known mine from that is

(45:16):
the jest of it is, it's not illegal if the
president does it. This is, unfortunately, this is the rule
of thumb for the oval office in this century, starting
with George W. Bush.

Speaker 2 (45:28):
Okay, so let's let me throw a couple of let
me throw a couple of examples at you. The court
ruled that as long as it was official duties, the
president could not be held accountable. So who's going to
decide and the court will obviously who's going to decide though,
whether or not something is official part of his official

(45:52):
job and what's not. For instance, when he made that
speech on the sixth of January, was he fulfilling official
function question one.

Speaker 3 (46:05):
Yeah, yes, yeah, it's it's so sad to see how
the Biden administration and a lot of the media have
endlessly demagogued. On January sixth, I actually had an article
that came out during that ruckus, and it was talking
about how even before then, the media and the Democrats

(46:26):
had greatly expanded the definition of treason, and so they
were talking about someone being guilty of treason practically if
they questioned the twenty twenty election result. And this is
before the ruckus. At the Capitol were quite a few people,
mostly guys who did violence or attack police that day,

(46:46):
who deserve our sentences. But this whole notion that anybody
who was within a mile of radius of the US
Capitol wearing a Maga hat deserves time in prison, it
was crazy. It never made any sense. But to take
a step back, going back to the question of the
president and the law, turned back the clock twenty one

(47:08):
years in this country, you've got George W. Bush invading
Iraq on false pretenses. George Bush misled the nation. He
knew or should have known that it was completely bogus.
Bush and his team were out there blaming Saddam Hussein
for the nine to eleven attacks, that was always bs.

(47:29):
The Saudis had a hell of a lot more to
do with it, but they were Bush's buddies, so we
didn't hear about that. But you had vast carnish resulting
from that. As I understand it, with the Supreme Court
decision on the presidential community, Bush would be immune from
indictment or prosecution on that. Granted it wasn't going to

(47:49):
happen anyhow, but as a moral principle, I'm totally opposed
to letting I'm totally opposed to letting presidents have this
unlimited power over the entire globe.

Speaker 2 (48:03):
See, I'm struggling to agree with you. At that particular time,
I argued on radio in favor of what the Bush
regime was doing, and I anchored it specifically to the
fact that to dam Hussein claimed at one point that
he or at least hinted strongly at one point that

(48:23):
he had weapons of mass destruction, And on that basis
where the words came from his own lips, I thought
that validated what they were doing. Why was I wrong?

Speaker 3 (48:35):
Weapons of mass destruction is not a reason the slaughter
a foreign nation. I mean, many if not. Most of
the garments in the world, certainly the ones that are
not in the Third World, have a lot of weapons
somewhech would be classified as weapons of mass destruction. Simply
because he possessed weapons did not give the American government

(48:55):
the right to kill tens of thousands of Iranqis, even
if they had had weapons of mass destruction, unless they
were using them against using them to launch an attack
against the US. The US had no right to go
after him.

Speaker 2 (49:11):
His intention, though at the time, was conveyed as being
one of doing exactly.

Speaker 3 (49:16):
That, was it not? And who was it who was
conveying his intention him? I don't I don't think he was.
I mean, he made a lot of mistakes. He was.
He was a ruthless dictator. He killed a lot of
innocent Iraqis. But I don't think that he ever said

(49:38):
things that would have been justifiable pretexts for US invasion.

Speaker 2 (49:42):
All right, let me let me stretch this just a
little longer. So the Iranians are undoubtedly, unquestionably working on
nuclear weapon weaponry.

Speaker 3 (49:53):
What's your source?

Speaker 2 (49:55):
Multiple sources?

Speaker 3 (49:58):
Are they credible?

Speaker 2 (49:59):
Well, let's I mean, I take your question. I've thought
about it. I have thought about it constantly. Let me
put it this way, we know what the what the
Iranians are doing in supporting various groups like Hezbollah over
a period of time, and that their intentions the intentions

(50:22):
of the present administration, and it's been there for some
time to wipe out Israel. Would you accept that?

Speaker 3 (50:28):
No?

Speaker 2 (50:30):
I mean, then what's what's your what's your source?

Speaker 1 (50:34):
Uh?

Speaker 3 (50:36):
Uh, there's there's a lot of alternative sources on the news.
I mean, I think it's a bad government. Uh, it's
a very oppressive government. But it's a part of the
world where almost all the governments are bad and oppressive.

Speaker 2 (50:49):
Yes, but they're the biggest, they're the biggest, the biggest
supporters of of terror, certainly in that part of the world,
if not elsewhere.

Speaker 3 (51:00):
What is your definition of terror? Is it only private groups?
Because if you include government, governments do hell of a
lot more terrorizing than private groups.

Speaker 2 (51:11):
Would you accept that there is a danger that the
Iranians might be behind a forthcoming attack on America and
nine eleven? Is that possible?

Speaker 3 (51:22):
It's possible that they and a lot of other nations
and other groups could attempt to launch another attack on
the US. But it doesn't build confidence that it took
US fifteen years to see the confidential Congress report linking
the Saudi government to the nine to eleven attacks. I mean,

(51:45):
you know, there were so many levels of so many
shovels of bs that the US government and a lot
of the American media did to avoid fingering the Saudis
on the nine to eleven attacks. And the US government
is still blocking lawsuits seeking to discover to discover the
full extent of Saudis support for the hijackers. Fifteen of

(52:07):
the nineteen were south but that fact practically banished once
George W. Bush and Cheney said, Hey, it was Saddan.
So I mean, I don't trust folks who are trying
to drag us into another war.

Speaker 2 (52:21):
Well, I have some sympathy with that. But my final
point is if we accept that, I do that Iran
has ambitions beyond its entitlementers. Okay, that different when they
develop nuclear capability, they are going to be much harder
to deal with. Would you approve then, if any administration

(52:44):
of the United States, or for that matter, the Israelis
with American backing, took out their nuclear capabilities before they
reached the goal.

Speaker 3 (52:57):
No, I would not do that because for over twenty
years we've been hearing that the Iranians are two or
three or four years away from having nuclear weapons. There
have been so many false claims on this, and I
think it would be folly to go into another Middle
Eastern war with the nation that was a whole lot
bigger than Iraq, and the US basically lost the Iraq War,

(53:21):
that lost the Afghanistan war. And I don't see, you know,
what best out of three or best out of five
here or what I mean. I don't see any any
reason for the US to intervene because things have worked
out very badly for the US and for the nations
where they intervened.

Speaker 2 (53:39):
So what would your advice be if you had easier
to the next president with regard to dealing with the Iranians.

Speaker 3 (53:47):
With regard to dealing with the Iranians, I mean I
would I'd keep an eye on them. I would definitely
keep an eye on them and see what they're up to.
But it's not like we can afford to, you know.
The the basic basic problem that has plagued the US
foreign policy for decades is this new motion that the

(54:09):
US has a right and a duty to scourge any
foreign threats and uh, and it's been and it's it's
a kind of notion that bligns Americans to the failures
and follies of US foreign policy. And they're being a
hell of a lot more than Congress or the American
media recognize.

Speaker 2 (54:28):
Mm hmm. Let me ask you some quick questions. Having
mentioned Michelle Obama already, who would you who would you
choose or who would you rather see as the president
if it came down to Michelle Obama and Kamala Harris.

Speaker 3 (54:48):
Oh, this is a great choice. I mean, this is like,
you know, there's a good comic comparison here. It's like,
uh and and second prize is two weeks in Philadelphia, right, yes,
uh yeah, I uh, I you know they're both bad choices. So, however,
I think if if either one of them is nominated

(55:09):
that they will not win.

Speaker 2 (55:10):
So no, no, no, But if there was, I'm asking
you which one you would prefer not to have?

Speaker 3 (55:16):
Well, Harris has more of a record as far as
working for the government. The abuses that she committed as
a prosecutor in California shouldn't have disqualified her forever, but
they haven't.

Speaker 2 (55:27):
Extraordinary, isn't it yep, Biden.

Speaker 3 (55:30):
Well this is sorry, Please go ahead.

Speaker 2 (55:32):
The Biden clan, I'm talking the whole family, you know,
Camp David and what have you. The Biden clan do
have issues that need to be built with, Do you
not think.

Speaker 3 (55:45):
Like thievery and money laundering and collecting all kinds of bribes,
those kinds of issues. Yeah, that'll do for stuff. Yeah,
it'll do for a start. But here again, this is
this is something with that Supreme Court decision. Well, he
was in office, and so it'd be kind of rude
to prosecute, but it was kind of official because because
he was seeing the president of China, this, that and

(56:07):
the other. Yeah, I mean it used to be that
presidents were like people understood that the rule of law
means that no one is above the law. But with
the Supreme Court decision today, and with a trend in
this country for decades, not only do you have presidents
who are above the law, you've got a vast number

(56:28):
of top government officials who can commit crimes with impunity.

Speaker 2 (56:33):
Is it impunity because nobody will pursue them.

Speaker 3 (56:36):
That's how impunity normally works.

Speaker 2 (56:37):
Yeah, I mean, not because they're protected by the law,
but because nobody wants to well, to this point, nobody
wants to take the head off the beast.

Speaker 3 (56:49):
You know, some of both, I mean. But there's another
wrinkle here, and that is a secrecy. The US government
is creating trillions of pages of new secrets every year.
That's equivalent to twenty billion filing cabinets full of double
space pages. So is committing more crimes than Americans will

(57:10):
ever know. And so that's one more way that the
deck is stacked against preserving our rights and liberties.

Speaker 2 (57:18):
Want to quote you from your own work rather than
the rule of law. We have a government of threats, intimidation,
and browbeating. Government of the people defaulted into government for
the people, which degenerated into perennially punishing people for their
own good. Twenty five years ago, Supreme Justice Ruth Bata
Ginsburg warned against permitting federal agencies the extraordinary authority to

(57:45):
manufacture crimes? Has that got? That was twenty five years ago?
How much worse is it?

Speaker 3 (57:51):
Got? A whole lot worse, a whole lot worse. If
you look at a lot of gun violations, there's a
lot of entrapment in those things. Drug cases have been
entrapment from the get go. It often happens when you're
trying to do nail people for non violent or crimes
of consent where people were selling something the government doesn't improve.

(58:13):
You set somebody up. But no, I mean, there's so
many different sting operations. You've had the FBI setting up people,
setting up people to do Ku Klux Klan protests with
the FBI informants in charge. You've got the FBI paying
for neo Nazi propaganda in some cases. You've got the

(58:37):
FBI covering for all kinds of horrendous folks that help
the FBI generate more cases.

Speaker 2 (58:44):
How much was the FBI involved in January sixth.

Speaker 3 (58:48):
You know, I wish I knew. I wish I knew.
I think that they were involved a hell of a
lot more than media's admitted. There were so many warning
signs that were disregarded they were involved in it. It
would be great if we knew. Here we are three
and a half years later, and the governments has succeeded
in covering up most of its role, and that ruckus.

Speaker 2 (59:11):
Well, by the way, you've just triggered something I hadn't
even thought of. Trump has said that rather rapidly after
gaining office, he would release the files on the Kennedy murder.
What do you think those What do you think is
in those files?

Speaker 3 (59:29):
Lots of dirt? But Trump said, you do that last
time too. Trump was making a big shortly before he
left office. Trump made a big deal about all these
federal documents he was going to release, but he got rolled.
He didn't do it.

Speaker 2 (59:45):
Do you not think that this time around he's in
a much different position to what he was for the
first term, that he can capitalize on the knowledge that
he that he garnered during that period and the lessons
that he learned.

Speaker 3 (59:59):
That question brings to mind my favorite line from Samuel
Johnson about the triumph of hope over experience.

Speaker 2 (01:00:07):
M I felt there was something personal in that comment.

Speaker 3 (01:00:12):
No, it's just, uh, I would I would like to see,
you know, I'd be happy if Trump gets if if
Trump does get elected, if he opens up these files
and opens up these secrets. And I guess I'm I'm
I'm skeptical because because a lot of the people that
Trump has put around him and has has endorsed, There's

(01:00:34):
a guy, a Congressman Mike Rogers running from Michigan. He's
going up against the guy who's really good, former Congressman
Justin Mamash, who was great on civil liberties. But Mike
Rogers was the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. I
think when Edward Snowden did his leagues, and this is
a paraphrase, I think I'm doing injustice. But Rogers said

(01:00:57):
something to the fact, well, if people don't know that
their privacy has been violated, then their privacy really hasn't
been violated. And it sounded kind of like the slogan
the here from some guy that used date rape drugs.

Speaker 2 (01:01:11):
I wouldn't have thought of that.

Speaker 3 (01:01:12):
Thank goodness, you have a much loftier mind than I do.
That's the difference in this entire interview. You know, that's
where the disconnect comes from. You're you're a way up
there amount o lippus, and I'm just just a muck raker.

Speaker 2 (01:01:28):
What are you talking about.

Speaker 3 (01:01:29):
I was trying to make a joke. It didn't work
very well. Feel free to edit it out if you want.

Speaker 2 (01:01:35):
Maybe maybe I'm just too busy trying to think of
where we're going, because I want to get a couple
more things in before we conclude. Trump has yet to
announce who his running mate will be. It's a pretty
wide open field, and there's all sorts of arguments for
all sorts of different people. Is there anybody that stands

(01:01:55):
out for you?

Speaker 3 (01:01:57):
Well, I think it'd be great if he would choose
Rand Paul as his running mate. That would be a
real boost of confidence. Mike Lee would also be very good. Uh, basically,
as far as someone who would give would have a
very good compass on foreign policy, Center Vance would be good.
A wild car would be Tulci Gavn, former Democratic congresswoman,

(01:02:20):
but that's probably not gonna happen. There's lots of people
whose names I'm seeing Benny about are utterly chilling, But
give me a couple of those. Nicky Haley interesting why
she's a warmonger.

Speaker 2 (01:02:38):
Do you think she would influence him that much?

Speaker 3 (01:02:41):
Yeah? Yeah, I mean, you know, Trump is interesting. He's
very intelligent, but in his you know, in his initial term,
perhaps his only term, but his first term anyhow, he
didn't seem to pay that much attention to the details
of government policy. He was busy tweeting and you know,
watching Fox News, and it's like, you know, dude, you know,

(01:03:02):
how about you put some control. It seemed like he
just handed the keys to the intration into a son
in law and his daughter, and it's like, you know, well,
you know, good luck with this. That's an overstatement, but
you know he didn't do that well. But it was
always a man on issues in which he was pretty good.
What's that?

Speaker 2 (01:03:19):
I think it was a bad look, the.

Speaker 3 (01:03:25):
Dreadful look, dredful.

Speaker 2 (01:03:27):
So I want to throw a name at you and
get your immediate reaction. John Radcliffe, Oh, you know on
the it's ringing a small bell. Where's the bell? National
Security advisor? Okay, he was involved in national security?

Speaker 3 (01:03:45):
Okay? And what him is VP or what?

Speaker 2 (01:03:49):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:03:52):
I don't know enough to react.

Speaker 2 (01:03:54):
Okay, and that's fair enough. So probably finally, I'm intrigued
in your view of the developments in the Julian the
Sange case.

Speaker 3 (01:04:05):
Okay, Biden is you know, there was a line and
I wrote about this last week and I said, this
is one of the areas where the Biden administration has
been slightly less odious than the Trump administration, because it
was a Trump administration that indicted him and hounded him.
There was a USA Today article I did I guess

(01:04:26):
six years ago that set of that said instead of
an indictment. Julian Asian should get a Presidential Medal of
Freedom for all the things that he exposed, helping Americans
understand their government and the failures of US interventions in
many countries.

Speaker 2 (01:04:46):
I have members of my family who are ex military,
and just then for a start, I think otherwise. But
I used them as an example of the fact that
I've actually got had a bit of conversation with regard
to this. But it's mostly military people or military connections

(01:05:06):
who think otherwise and think that he should have been
looked up for life or whatever. The fact that the
fact that he ended up not being Do you really
think it was Biden's decision, because I don't.

Speaker 3 (01:05:21):
I think that the Biden people recognize that they could
be embarrassed hugely by defeat in British court on whether
he would be extradited. There was there was some impact
from the media campaign, some of the top papers and
outlets here pushing for assnge for the charges to be dropped.

(01:05:42):
I don't know what other strings were being pulled. I mean,
you know, this is a good example. Okay, so it was.
It was a good decision, but how many years is
it going to be until we find out what really
happened five years, ten years, maybe after both of us
are dead.

Speaker 2 (01:05:57):
Well, the same thing applies, I suppose to the to
the Kennedy records.

Speaker 3 (01:06:03):
Yeah, I mean, and that's a perfect example, because what
did Justice Earl Warren out of their Warrant Commission and
others did. They had this big investigation and then sealed
the records for seventy five years. I mean, this is
complete bs. I mean that standard policy. I guess in
Britain with the Official Secrets Act. Maybe not the same

(01:06:24):
number of years, but it makes a travesy of democracy.
If folks don't know what the government is doing in
their name, then they might as well be serfs in
the Middle Ages.

Speaker 2 (01:06:37):
Again, I want to quote from last rites. School children
are being sacrificed on an altar of social justice, from
no Child left Behind to common Core. The federal dictats
have subverted academic standards and squanted billions of ours of
our kids' lives. Teacher unions have worked to destroy local

(01:06:57):
control of education, prevent teacher accountability, deny parents any voice,
any voice in their children's education, and pointlessly shut down
schools during the pandemic in lieu of literacy. Government schools
are redefining gender and indoctrinating kids with values that many
parents detest. When mothers and fathers raised hell at school

(01:07:18):
board meetings, the Biden administration and the FBI labeled them
as terrorst suspects and treated some of them, I will add,
and treated some of them accordingly.

Speaker 3 (01:07:28):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (01:07:29):
I mean I knew that was going on, but I
read that paragraph and I was. It seriously got to me,
how on earth, how on earth had this happened government schools.
Teacher unions are some of the strongest unions in this country.
They have really rolled a lot of the opposition. They've

(01:07:51):
have turned the schools, and especially in big cities where
the schools are worse, where kids are at least likely
to learn how to read, the teacher unions have got
almost unlibered sway and it's it was fascinating to see
how they shut down. There were all these protests by
teachers they would have Teachers were outraged that they would

(01:08:12):
have any risk when they went back to school during
the pandemic. I mean, other workers had to accept at risk,
but the teachers wanted to have their full salary and
have these zoom classes that were a complete failure, and
it did the greatest harm to low income kids that
might not have good Internet connections. So and then there's

(01:08:34):
the other thing that the schools have gone on a crusade.
They are ignoring, like the phonics method for teaching reading,
part of the reason that reading skills have gone so
bad here, and instead they're just encouraging kids in kindergarten
to question their own gender. I mean, this is I mean,
it's a full employment program for therapists and it's an

(01:08:58):
absolute travesy and there's so many lives being messed up
by this, and it's an insanity.

Speaker 3 (01:09:03):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (01:09:04):
So the latest book, which came out a few months ago,
is called Last Rights, based on the book thirty years ago,
Lost Rights, Last Rights, The Death of American Liberty. Why
would why would people in this part of the world,
New Zealand, Australia. I got a reasonable audience in America too,

(01:09:29):
by the way, But in this part of the world,
why would they know?

Speaker 3 (01:09:34):
Not?

Speaker 2 (01:09:35):
Why what would they get from reading that book?

Speaker 3 (01:09:39):
I think it'd be of interest to anyone in English
speaking nations or other nations where you've got democratic or
semi democratic nations where the government is seizing so much power,
it's making a travesy of the Constitution, and people's rights
are being lost every passing year. There are a lot

(01:10:00):
of parallels. For instance, the chapter in the book Last
Race on COVID policy a lot of parallel to what
happened in Australia and New Zealand. Same type of hissory
we had Fauci here. I'm sure there were other demagogues
in Australians in some of these states. Is it called states, provinces.

Speaker 2 (01:10:20):
States states in Australia.

Speaker 3 (01:10:22):
Yeah, yeah, I mean there were a couple of states
I was reading about and it was just it was
bizarre how far the power stretched. And that would have
been Victoria just for a stop. Okay, Well, and there's
the chapter and gun control in there. I've got a
discussion on the Second Amendment that talks about how firearms

(01:10:42):
are are an insurance policy against tyranny, because if the
government takes away all your means means to resist, then
you know your cannon fodder for them. They can do
whatever they want. And it's something the founding father is recognized.
There's some wonderful quotes from early American history because this

(01:11:03):
is how the Americans beat the British in the seventeen
seventies and seventeen eighties. But it's almost as if we're
supposed to hate guns because people might resist the garment.
But you know, if you look at history, there's a
lot of garments that deserve resisting.

Speaker 2 (01:11:19):
Absolutely true, Jim. It's been well over now and it's
been most enjoyable. I feel like I want to go
on for longer, but I but I shan't stress you.
But we'll do it again, hopefully in another three years.
It's been a privilege.

Speaker 3 (01:11:36):
Oh well, it's it's a privilege for me to talk
to such a great host, who's got who's famous, famous
in multiple countries for your long record of top quality stuff.
So and thanks for your thoughtful questions that pushed me
to think a little bit and almost push me to
the edge of my cynicism.

Speaker 2 (01:11:57):
That would be a victory or perhaps maybe so Thank
you and you take care. Thanks so much for having
me on. Thank you, Jim. Well, I hope you enjoyed

(01:12:26):
that as much as I did. Jim is very good
and I have a couple of ideas. We'll talk with
him again soon because there are things that I would
like his opinion on and he delivers so well so,
ladies and gentlemen, that brings us to a close. Next
week we should everything being equal, provided nothing goes wrong,

(01:12:50):
we shall return and we'll give you a fullsome podcast
at least that's the plan. Happy new Year for the
I think the last time, and we'll see what twenty
twenty six brings us in the meantime. Thank you for listening.

Speaker 3 (01:13:08):
Mm hmmmmmmm.

Speaker 1 (01:13:14):
Thank you for more from us talks at b Listen
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