Liberals Don't Actually Like Democracy

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
A couple of news stories today, both locally and nationally,

(00:03):
that call into question, does the left actually believe in
democratic forms of government or do they not? Do they
just think democracy means stuff I like is advanced, or
do they think democracy means or you know, a democratic

(00:27):
form of government, meaning some form of government that is
responsive to the actual will of the voters, of the
citizens of the governed polity. Two stories like this, one's
national i'll talk about later in the show, and one
is local here in Fresno County, the Fresno County Board

(00:48):
of Supervisors adopted new spending limits on public events that
members of the LGBTQ plus community say are discriminatory rights.
Thattius Miller in the Fresno b Now, there's a lot
of kind of men are from Mars, women are from Venus,
sort of ways of discussing this in the article. We'll

(01:11):
see if you can catch it. The kinds of things
that the author or maybe the b's presentation of this
doesn't find remarkable that I think the average Joe would
find remarkable. The new administrative policy, adopted in a three
to two vote, requires county departments to ask for approval
from the board for spending at community events in different causes. Okay.

(01:39):
The list of what causes or holidays that will be
supported is still up for debate, and officials on Tuesday
said they expected to discuss it in August. Officials said
the county did not have such a policy before. Although
supervisors themselves must get any expenditure of more than fifteen
hundred bucks approved by the board, The new policy would
align the new administrative policy with the one the follows,

(02:00):
According to Paul Norlan, the chief administrative officer, The policy
comes after Supervisor Gary Bradefeld expressed outrage that the county
had spent about six thousand dollars in June during the
Pride Month parade and event where Department of Health employees
passed out condoms, lube, and informational materials. There was no

(02:24):
I'm trying to see if the article makes any other
mention of lube. Let's see one mention. The article just
kind of breezes by that lube. I mean, look, my

(02:45):
you know, Roman Catholic over here. Of my view on contraception,
contraceptive devices, and gay sex in general is not hard
for you to figure out, but lou, I mean, at
least maybe there is some purported health benefit to condoms
as a means of STD prevention. But Loube, what are

(03:09):
we doing? I mean, I don't think Loube has a
health benefit. I mean it helps, you know, it can
help with you know whatever, It's not a health thing.
What are we talking about here? And there's this attitude

(03:35):
on the left of well, well, what's wrong with handing
out loop? What's wrong with handing out loop? That has
nothing to do with health? That, that is nothing that
Why is a county health agency, I don't know, helping
gay guys out to have more have more pleasure, I guess,
or have an easier experience during intercourse? What what are

(03:59):
we doing that goes beyond generalized concern for health into
just endorsement of the panoply of whatever is happening at
the LGBTQ parade, which frankly I don't want a county

(04:22):
to support. I think there are at least three of
the five supervisors who don't want three of the five
duly elected county supervisors who don't want this. And this
is where it gets to the kind of democracy angle.
County health officials just kind of decided on their own.

(04:45):
The president County was going to have a booth there,
and President County was going to be supportive of everything
happening there and hand out condoms with rainbow design packaging
on them, and handout loop. County Health officials just sort
of decided that they didn't run a the Board of Supervisors.
They just did it. Bredefeld also noted that the Fresno

(05:06):
County Library should not highlight Pride Month June quote to
make sure that our departments don't go woke, don't buy
into the nonsense that unfortunately involves gender identity and trans
and all the other stuff that's destructive to our children.
Members of the LGBTQ plus community at the board's meeting
said the policy around spending was a veiled attempt to

(05:27):
squeeze Pride out. I don't think it's veiled. Yeah, we
because again, do we believe in democratic government or not not.
Every aspect of Pride Month is just about non discrimination
or even the parameters of non discrimination as defined in

(05:51):
California law. It's about positive endorsement of all kinds of
things that much of the citizenry doesn't believe in. Every
one of you knows this is not about the fiscal
problem for as no resident. Maira Kobel said, addressing the supervisors,
the reason this item is on the agenda is because
of the hateful discrimination and bias of one of your
board members against a particular group of people, one of

(06:14):
your duly elected board members. And apparently it's three of
your duly elected board members, three of the five. And
again this is where we get to. Is this about
democrat Do we actually believe in democracy here? Or how
should a county government be run? Here's what I mean,

(06:37):
the agents and employees of the county government. The employees
of the county government, I should say, it's not really
the employees of the county government, from the county Department
of Health, from the county libraries, the chain their chain

(06:58):
of command when you get to the tippy top of it,
the tippy top of the chain of command for all
county employees, I guess, other than the DA's office, where
everyone's answerable to Lisa smick ckimp and other than the
Sheriff's department, which is answerable to the sheriff. Okay, exclude
those two. All the other county employees their org chart

(07:21):
has at the tippy top the County Board of Supervisors,
the five elected members of the county Board of Supervisors.
They oversee all of the county's services, all the employees
who work for the county. Ultimately, they're at the top
of the county Department of Public Health, Department of this, department,

(07:41):
of that, the libraries, et cetera. They're in charge. County
employees are not like free floating actors who can just
kind of decide what they want to do. They are
ultimately answerable to political authority. And by political authority, I

(08:06):
mean people authority, the authority of the people of Fresno
County as represented through they're duly elected county supervisors. Okay,
the five county supervisors represent five different regions of Fresno County.
They are elected by the people in those five different regions.

(08:29):
This board of five represents theoretically and practically the will
of the voters of Fresno County, and that is how
the county services are supposed to be governed. Because in
America we deem I mean we can have deeper philosophical

(08:52):
ideas about where authority ultimately flows from does flow from God?
But on a practical level, in America, political authority flow
from the people it flows from the people choosing their
elected representatives. That's where political authority flows from. Okay, the

(09:14):
president has a certain legitimacy because he's elected by the
people through the EC you know, through the the sort
of intermediate means of the electoral College. Members of the
House of Representatives are representatives of the majority of the
people in their district. So county librarians who just kind

(09:42):
of go out there and say, well, the library is
supporting Pride Month because I county employee librarian, you know,
Joe Schmoe, because I think it's good. Well, hold on there, Sparky.
You're a government employee. You are accountable to an elected

(10:05):
board of supervisors, who are in turn accountable to the people.
County services aren't free floating entities that get to do
whatever they want. Ultimately, if the people make this point
through their elected representatives, the county supervisors, and the county
supervisors say no, the library shall deal with things in

(10:26):
this way or that way. Now, there are parameters to
what the county supervisors can do. I'm not saying there aren't.
County supervisors can't say we're only going to hire black people,
We're only going to hire white people. For the county libraries,
or we're only going to hire black people for the
county libraries. No, county supervisors can't do that. Why because
the county supervisors themselves must be accountable to the constitution

(10:51):
and laws of the state of California, the United States Constitution,
et cetera. So there are parameters that limit what county
supervisors can do. But within that playing field of acceptable conduct,
the county supervisors dictate what's going to happen. So if
there isn't laws on the books saying that, yes, county

(11:13):
libraries must have gay pride celebratory displays in the county libraries, Yes,
the county health departments must participate in gay pride marches,
then this is just democracy at work here, all right.

(11:42):
I mean, how else do you want county services to run?
Do you want them to be responsive to the Board
of Supervisors or not? What is the structure you actually propose.
Are county services supposed to just be free, floating entities,
not accountable to the board. You know, one of the

(12:04):
people who protested this at the County Board of Supervisors
meeting was saying, this is obviously not about money. It's
a little bit about money I recognize that the six
thousand dollars that the county Health Department spent in you know,
their booth or whatever they did for the gay Pride
parade buying lube? How much lube do you get for

(12:27):
six thousand dollars? Holy cow? I recognize that six thousand
dollars is a relatively speaking, very small amount of money
given what the county spends in total. However, individual county
supervisors have to run it by the rest of the
board before they spend fifteen hundred bucks on something. Why

(12:47):
because they don't want an individual supervisor spending the county's
money on some personal pet project that the rest of
the board doesn't agree with. Even worse is when individual
county employees spend money on stuff that the board doesn't

(13:09):
agree with. And why is it bad if the board
doesn't agree with it, Because it means the people don't
agree with it. I'll bet you anything, if you pull
the people of Fresno County and say, hey, do you
want your taxpayer dollars, even one dollar of your taxpayer dollars,
let alone six thousand of them paying for lube at

(13:30):
a gay pride event, probably most people are gonna be wait, Lube,
hold on a minute's condoms. Maybe I understand, Lube. What
are we doing here? And I think there's been a
lot of programs like this, especially from the County Department

(13:53):
of Public Health, where we've had an alleged Republican majority
on the Board of Supervisors, and we just had you know,
the most liberal what was his name, doctor Vora. We
have the most liberal application of COVID regulations possible within

(14:15):
the county. We had this whole we have this whole
needle exchange program that has continued to exist throughout the
county in spite of the fact that you've got extremely
left wing Democrat lawmakers in Fresno like Miguel Arius, who
are up in arms about it and says, this is terrible.

(14:37):
It's terrible, this needle exchange program that's happening. I think
it's on Fulton Street in downtown Presno. This is terrible
that you have this needle exchange program that it's doing
nothing to alleviate drug addiction problems. And probably most residents
of Presno County don't support that kind of thing, because,
again Fresno, people who vote for County supervis in Presno

(15:00):
County are at least look at the results. It's three
to two. There are three Republicans and two Democrats. Donald
Trump won Fresno County in twenty twenty four. This is
a red county. We constantly have Republicans elected as sheriff,
We have Republicans elected as DA. This is a conservative county.

(15:27):
So yeah, I think most people in this county who
are paying taxes. Look, it's one thing to talk about.
Are we going to follow California non discrimination law when
it comes to hiring? Okay, that's one thing. Okay, California

(15:47):
law has certain requirements. I understand that that's different from
we're going to expend county resources. Have county librarians spend
a bunch of time on their worktime setting up huge,
which ideologically based, promotional things for the full panoply of
gay pride related priorities, gender transition, the whole nine yards

(16:13):
that most people don't agree with, and certainly most people
in Presno County don't agree with. So do we actually
believe in democracy and democratic forms of government and the
will of the people being sovereign as expressed through their
elected representatives or don't we when we return Another example

(16:37):
of this coming from the Clovis branch specifically of the
Presnoe County Library. That's next on the John Girardi Show.
Another story like this, Fresnoe County Board of Supervisors passing
a policy three to two saying that the county needs
to approve the supervisors rather need to approve before a
county agency spend a bunch of money on different celebrating

(17:00):
different kinds of events and holidays, things like that, and
they're going to approve a list of which holidays are
actually going to allow to have promotion and celebration whatever
within Presnoe County institutions. A specific example of this occurred
in the was shown very publicly on the Facebook page

(17:21):
of the Clovis branch of the Fresno County Library. Now,
immigration has obviously been a very particularly hot political topic
in the last you know, a couple of weeks and months, Okay,

(17:43):
the Fresno County the Clovist branch of the Fresnoe County
Library had this whole display and a whole big Facebook
post rather on their Facebook page. So this is a
county agency library. One specific branch of the present county

(18:04):
library system, the Clovise Branch, on its own Facebook page,
so presumably this is a county run Facebook page promoting books,
events whatever at the Clovist branch of the Presdent County Library.
And then they post this thing about books for children
building empathy, books to help readers understand the emotional weight

(18:32):
of forced displacement, family separation, and injustice. And it's a
bunch of books obviously about deportations and illegal aliens being deported,
and it's children's oriented books, obviously written by very sort

(18:53):
of more left leaning authors who are trying to explain
to children how unjust it is for deportations to happen.
And apparently there's a whole genre of books like this
for kids, because of course, nothing that liberal book publishers
for children like more than presenting adult political topics for children.

(19:16):
And it's all, of course, very one sided, and it's
presented under this guise of well, no, no, no, no no,
we're just trying to help children grow in empathy for
people who might be suffering right now because of deportations,
without any kind of thought of okay, well there's two
sides to for whom do we need to have empathy

(19:40):
calculus when it comes to illegal immigration? You know, people
who oppose illegal immigration are not opposing it for pure
cruelty or racism. In fact, In fact, I mean, it's
a large majority of the country who is supportive of
large scale deportations. Why well, because we see that illegal

(20:06):
immigration has bad impacts on our country. It has bad
impacts of displacing American workers, depressing the American labor market.
It has bad impacts that we are letting people into
the country largely unvetted, whose criminal histories might be largely unvetted,

(20:26):
et cetera. That the drug trade is largely facilitated into
America by means of illegal immigration, that drug cartels themselves.
I mean, we just talked with Nathan Brown yesterday, was
the local presdent immigration attorney was talking about. Yeah, basically,
everyone who either gets across the border, you know, is

(20:47):
able to clandestinely get across the border illegally, they're paying
the cartel about twelve thousand dollars to do that. To
get to a border checkpoint, they're paying the cartel about
two thousand bucks. I mean, the massive involvement of the
cartel in illegal immigration and the strengthening of the cartel
be caught by illegal immigration, and you know, I don't

(21:14):
think it's illegitimate to bring up that. There are a
lot of illegal immigrants, now many many illegal immigrants who
come to America. They just want to work, They just
want economic opportunity. Okay, that's fine, But not all of them,
not all of them want to do that. And that's
the problem with illegal immigration is you haven't vetted them.
You haven't vetted them to see why they're coming here

(21:36):
in the first place. Are you coming here just to
work hard and you know, be a farm worker and
work really hard and contribute to this country and maybe
pay taxes or something. Many of them are, Many of
them want to do that. That's great. We have no
way of knowing because they didn't go through any kind
of legal process. And I don't think it's illegitimate to

(21:57):
bring up there are people who are victims of crimes
committed by illegal Alians. Are we having any empathy for
those people? Are we having books written for children demonstrating
empathy for those people, etcetera. No, of course not. But
this is a county run Facebook page, run by county employees,

(22:22):
making what is clearly a very ideologically slanted presentation of
things on the county's time on the county's dime, and
probably in a way that at least three of the
five members of the Board of Supervisors wouldn't appreciate. Three

(22:44):
of the five duly elected accountable to the people members
of the Board of Supervisors would not appreciate. So how
is that allowable in a democratic system, a democratic based
system where popular sovereignty is supposed to determine things. How

(23:06):
do how are we just okay with this of acting
like county employees and county institutions like the library. Are
these free floating actors who sort of just can do
their own thing ideologically just ideological stuff in there otherwise
not supposed to be a very ideological job with And

(23:29):
who will shriek and holler if the county supervisors intervene
and say, nuh huh, no, I don't we don't want
the library system to be wading into the immigration debate
with a very one sided presentation of this for kids.
I mean, they're not having any books about empathy for

(23:50):
you know, families who might have been victimized from by
illegal aliens. And I look, I had have empathy for
people who are fear right now, but it's also for
many of these people. They broke the law, and I
feel bad for them. I feel bad that they're distressed.

(24:11):
But this is a more complicated ideological issue that probably
the county supervisors don't want presented in this specific way.
We'll return with a ridiculous story about fired US eight
employees wanting to overthrow the government, apparently next on John
Jrardy Show, continuing with the theme of do we actually
believe in democratic forms of government or do we just

(24:34):
like it when liberals win. A remarkable story was published
by this news outlet called Notice News of the United States,
and Charlie Cook at National Review has a good write
up about it that I retweeted Twitter dot com slash
Fresno Johnny at Fresno Johnny, he writes the headline of

(24:55):
this piece, Trump fired them, Now they're plotting to stop him.
That's the headline. And yet, despite its explosive subject matter,
it is written in the sort of dry, matter of
fact tone that one would typically associate with a report
on the most recent meeting of the county drainage Board.
In fairness, too little editorial comment is a lesser sin
in this type of article than too much, But given

(25:17):
the astounding implications of the facts the author relates. I
thought that it deserved a good deal more comment than
it received, So, having picked my jaw up from its
new home about my keyboard, I resolved to provide just that.
Here's how the story starts. Some of the democracy building
experts that President Trump fired this year from the US

(25:40):
Agency for International Development USAID and the State Department are
now reapplying the skills and knowledge they built up over
decades to undermine Trump's power. So a couple of remarkable
things about that sentence. First, how does one become a
democracy building expert? Where's the job application for that? It

(26:06):
sounds really hard, but also very nonspecific. Secondly, they are
democracy building experts who want to undermine Trump's power. Why
would they want to undermine Trump's power? When Trump won

(26:28):
the election? I mean he won the twenty twenty four
election right democratically. I recognize he only got a plurality
of the popular vote, but you know he did win it.
I mean he got more votes than Kamala Harris. He's
got more of a claim than anyone else does. If

(26:49):
you are supportive of democracy, why are you wanting to
undermine the power of the democratically elected leader. Oh, because
you don't actually support democracy, you just support liberals. For years,
these officials were stationed across the globe actively supporting opposition

(27:09):
movements in autocratic nations. Now they've got time, a network
of former colleagues, and a growing sense of moral indignation. Okay,
so these people used to work for the federal government
supporting opposition movements in autocratic nations. Now they don't have

(27:33):
a job, they have time on their hands, and they
have a growing sense of moral indignation. Ooh, they're morally
indignant at what increasing the salt deduction? What are they
mad about? Ah? Interesting, they're angry, and Charlie Cook writes,

(27:54):
they're angry with the president. So they're going to try
to persuade their fellow citizens that Trump and his party
are bad, or bring a lawsuit again actions they believe
to be illegal, or run for office on an anti
Trump platform. Then right, No, actually that's not what they
mean at all. Here's this quote from a currently employed

(28:15):
federal official. Take it from those of us who worked
in authoritarian countries. We've become one, said a currently employed
federal official who spoke to News of the United States
on condition of anonymity. No, we haven't. New York City's
about to elect a communist mayor. Like if this were

(28:36):
an authoritarian country, the president would just like intervene to
stop that election. It's not an authoritarian country. Republicans have
one on a couple of policy priorities. It's not an
authoritarian country. They were so quick to disband you to
disband aid USAID, the group that supposedly instigates color revolutions.

(29:02):
But they've done a very foolish thing. You just released
a bunch of well trained individuals into your population. If
you kept our offices going and had us play solitaire
in the office, it might have been safer to keep
your regime. Cook writes, sorry, what I've read this five
times now, and I can see no way of comprehending
it other than as an insane threat to bring down

(29:25):
the American government. The official mentions color revolutions, he mentions
being representative of a bunch of quote, well trained individuals,
and then he says that if the President of the
United States wishes to keep his quote regime, he ought
not to have fired them. Naturally. This represents a flagrant
inversion of how our system of government works. We cannot

(29:46):
have a democratic republic if the hired help responds to
being let go by endeavoring to stage a coup. This
is exactly right. Donald Trump was elected fair and square.
These bureaucrats were not to imply that Trump's presidency cannot survive.
Their dismissal is to reject the American constitutional order, root

(30:09):
and branch. The story continues, the former officials tell News
of the United States that they're holding workshops on a
tactic called non cooperation. They're building a network of government
workers willing to engage in even minor acts of rebellion
in the office, and they're planting the seeds of what

(30:31):
they hope could become a nationwide general strike. Now Cook
brings up this point, there's no such thing as non
cooperation or acts of rebellion within the executive branch. Okay.
America does have systems of checks and balances within government

(30:55):
that you know, if the executive branch does something bad
that it can be checked somehow by Congress, or it
can be checked by the courts checks and balances, Okay,
And something doesn't become law unless Congress agrees to it.
So there's all kinds of mechanisms for stopping overly aggressive,

(31:15):
unlawful action. But the thing that the Constitution does not
envision is employees of the executive branch stopping the president. Okay.
Article two of the Constitution, which describes the president's power, says,

(31:38):
the executive power of the United States is vested in
a president. That's it. The president is literally the only
person that the Constitution says, is the person who has
executive power. Literally everyone else who works in the executive branch,
for all of the executive branch agencies, the FBI, the CIA,

(32:02):
the Department of Defense, the Department of Health and Human Services,
the EPA, the HUD, Department of Homeland Security, every single
alphabet soup government agency in the executive branch. They're all
in the executive branch. Okay, it's all about enforcing the law,

(32:22):
and what they are really is extensions of the president's
executive authority to enforce the law. That's what the president does.
He enforces the law. He doesn't write law. Congress writes law.
The president enforces laws that Congress has already written. And
all of the officials, employees, et cetera, are extensions of

(32:47):
the president's authority. If they contradict the president. They need
to go, they need to be fired. Okay, it's just
not how it works to act as the sooh there
is any legitimacy whatsoever to an executive branch employee saying

(33:07):
I'm going to go counter to what the president says. No,
you need to be fired. Then it's just like Presno County.
Like what I was talking about before. The employees of
the Presdo County Library, for example, are not free floating
entities flying around in the either able to make whatever
decisions they want to promote whatever they want to promote.
They are accountable to the board of supervisors. Similarly, people

(33:32):
who work for USAID are not like free floating actors
who just get to do whatever they want to do. No,
they have to be responsive to the president. Why because
the president's the only guy who's actually elected. Because that's
how our system of government works. It is a democratically
based system of government, where the people vote for stuff,

(33:55):
The people vote for different kinds of legislative representatives, and
they vote for the executive. The president's the only guy
who was subject to the electorate, and he got a
plurality of them to vote for him. Was very close

(34:15):
to a majority, not anyone who works at USAID. So
you've got all these people. I mean, we already knew
kind of knew this was happening, but this story is
making it very blunt. How fired USAID people who say
that they helped foment revolutions and authoritarian countries, which ones Libya,

(34:42):
which turned into a complete disaster, the egypt Color Revolution,
which that turned out to be a disaster also. So anyway,
these people are trying to they're saying in this story
that they want to foment sent among federal government employees
to undermine the quote Trump regime. And we don't see

(35:07):
a massive problem every single person who is engaging in this.
It's either great that they were fired or if they're
still working, they need to be fired when we return.
Why I am not actually as afraid of some of
these critiques from USAID, these threats from USAID workers. Next

(35:29):
on the John Girardi Show, this whole story in News
of the United States a couple days ago from former
fired USAID workers who are making these threats that were
going you know, we were we worked to instigate revolutions
in autocratic countries. We know how to take down a regime,

(35:50):
and we're going to do that to the Trump administration
by fomenting non compliance and eventually a whole broad based
strike of federal workers. And we're gonna send Baba okay,
he should watch out, which is like the tone they're
using is like quite threatening language, like explicitly saying they
want to bring down the government of the United States

(36:13):
because it's authoritarian because Donald Trump. Here's the thing, I'm
not actually that concerned. Why, well, these are USAID workers
unless some of the fired USAID workers were actually just
CIA operatives using USAID as cover. None of these people

(36:38):
have lifted a gun in their life. They'd be terrified
to see a gun in person. Most of these people,
a lot of these people anyway. The most harmful thing
that you know, what are they going to do approve
you know, a grant application for a nonprofit that their
wife runs. I can't say. I'm exactly shaking in my

(37:03):
boots because these fired employees. So, oh, we're gonna bring
down President Trump. No, you're not gonna bring down President Trump.
And and the minute these people put their head above
the water level, they get fired and rightly. So uh.
There was actually a story about a week ago, this
huge group of EPA employees had this open letter saying

(37:25):
that they they are in severe disagreement and are protesting
against the Trump administration and Lee Zelden, who's the new
EPA administration. There are decisions about BET and so the
Trump administrator shouldn't just put them all on I don't
know if they fired them or put them on administrative
leave with a with a view towards firing them, but yeah,

(37:46):
they're gonna fire them all. Of course, if you don't
support what the Trump administration is doing, that's fine, but
you can't keep pulling a salary. And that's the thing.
Like Trump was very generous to these people when he
came into office. He said, look, you can take an
eighteen month buy out and just leave, or you get

(38:08):
with the program. And these people still wanted their jobs.
So now you've got to get fired. Now we gotta
do it the hard way. That'll do it. Johns already
show see you next time on Power Talk