8-23-25 The Weekend Hour 2: Can The Republic Last Much Longer? Yes.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
To night. Michael Brown joins me here, the former FEMA
director of talk show host Michael Brown. Brownie, no, Brownie,
You're doing a heck of a job. The Weekend with
Michael Brown broadcasting live from Denver, Colorado. It's the Weekend
with Michael Brown. Glad to have you joining the program today.
As I always am. Text lines always open as it
always is. The number three three one zero three keyword
is Mike or Michael. Go follow me on X. Stop

(00:24):
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(00:44):
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(01:06):
good for your health, very good for your health. I
have at times and fairly consistently, although sometimes aren't as
bad as other times. Really question, because I understand history.
I question how much longer this republic can last? And

(01:28):
then I start and I think, and I know I
catch myself doing this, So don't at me. I realize
that sometimes the inputs as is true about anything in life.
You know you that always say you are what you eat, well,
you are what you watch, you are what you read?
You are I mean that cannot help but affect your

(01:52):
mental attitude, your mental outlook. The good and the bad
of what I do as a profession on radio is
and I think it's also the combination of what I
do in radio, which means I've got to I'm constantly
looking for things that interest me because when I find

(02:14):
things that interest me, then I know that I will
be much more animated and excited and interesting to listen
to because I'm interested in it. If you tuned in
wanting me to talk about something that I have zero
interest in, it's going to be pretty damn boring radio.
So I always choose things that interest me. But when

(02:37):
I have to survey the entire horizon about what's out
there in terms of stories, we live in a world
now where it's not just stories that are in Colorado,
where I currently live, but it's in all the other
fifty six states, and then it's in all the countries
around the world, even into other universes, depending on you know,

(03:01):
what you're reading or looking at. And when I look
around at some of the stuff that goes on in
some of our major cities. And again, even though I
say do not be a drive by consumer of news,
this morning I was busy doing some other stuff, so
I was a drive by consumer of news. I had

(03:22):
the television on and one of the local stations was
talking about there was a shooting at a high school
football game Friday night last last night. Because I'm broadcasting
on Saturday, Friday night lights is now comes with shootings.

(03:44):
I don't know anything other than that put a gun
to my head, no pun intended, but put a gun
to my head. Right now, I couldn't tell you where
it was. All I know was it occurred last night.
It looked like when I when I glanced up to
just kind of see what visuals they were showing, it
looked like a relatively small high school football game. And

(04:05):
then I went about because I was dealing with my
dogs or something, and I turned away, and I missed
the rest of the story. But I thought to myself,
another example of how our society is degenerating. And I've
often questioned whether or not this denigration of our society
is a denigration of a republican form of the republic

(04:28):
of small all small r republican government. And why is that? Well,
let's start with a chart that I saw about the
number of people that read for pleasure. Now you may think, well,
what does that have to do with anything. Bear with me.

(04:50):
The percentage of Americans who read for pleasure has been
declining by three percent every single year for twenty years.
If you go back to two thousand and three, the
percentage of people who read for pleasure, you know, maybe
a work of fiction or science fiction, or even you know, magazine,

(05:14):
so whatever you read, just read for pleasure, that was
above fifty percent. From two thousand and three through twenty eleven,
it steadily declined, bumped up with slightly. It declined to
about forty percent in twenty eleven. Then it bumped up slightly,
and it has been on a downward trajectory ever since.

(05:38):
In twenty twenty three, it bumped up ever so slightly,
but not a lot, but it did bump up. Now
I'm there's a serious side to that, and there's kind
of a goofball side to that, silly, because I've got
this kind of intuitive revulsion to the hostility of some

(06:01):
of my really educated friends toward Republicanism. Now again, I'm
not talking about the party. I'm talking about our form
of government. Some people would say democracy towards you know,
my educated friend's attitude toward democracy. But again, you and

(06:21):
I know we're not a democracy. We are a republic.
So I'm using the term republicanism in that vein those
people that I'm referring to tend to be somewhat elitist
and for me having truly humble origins, but I mean,

(06:42):
my family wasn't dirt port, Don't get me wrong. They
were solidly middle class, but in the grand scheme of things,
they worked very hard and we didn't have the finest
of things. I can remember when my dad built this
new house we lived in. Oh my gosh, I as

(07:05):
a teenager, I thought it was a mansion. It was amazing.
I go home to that house now compared to the
house that I live in, and it's like this tiny little,
tiny little house, tiny little track home. But my starting
point in all this discussion is is that republicanism and
that this country is good, and that the more Republicanism

(07:26):
and the more participation we have in our in our country,
the better off we are. Meaning a wider voter base.
But I want to I want a wider voter base
that is engaged, that has critical thinking skills, that really
understands the issues, even if you're on the other side
of the issue, whatever it might be. I don't care

(07:46):
taxation of social policy, whatever it is. If you can
make a cogent, critical argument for your position, I have
a whole hell of a lot more respect for you
than someone who says, well, I like this policy simply
because it makes me feel good. Feel good is not
a way to make public policy, and it's not a
way to debate, to debate public policy, or to shame

(08:09):
me into feeling bad. A real quick footnote before I
get me deeper into this, well, no, let me do this.
Let me take a break right now, and then when
we come back, I want to tell you a story.
And again, going back to the Wall Street Journal, Wall
Street Journal had an in depth story. I mean it
was online. It was I mean, I scrolled through several

(08:33):
pages and lots of photographs to finish it. And when
I finished it, I thought the whole purpose of that
story was to make me feel bad, to feel badly
about our immigration policies, to which I thought, screw you.
Do I feel sorry for the family that you used

(08:53):
in that story? Yes? Does it change my attitude about
our policy? No, I'll tell you that story next. I'll
be right back. Hey, so we came with Michael Brown.
Let to have you with me. I appreciate you tuning
in again. Go follow me on except Michael Brown USA

(09:15):
at the text lines, open the numbers three three, one
zero three, keyword micro Michael so real quickly this story.
I pulled it up during the break. They gave us
a Wall Street Journal story. The headline is the grim
realities of US bound migrants stuck in Mexico. There are
few jobs. This is the subhead. There are few jobs,

(09:38):
accommodations or services for immigrants in the southern Mexican city
where most of them have gathered. And it comes out Tapachula.
I'm not sure pronouncing that right. Mexico. And the first
paragraphs just says migrants from Latin America and as far
away as Afghanistan and China once flooded into this sweltering

(09:59):
city near Mexico's southern border with Guatemala. An American government
app allowed them to make appointments to declare asylum, and
then they waited for their return to cross the border,
and now they find themselves stuck. This goes on forever.

(10:19):
And what I find interesting is there are dozens and
dozens of photographs in this story, including lots of photographs
of the family that they focus on as they're making
the trip trying to get to the southern border. They
don't tell me who the photographer is, Not that it

(10:41):
makes any difference, but why are you hiding the name
of the photographer? And by the way, Wall Street Journal,
why are you what did you do to help this family?
If anything? While you were photographing and interviewing them as
they're bathing in a river, as they're fighting their way

(11:04):
through the jungle, I'm sure you were traveling with the
nicest stuff from Rii or North Face. Well, they're wearing
tattered clothing. Now they do have a cell phone provided
by an MNGO, but you probably had a satellite phone,
so you never worried about service. I just found it
so offensive that this story the reporter's name is Ryan

(11:28):
dubay Oh, it does say at the beginning photographs by
Tomaso Prote for Wall Street Journal. This story's dated March seven.
I just saw it yesterday. I realized that all they're
trying to do is make me feel sorry for this family.
Now I do feel sorry for the family in the
sense that they were fed a bunch of bull crap,

(11:53):
and they were subject to this idea that for years,
not just Biden, but going all the way back to Clinton,
including my old boss George W. Bush, they were enticed
to come to this country by an open border. Will
shame on us, But that doesn't change my attitude looking

(12:15):
at the plight of these poor, down trodden humans. It
doesn't change my attitude about the sovereignty of this nation
and the security and securing of our border so that
we don't have this problem. It also made me irritated
at all those Latin American countries for allowing them to

(12:37):
traverse their countries, the Triangle countries Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador,
to traverse Ecuador to traverse Columbia, Peru to travel from
wherever they were traveling from. Shame on you for allowing
them to do that. So I didn't have any sympathy
in that regard. The only thing I thought was, you're

(13:01):
trying to convince me to let my heart bleed and say, oh,
just let them in. No, I'm not going to feel
that way at all. I refuse that. I feel sorry
for them, and I hope that there is a charitable
organization out there that is trying to help these people
maybe get back home or find a job or whatever.
That's great, but no, I'm not going to change my

(13:22):
attitude about our policy. Well, that story really hit home
with me in terms of what I'm talking about, in
terms of this idea about questioning the survivability of this republic.
And it gets back to some of my friends because
some of my friends, which is where I found ot

(13:43):
about the story, read it and said, how can you
be so cold hearted? And I said, because I will give,
as my wife and I do, to charitable organizations for
which we believe in and which we think have the
highest rating in terms of the amount of money that

(14:04):
if I give them one hundred dollars that ninety nine
dollars of that's going to go to actually support their programs,
and only a dollar is going to go to salaries
and overhead. So I'm not going to advocate my compassion
to the government. My compassion and be funded by things
I don't believe in or support by taxes that are

(14:27):
forcibly taken out of my income, whether that be salary
or capital gains investments or anything else. And so when
I read the story, I called back my friend and
I said, the story actually had the exact opposite effect
on me. I still believe in this republic, but this
republic can't survive with we had a little bit of

(14:50):
an argument, can't survive with people like you that think
that policies that just make you feel good are the
policies that we ought to adopt. The republicanism skeptics had
become this rising chorus, And I think particularly among Democrats,

(15:12):
the snidness among them really started back with Obama, remember
clinging to their guns and religion, and then it went
from kind of noticeable to obvious when Hillary Clinton referred
to people like you and me as deplorables. Well, now
it's a full throated chorus singing the hall Oluah chorus
about how bad we are. I refuse to carry that

(15:37):
sandwich board of shame on my front and back over
my shoulders. Democrats should stop being annoyingly condescending and otherising
centrist people who vote for, you know, policies that are
rational and based upon reason and logic and critical thinking.

(15:58):
Think about the nineteen fifty six presidential campaign against Eisenhower.
Adel Stephenson was a Democrat nominee. He shook a lady's hand,
so goes the story, who said, quote, every thinking person
in America will be voting for you, mister Stevenson. And
he equipped, I'm afraid that won't do. I need a majority.

(16:21):
You know. The irony is that for most of my life,
the Democrats were the party of the people, the party
for the down trout. And I don't mean these illegal
aliens that I'm talking about, but for blue collar workers
or people that were really struggling, just leaving paycheck to paycheck. Yet,
isn't it interesting that Democrat elites actually sneer at those people? Well,

(16:46):
ask yourself, do Democrats support the republic the democracy of
voters at the state and city level, city level, who
strongly favor restrictions on abortion, what about gun rights? What
about anti vagrancy laws to keep people just from camping
on the streets. In too many cases, democrats not only

(17:09):
flatly oppose the policies that we believe in, but they
actually engage in policies such as the homeless policies that
encourage homelessness. And then you see it also in the
whole thing about misinformation that we live in. Now, what

(17:29):
do I mean by because we do? We live not
in the information age. I think we live in a
misinformation age, and some of this misinformation is actually dangerous
to the future of the Republic. I'll explain next. Don't forget.
You can listen weekdays from six to ten Mountain Time
on your iHeart app. Just search for the station six
point thirty khow and Denver and you can listen on

(17:52):
the weekends too. So you get me all the time.
Hang tight, I'll be right back tonight. Michael Brown joins
me here, the former FEMA director of talk show host
Michael Brown. Brownie, No, Brownie, You're doing a heck of
a job The Weekend with Michael Brown. Welcome back to

(18:14):
the Weekend with Michael Brown. So glad to have you
with me. I appreciate you tuning in on the weekend.
We're listening on the podcast or on the app, howverview listen.
I just appreciate it. Remember the text line is always open.
The numbers three three, one zero three, keyword Micha or Michael.
I read text messages all the time. So to have
a real faith in this republic is rooted in having

(18:39):
a confidence in the decision making of human voters, because
it is humans that vote. God doesn't vote in the elections. Yay,
Angels don't vote in the elections. I might argue this.
Sometimes it seems like devils vote in elections, but it's
humans that vote in elections. Requires that we believe that.

(19:04):
You really do need to be educated. You need to
be a resilient and a critical consumer of political information
and not be some sort of thumbsucking kid with no
worthy sense of their own context, or their own worth
or their own you know, role in this society. Do

(19:24):
you ever wonder about when you when you see the videos,
if you've seen a story about the shooting at the
football game last night, or you see the videos where
you know, gangs of kids. I shouldn't even say kids,
we're just gangs. They could be kids, they could be teenagers,

(19:45):
they could be young adults, they could be adults where
they just suddenly somebody takes you know, just takes a
sucker punch to somebody and now you've got a brawl.
Or you you watch a flash mob into a into
an Apple store. That would always fascinated me. You're you're
stealing things electronics that Apple has designed, that whether that

(20:07):
they as long as you know you steal, you steal
my laptop. Now, one I can track it, but two,
if I can't retrieve it, I can turn it into
a brick. So it's it's it's utterly useless unless you
think you're going to go sell the parts or sell
some of the you know, the the metal that's in it.
I don't know why it's it's irrational or the people

(20:30):
that loot, the people that rob at bodega in New York,
or the guy that thinks that because he's pissed off
at an insurance company, not even his own insurance company,
but assassinates in the back the CEO of United Healthcare,
who he has no relationship with whatsoever. I mean, what
kind of sickness is this, Do you share any faith

(20:56):
in that right to vote to the extreme that would
include the least literate person among us, or do you
want to draw a line somewhere a literacy test? How
many Americans could pass the basic citizenship test that people

(21:21):
who are wanting to immigrate into this country legally have
to take, or someone who has been here with a
green card and now wants to, you know, move on
to becoming a naturalized citizen that has to take that exam.
I've looked at that exam numerous times, and I've actually
questioned how many Americans and how many people that I

(21:42):
know could I give that test to and see if
they could pass it or not? Because you've got to
be careful because once you start carving a line between
a citizen that you think is vote worthy or unworthy
of voting, now you've empowered the elites, and now you're

(22:02):
in an infinite gray area. Should the smartest have be
granted the right to vote? The smartest third tenth at infinitum?
What you're doing is you're formalizing an oligarchy. If you're
uncertain in your convictions about this republic, we probably have

(22:24):
a lot to worry about in a large This comes
from a group that did a detailed study. Let me
just read you this paragraph bear with me. In a large,
nationally representative sample of the US population, the proportion who

(22:45):
read for pleasure on an average day declined over the
last twenty years, from highs of twenty eight percent in
two thousand and four through lows of sixteen percent in
twenty twenty three, a relative decrease of about three percent
per year. In contrast, there were no changes in reading
with children over time. The decline in reading for personal

(23:05):
interests over the past twenty years in the United States
is consistent with the most robust previous evidence. This decline
is concerning given earlier evidence for downward trends and reading
for pleasure from the nineteen forties through to the start
of our study in two thousand and three, suggesting at
least eighty years of continued decline in reading for pleasure.

(23:28):
The extent of the decrease in our study is surprising,
giving that the definition of reading for personal interest including
not only just reading a book, magazine, or a newspaper,
but even now listening to an audiobook or a book
on tape, or reading on a kindle or another eReader.
So it's not clear to me that this study includes
Maybe screen time on a laptop is reading, but I

(23:52):
think that it would depending on what it is that
you're reading. I tend to believe the trend even if
it does or does not include me, for example, because
I don't read any newspapers hard copies of newspapers anymore,
and I don't read any hard copies of magazines. I
still get them that come in the mail. I can't
stop them, but I don't read them because I got

(24:12):
the same thing online. There's this generational shift. Younger people
live in radically different infospheres that is rich in video.
That's what they're watching. Video consumption, I don't think necessarily

(24:33):
means that people are dumber, but it certainly makes me wonder.
Maybe it makes them smarter in some ways that I
don't fully understand. Maybe it makes the more cosmopolitan, Maybe
it makes some critical thinkers. I can't find a study
that either proves or disproves that one way or the other,

(24:54):
but I tend to think this that I want you.
For example, why do I always ask you to go
follow me on X Well? One, I like the interaction
because I like to see my followers, and I like
to see what you're talking about. I don't follow a
lot of people. That doesn't mean that I don't go

(25:14):
see what you're posting, because that gives me inside. If
you've taken the time to follow me and I go
see what you have posted, that gives me insight into
what this huge group of people that listen to this
program or my weekday program, what you're thinking, what you're
engaged in. I also keep lists of people, even people

(25:36):
that I don't follow. I've got one list that's called
keeps on blood Pressure up of people that I think
are radical leftist Marxists. I keep them on a separate
list out of my timeline, so that only when I
want to go get my blood pressure up, I can
go read what they're writing. He gives me a lot
of fodder for this program. I think that it actually
helps me become a better critical thinker. But then I

(26:00):
get concerned that perhaps that people that are not understanding
what they're watching or the videos that they're consuming, that
maybe it's numbing them down. Because many people post videos
of how many times have we seen videos of people
getting beaten up and everybody's just standing around with their

(26:22):
cameras pointed, I saw one video this week, one one
video of all the ones that I watched, one video
of somebody that somehow was involved in a road rage
incident and guy got out punched. The guy knocked him out.
He was holding a dog, punched him out cold, fell

(26:43):
hit his head on the concrete on the pavement, and
while there was somebody that seemed to be maybe in
an apartment building or maybe it was a security video,
I'm not sure, but I saw several people come to
his aid, and I thought, Wow, that really impresses me.
And then it bothered me that it impressed me. Why

(27:03):
because most of the videos I see are just of
people standing around with their phones running and videotaping while
someone's getting the snot beat at them and nobody's helping.
Or I watched one of a couple of cops during
a funeral for NYPD officer who's canine dog got loose

(27:28):
and the dog ran to and buy several people sniffed,
and then went to a young las shouldn't say young,
I'm not really sure, but went to a black person
and the dog attacked the black person, and I thought
to myself, I watched the video three or four times
to make certain that I was seeing what I thought

(27:50):
I was seeing the dog running. Now, the officers were
panic stricken. They were totally panic stricken as they tried
to get to the dog who was not on the leash,
to get to the dog before the dog attacked anybody.
But the dog passed at least two, maybe three people
where he finally decided to attack a black man, And

(28:12):
I thought, that's odd. The dog clearly shouldn't have been
off the leash, and the dog clearly needs more training.
Or if I went to the really deep dark side
in my brain, did the dog pass the other people
because they weren't black? I refuse to believe that, but

(28:34):
I have to be honest and tell you I thought
that Now if if I already tend to be and
lean toward being racist, either black or Caucasian or Asian,
either way, anybody that is already predisposed of being racist,
would think, oh, that dog was trained to attack a

(28:55):
black person. So it's not clear to me that video
is this video information age that we live in is
necessarily good, and I think that leads to what we
really need in public education. I'll be right back. Hey, welcome,

(29:23):
back to the weekend with Michael Brown. Glad to have
you with me. Text line always opened three three one
zero three on your message app, keyword is Mike or Michael.
Be sure and follow me on x at Michael Brown USA.
In fact, let me share a text message with you
real quickly. Goober number four six seven nine writes that Michael,
the reason watching videos, particularly I guess TikTok is replacing

(29:44):
reading for enjoyment is because of laziness. Yeah, it's true.
Today's society has gotten even too lazy to read. This
is the lack of critical thinking, the lack of critical
thinking among our youth. I do think that's true. But
what do if those those rug rats, those kids or
adults who consume TikTok all the time, what if they

(30:06):
have more visual nuance but less linguistic or vocabulary nuance.
They have less physical range? You know, you know, And
now a singer is said to have a certain vocal range, Well,
what if their range is just narrower, but broader in

(30:29):
a particular part visual In other words, maybe as we
get older and those changes that are taking place over
our shoulder are not necessarily bad, or do we think
they're bad? Simply because well that's what as we get older,
tend to think. Now a young whipper snappers, all they're

(30:51):
doing is watching TikTok, and they're not really you know,
learning anything, are they. I mean, I because I'm not around,
you know, a bunch of tech talkers. I don't really know.
I do wonder though, But here's the bottom line. I
don't think that the Republic is at risk, and I

(31:11):
think a lot of that has to do with we've
gone the Democrats have gone so far leftward with you know,
I rarely, in twenty years of radio up until probably
the last five years, maybe four years for five years,
I never are, rarely ever referred to Democrats as in

(31:37):
general as Marxist, socialist or communists. But today I would
say the majority of Democrats fit that particular category. That's
what they have become, and that's what they advocate. But
having said that, I think it's the Democrat Party that

(31:57):
is on the verge of failure, not the Republic. I
think we've got problems, We've always had problems. This Republic may,
over time, as all republics have in the history of humankind, collapse,

(32:20):
but I don't think we're close to that yet, because
I think that while there is this collapse within the
Democrat Party, we should not conflate that with a collapse
of the republic Because as the Democrat Party is collapsing
over here, those of us who are categorized as Republican

(32:42):
or conservative, or libertarian or even moderate are beginning to see, oh,
all the woes and the ills and the dangers of
the Marxist socialist slash communist policies that Democrats are beginning
to advocate. They're drawing a We still have to point

(33:05):
out the difference and why our policies work and theirs don't.
But unbeknownst to them, they are by example showing us
how those policies do not work. Because all we have
to do is, you know, we always pick on California,
highly regulated, overtax, losing population, all of the problems that

(33:29):
California has, Palisade fire area not being rebuilt, being bought
up by land speculators, because people can't get building permits,
because the bureaucracy in LA is so overwhelming that by
the time you get a building permit, you may build
a house and then you suddenly who knows what's going
on in the neighborhood. So that neighborhood is not being rebuilt.

(33:50):
Why because of a centrally planned economy in the microcosm
that is la Or go to New York at law,
not just New York City, but New York at large,
heavily over attaxed. People beginning to leave Illinois, same thing,
facing year after year of billion dollars in deficits. Colorado

(34:11):
becoming the same Yet what about Texas, Oklahoma, Wyoming, what
about Florida? What about all of those other states that
are thriving based upon their policies? The Democrats are doing
the comparion contrasting for us. Now, we have to articulate it,

(34:33):
and we have to be able to show the evidence
of it and to point it out to those who
lack the critical thinking skills to say stop and think
about I know the policy about homelessness makes you feel good,
but if you ever stopped and asked yourself, We've spent
across the country billions of dollars on homelessness, and what's happened.

(34:54):
The problem's only grown more. So it's as if we are,
which I believe, we are, sub homelessness through the homelessness industry.
So the more we spend on it. What are we doing.
We're encouraging more people to become homeless, and those who
may be temporarily in homelessness suddenly find themselves in a
system that is actually supporting them. So unless you have

(35:17):
just that human nature that says I want to get
out of this, you'll end up staying in it. So
I don't think that the Republic's going to collapse, but
I do think the Democrat Party is at risk of
completely collapsing, particularly if it keeps going down this road
of progressive elitism and the Marxist socialists slash communist policies

(35:43):
that they are beginning to adopt and freely advocate. So
anybody that's a moderate in the Democrat Party begins to
look someplace else to find home. Now that may not
be that may be unaffiliated, And that's fine as long
as they end up voting for the policies that you

(36:05):
and I would advocate. Then there's the whole problem of
democracy because they keep pushing the idea of democracy. Trump
is a threat to democracy, Michael Brown is a threat
to democracy. You are a threat to democracy, really, because

(36:28):
when the Founding fathers wrote the Founding Documents, They could
have adopted a democracy, but in their debates and in
their final versions of what they wrote, they steered completely
away from it. That's next.