April 16, 2024 • 33 mins
This episode welcomes Dr. Leonard Lira, Chair of Public Policy in Higher Education and decorated Army Veteran, as he explores America's political evolution, the foundation of American democracy, and contemporary voting rights. Discover how primary and general elections shape our political landscape as we delve into the complexities and challenges of voters today. Understand strategic patterns in American politics through a historical lens with Dr. Lira's insightful commentary.
Follow the transformative journey of a woman who went from indifferent voter to active democratic participant, as she navigates voter registration complexities. Understand the deep-seated issue of inadequate voter education and its effects on young voters from the University of Houston's Election Lab. Tackle obstacles such as disjointed public service announcements and the strenuous system of voting by mail that discourages participation.
We also expose the issue of gerrymandering and its detrimental effect on voter disillusionment, coupled with the electoral college system, we make a compelling call for an improved voter education system.
Join our host Adam West as he interviews Dr. Len Lira about the importance of the democratic system and the power of the vote. With experiences from voting in the military to his current standpoint as a Democrat, Dr. Lira provides a nuanced perspective on political affiliation. He emphasizes the crucial role of regular voter education, media information dissemination, and integrity in our democratic institutions.
This episode ends optimistically, with faith in the American democratic system and the belief that constitution adherents will prevail amidst the challenges. Tune in for a captivating and thought-provoking look at democracy in America.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Music.
(00:13):
Your vote. Conversations from the Hill Country. I'm Adam West.
On this episode, we're talking with Dr. Leonard Lira, Chair of Public Policy
and Service for Area Higher Education.
He has taught political science both at West Point and at San Jose State University.
He's the Democratic Chair of Precinct 106 in Comal County. We had a very interesting conversation.
(00:35):
I learned an awful lot, and I think you will too. Welcome, Dr.
Leonard Lira, to the podcast. How are you, man? I'm doing well.
Thank you for inviting me.
Well, hey, thanks for being here. It's a pleasure to have someone here of your stature.
Okay, well, first of all, working with the Democratic Party,
you are currently a Democratic chair of Precinct 106, right? That's correct.
Okay. Where is 106 exactly?
(00:57):
So 106 is on the, I like to say, is on the corner of 46 and 281.
We're in the River Crossing neighborhood in that area.
Now, some of your background, of course, that certainly applies to politics,
You've taught political science at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
Yes. I taught there for two years, from 2003 to 2005.
Okay. That's awesome. You're a 28-year Army veteran.
(01:20):
You retired at the rank of colonel and served as an Army strategist. Yes.
Explain a little bit about that. Does that mean you strategize battle plans
or education or what? How does that work? Actually, both.
The Army developed this Corps of Thinkers or Strategists is what they called them.
And the idea was to develop and connect operational plans to strategy and connect
(01:43):
it to the national strategy, but also to educate the force on strategy.
And so I actually, as part of that, they sent me back to the Command and General
Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, and I taught strategic studies,
which was really related to international relations and political science and
public administration, all the things that I had trained on academically. Okay.
And your background obviously includes political science. You were an assistant
(02:05):
professor from the Department of Political Science at San Jose State University.
That's correct. I taught political science at the undergraduate level,
and I was also teaching public administration at the graduate level.
And I still teach San Jose State for their program of leadership and management
in the Mineta Transportation Institute.
You are a doctor of philosophy from the University of Kansas, right? That's correct.
(02:26):
And public administration. Yeah, I was going to say Master's of Public Administration,
Master's of Arts in International Relations, and you have a Certificate of Advanced
Studies of Conflict Resolution from Syracuse University. Go, Orangemen. .
So talk a little bit about that conflict resolution, like international types
of conflicts or domestically international.
(02:47):
I was I received that certificate as part of my study when the Army sent me
to get my master's of public administration at Syracuse.
I had an opportunity to either do the Ph.D. or do the master's.
But Syracuse, they had this program for Ph.D. where you had to do it in residence.
And the Army wants you to get A.B.D. and then go teach at West Point.
So I didn't have time to complete it. And I wanted to be public administration.
(03:08):
I could have done it if I'd switched over completely to political science, but I couldn't.
So I tried to advance my education as much as I could. I did a double major,
double master's. So that's how I got the MPA and the IR.
And then one of my mentors, Dr. Rosemary O'Leary, was leading the conflict resolution
program with Professor Rubin, which was another one of my mentors when I was
(03:28):
there at Syracuse. And I fell right into that program because,
you know, I was in the military.
I was studying about conflict, conflict in the international realm,
conflict within organizations.
It just fit. So I added it to my studies. It was like synergy.
Fascinating. Okay. So currently you are the chair of public policy and service
(03:48):
for area higher education, shall we say?
Yeah. And I just have to clarify the caveat here is that everything that I'm
saying here are of my opinions only.
Of course. People probably can look me up and figure out where I work,
but it's not affiliated and I don't represent the current educational institution
while I'm doing this podcast.
So just so that that's that's clear. OK, well, that's terrific.
(04:08):
And since you have this extensive background, conflict resolution and political
science, et cetera, et cetera, let's talk about the foundation and evolution
of democracy in America and how it has shaped the right to vote and where we are today. Right.
So just a quick, brief history. I mean, it's been filled with controversy and conflict, if you will.
(04:29):
But, you know, when the nation was founded, one of the unique things about our
American enterprise was that unlike in our European, the European countries
where a lot of our Americans came from, anybody male at this time could vote.
And that was that was enlightening. It was a change, dramatic change in the
world. And later, the principles in which America was founded finally caught up with its actions.
(04:51):
Not completely today, but we started having the enfranchisement of blacks in
the South in the 1870s, the passage of the 14th and 15th Amendment, 13th Amendment.
And then later, about 144 years later, if you can imagine that.
Took a while. Yeah. Half of our country, the women, finally were enfranchised
(05:11):
and given the vote. So it's.
You know, we made this steady progress over time. And what's interesting today
is that we're starting to see like that arc of that start to revert back to
where we were previously.
You know, we you know, the the Civil Rights Act is has kind of been gutted a
little bit with the 2013 Supreme Court ruling and Shelby versus Holden,
(05:32):
which stripped the fifth section of that law in the fourth of the fourth section of that law.
Well, the fifth one was basically said if a state had previously demonstrated
racism against their minorities, they had to get preclearance to change their
voting laws. Right. Well, it took that away.
And then the other thing that was important was that the fourth section said,
you know, we have a formula for figuring out if a state falls in this category.
(05:55):
And we can, you know, based on civil rights complaints, based on lawsuits,
based on all kinds of metrics, it took that away.
And so now we're starting to see a reversion back to, at least now for blacks
and Hispanics in certain states, to include Texas, we're seeing a reversion
back to restriction of voting rights.
So one of the problems that we often talk about on this podcast and that we
(06:16):
obviously see a lot of is low voter turnout in general and particularly low
Democratic voter turnout in the primaries and in the general.
But I guess there's a positive spin on that is that the low voter turnout in
the primary Republican or Democrat doesn't necessarily predict turnout in November,
(06:37):
right? Right. That's absolutely correct.
I mean, if you look at the statistics just across the board in the United States
or even in Texas, Texas is a good example.
We're at the primary total voter turnout. That's both Republicans and Democrats
is the nine percentage or 15 percent.
But when the highest office on the ballot, whether it's the governor or whether
it's the president, is in contention with both parties, then you see a large
(07:00):
turnout in the primary because then it's very competitive. Right. Right. Sure.
But when it's not competitive, when one party holds the holds the office,
they don't really turn out.
And that's this is systemic across. You can see it. The pattern is clear across history.
And so that's true. And the turnout for like this Texas itself is up in the
60s. We had a record turnout in 1992, 72.9 percent.
(07:22):
And then when Obama in 2008, you know, the record turnout for the general election
was almost 60 percent. And then we beat that record in 2020 recently with a turnout.
This is Texas numbers themselves with a 66.7% turnout rate compared to 2015.
3% during the primary. So that no way does it reflect, I mean,
(07:45):
it's probably related to, but it doesn't have an impact on what we can expect for our voter turnout.
And so a lot of the lack of turnout for the primaries is the people probably
just figure, well, that decision's going to be made. I'll worry about it in November.
Yeah. So it's kind of like this idea, but it's like four main factors,
right? There's motivation and enthusiasm.
When a party's in power, they feel less urgency to try to go out and vote.
(08:07):
They know that the real election is going to be coming in later in November.
Also, supporters of the incumbent party might assume that their candidate will be the nominee.
And this was clear in this last one, right? Biden really had no competition
with the other two or three most mostly known candidates.
Yeah. And obviously the same with the other party. Well, you know, it's interesting.
(08:27):
I read a lot in the newspaper about this low voter turnout for Democrats.
And I think the real question though is, why weren't there more Republicans that came out?
This is a more important election for the Republicans because they are trying
to recover the White House and they're trying to maintain the Senate.
But their turnout, even though we had two million more voters join Texas and
(08:50):
become eligible, their turnout was still 12 point, went like from 12.4 to 12.6.
It was kind of flatlined.
You know, you would expect, if you look over history.
The party that's trying to regain the position or the office,
they have a large turnout.
And it's like between four and then sometimes six or 10 percentage points, right?
It was flat for the Republicans. So I think the real question is,
(09:13):
why didn't the Republicans care as much to try to take back the White House
and try to maintain the Senate?
And so I think those are some, I don't know what it means exactly.
I'm still trying to do the analysis of the numbers, but I think that's going
to have an impact on what we see happen in the general election in November.
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And then when you look at like the midterms,
that's usually blowback against the general two years before.
(09:35):
So another contrary to that, right? That's what it's, you know,
if you look at the midterms, generally there's low voter turnout.
And generally it's a bellwether mark on the administration that's in power.
That didn't happen in 2020, right? Remember in 2020, we were expecting in this
last midterm, sorry, 2022, we were expecting this huge red wave that was going
to come back and be against the Democratic administration.
(10:11):
Right, right.
Primary and general elections. Well, let me circle back a little bit and talk
(10:32):
a little bit more about the challenges that we currently have.
And I think as I look at the research and anecdotally, when I talk to my family
members, I talk to my precinct members, one of the major challenges we have is voter education.
Oh, you got that right. Understanding the rules, the regulations.
And, you know, I just, I go back to, let me tell you a story about,
(10:53):
you know, one of my family A young female, my family member, and she's my niece.
I asked her some information for this to get her background story,
but she didn't want me to share her name because she's voting active,
but she's not politically active. She doesn't like the controversy.
But she's a voter. And her story was, you know, she registered to vote as soon as she was 18.
There's a whole reason why she did that. We can talk about that in a second. And she voted.
(11:16):
And she said when she went to the polls, she felt intimidated because she didn't
feel like she was prepared to vote. She didn't understand the issues.
She didn't know the candidates.
She felt like people were judging her. She was also concerned about personal safety.
And so she didn't vote for another six years after that until she became more
attuned to the policies and the laws that were affecting her,
(11:37):
her ability to make medical decisions for herself,
the future ability for her children to make medical decisions for themselves and their families.
And then she became motivated again and she voted again after six years.
So that initial challenge of understanding.
Oh, and the other thing is where to vote. You know, young people,
for example, they they're either going to college or they're going to get jobs.
(11:58):
And in her case, she got a job and she moved from her hometown to a larger town.
And when she went to go vote, realized that she wasn't registered to vote and
couldn't vote and didn't realize that she could cast a provisional vote and
then go back and fix it later. And it just became, it just, it was a,
it became an encumbrance and caused her just, you know, that's, I got too much to do.
I had to kind of pay for rent, kind of pay for food.
(12:19):
So. I think that's a common denominator for any age group as far as having trouble
being able to vote, understanding all the rules.
I mean, just like anything with the government, you know, it gets caught up
in red tape and fine print, right? Right, right, right.
You know, it's interesting in Texas, Texas has the potential to support voter education.
(12:40):
And it is Texas law that high schools will register at least twice,
do registration for high school students who are eligible to vote.
But the research on this, and I got my research from the University of Houston's
election lab, indicates that less than half of the schools across Texas do that.
And there's no enforcement mechanism. communism.
And beyond that, within the high school curriculum themselves,
(13:02):
there's no voter education.
When they do social studies, they don't talk about how to vote,
the reason to vote, or any of that civic engagement aspect.
And so they do in some cases, but not all cases.
And so one, we don't follow the laws that we're supposed to be doing.
And two, we don't train our young people at what we're supposed to be doing. True.
Now, one thing I've, you know, to, I guess, to the state's credit or the secretary
(13:23):
of state's office or whatever, I have seen it coming up to elections and primaries
There's a lot of public service announcements about making sure you're registered,
how to check that you're registered.
You know, I see it pops up on social media. Maybe that has to do with algorithms.
So I think there is some effort out there, but it's almost like you see one party –
trying to suppress that information, but then it's still getting out there somewhere, you know.
(13:45):
It's interesting, at the convention yesterday, one of the members was talking
about motor education, and she said, in Austin, there were billboards asking
Texans, are you ready to vote?
But no date, no other information, no hyperlink, no QR code,
nothing to draw anybody's attention to. Yeah, it should really be placed with a lot more importance.
(14:07):
I mean, my thought is, Why don't we have a election day as a national holiday?
Exactly. Yeah. Other countries do. I don't think we need to go to the extent
where we need to make it mandatory.
I think we still have to make citizens be responsible for the outcomes of their votes or non-votes.
We can do a lot more to, without making, without jeopardizing the security and
(14:27):
the legitimacy of our votes, we can do a lot more outreach, a lot more education.
Absolutely. And that's where the new voter suppression is coming from. It's not outright.
It's not blatant. It's almost insidious.
There are things that are being put into policies, laws, rules,
and procedures the way we don't follow our own laws, for example.
(14:49):
Example, or the way we, one of the major ones was this new change to receive
an application to vote by mail.
That law changed recently within the last year or two. So many of my precinct
members that I talked to who are eligible to vote by mail didn't realize that
this year they weren't going to get that application automatically.
That they had to actually, they actually, you know, I call it the double application process.
(15:12):
You have to apply to apply to vote by mail. First, you got to find it And then
you've got to request the application.
Oh, I know, I know. So that's an application process, right?
Yeah, we did some outreach with phone banking and whatnot to try to encourage
people and let them know they could vote by mail, et cetera.
And I've recently read in the San Antonio Express News a couple of letters to
the editor of people that sent in their application.
(15:34):
They received information that their applications were received.
This was in the middle of February. And they still have never received their ballot.
Right. And you have to be proactive. active, you have to call the,
and my son had to call the Kamala County to make sure, Kamala County Elections
Office to make sure that his registration, because it wouldn't show up on the website.
And he knew he had done the registration when he updated his driver's license.
(15:57):
So it's those not blatantly illegal actions, but those under,
those indirect, latent actions that is causing voter restrictions within Texas and across the nation.
You know, not only with the lack of voter education for the young people.
You know, removing that automatic, taking that barrier away to allow people
(16:17):
to vote by mail for our older generation who would vote.
Exactly. These were senior citizens who wrote those letters.
Yeah. So then maybe like you're talking about education, having civics required
in high school ought to be a thing, you know? Yeah.
And so they have a requirement. If you look at the Texas Education Commission,
they have a requirement for political participation, political civic civic engagement to be taught.
(16:40):
But again, it's not taught at a level that explains the current context.
And you generally, the students who, unless they go on to community college
or to a four-year university where they're required to actually get more in-depth
and they actually have more education on that, which is not the majority of Americans.
I mean, I'm sorry, majority of Texans. They're not going to get a complete education
(17:01):
on that process or have it updated because that's what faculty at colleges do.
They research and they study and they take that current research and they bring
it into the classrooms. Yeah. High school teachers.
Ideally, anyway. Yeah, ideally. High school teachers do that,
but they're so overwhelmed, so underpaid.
Yeah. That it's hard to, you know, sometimes some high school teachers are teaching
(17:22):
multiple disciplines as well.
They're teaching math and history and social science as well. That's true.
That's true. And then they also have to fight the battle of what they're allowed
to teach in a lot of cases, right?
Right. They are. And I mean, we haven't.
Yeah. So it was interesting, the recent rule and law that was passed about you
must teach to Texas documents when it was, when we were trying to,
when the current governor was trying to root out critical race theory in Texas curriculum.
(17:47):
Even if you go to the founding documents within Texas, the reason why we seceded
from the union, what was founding, why we created our constitution,
it's all rooted on, you know, one category of people wanting to maintain power
over another category of people. I mean, it's written in our own founding documents. statements.
That's unbelievable. Well, I guess it's not that hard to believe, actually.
But I get a lot of comments from my students, even from my own family members,
(18:10):
younger family members about, well, my vote, you know, the reason why I don't
vote is because it doesn't count.
My vote doesn't count. Yeah, yeah. Right. And I always say, I always report back to them.
I'm like, or I respond back to them. I say, well, if your vote doesn't count,
why are so many people trying to make sure you can't vote?
Think about that. That's a good point. The other thing that they'll tell me
is, well, I'll vote, but I don't think anything's going going to happen. Right.
(18:32):
And then I always ask him, well, hasn't things changed already?
I mean, how did we get the right to vote anyway? How do women get the right to vote?
How are you not getting the education you should?
Why, why are women not in control of their bodies right now when they used to be?
Why are all there's people are voting votes cause change.
And if you don't like the change that's happening and you're not voting,
(18:53):
well, you have no room to complain. You have no room to complain,
but you also are part of the problem.
Yeah, this is true. So getting back to voting rights and trying to keep people
from voting, et cetera. What about redistricting?
Gerrymandering. Gerrymandering. That's it. Yeah, gerrymandering.
So that's another tactic that's being used.
(19:13):
And what's interesting is that when gerrymandering had occurred and it had blatant
racial overtones, it was easy to identify, right?
But now politicians and political parties in particular are dividing among Republican,
Democratic, et cetera, right? And it's harder to identify that there's a racial aspect there.
I'm not sure what the current statistics are, but the last time I looked at
(19:35):
this, there were more minorities that were Democratic voters in some areas,
not in general, in some areas, not everywhere.
In some of the areas where the court cases have been filed, minorities would
be in the Democratic Party or vice versa, right?
And they would use the Republican identity to gerrymander.
And so what you would have happen in certain cases, I know this happened in
(19:57):
Dallas, I know it's happening in Alabama.
In fact, Alabama has gone back to the Supreme Court two or three times in violation
of the very conservative Supreme Court's rule that they can't do what they're
doing with regards to gerrymandering. and then said that they were just going to do it anyway.
They'll either do it where they pack one category of people onto one district,
so they're in competition with two or three other districts,
(20:20):
and it dilutes their vote because now their district is voting against two or
three other, and so it's three to one.
Or, depending on what district or jurisdiction they're trying to set the political
boundary for, they'll split them.
So I think within southern counties in Dallas, they were splitting the Asian vote.
So the Asians and the black vote there had enough power to elect their own DA,
(20:44):
elect their own city council, elect their own congressman and state,
and they were split in three.
And so it diluted their power and they drew this long line all the way out to
a very white rural community that had, you know, more less people if you if
you compared it together.
But when they when they split them into three, it made them the absolute minority
(21:06):
in that that district, the new redrawn district.
But it was all based on on the political identity, right, of the of the voting
members, not not their race per se. And, you know, one of the issues that when
a lot of people feel like they say, well, my vote just doesn't matter.
Is that because of the electoral college?
You know, you can win the popular vote by a large margin and still lose an election. Yeah.
(21:29):
And we've had, interestingly, in the last several Republican presidents have
not won the popular vote, but they were able to win the electoral college and thereby win the seat.
The electoral college is an institution that was created to balance the competing
political interests between large states and small states when we were making
(21:51):
an agreement to solidify a constitution.
It was a compromise at that time that was important.
I still believe in the electoral college. I still believe in the two-party system.
I think that what really solidifies, I mean, if you look at the last election,
for example, Biden won not only the popular vote, but he won the electoral college.
(22:11):
I mean, so it's like double legitimacy, right? Right. Sure. Absolutely.
Compared to Trump, who only won the electoral college, but completely lost by
several hundred million.
I think my six million people, the popular vote.
Right. Right. Well, I guess, you know, in a lot of ways, it's always a work in progress. Right.
Right. A path forward, though, you wanted to ask me that early and I kind of circled back. Right.
(22:34):
We need to double down our education and voter education in the near term.
We need to, as Democrats, we need to get that message out consistently.
Routinely, podcasts like this.
We need to put it on our social media. We need to share it. We need to let people
know what their options are.
But the other thing we need to do, I think we need to tell a story of hope.
We need to inspire people. My own history in voting, you know,
(22:58):
my dad was a union man, lifelong Democrat.
When I was 18, he marched me down to the county courthouse and signed me up
to get registered to vote and register me as a Democrat.
But when I joined the Army, you know, I went through that professional training
and we shouldn't be biased and we should be neutral. And I didn't.
Any political affiliation for 28 years. And I was a swing voter, right?
(23:21):
I voted for Bush twice. I voted for Clinton once. I voted for Obama twice.
And then I've been consistently voting Democrat after that. And it was all based
on that first time of voting, right?
If you know somebody in your family, anybody who's listening to this podcast.
Don't be afraid to talk to the young people in your family.
Help them know how to register, what the dates are, consistently send them text messages.
(23:45):
You don't have to tell them who to vote for. They're smart. They know who to vote for.
They know. And once they get that vote, like my niece, you know,
she voted the first time she probably voted the way her dad,
cause her dad did the same thing.
He, he walked her down and got her registered to vote.
She probably voted the same way he voted. Sure. I don't think they vote the same way anymore.
And she's cause she's become politically aware and she knows.
(24:07):
And so don't, you don't have to tell people who to vote for,
just help them get to that, get that agency. And that's what we need to do. Yeah, absolutely.
I know when I was becoming a voting age, I was, I read newspapers and I did then too.
So, you know, I was aware of what was going on pretty much. There's a lot of,
especially with younger people, apathy about news in general and the political system.
(24:29):
So, you know, that's another battle, I guess, trying to make them realize that
it is important to stay on top of what's going on.
I guess the last thing I'd leave, and I'm happy to talk about anything anything
else you want to talk about.
But the last thought I had on why your boat matters, and I'd like to share with
your listeners, is that if you look back in history.
The democracies who have given up their vote. You look back to the 1930s when
(24:52):
Germans voted for the Nazi party.
Later when they interviewed them after the war, they didn't realize that that
was going to be the last time they were going to be able to vote.
When you look at the Czechoslovakians who voted for the communist party in the
1940s, they didn't realize that was going to be the last time to vote.
You look at the Russians in the 1990s when they voted for Putin,
(25:13):
they didn't realize that was going to be the last time they voted.
You can't say it can't happen here. Only the American citizens can maintain
that right to vote. And they can only do that if they go out and vote.
Extremely, extremely important. Okay. There's a lot of talk in the current Republican
campaign. Obviously, Trump is the nominee.
(25:33):
And a lot of it is probably hyperbole, but becoming a dictator on day one, et cetera, et cetera.
Are the Republicans really Really trying to kill democracy.
I'm going to answer that by offering another venue of information for your podcast listeners.
(25:53):
And one recent podcast I've started listening to is by a historian.
The podcast is called Letters from an American. So you can Google that.
It's from Heather Cox Richardson. She has got a really good podcast episode
in this, and I'll share it with you.
So you can put it in the notes afterwards, and I'll put it on our podcast,
I mean, our social media.
But she's presented evidence of a campaign by the Heritage Foundation,
(26:18):
by the extreme members of the Republicans to overdo the institutions in America
that have maintained our democratic republic.
And that being, you know, this you've heard this this idea that we need to get
rid of the deep state, the administrative state.
Yeah, for whatever that means to people. What it means is they want to get rid
(26:39):
of the nonpartisan civil core that has kept the United States operating.
Every civil servant from the post office to the Department of Agriculture to
the Department of Defense, and they want to bring in loyalists to one side of the party, right?
So I think that's, you know, that plan and the amount of money and the amount
of support that they've got, and this is their, it's called the 2025 plan.
(27:04):
I've heard of it, yeah. Yeah, so that they can completely undo the civil employees
within the federal government's neutral standing, you know, just upend it, right?
Because they want to get rid of that administrative state. So they've been attacking
that particular institution.
When Trump was in office, he did his best to attack another democratic institution,
(27:26):
which was our free press and our media.
You know, mischaracterizing, calling them the enemies of the state,
taking away, you know, the immense amount of voter disenfranchisement that has
occurred since Trump's time is another, you know, just, you know,
hacking away at our institution of voting rights is another way.
Putting partisan judges in place in the Supreme Court and lower courts, another way.
(27:51):
So there, well, I'm not exactly afraid. I still think, I still believe in the American enterprise.
I believe. Absolutely, yeah. I believe that there's still passionate people
out there who are nonpartisan, who will follow the Constitution to the letter.
And I think, you know, the military, for example, and even the Supreme Court
still, even though that they're there, there's it's nine to three.
(28:13):
Right. I still think that it's an institution that is beholden to at least that
Constitution, that idea that's on paper.
Sure. And I said the military originally because I'm looking back at General
Mark Milley as an example who kept the military out of the political fray the
entire time under Trump.
And what scares me is that you've got governors that are now using their military
authority to politicize the National Guard.
(28:36):
Right. And, yeah, any state in particular that we might live in. Yep.
Texas for one. You know, the idea that we're going to create an entire base
in Eagle Pass and we're going to have National Guard,
you know, fight against federal troops to keep them out of that location so
that they can protect against this fictitious invasion.
There is a you know I've signed up to
(28:58):
do another podcast with you guys and talk about immigration we'll
do that later there's a lot of other issues it is an issue it is a problem no
one's not saying it isn't right I think it's completely being mischaracterized
and that's what scares me so we're not seeing the normal the normal routes to
authoritarianism right right we're seeing them on other on other.
(29:19):
Other indirect ways coming in through the state and local government. Yeah.
But what about our system of checks and balances to try to prevent that from happening?
Right. And so the checks and balances is based on what is Congress able to do
to prevent the president, right?
And also what is the Supreme Court, are they creating laws or are they looking
at the constitutionality of laws, right?
(29:40):
You know, Texas is now, you know, this idea about the SB4 where Texas can enforce
immigration and arrest anybody who doesn't look like they belong here in the United States.
They can arrest them for being in Texas illegally, right?
The fact that that hasn't been in whole cloth just pushed down by the Supreme
Court or pushed down by the Fifth Circuit, it's another example of that chipping
(30:03):
away of that checks and balance, right?
Because if the federal government doesn't have supremacy, like it says in the
supremacy clause in the the Constitution, then what does the federal government have, right?
And then you adjoin that with this secessionist movement within Texas,
which is Texas, not the only one.
When I lived in Hawaii, when I was stationed in Hawaii, it was pretty strong there too.
(30:23):
But it wasn't as politically activated as it seems to be now.
And you're not hearing, you know, what I haven't heard from the governor,
what I haven't heard from the state legislatures is this loyalty to the the United States.
They haven't come out and blatantly said, look, we're not seceding from the union.
I think, though, I mean, maybe I'm just an eternal optimist,
(30:45):
but it just seems like the general public is vastly against that.
And it's just not practical at all, even economically.
I read an article recently about how much we would end up owing
the federal government, if we were to cut ties, say, tomorrow, you know?
Yeah. It's not practical. It's just not viable at all. But again,
(31:05):
it's not about it being practical.
It's about the political cachet that it gives those who want to maintain power
and prevent an overturn of their regime to maintain that power.
It doesn't have to happen. They just have to get the movement going.
Yeah. And that's kind of what, you know, has been the brilliance of the Trump campaign.
A lot of the the things that he's campaigned on, they're going to happen.
(31:28):
And they didn't happen under his original campaign.
But the idea was he motivated his base.
He motivated them enough to keep him in power during when in 2016.
And unfortunately, there was an alternative base that was motivated to prevent
that, you know, from happening in the future in 2020. And hopefully we do the same thing in 2024.
Not hopefully, we will do the same thing in 2024.
(31:50):
Yeah, I think so. I mean, I see a lot of Maybe it's just segments of Republicans
that are pushing back a lot of his ideas.
Yeah, that's another part that gives me hope, too.
I am also optimistic, and I don't want to sound very dour or gloomy,
but I am concerned. I am concerned about our democracy.
As we should be, yeah. And I am concerned about the directions and some of the policies.
(32:12):
But the thing that gives me hope is that even within the Republican Party,
there are there are people who are true Americans who truly know and believe
in the Constitution and know some of the policies that the more extreme elements
of that party want to put in place are just antithetical to our American society,
American culture. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
(32:32):
Len Lira, thank you very much for being here.
Well, thank you. I'm happy to be here. And I know we've got a lot of other topics
we can cover, which we will save for future podcasts.
It's good talking to you. All right. Well, you too.
(33:07):
Www.bandcamp.com. We welcome your comments. I'm Adam West. Thanks for listening.
Music.
Music.
(00:13):
Your vote. Conversations from the Hill Country. I'm Adam West.
On this episode, we're talking with Dr. Leonard Lira, Chair of Public Policy
and Service for Area Higher Education.
He has taught political science both at West Point and at San Jose State University.
He's the Democratic Chair of Precinct 106 in Comal County. We had a very interesting conversation.
(00:35):
I learned an awful lot, and I think you will too. Welcome, Dr.
Leonard Lira, to the podcast. How are you, man? I'm doing well.
Thank you for inviting me.
Well, hey, thanks for being here. It's a pleasure to have someone here of your stature.
Okay, well, first of all, working with the Democratic Party,
you are currently a Democratic chair of Precinct 106, right? That's correct.
Okay. Where is 106 exactly?
(00:57):
So 106 is on the, I like to say, is on the corner of 46 and 281.
We're in the River Crossing neighborhood in that area.
Now, some of your background, of course, that certainly applies to politics,
You've taught political science at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
Yes. I taught there for two years, from 2003 to 2005.
Okay. That's awesome. You're a 28-year Army veteran.
(01:20):
You retired at the rank of colonel and served as an Army strategist. Yes.
Explain a little bit about that. Does that mean you strategize battle plans
or education or what? How does that work? Actually, both.
The Army developed this Corps of Thinkers or Strategists is what they called them.
And the idea was to develop and connect operational plans to strategy and connect
(01:43):
it to the national strategy, but also to educate the force on strategy.
And so I actually, as part of that, they sent me back to the Command and General
Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, and I taught strategic studies,
which was really related to international relations and political science and
public administration, all the things that I had trained on academically. Okay.
And your background obviously includes political science. You were an assistant
(02:05):
professor from the Department of Political Science at San Jose State University.
That's correct. I taught political science at the undergraduate level,
and I was also teaching public administration at the graduate level.
And I still teach San Jose State for their program of leadership and management
in the Mineta Transportation Institute.
You are a doctor of philosophy from the University of Kansas, right? That's correct.
(02:26):
And public administration. Yeah, I was going to say Master's of Public Administration,
Master's of Arts in International Relations, and you have a Certificate of Advanced
Studies of Conflict Resolution from Syracuse University. Go, Orangemen. .
So talk a little bit about that conflict resolution, like international types
of conflicts or domestically international.
(02:47):
I was I received that certificate as part of my study when the Army sent me
to get my master's of public administration at Syracuse.
I had an opportunity to either do the Ph.D. or do the master's.
But Syracuse, they had this program for Ph.D. where you had to do it in residence.
And the Army wants you to get A.B.D. and then go teach at West Point.
So I didn't have time to complete it. And I wanted to be public administration.
(03:08):
I could have done it if I'd switched over completely to political science, but I couldn't.
So I tried to advance my education as much as I could. I did a double major,
double master's. So that's how I got the MPA and the IR.
And then one of my mentors, Dr. Rosemary O'Leary, was leading the conflict resolution
program with Professor Rubin, which was another one of my mentors when I was
(03:28):
there at Syracuse. And I fell right into that program because,
you know, I was in the military.
I was studying about conflict, conflict in the international realm,
conflict within organizations.
It just fit. So I added it to my studies. It was like synergy.
Fascinating. Okay. So currently you are the chair of public policy and service
(03:48):
for area higher education, shall we say?
Yeah. And I just have to clarify the caveat here is that everything that I'm
saying here are of my opinions only.
Of course. People probably can look me up and figure out where I work,
but it's not affiliated and I don't represent the current educational institution
while I'm doing this podcast.
So just so that that's that's clear. OK, well, that's terrific.
(04:08):
And since you have this extensive background, conflict resolution and political
science, et cetera, et cetera, let's talk about the foundation and evolution
of democracy in America and how it has shaped the right to vote and where we are today. Right.
So just a quick, brief history. I mean, it's been filled with controversy and conflict, if you will.
(04:29):
But, you know, when the nation was founded, one of the unique things about our
American enterprise was that unlike in our European, the European countries
where a lot of our Americans came from, anybody male at this time could vote.
And that was that was enlightening. It was a change, dramatic change in the
world. And later, the principles in which America was founded finally caught up with its actions.
(04:51):
Not completely today, but we started having the enfranchisement of blacks in
the South in the 1870s, the passage of the 14th and 15th Amendment, 13th Amendment.
And then later, about 144 years later, if you can imagine that.
Took a while. Yeah. Half of our country, the women, finally were enfranchised
(05:11):
and given the vote. So it's.
You know, we made this steady progress over time. And what's interesting today
is that we're starting to see like that arc of that start to revert back to
where we were previously.
You know, we you know, the the Civil Rights Act is has kind of been gutted a
little bit with the 2013 Supreme Court ruling and Shelby versus Holden,
(05:32):
which stripped the fifth section of that law in the fourth of the fourth section of that law.
Well, the fifth one was basically said if a state had previously demonstrated
racism against their minorities, they had to get preclearance to change their
voting laws. Right. Well, it took that away.
And then the other thing that was important was that the fourth section said,
you know, we have a formula for figuring out if a state falls in this category.
(05:55):
And we can, you know, based on civil rights complaints, based on lawsuits,
based on all kinds of metrics, it took that away.
And so now we're starting to see a reversion back to, at least now for blacks
and Hispanics in certain states, to include Texas, we're seeing a reversion
back to restriction of voting rights.
So one of the problems that we often talk about on this podcast and that we
(06:16):
obviously see a lot of is low voter turnout in general and particularly low
Democratic voter turnout in the primaries and in the general.
But I guess there's a positive spin on that is that the low voter turnout in
the primary Republican or Democrat doesn't necessarily predict turnout in November,
(06:37):
right? Right. That's absolutely correct.
I mean, if you look at the statistics just across the board in the United States
or even in Texas, Texas is a good example.
We're at the primary total voter turnout. That's both Republicans and Democrats
is the nine percentage or 15 percent.
But when the highest office on the ballot, whether it's the governor or whether
it's the president, is in contention with both parties, then you see a large
(07:00):
turnout in the primary because then it's very competitive. Right. Right. Sure.
But when it's not competitive, when one party holds the holds the office,
they don't really turn out.
And that's this is systemic across. You can see it. The pattern is clear across history.
And so that's true. And the turnout for like this Texas itself is up in the
60s. We had a record turnout in 1992, 72.9 percent.
(07:22):
And then when Obama in 2008, you know, the record turnout for the general election
was almost 60 percent. And then we beat that record in 2020 recently with a turnout.
This is Texas numbers themselves with a 66.7% turnout rate compared to 2015.
3% during the primary. So that no way does it reflect, I mean,
(07:45):
it's probably related to, but it doesn't have an impact on what we can expect for our voter turnout.
And so a lot of the lack of turnout for the primaries is the people probably
just figure, well, that decision's going to be made. I'll worry about it in November.
Yeah. So it's kind of like this idea, but it's like four main factors,
right? There's motivation and enthusiasm.
When a party's in power, they feel less urgency to try to go out and vote.
(08:07):
They know that the real election is going to be coming in later in November.
Also, supporters of the incumbent party might assume that their candidate will be the nominee.
And this was clear in this last one, right? Biden really had no competition
with the other two or three most mostly known candidates.
Yeah. And obviously the same with the other party. Well, you know, it's interesting.
(08:27):
I read a lot in the newspaper about this low voter turnout for Democrats.
And I think the real question though is, why weren't there more Republicans that came out?
This is a more important election for the Republicans because they are trying
to recover the White House and they're trying to maintain the Senate.
But their turnout, even though we had two million more voters join Texas and
(08:50):
become eligible, their turnout was still 12 point, went like from 12.4 to 12.6.
It was kind of flatlined.
You know, you would expect, if you look over history.
The party that's trying to regain the position or the office,
they have a large turnout.
And it's like between four and then sometimes six or 10 percentage points, right?
It was flat for the Republicans. So I think the real question is,
(09:13):
why didn't the Republicans care as much to try to take back the White House
and try to maintain the Senate?
And so I think those are some, I don't know what it means exactly.
I'm still trying to do the analysis of the numbers, but I think that's going
to have an impact on what we see happen in the general election in November.
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And then when you look at like the midterms,
that's usually blowback against the general two years before.
(09:35):
So another contrary to that, right? That's what it's, you know,
if you look at the midterms, generally there's low voter turnout.
And generally it's a bellwether mark on the administration that's in power.
That didn't happen in 2020, right? Remember in 2020, we were expecting in this
last midterm, sorry, 2022, we were expecting this huge red wave that was going
to come back and be against the Democratic administration.
(10:11):
Right, right.
Primary and general elections. Well, let me circle back a little bit and talk
(10:32):
a little bit more about the challenges that we currently have.
And I think as I look at the research and anecdotally, when I talk to my family
members, I talk to my precinct members, one of the major challenges we have is voter education.
Oh, you got that right. Understanding the rules, the regulations.
And, you know, I just, I go back to, let me tell you a story about,
(10:53):
you know, one of my family A young female, my family member, and she's my niece.
I asked her some information for this to get her background story,
but she didn't want me to share her name because she's voting active,
but she's not politically active. She doesn't like the controversy.
But she's a voter. And her story was, you know, she registered to vote as soon as she was 18.
There's a whole reason why she did that. We can talk about that in a second. And she voted.
(11:16):
And she said when she went to the polls, she felt intimidated because she didn't
feel like she was prepared to vote. She didn't understand the issues.
She didn't know the candidates.
She felt like people were judging her. She was also concerned about personal safety.
And so she didn't vote for another six years after that until she became more
attuned to the policies and the laws that were affecting her,
(11:37):
her ability to make medical decisions for herself,
the future ability for her children to make medical decisions for themselves and their families.
And then she became motivated again and she voted again after six years.
So that initial challenge of understanding.
Oh, and the other thing is where to vote. You know, young people,
for example, they they're either going to college or they're going to get jobs.
(11:58):
And in her case, she got a job and she moved from her hometown to a larger town.
And when she went to go vote, realized that she wasn't registered to vote and
couldn't vote and didn't realize that she could cast a provisional vote and
then go back and fix it later. And it just became, it just, it was a,
it became an encumbrance and caused her just, you know, that's, I got too much to do.
I had to kind of pay for rent, kind of pay for food.
(12:19):
So. I think that's a common denominator for any age group as far as having trouble
being able to vote, understanding all the rules.
I mean, just like anything with the government, you know, it gets caught up
in red tape and fine print, right? Right, right, right.
You know, it's interesting in Texas, Texas has the potential to support voter education.
(12:40):
And it is Texas law that high schools will register at least twice,
do registration for high school students who are eligible to vote.
But the research on this, and I got my research from the University of Houston's
election lab, indicates that less than half of the schools across Texas do that.
And there's no enforcement mechanism. communism.
And beyond that, within the high school curriculum themselves,
(13:02):
there's no voter education.
When they do social studies, they don't talk about how to vote,
the reason to vote, or any of that civic engagement aspect.
And so they do in some cases, but not all cases.
And so one, we don't follow the laws that we're supposed to be doing.
And two, we don't train our young people at what we're supposed to be doing. True.
Now, one thing I've, you know, to, I guess, to the state's credit or the secretary
(13:23):
of state's office or whatever, I have seen it coming up to elections and primaries
There's a lot of public service announcements about making sure you're registered,
how to check that you're registered.
You know, I see it pops up on social media. Maybe that has to do with algorithms.
So I think there is some effort out there, but it's almost like you see one party –
trying to suppress that information, but then it's still getting out there somewhere, you know.
(13:45):
It's interesting, at the convention yesterday, one of the members was talking
about motor education, and she said, in Austin, there were billboards asking
Texans, are you ready to vote?
But no date, no other information, no hyperlink, no QR code,
nothing to draw anybody's attention to. Yeah, it should really be placed with a lot more importance.
(14:07):
I mean, my thought is, Why don't we have a election day as a national holiday?
Exactly. Yeah. Other countries do. I don't think we need to go to the extent
where we need to make it mandatory.
I think we still have to make citizens be responsible for the outcomes of their votes or non-votes.
We can do a lot more to, without making, without jeopardizing the security and
(14:27):
the legitimacy of our votes, we can do a lot more outreach, a lot more education.
Absolutely. And that's where the new voter suppression is coming from. It's not outright.
It's not blatant. It's almost insidious.
There are things that are being put into policies, laws, rules,
and procedures the way we don't follow our own laws, for example.
(14:49):
Example, or the way we, one of the major ones was this new change to receive
an application to vote by mail.
That law changed recently within the last year or two. So many of my precinct
members that I talked to who are eligible to vote by mail didn't realize that
this year they weren't going to get that application automatically.
That they had to actually, they actually, you know, I call it the double application process.
(15:12):
You have to apply to apply to vote by mail. First, you got to find it And then
you've got to request the application.
Oh, I know, I know. So that's an application process, right?
Yeah, we did some outreach with phone banking and whatnot to try to encourage
people and let them know they could vote by mail, et cetera.
And I've recently read in the San Antonio Express News a couple of letters to
the editor of people that sent in their application.
(15:34):
They received information that their applications were received.
This was in the middle of February. And they still have never received their ballot.
Right. And you have to be proactive. active, you have to call the,
and my son had to call the Kamala County to make sure, Kamala County Elections
Office to make sure that his registration, because it wouldn't show up on the website.
And he knew he had done the registration when he updated his driver's license.
(15:57):
So it's those not blatantly illegal actions, but those under,
those indirect, latent actions that is causing voter restrictions within Texas and across the nation.
You know, not only with the lack of voter education for the young people.
You know, removing that automatic, taking that barrier away to allow people
(16:17):
to vote by mail for our older generation who would vote.
Exactly. These were senior citizens who wrote those letters.
Yeah. So then maybe like you're talking about education, having civics required
in high school ought to be a thing, you know? Yeah.
And so they have a requirement. If you look at the Texas Education Commission,
they have a requirement for political participation, political civic civic engagement to be taught.
(16:40):
But again, it's not taught at a level that explains the current context.
And you generally, the students who, unless they go on to community college
or to a four-year university where they're required to actually get more in-depth
and they actually have more education on that, which is not the majority of Americans.
I mean, I'm sorry, majority of Texans. They're not going to get a complete education
(17:01):
on that process or have it updated because that's what faculty at colleges do.
They research and they study and they take that current research and they bring
it into the classrooms. Yeah. High school teachers.
Ideally, anyway. Yeah, ideally. High school teachers do that,
but they're so overwhelmed, so underpaid.
Yeah. That it's hard to, you know, sometimes some high school teachers are teaching
(17:22):
multiple disciplines as well.
They're teaching math and history and social science as well. That's true.
That's true. And then they also have to fight the battle of what they're allowed
to teach in a lot of cases, right?
Right. They are. And I mean, we haven't.
Yeah. So it was interesting, the recent rule and law that was passed about you
must teach to Texas documents when it was, when we were trying to,
when the current governor was trying to root out critical race theory in Texas curriculum.
(17:47):
Even if you go to the founding documents within Texas, the reason why we seceded
from the union, what was founding, why we created our constitution,
it's all rooted on, you know, one category of people wanting to maintain power
over another category of people. I mean, it's written in our own founding documents. statements.
That's unbelievable. Well, I guess it's not that hard to believe, actually.
But I get a lot of comments from my students, even from my own family members,
(18:10):
younger family members about, well, my vote, you know, the reason why I don't
vote is because it doesn't count.
My vote doesn't count. Yeah, yeah. Right. And I always say, I always report back to them.
I'm like, or I respond back to them. I say, well, if your vote doesn't count,
why are so many people trying to make sure you can't vote?
Think about that. That's a good point. The other thing that they'll tell me
is, well, I'll vote, but I don't think anything's going going to happen. Right.
(18:32):
And then I always ask him, well, hasn't things changed already?
I mean, how did we get the right to vote anyway? How do women get the right to vote?
How are you not getting the education you should?
Why, why are women not in control of their bodies right now when they used to be?
Why are all there's people are voting votes cause change.
And if you don't like the change that's happening and you're not voting,
(18:53):
well, you have no room to complain. You have no room to complain,
but you also are part of the problem.
Yeah, this is true. So getting back to voting rights and trying to keep people
from voting, et cetera. What about redistricting?
Gerrymandering. Gerrymandering. That's it. Yeah, gerrymandering.
So that's another tactic that's being used.
(19:13):
And what's interesting is that when gerrymandering had occurred and it had blatant
racial overtones, it was easy to identify, right?
But now politicians and political parties in particular are dividing among Republican,
Democratic, et cetera, right? And it's harder to identify that there's a racial aspect there.
I'm not sure what the current statistics are, but the last time I looked at
(19:35):
this, there were more minorities that were Democratic voters in some areas,
not in general, in some areas, not everywhere.
In some of the areas where the court cases have been filed, minorities would
be in the Democratic Party or vice versa, right?
And they would use the Republican identity to gerrymander.
And so what you would have happen in certain cases, I know this happened in
(19:57):
Dallas, I know it's happening in Alabama.
In fact, Alabama has gone back to the Supreme Court two or three times in violation
of the very conservative Supreme Court's rule that they can't do what they're
doing with regards to gerrymandering. and then said that they were just going to do it anyway.
They'll either do it where they pack one category of people onto one district,
so they're in competition with two or three other districts,
(20:20):
and it dilutes their vote because now their district is voting against two or
three other, and so it's three to one.
Or, depending on what district or jurisdiction they're trying to set the political
boundary for, they'll split them.
So I think within southern counties in Dallas, they were splitting the Asian vote.
So the Asians and the black vote there had enough power to elect their own DA,
(20:44):
elect their own city council, elect their own congressman and state,
and they were split in three.
And so it diluted their power and they drew this long line all the way out to
a very white rural community that had, you know, more less people if you if
you compared it together.
But when they when they split them into three, it made them the absolute minority
(21:06):
in that that district, the new redrawn district.
But it was all based on on the political identity, right, of the of the voting
members, not not their race per se. And, you know, one of the issues that when
a lot of people feel like they say, well, my vote just doesn't matter.
Is that because of the electoral college?
You know, you can win the popular vote by a large margin and still lose an election. Yeah.
(21:29):
And we've had, interestingly, in the last several Republican presidents have
not won the popular vote, but they were able to win the electoral college and thereby win the seat.
The electoral college is an institution that was created to balance the competing
political interests between large states and small states when we were making
(21:51):
an agreement to solidify a constitution.
It was a compromise at that time that was important.
I still believe in the electoral college. I still believe in the two-party system.
I think that what really solidifies, I mean, if you look at the last election,
for example, Biden won not only the popular vote, but he won the electoral college.
(22:11):
I mean, so it's like double legitimacy, right? Right. Sure. Absolutely.
Compared to Trump, who only won the electoral college, but completely lost by
several hundred million.
I think my six million people, the popular vote.
Right. Right. Well, I guess, you know, in a lot of ways, it's always a work in progress. Right.
Right. A path forward, though, you wanted to ask me that early and I kind of circled back. Right.
(22:34):
We need to double down our education and voter education in the near term.
We need to, as Democrats, we need to get that message out consistently.
Routinely, podcasts like this.
We need to put it on our social media. We need to share it. We need to let people
know what their options are.
But the other thing we need to do, I think we need to tell a story of hope.
We need to inspire people. My own history in voting, you know,
(22:58):
my dad was a union man, lifelong Democrat.
When I was 18, he marched me down to the county courthouse and signed me up
to get registered to vote and register me as a Democrat.
But when I joined the Army, you know, I went through that professional training
and we shouldn't be biased and we should be neutral. And I didn't.
Any political affiliation for 28 years. And I was a swing voter, right?
(23:21):
I voted for Bush twice. I voted for Clinton once. I voted for Obama twice.
And then I've been consistently voting Democrat after that. And it was all based
on that first time of voting, right?
If you know somebody in your family, anybody who's listening to this podcast.
Don't be afraid to talk to the young people in your family.
Help them know how to register, what the dates are, consistently send them text messages.
(23:45):
You don't have to tell them who to vote for. They're smart. They know who to vote for.
They know. And once they get that vote, like my niece, you know,
she voted the first time she probably voted the way her dad,
cause her dad did the same thing.
He, he walked her down and got her registered to vote.
She probably voted the same way he voted. Sure. I don't think they vote the same way anymore.
And she's cause she's become politically aware and she knows.
(24:07):
And so don't, you don't have to tell people who to vote for,
just help them get to that, get that agency. And that's what we need to do. Yeah, absolutely.
I know when I was becoming a voting age, I was, I read newspapers and I did then too.
So, you know, I was aware of what was going on pretty much. There's a lot of,
especially with younger people, apathy about news in general and the political system.
(24:29):
So, you know, that's another battle, I guess, trying to make them realize that
it is important to stay on top of what's going on.
I guess the last thing I'd leave, and I'm happy to talk about anything anything
else you want to talk about.
But the last thought I had on why your boat matters, and I'd like to share with
your listeners, is that if you look back in history.
The democracies who have given up their vote. You look back to the 1930s when
(24:52):
Germans voted for the Nazi party.
Later when they interviewed them after the war, they didn't realize that that
was going to be the last time they were going to be able to vote.
When you look at the Czechoslovakians who voted for the communist party in the
1940s, they didn't realize that was going to be the last time to vote.
You look at the Russians in the 1990s when they voted for Putin,
(25:13):
they didn't realize that was going to be the last time they voted.
You can't say it can't happen here. Only the American citizens can maintain
that right to vote. And they can only do that if they go out and vote.
Extremely, extremely important. Okay. There's a lot of talk in the current Republican
campaign. Obviously, Trump is the nominee.
(25:33):
And a lot of it is probably hyperbole, but becoming a dictator on day one, et cetera, et cetera.
Are the Republicans really Really trying to kill democracy.
I'm going to answer that by offering another venue of information for your podcast listeners.
(25:53):
And one recent podcast I've started listening to is by a historian.
The podcast is called Letters from an American. So you can Google that.
It's from Heather Cox Richardson. She has got a really good podcast episode
in this, and I'll share it with you.
So you can put it in the notes afterwards, and I'll put it on our podcast,
I mean, our social media.
But she's presented evidence of a campaign by the Heritage Foundation,
(26:18):
by the extreme members of the Republicans to overdo the institutions in America
that have maintained our democratic republic.
And that being, you know, this you've heard this this idea that we need to get
rid of the deep state, the administrative state.
Yeah, for whatever that means to people. What it means is they want to get rid
(26:39):
of the nonpartisan civil core that has kept the United States operating.
Every civil servant from the post office to the Department of Agriculture to
the Department of Defense, and they want to bring in loyalists to one side of the party, right?
So I think that's, you know, that plan and the amount of money and the amount
of support that they've got, and this is their, it's called the 2025 plan.
(27:04):
I've heard of it, yeah. Yeah, so that they can completely undo the civil employees
within the federal government's neutral standing, you know, just upend it, right?
Because they want to get rid of that administrative state. So they've been attacking
that particular institution.
When Trump was in office, he did his best to attack another democratic institution,
(27:26):
which was our free press and our media.
You know, mischaracterizing, calling them the enemies of the state,
taking away, you know, the immense amount of voter disenfranchisement that has
occurred since Trump's time is another, you know, just, you know,
hacking away at our institution of voting rights is another way.
Putting partisan judges in place in the Supreme Court and lower courts, another way.
(27:51):
So there, well, I'm not exactly afraid. I still think, I still believe in the American enterprise.
I believe. Absolutely, yeah. I believe that there's still passionate people
out there who are nonpartisan, who will follow the Constitution to the letter.
And I think, you know, the military, for example, and even the Supreme Court
still, even though that they're there, there's it's nine to three.
(28:13):
Right. I still think that it's an institution that is beholden to at least that
Constitution, that idea that's on paper.
Sure. And I said the military originally because I'm looking back at General
Mark Milley as an example who kept the military out of the political fray the
entire time under Trump.
And what scares me is that you've got governors that are now using their military
authority to politicize the National Guard.
(28:36):
Right. And, yeah, any state in particular that we might live in. Yep.
Texas for one. You know, the idea that we're going to create an entire base
in Eagle Pass and we're going to have National Guard,
you know, fight against federal troops to keep them out of that location so
that they can protect against this fictitious invasion.
There is a you know I've signed up to
(28:58):
do another podcast with you guys and talk about immigration we'll
do that later there's a lot of other issues it is an issue it is a problem no
one's not saying it isn't right I think it's completely being mischaracterized
and that's what scares me so we're not seeing the normal the normal routes to
authoritarianism right right we're seeing them on other on other.
(29:19):
Other indirect ways coming in through the state and local government. Yeah.
But what about our system of checks and balances to try to prevent that from happening?
Right. And so the checks and balances is based on what is Congress able to do
to prevent the president, right?
And also what is the Supreme Court, are they creating laws or are they looking
at the constitutionality of laws, right?
(29:40):
You know, Texas is now, you know, this idea about the SB4 where Texas can enforce
immigration and arrest anybody who doesn't look like they belong here in the United States.
They can arrest them for being in Texas illegally, right?
The fact that that hasn't been in whole cloth just pushed down by the Supreme
Court or pushed down by the Fifth Circuit, it's another example of that chipping
(30:03):
away of that checks and balance, right?
Because if the federal government doesn't have supremacy, like it says in the
supremacy clause in the the Constitution, then what does the federal government have, right?
And then you adjoin that with this secessionist movement within Texas,
which is Texas, not the only one.
When I lived in Hawaii, when I was stationed in Hawaii, it was pretty strong there too.
(30:23):
But it wasn't as politically activated as it seems to be now.
And you're not hearing, you know, what I haven't heard from the governor,
what I haven't heard from the state legislatures is this loyalty to the the United States.
They haven't come out and blatantly said, look, we're not seceding from the union.
I think, though, I mean, maybe I'm just an eternal optimist,
(30:45):
but it just seems like the general public is vastly against that.
And it's just not practical at all, even economically.
I read an article recently about how much we would end up owing
the federal government, if we were to cut ties, say, tomorrow, you know?
Yeah. It's not practical. It's just not viable at all. But again,
(31:05):
it's not about it being practical.
It's about the political cachet that it gives those who want to maintain power
and prevent an overturn of their regime to maintain that power.
It doesn't have to happen. They just have to get the movement going.
Yeah. And that's kind of what, you know, has been the brilliance of the Trump campaign.
A lot of the the things that he's campaigned on, they're going to happen.
(31:28):
And they didn't happen under his original campaign.
But the idea was he motivated his base.
He motivated them enough to keep him in power during when in 2016.
And unfortunately, there was an alternative base that was motivated to prevent
that, you know, from happening in the future in 2020. And hopefully we do the same thing in 2024.
Not hopefully, we will do the same thing in 2024.
(31:50):
Yeah, I think so. I mean, I see a lot of Maybe it's just segments of Republicans
that are pushing back a lot of his ideas.
Yeah, that's another part that gives me hope, too.
I am also optimistic, and I don't want to sound very dour or gloomy,
but I am concerned. I am concerned about our democracy.
As we should be, yeah. And I am concerned about the directions and some of the policies.
(32:12):
But the thing that gives me hope is that even within the Republican Party,
there are there are people who are true Americans who truly know and believe
in the Constitution and know some of the policies that the more extreme elements
of that party want to put in place are just antithetical to our American society,
American culture. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
(32:32):
Len Lira, thank you very much for being here.
Well, thank you. I'm happy to be here. And I know we've got a lot of other topics
we can cover, which we will save for future podcasts.
It's good talking to you. All right. Well, you too.
(33:07):
Www.bandcamp.com. We welcome your comments. I'm Adam West. Thanks for listening.
Music.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!