June 29, 2025 • 66 mins
Show LinkSummary
The conversation explores the themes of cultural assimilation, national identity, freedom of speech, and the challenges of civil discourse in contemporary society. The hosts discuss the implications of cultural integration on national security and the importance of leadership in fostering a healthy societal environment. They reflect on the historical context of civil rights movements and the need for a national conversation about current societal issues, emphasizing the value of freedom and the responsibilities that come with it.
Chapters
00:00: Introduction
02:00: Cultural Assimilation and National Identity
09:42: Challenges of Assimilation and Cultural Clashes
14:47: Freedom of Speech and Its Boundaries
20:31: The Role of Universities in Civil Discourse
28:15: Historical Context of Civil Rights and Current Issues
37:49: Protests and Civil Disobedience
47:53: National Security and Military Readiness
The conversation explores the themes of cultural assimilation, national identity, freedom of speech, and the challenges of civil discourse in contemporary society. The hosts discuss the implications of cultural integration on national security and the importance of leadership in fostering a healthy societal environment. They reflect on the historical context of civil rights movements and the need for a national conversation about current societal issues, emphasizing the value of freedom and the responsibilities that come with it.
Chapters
00:00: Introduction
02:00: Cultural Assimilation and National Identity
09:42: Challenges of Assimilation and Cultural Clashes
14:47: Freedom of Speech and Its Boundaries
20:31: The Role of Universities in Civil Discourse
28:15: Historical Context of Civil Rights and Current Issues
37:49: Protests and Civil Disobedience
47:53: National Security and Military Readiness
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Welcome to mid Rats with sal from Commander Salamander, an
Eagle one from Eagle Speak at seer Shure your home
for a discussion of national security issues and all things maritime.
And welcome on board everybody to your pre fourth of
July free for all. We really appreciate you all taking
time to join us today, whether you are live or
you're getting it via the podcast. But if you are
(00:52):
with us live, i'd like to extend the invitation. Go
ahead and head over and find the chat room. You
can roll right in there if you have some observations
you would like to show during the course of the show,
are some questions that you wanted to throw Mark or
my way, please do. This is a free for all format,
so we have the things that we want to chat
about today, but obviously if there's something that's tickling your
(01:13):
rib you would like for us to chat about, that's
the perfect place to do it. And as always, I'll
just put the altocol out there. If you are with
us Live and you aren't already subscribed to the podcast,
you can head over to iTunes, Spotify, Spreaker, wherever you
get your podcasts, find us subscribe that way, we will
be waiting for you can't beat the price. And on
(01:34):
that note, Mark, Hey, happy Sunday to you.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Hey, thank you very much. Well, I just disappear. Nope,
and hope you're still here. My screen disappeared. That's always shocking.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Yeah, we had a little experience we're talking about in
the pre show for the listeners, just so you know
you're not the only people that happens to. It's kind
of a running too. I don't know if we've been
keeping track of how many times I've been able to
log on like ten seconds before the those starts, even
when we have a guest and you had a little
trouble having to do a Chrome update, shaking a chicken,
(02:11):
make a sacrifice the ball, and everything else, but you
did get your computer up and running in time for
us to do a little bit of appreciative Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
It what's the what's the character that joebu or from
a major league mcclass of rum and a cigar and
then all of a sudden it came came.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Up so good nough, So I mean it's it's you know,
we did a free for all last week, but we
always joked and we only do an hour and we
could probably talk. Sometimes our post show goes another twenty
minutes if we don't ever record it. But there's a
lot going on. But what what what broke above your
background noise the most for you this week?
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Well, uh, you know, obviously there's been a lot of
discussion about the the success of the Irane, the Iranian
the attack on the Iranian nuclear program and uh so
you know that's that's been, that's been there. We've got
a lot of other stuff going on. We you know,
there Jerry doctor, Jerry Hendrix I see is on the
(03:07):
staff of the the people trying to get the ship
building program going. He sounds like he's doing doing well.
But among other things, there was a there was a
post an x what do you call him tweet? I
don't know what to call him now, tweet tweet, Yeah,
by a guy by a guy who goes by the
name of Infantry Dort and uh he he was, you know,
(03:29):
talking about he didn't want to slide into Islamophobia, I
don't think, but he talked about some culture shock issues
facing our forces who were involved in Afghanistan Iraq, and uh,
you know that that caused me to think about, Uh,
Samuel Huntington's the clash of civilizations, which has been critiqued
(03:52):
by a number of people has not been exactly right,
but a lot of other people are looking at and gone, yeah,
we see these these new boundaries. With the end of
the Cold War, the nation state and the and the
advance of globalization, the nate state, nation state becomes less important,
and then people are falling where their countries, you know,
(04:13):
I have have have kind of gone by the wayside
or are not as important to them as there as
other things that a lot of times, religion and some
of the other aspects of life have taken over their
their center spot in their lives. So, you know, it's
a pretty He makes a pretty good point somewhere along
(04:33):
the way that that he's unaware of people. You know,
you could be a French Canadian, you can be a
a Algerian French person, but he's never heard of anybody
being a half half Catholic, half Muslim. And you know,
there there are certain cultural things and we're seeing a
(04:56):
lot of this stuff come out coming into play these days.
But the Glastonbury event, a lot of other places where
we're seeing people who are not assimilating into the culture
of the of the nations they're currently living in, but
are hanging on to their their center, which is, you know,
their religion, not necessarily their race, not anything else or
(05:19):
where they came from, but the religion that they that
they belong to.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Yeah, you and I have done a good job over
the last fifteen years. We try to you know, it'll
touch on now and the things you can't avoid some things
and evolve politics or some of the cultural issues. But
I think, you know, inside the lifelines of a national
security discussion, I think I think there this is something
that's worthy of discussion because when we look at you,
(05:46):
within the last one hundred fifty years or so, two
of the major waves of immigrants came to this country.
I'll just use as a data point the Irish and
the Italians, because those big waves are you know, those
people that were third or fourth generation in But when
those individuals showed up in the first generation and the
(06:07):
second generation, one thing that characterized them more than anything
else were how much they loved this country and why
they came to this country. Especially on the Union side
and World War Two, you had a lot of Irish
that had barely been off the boat and they filled
out some civil War autist, I'm sure will correct me,
(06:27):
but it was a couple of regiments of Irish that
fought on the Union. There's actually some smaller units around
Charleston area mostly that fought for the Confederacy as well.
Very patriotic, very self sacrificing for their country. The big
wave of of Italians, it came over here in the
(06:47):
first couple of decades of the twentieth century, especially right
after World War One. We had no shortage of Italian translators.
During World War Two, they were great Americans. You look
at even the way they were treated after December seventh
of forty one. Japanese Americans, a lot of them at
that point were second generation. Even though they were put
(07:09):
in camps, they enlisted in tremendous numbers and produced the
most decorated unit in the US Army in World War Two,
or one of the Japanese Americans units. So you have
that data point. And the Japanese came here that was
mostly Buddhist culture, though a lot of them became Christians
when they came over here. And of course you had
(07:29):
a lot of the Christians from Nagasaki who came over
as well. But that is a different flavor of people
that have come here. And I'll use one example that
covers two different parts of the country and I'll name
names because she's been out there and been quite advocate
advocating her position. You look at Representative il Han Omar,
(07:52):
and there's also I can't recall her name off the
top of my head, but she's a state representative for
Maine from around Lewiston. They're both from Somalia. And when
you look at ill hand Omar specifically, her father was
a colonel in the communist government of Somalia that got
overthrown in a revolution, was in a refugee camp, came
(08:13):
to the US, I'm believe when she was nine years old,
and she got elected to Congress, and she's got a
lot of her family over here in the best country
in the world, and yet you will find somebody who
at every turn has the worst things to say about
her adopted nation that she represents in one of our
(08:34):
highest bodies an official can be elected to. And very
similar that's been echoed in Maine with that Somali community that.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
You have there.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
I am here to represent the issues of Somali Americans.
Completely flipped from what we have seen in previous And
you know, I don't agree with everything that Infantry Door
put in the comment section, but a lot of it
ring true, especially for those of us that deployed on
the ground in the Middle East that I spent most
(09:06):
of much twenty years and twenty one years involved in.
And it's something that it's difficult to have a conversation
about because people will immediately call you the most nasty
things in the world. Though I don't think it bites
as much as it used to. But we need to
look clearly at it because it's a different challenge when
you have people immigrate to this country who do not
(09:27):
want to not only don't want to assimilate, but are
actively hostile to it. And it's founding neath us.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Yeah, and some of the stuff that Infantry Door put
in there was reflects more culture shocked than cultural clash.
I mean, it's although sometimes hard to tell the difference,
but you know, what he reports is not much different
than what I saw when I lived in an Islamic
country back in the late nineteen sixties. So some of
(09:59):
the the activities are apparently timeless. Uh And and if
you have any doubt, you could watch lorens of Arabia
and see some of those activities continued there too. I mean,
it is is the question really is, is there is
it possible for people who are so wrapped up in
(10:20):
their culture to assimilate or even want to assimilate into
a culture they view as being totally counter to their
belief systems, And it is, you know, I find that
I don't I don't know. I'm not proposing that we
we intern anybody and and do all the stuff we
(10:41):
did to the Italians and and the Japanese in World
War two. I'm just curious as to where we're going
to go with this and how how long you know,
the classic line from Abraham Lincoln, you know, kind of
country divided against itself survive and how you know? Right now,
(11:01):
it's a fairly small group of people, but there are
also a lot of We've seen a lot more return
to religious religious behavior. Secularization seems to be kind of fading.
We're getting more young people involved in religion, in Christianity
and other religions. A lot of people are seeking something
to give them a basis because the society as a
(11:24):
whole seems to be a little bit of drift right now,
as whereas the shared values we had if we you know,
sixty eighty years ago, you know there was some we've
been all unite against the communist menace. We could well
not all of us. Some of us just became elected
representatives and centator from New Hampshire where he's from Vermont anyway,
(11:50):
So you know, it's a question, and I think that
is a national security issue. You can you have people
who were in this country who are acting against the
best interests of of the society they live in.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
And you mentioned something I think that also ties into it.
And there's a little bit of this that the you
have your relative distance that it takes to travel to
assimilate to a new culture. For instance, back when we
were kids, Dearmore and Michigan or my hometown had Lebanese
(12:22):
palesin what's now called Palestinians and Syrians have been coming
here for one hundred and twenty five years. But they
were Christians and they were no different than somebody who
had a German last name or Scottish last name. They
just their redneck accent was worse than mind. Their families
had been for so long, and there was very little
(12:44):
cultural difference, no more than there is between somebody at
English Extraction and somebody of Irish Extraction or the Italian
American Club on the other side of town. So there
wasn't much problem there. But you look at places like Dearborn.
Now are some of the other places where you now
have people who come over there are still wearing the
(13:06):
outfits they wore in Pakistan or you see in the
fundamentalist neighborhoods in Damascus. That's that's not assimilating, and that
is dangerous. So I think it dovetails with another trend
going back to Glastonbury is I think I mentioned it
here before, but I've written about it a few times.
(13:27):
I know part of it was the way I was raised.
Anti Semitism and jew hate was foreign to me because
I just had so many Jewish people I grew up
with here, no different than Methodists. I did not think
that we would have seen in our nation the level
(13:51):
of red and tooth and clawed jew hate that we've
seen in the last two years. And it's not realized,
not just here but another places. And you saw this
as a young adult. I was either still in diapers
or running around in early grade school. But you go
back to the Summer of Love. You look back at
(14:13):
a lot of the anti war protests against Vietnam, and
after that you had the anti nuclear Saint Freeze of
the late seventies and the nineteen eighties, and you've got
had green peace, the environmental movement. Yeah, they had some
fellow travelers on the edge, Students for a Democratic Society,
(14:36):
the IRA, various People's Front for the Liberation of Palestine
National Command. You know, they were on the fringes. They
weren't in the center and their call for violence and
killing or on the fringes at the center of it.
It was a relatively peaceful movement. But that's not true
where you have a very popular group of singers at
(14:56):
a music festival that are calling for the murder of
members of parliament that they disagree with them politically, and
they call for death to the IDF because it rhymes.
But we all know that they're more than just the idea.
If they're interested in and they get away with it,
(15:17):
it's a different vibe that I don't see what type
of positive direction that goes to if there isn't an
honest conversation about that type of violence that is coming
from that particular part of the political spectrum. Those folks
(15:38):
have got to police themselves, but we've got to police
them as well. It's just it, it spirals in a
direction nobody wants to go to if you allow that
type of stuff to go without being challenged.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Yeah, and it's part of the thing that I am
troubled by is that you know, certainly people are free
to express their views. Yeah. I may not agree with them,
but as as I certainly spent some time defending their right,
as as you did, defending their right to have those
opinions and to be able to talk about them. But
(16:12):
the other side of it is the minute you take
on some of these issues, then you can be accused
of all kinds of of anti you know, you're you're
anti Islamic, you're anti whatever, and it is it is
uh where where you know where? Why can you not
(16:33):
have a conversation about this that doesn't end up in
being resulting in it in a death threat or you
know we're going to I mean, it has just gotten
to the point where the people who need to stand
up and say this, this is not right, what you're
what you know, are not being there. They're being accused
(16:53):
of being a phobic of whatever thing that you're standing
up against, and that that is a problem. I mean
that happened a lot when when just take an example
of parents who were complaining about the some of the
materials their kids were being exposed to at school. You know,
that should have been a nice topic for debate. Why
you know, why the kids should see it when a
(17:14):
kid shouldn't see it, But it got to immediately got
to these parents are you know, accused of all kinds
of a criminal activity necessarily but opinion, you know, bad
think if you will, from nineteen eighty four, so wrong think,
and it's that that cannot stand in this country. We
(17:36):
you know, we need to defend the right for people
to be say what they want and to be right
or wrong and be judged on the merits of what
they say, rather than just attacking them blindly and incorrect.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
Freedom of speech. It's a messy area, but I think
you do have a line. Part of the problem is
we allowed ourselves to lose the language, especially over the
last ten years, where words you are violence, but violence
is words type of things. No, you know, people should
be allowed to be insulting, but you've got to draw
(18:08):
a line where there is a clear incitement to that violence.
And I don't think just because you're a musician. Music
is an art. Writing is also an art. And if
you write and tell people go out and kill MPs,
(18:29):
and you're in a society where other people have been
jailed who simply write something even more benign than that,
you are throwing kindling on a fire. And we have
similar challenges over here where you have to have equality
(18:50):
before the law and either you cannot incite violence or
you can incite violence. You can't have a situation where
one side of the political spectrum, or one side on
a socio cultural political view is allowed to do whatever
they want, but on the other side disagrees in any way,
(19:11):
then the full power of the law is going to
come down on these people. That is not only contrary
to a free society, it is throwing kindling on a
fire because that pressure will build up in a society.
Societies will take it, there's others won't. And it's something
(19:33):
that you're seeing in spades in the UK, and you're
seeing it a little bit here though. I think it's
gotten a little bit better now because there's a Department
Adjustice that's kind of let what had been abused previously.
Go And again I'm trying really hard not to be political,
but freedom speech should not be a political issue. That
(19:55):
should be bipartisan. You can say somebody is rude, that
was a little uncalled for, or I think that's a
bad faith argument. I think that's fine. But saying you've
said this, I disagree with it. So I'm going to
destroy your family, your name, your business, and I'm going
(20:16):
to dox your house. Those swat agents come over your
house at two o'clock in the morning and shoot your
dog that barks at him as a kick in the door.
That's a totally different matter. And I think the director
of the FBI, Cash Bettel, I think three or four
weeks ago his house was his house was docked. And
(20:39):
there have been other people who are living remotely from
their families. So it's we're reaching that stage with violence.
And I wish everybody from the right, the left, in
the center has a level of intolerance towards calls for violence,
because we should. We should encourage and allow everybody to
(20:59):
have the US debate. You can call people's ideas stupid, wrongheaded,
et cetera, and so forth, but what we can't do
is say will you use the wrong pronoun. That's the
violence is the same as somebody is saying go out
and kill your member of parliament or some other political
(21:21):
person because you disagree with them on a policy issue.
That uh, that's a different, different kettle fish altogether. And unfortunately,
and I hope that this will change, I have not
seen a full spectrum response to people in society saying
we will not accept that, just the opposite, and it's said.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Yeah, it's you know, you look at the universities, uh,
the stuff that's been going on in the Ivy League
and other UH schools where some of these you know,
these anti Semitic groups are taking over libraries, they're you know,
they're they're attacking the Jewish students and the on the campus,
not letting them go to class I mean, and then
(22:03):
you know, the resistance of the administration of those schools
to people saying this isn't right. You've got to enforce
the the the law, which is that they you know,
it is discrimination not to let your Jewish students participate
in the in the benefits of the university. And where
(22:24):
you know, when did the university has become places where
it's not just that you're you're you made a bad argument.
You know, if you disagree with someone, then you're evil
and and and they don't you know that if you're evil,
it's it's that justifies all their actions against you. And that,
you know, that is a deeply troubling, uh part of
(22:47):
our current society where people won't listen anymore, there is
no debate. You're you know, it's a it's become black
and white. You know, if you don't agree with me
on this, I will no longer communicate with you. And
because you're evil, and that that is that is a
very sad thing to have happen.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
And it's it's a culture of denouncement, which again has
as a pedigree. You know, it used to be calling
somebody a witch. I remember I lived in Norfolk, Virginia
Witch Duck Road, and I was like, that's a strange name.
And then I read up on some of the Norfolk
history in the first years that Norfolk Virginia, which is
(23:26):
one of the older parts of the US. Yes, that's
where they actually for you Monty Python fans, you know,
dunk the witch in the water. If she floats, she's
a witch. If she sinks, she's been embraced by the
by the water and she's not a witch. Either way,
she dies. But in more recent history, Uh, one thing
(23:50):
I forced my kids to watch is and I think
it's one of the best films ever made is The
Killing Fields about what happened at Cambodia, and they're the
plenty of stuff. There's not really an equivalent that I
can think of, except for maybe the opening episode of
I think it's on Netflix three Body Problem that went
(24:12):
through the cultural what happened during the Cultural Revolution in China,
where this logically leads. When you have a culture of
denouncing people in that type of political environment, it doesn't
have a good history. And again it's everybody should call
it out red life. I don't like when people do
it from the right. I don't like when people do
(24:33):
it to the left, because it has a history, it
has a track record, and it's something everybody should be
conscious of. And it is national security related because when
that feeds people to pick up a gun and shoot
at members of Congress who are playing baseball, are a
(24:55):
presidential candidate who's making a speech or tries to ambush them,
or leaves pipe bombs lying around. There's a connection. You
call for violence clear enough, or if you do not
hold people accountable properly who are planning or supporting violence,
(25:15):
then you're going to get more of it. And I
was born years after it took place, but the last
time we had a major political assassination in this country
it still resonates. That of course, was Kennedy's. You don't
want that in a society like ours, especially if it
is easily assigned to a group of people who, eitherby
(25:42):
political standing, ethnicity, race, or anything else type of advocates
a crazy person. People can deal with, because mental stability
has no flavor. But when it's done under a banner
of some sectarian organization or cause that has been encouraged
by people who are charted with being responsible, Uh, then
(26:05):
it definitely is a national security issue. And I'm glad
we talked about it.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
Yeah this, I mean, it's not like the US has
not had this in the past. I mean the the correct,
the Cake, the k k K, the the was, the
know nothings, and the I mean all these anti Catholic movements,
the certainly the anti Freeman. Uh yeah, I mean all
(26:31):
that stuff. We've had it, but we we we worked
to overcome it. You know, the the government, especially under
Grant UH enforced the the law against these people. They
sent troops down there. I mean, that's the whole reason
the pass Poss Comitantis Act got passed by Congress was
(26:53):
to stop the federal government coming in and assuming the
the law enforcement role because the Southern states didn't necessarily
like it. Well you know that, but a lot of groups,
I mean, the Mormons, they got discriminated against. They when
they their people were murdered, their temple was burned in
uh in Navu, Illinois. I mean, you could go through
(27:15):
a litany of almost every group in the country and
religious and otherwise that has been discriminated against. And that's
why we have all these laws that forbid it. But
you know, if you're not enforcing the laws, if you're
allowing these activities to to prosper, then you are you
are We're going back to those uncivilized times where certain
(27:35):
groups who had strongly held UH beliefs that were you know, illegal,
because that you can't discriminate on the basis of various things,
then that is that is that is contrary to the
American way. What we'd like to think of as the
American way when we've certainly had you know, discrimination against this.
We talked about the Italians, the Irish, the the you know,
(27:58):
the Hispanics, the America can Indians or Native Americans, the
I mean, you know, it is it is something we
have to strive to keep overcoming. And and it's the
to to foster the kind of resemblance that leads to
violence is simply wrong.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
And there are certain people that prosper from that unfortunately,
and I think it's it's good to call them out.
There are people who either they what's the old what's
the old cliche? There are some people who will let
the world burn just so they can rule over the ashes.
There's those people. They are also the people that get
a little tingle up the legs from getting crowds excited
(28:41):
and grabbing their pitchforks and their torches. Again, that's as
old as human history. We could literally entire library shelves
are full of examples of that. It's it's in the
dark part of every human heart to join in a
crowd like that, but it's it's to be called out avoided.
(29:02):
I think in our nation too, it's problematic because we
are as our founders said, we're an experiment, and self
government can a polyglot republic polyglot as defined throughout human history.
It does not share a race, creed, color with everybody
(29:23):
else can be united under a certain idea and a
concept of ambition, checking ambition, representative government, appeals, justice, all
those things that people used to be taught in civic class.
That would be nice if they brought that back so
people don' understand what's going on when you have people who,
(29:44):
whether they are the KKK or ibermex KINDI are the
no nothings or anything that when they take a wedge
and they try to find a crack, because there's always
going to be cracks, and they pound and pound and
open up that wedge, I think it's incumbent on the
rest of civil society, which we saw to our great
(30:05):
credit in the nineteen sixties and in the Civil rights era.
Did other people's society come in and say, no, it's like,
we're going to spot, well the cracks, we're going to
heal the crap cracks, We're going to pull it back together,
and we're going to make this strong and together again.
I think that's kind of the point that we're at
right now. We need to have civil society to come
(30:25):
in and call these people out and to try to
pull folks together, as opposed to going, yeah, let's throw
some more wedges in there, and if we have a
problem with people who are here. This is where I
had a little back and forth with a few folks
(30:47):
about deporting. I don't know, we want to go to
the step that we did one hundred years ago, like
we did with Emma Goldberg and some of the more
ridiculous anarchists about denaturalizing people. But people are guests in
this country, whether they're on a student visa or they're
on a visiting visa, tourist visa, whatever they're calling it,
(31:10):
at HR work visa, whatever. You and I, as citizens
of the US, you know it's our birthright to be
difficult with each other. That's fine. So if you're a
guest in this country, are to no obligation to let
you create discord in our street. If you want to
create discord in a society, go back to the one
(31:32):
that your passport belongs to. So that's one thing that
the Secretary Rubo I think, has been very strong about
and I support is a lot of these people who
are promoting division and are on the edge of civil
disobedience and violence, they're not holding a US passport. They
(31:54):
can go home and they can do that where they're from.
That's the type of steps you have to make the
point point. If you don't stop a line and make
an example, it's only going to get worse. And it'll
be interesting to see how much longer this path will go.
But if we want to halt the advancing tide of
(32:16):
whether it's people calling for violence in the street over
things that are happening overseas, are people accepting the fact
that we have people whose loyalty is not here in
the US, you're just going to get more. You get
more of what you encourage, you get less of what
you discourage. And I think we can do that inside
the lifelines of the liberty and freedom that we as
(32:39):
citizens have as a nature having a US passport. But
if you have a passport from country X, and you're
over here talking about my neighbor to my left or
my right, whether or not I agree with them, and
you're trying to promote people to create negative outcomes for them,
now you can take the first plane back. I will
not shed a tear for you are people in your family,
(33:00):
we don't need you here.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
Yeah, and we would be unique in the world if
we didn't have that stance. I know plenty of people
who became persona non groud in some country because they offended, uh,
some local national pride issue and got they got properly
sent home because they misbehaved. And I don't, I don't
(33:27):
that happens used to happen all the time. I just
you know, I and I want to make sure that
you know we're not we're not talking about any particular
group that we don't like. But it is, uh, it
is a question of having the groups conform to a
certain expected standard, that that this country requires to to
(33:52):
be able to function properly, and that that that standard is.
I mean, maybe it's civil discourse. Maybe it's if you're
going to engage in civil disobedience as the as certainly
a lot of people in the sixties did with the
with the during the civil rights movement. You know, that's fine,
that is that you're certainly entitled to that. But that was,
(34:15):
as you may remember, you might have been I don't
know two or three, Uh, you know, that was non
violent and that's what made that really helped make the
point when when the the TV in those days covered
the like the march in Selma, Alabama, or some of
the other activities that went on, you know, the violence
(34:36):
that was that was being inflicted on these on these
marchers and and people who were not engaged in the
activity which was violent enough to have anything happened to him.
That that really helped change a lot of minds about
about what civil rights meant in this country and what
(34:57):
it would how how things should work, rather than how
they were working. And I think that kind of consciousness
raising was important, is important, and uh, we're but we're
seeing that as you said, you know, the human mind
tends to revert to certain prejudices, and you know, so
now we're but to encourage it at the especially at
(35:20):
the university level. I'm appalled by the administration of those schools,
who are you know, allowed the stuff to happen without
calling in the police. And because in the in the
days when there was resistance to integration of the universities
in the South the UH we certainly had National Guard,
state Police, all kinds of folks coming in to help
(35:42):
enforce the the integration of those schools. Now, it may
not have been pleasant for the for the first students
who came into one of those one of those schools
and faced all that prejudice, but you know, you you
would not know what today, uh, that that that had
been an issue, that it was as big as it
(36:03):
was back in the sixties.
Speaker 1 (36:05):
Yeah, you can look at let's just use the timeframe
of the last twenty five years since two thousand. You
go twenty five years back from nineteen sixty five and
it's nineteen forty. The amount of change, and you know,
twenty five years after nineteen sixty five is nineteen ninety.
(36:26):
The amount of change that took place in that period
is absolutely amazing, and it's something that you know, a
lot of these people who are complaining, they're not dumb people.
They have to know their history. When you look at
how other nations have self corrected and then how our
(36:48):
nation has self corrected, we've done so with less bloodshed
outside of the US Civil War than almost anybody else has.
Because you look at especially Martin Luther King's early marches.
They were done and this is very smart on their part,
(37:10):
but also I think it was legitimate. A lot of
affection for their nation and what was the common rephrase,
you know, live up to its own ideals. That's very
different than what we have seen in other places where
it is we'll use the George Floyd riots in especially Minnesota,
(37:35):
where these people consciously let the worst players burn their
city down for mostly political reasons. And you can have
civil protests without violence, which is why it's supposed to
be perfect example for those that aren't tracking. In the
Free State of Florida, were setting up what we call
(37:58):
the Alligator Alcatraz for illegal foreign nationals who are found
in Florida waiting deportation, where out in the middle of
the Everglades. They're going to be building a detention facility
for five thousand people. And they had some protesters out
there during the construction, and it's because things happen pretty
fast in Florida. It'll be built here by August. However,
(38:22):
all the protesters were by the side of the road.
They weren't blocking the road, because one in Florida, if
you block a road, the police will grab a collar
and pull you off. Plus the governor has come out
and said that somebody is blocking your road and you
perceive them to be a threat you can run through them.
(38:43):
So the protesters are doing peaceful protests by the side
of the road, letting their opinion know, but they're not
interfering with the lawful commerce of the state in the process,
where as you see in other places where that is
where these protests are taking place, and that's where you
(39:04):
get with your reward. You get less of what you
punish that peaceful protest. Redress agrievances. That's as important as
freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and everything else. But
it needs to be done within those proper, proper guidelines
and you'll get more of the right type of redress agrievances.
(39:25):
Which if you don't think having five thousand people surrounded
by alligators and pythons is what we should do with
people in the nation illegally, then that gives you an
opportunity to say you don't agree with it and maybe
come up with other options in the process. So we
can have this radical thing called civil discourse as opposed
(39:47):
to what we've seen in other places where cars are burned,
people are run over, given wood shampoos all the nine yards.
So by having the right contacts, the right structure, and
the rights civil leadership, people can do their constitutional right
(40:09):
to protest and redraft the agrievances. It can be done,
but it has to be encouraged, so to speak.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
Yeah, being somewhat older than you, I remember there was
a lot of violence committed against the Civil War civil
rights people, everything from the I don't know they saw
the movie Mississippi Burning, but the the the the civil
rights workers who got killed and buried in a levee
(40:38):
somewhere in I think it was Mississippi. The you know,
Medgar Evers got shot, Martin Luther King got shot, Bobby
Kennedy got shot, jfk got shot. Uh. You know, the
history of of moving that process forward, it was not
as gentle and genteel as we sometimes would like to
(41:01):
think we got there. It was a hard grow The
people who who brave that the threats, I think, uh
deserve special recognition for the courage they showed and and
the fortitude it took to to to move it forward.
It's it's a shame that they just might At the time,
(41:23):
the the theory was they wanted to be treated just
like everybody else, and that you know, how hard is
that a concept? And having grown up in the as
a military brat during that era. You know, we the
military had been integrated a long time before the rest
of the country got there. And you know it, I
never I never really thought about it because I you know,
(41:46):
had we had a wide variety of people that we
lived with, we we played with, we you know, coaches
on your sports teams, the other kids on the teams.
I mean, it was, it was, it was just the
way it was. I was quite shocked when I first
got back to States from being overseas that there were
(42:07):
still places. Of course it wasn't it was it was
in the in the late sixties, but there were still
a lot of and still is probably a lot of
bigotry that is totally uncalled for.
Speaker 1 (42:23):
But the thing that's nice nowadays is a lot of
that bigotry. People are so ashamed of it, people that
still have that in their heart, and civil society rejects
it so much that it's hidden. It's not out out.
Look at you little rock. When they opened up the
(42:44):
high school, that that open vitriol. People say, yeah, see
my face, I want to say the most vile things
in the world. That's one thing to loop back what
we were talking about before that. I still am having
trouble getting my head around five. We allow circumstances at arguably, though,
(43:05):
I think this is going to change our best schools.
We're talking about Cornell Harvard, Columbia, where our fellow citizens
who just happen to be Jewish are prevented from walking
around campus, they have to hide their identity. They have
their Hellll Center, and they're predominantly Jewish sororities, fraternities having
(43:33):
rocks thrown at them, having protests outside that should not
be happening and would not be tolerated if that was
being done towards predominantly African American fraternities are cultural centers
by the general student population and being permitted by administrators,
(43:54):
and it doesn't have to be I think. I don't
think we've talked about it here, but I'm really proud
of the University of Florida. There are more Jewish students
at the University of Florida than any other campus in
the US, And right after the events of the seventh
of October of twenty three, Chancellor former Senator Ben Sas
(44:18):
made it very well known that whatever is happening in
Columbia and elsewhere, it's not happening here in Gainesville, and
that created a culture where people that wanted to protest
one side or the other could do it. But besides
a couple of individual cases, there is no organized and
systemic threat to anybody who just happened to be Jewish
(44:39):
on that campus, and it isn't to this day when
you talk to the people who are there. So again
it goes back to leadership, expectations and enforcements. That creates
an atmosphere where people can exercise right A without impinging
on right B and definitely with out making people feel
(45:01):
like they're in physical danger. And that is something in
twenty twenty five that more parts of our civil society
need to hit the pause button and ask why we
have allowed this to take place, and why are we
giving a pass to people politicians in office and running
(45:24):
for office who have been part of that. That is
a conversation I want to see more of because I
was told we weren't going to allow this to happen
again in civil society, but we are. It just happens
to be at somebody else's time.
Speaker 2 (45:39):
Yeah, I'm always back in during the Vietnam War days,
if you were an ROTC student, you could be you know,
there was a lot of violence and discrimination against people
who were willing to serve the country, and so there
were bombings of Ratza unit, there were threats of not
(46:05):
just threats. I remember we at one time at in college,
we were doing on our ow GC can remember it
was a Memorial Day march or some it was something
that we were marching through campus and a bunch of
protesters that came up and tried to tried to interfere
with that, and they were not they were not peaceful protesters.
(46:28):
And one of our senior midshipmen at the time got
bopped by one of them, and he countered and just
late laid this guy out. But I mean, the point
is that a lot of these I wonder how many
of these people, especially since when you see all these
older people at these protests, various protests, uh, you know,
(46:51):
how many of them are reliving as we've talked about before,
we lived in their glory days when they were anti
anti Vietnam War protesters and and and the kind of
violence that that as you said, the the SDS there was,
I mean, who were the ones who blew themselves up
in a basement in New York City? I can't remember
who they were.
Speaker 1 (47:10):
I think that was a branch of SDS. That what
the weathermen, the weatherman, yeah, Bob President Obama's friend, Bob
Airs and those guys.
Speaker 2 (47:23):
Yeah. So, you know, I just to to a certain extent,
I'm sure there's a group of people who idolized those
those ancient protesters and and admire how they stood up
for their beliefs. But that was not the right way
to stand up for your beliefs. And and they wouldn't again,
they would not engage in debate, really they would. They
(47:44):
would prefer to to go blow up a Rozza unit
someplace then, or one of them, I mean one of
them they killed a guard, robbing what a banker or
a armored car something to get money to fund some
of their operations. I mean, that's just that's just thuggery.
Speaker 1 (48:03):
Yeah, we haven't quite reached that type of revolutionary cell action,
thank goodness. It's a little just disaggregated. I guess the
closest we have to it are the the paid Antifa
types that are that that are busted all over the
country to go be the cell. I'm reminded that over
(48:24):
in my hometown some of those imported guys tried to
get involved in one of our protests, but the local
sheriffs after day one and all these people disappeared because
they're either in jail, the hospital, or they got they
got out of town because they didn't want to wind
up in the jail or the hospital. But yeah, that
(48:45):
that's that's part of the sixties. I think you're right
that sometimes we forget that they the Summer of Love
had some bookends on either end that we were quite
bloody from a different direction, whether you're on the receiving
end and the bull Connors fire hose, which is why,
unlike Europe we don't use fire hoses for crowd control anymore,
(49:10):
or on on the other end, you were a cop
in a restaurant somewhere that got blown to bits by
a bomb placed by the SDS. So yeah, that that
we haven't reached that level, thank goodness, and hopefully hopefully
we won't, but we will see. I do think though,
(49:34):
victories have a way of calming a lot of seas.
And when you look on the national security front, where
we've we've done what a lot of people said you
couldn't do, which was to go in and punch our
rent in the face real hard and go back without
(49:55):
leaving any boots on the ground. Israel has held create
the conditions where Lebanon might be able to exert a
little more influence over its southern part, where has Blah
has been able to do as one to two for
a long time, there might be an ability to moderate
what's his name, Jo Nani Jolani, whoever's in charge of
(50:18):
Syria now. Egypt is not having anything to do with
Hamas and hasn't for a long time. Israel will find
some solution to Gaza at some way. I think we're
about to see phase two of the Abraham A. Gord's
breakout and one of the other things that have happened recently.
(50:39):
We've got the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda has
signed a treaty. There are millions of people have died there.
So there's a chance where if you continue to have
some successes, maybe that will not encourage people to be
the water in which the bad players swim.
Speaker 2 (51:02):
Yeah, and we could use the respite we need to.
As one of the people in the chat room says,
we need a strategic pause to allow us to rearm
and and get you know, we're going through the weaponry
faster than we we can afford to do it. We
(51:27):
also need to I'm hoping, as I said at the
start of the show, that that the the movement to
get the American shipping industry and the Navy back on
track for the number of ships and the number of
you know, the vital equipment we need. I hope that
that comes to pass and that we're getting back on stable,
(51:48):
stable ground.
Speaker 1 (51:50):
I still think we're it's hard to believe that. See
what is at the end of June, so the from
of Administrations only bit office five months. It seems like
couple of years. A lot's happened, So you know, there's
a lot that we still need to see. But that's
a great point. It'd be nice for the world to
give us an operational pause where we can have a
(52:14):
few years maybe where we now just do six months
deployments without disgorging a couple of replenishmentships worth of weapons
every time we go out. That we don't do nine
months eleven months deployments, we don't short cycle our DDGs,
(52:34):
and we can concentrate on reconstituting and rebuilding to get
rather for larger challenges as opposed to being held down
by a thousand little putins pulling us down. One thing
that I'm wondering about, though, is on the Navy side
(52:55):
of the house. We'll probably know more by the fall,
but how we get ready for the Pacific fight if,
as rumors are playing out, the FA xx is defunded,
if we don't build the FFG sixty two, the Constellation class,
(53:18):
if we're not going to do that, I don't know.
I don't know how you build the navy that we
need for the Pacific when we're canceling the programs that
can maybe imperfect, but they need to be displacing water
and making shadows on the ramp. I don't know how
you get from A to B. But you've heard me
say before. You know we're predominantly a maritime and aerospace power.
(53:39):
In the maritime, we keep slipping and falling down. I
haven't really gotten our grip, but I'll tap a hat
to our aerospace friends, the boys in Blue. They're having
a pretty good year so far. Right out of the bat,
they said we're going to build the F forty seven,
which still cracks me up. There it the forty seven,
(54:01):
but it is.
Speaker 2 (54:01):
What it is.
Speaker 1 (54:03):
And they have with the strike on Iran, with their
probably all of their fully mission capable B twos that
they have, they underline the fact that the B twenty
one needs to be fully funded, the utility of having
a global reach with heavy strike. That also is going
(54:27):
to give them a boost to buy more tankers because
they still have a museum quality tanker force, even though
we do have some more coming online. That they've caught
the moment right, and how we're postured right now to
not be involved in all these little battles all over
(54:48):
the place. The Air Force has been able to say, hey,
here's what we're being, here's what we're doing in the
new strategic environment. Help fund all of our stuff that
is going to enable that. Now I look over the
Navy side of the house and uh, it's like looking
(55:08):
at a VW this uh disassembled into his constituent parts
that five or six mechanics are running around trying to
put together all of a sudden. So I will I
will tip my hat to the boys in blue that
they've caught the moment right, I think, to to get
the funding that they need for the programs that they
(55:29):
believe is the best answer to the Pacific fight. So
you know, here's the you boys in blue. You better
to be lucky than good.
Speaker 2 (55:36):
Yeah, there's a there's a pretty good piece and uh
and uh on the us NI website about uh. It's
probably locked up about Fleet Admiral Ernest King, the Navy's pope,
and and he was trying he got he knew that
the Air Force was winning the pr battle uh during
(55:58):
World War two. And but so his an was to
host a bunch of of reporters, you know, for beer
and in his place and all that. Well, you know
that's not what the that was not what the Air
Force or Air Corps in those days was doing. So
they kind of stole the march on him. And here
we are again. You know that the Navy's doing all
this stuff and a lot of the the hard work
(56:20):
and being there all the time. The Air Force flies
in typical Air force, I mean my dad for the
Air Force officer, typical Air Force. They fly in, they
do their thing, and they go home. You know it's
that when right now we've got what five destroyers out
there on the med carry a couple of carriers. I mean,
it's still you know, we had we're a presence that is.
(56:41):
I don't like the presence mission, but exactly what it
is is a presence and that that is the job.
And we need to have enough ships so that that
job and people so that the job doesn't become harder
than it has to be. And that's you know, that's
where the Navy needs to to push for with these programs.
Speaker 3 (57:03):
Now.
Speaker 2 (57:04):
I don't know if the cancelation of these programs is
a serious thing or it is a shot across the
Navy's bow saying, you know, if you don't get your
act together, we are going to cancel these things because
we can't afford to have you thither and waste money. Again,
this is you know, if you had a history of
(57:24):
being productive and getting this job done on time, like
the Coastguard has done with their National Security cutters, we
might cut you some slack. But since you can't even
decide what you want on your ship while you're building it,
that you know that that can't last.
Speaker 1 (57:41):
We have not, we have not done a great job
last quarter century to prove people that we can competently
run programs. Yeah, there's blood in the water. There gets
one to hope. And I don't think we've talked about it.
But Admiral Caudle the nominee. I think I'm pronouncing his
name correctly. If not, somebody correct me in the uh
(58:02):
in the in the chat room, who's due to be
the next cn O. He's a submariner, and he's got
a heck of a lot of experience of command at sea,
and he hasn't been a professional staff weenie or anything
like that.
Speaker 3 (58:19):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (58:20):
I have people who I know, I've talked to him background,
I have kind of people giving me mixed reviews of him.
But uh, I think in the in the present moment,
he would not have been picked for the position if
he wasn't somebody that was going to kind of move
that needle, because goodness knows, there's there's nowhere nowhere to
go but to improve. I don't think are from a
(58:42):
program management point of view, we could we could get
much worse than we've already been the last quarter century.
And one thing about nukes and submariners, uh, they uh,
they like their like facts and they like math, and
they're they're able to look you straight in the eye
about performance because there's a very little room for error.
So I think it would be interesting to see what
(59:03):
his priorities are and what type of moves we see. Again,
we're not really going to see anything until the fall.
Goodness knows when the Senate is going to approve his nomination,
and then it takes a few months before you actually
start to seize the movement one way or another.
Speaker 2 (59:19):
Well, hopefully somebody is telling me good his you know,
his people together, get his act together and be ready
to and he ought to be working already. Uh, you know,
if you're going to be designated and you think they're
going to get the job, and you've got to hit
the ground running in that that needs to be done quickly.
(59:40):
You know, he's got I think he's got the experience.
I don't know enough about him, but we're at least
he's uh, you know, he's had Fleet Forces Command. He
understands a lot of the issues.
Speaker 1 (59:51):
I kind of I just just shared it on the
live stream, said a comment. It is true that at
Fleet Forces Command his most re an announcement, the good
Admiral was wearing his his algae flage the Navy's a
little green. There's no reason for a submarine or to
(01:00:11):
ever wear camo unless he is on the deck somewhere
doing a staff job in country next to an Army guy.
I really hope that we don't see him as Cno
wearing the Navy's little camouflage uniform one or another. I
will give one thing that I've enjoyed because occasionally I
(01:00:33):
make fashion comments because I like to be petty. I've
gotten a kick out of Chairman of Joint Chiefs General
Kine wearing his Air Force uniform because whereas the Navy's
been bouncing around uniforms all day long, the Army's gone
back to World War two's pinks and greens. The the
(01:00:57):
Air Force, blessed their heart, they have stuck with their
old Cold War Air Force uniform that they've kept it
so long as it's kind of making me think that
like the Marine Corps, it's not archaic, it's kind of
retro and self identifying. It's not look as it's an
outdated fashion statement. It's just tradition. So you know, the
(01:01:21):
Air Force probably is at the point now kind of
like the Marine Corps. They shouldn't change their uniforms now
because it used to be the Air Force uniform just
the blue version of the Army green one. Now it's
kind of unique and it kind of looks professional, and
maybe it has to do with the fact that he
was in the civilian world for a while. But I've
also noticed that General Caine, what do the Air Force
(01:01:45):
call their equivalent of our service stress blue, their their
blue uniform with the tie that's been tailored. He did
not buy that off the shelf, which are our senior
any field grade officer or above, though I did it
even as as a as a lieutenant. Get your unit
if you have. If you can't wear stuff off the rack,
(01:02:07):
that because very few people can go get them properly
tailored to fit right. So there's the fashion observation of
the day from.
Speaker 2 (01:02:15):
Well, no matter what we wear, we're going to be
better off than the space for us. I don't think
I've ever seen such a horrible collection of uniforms.
Speaker 1 (01:02:28):
They tried, they tried, they and we're already over over
an hour, and I appreciate everybody sticking with us. We
covered a little bit of of nautical and military stuff
at the end, but you know, Mark and I were
talking in the pre show that the other issues that
we spoke about most of the show, I think because
(01:02:48):
we haven't really covered it much like we have. But
I think we're at a moment in time mark that
you're you're exactly right that it deserves to be talked about.
Speaker 2 (01:02:58):
Yeah, I think it's. Yeah, we need to have a
long national conversation about this stuff and get our act
together and quite allowing people to go beyond acceptable limits.
People need to be put in jail. I mean, not
for free speech, but for for violence in the name
and then pretending it's free speech.
Speaker 1 (01:03:20):
Yeah, if you if you throw a brick at somebody,
you need to go to jail, and uh, you know,
spend spend some money on attorneys. And halfway halfway through
our discussion, I realized that, you know, hey, before July fourth,
it's actually not a bad topic to talk about. That's
what you know. July fourth is for we have a
(01:03:41):
unique experience with our republic that we have a lot
to be proud of. There's always things that could be improved,
and there have been times that we we could have
done better at the time, but we didn't, but we
self corrected. So be part of the self correction and
not part of the destruction, and be proud of the
those that help us improve through the generation. So there
(01:04:05):
there's a there that's another reason why. I'm glad we
covered the topic because July fourth is more about more
than the hot dogs and warm beer.
Speaker 2 (01:04:13):
Yeah. Wait, we really do need to appreciate our freedoms
and and appreciate how we how we keep those.
Speaker 1 (01:04:22):
And on that note, we will not have a show
next week, but we will be coming back this summer
and we'll have some guests, which is which is always
a plus. And I wish you and yours Mark a
great July fourth and everybody else as well. Oh, thank
you and you too, and that we also have dogs
in the background. That was a good July for the
(01:04:44):
official dog of the mid Rats podcast. And thank you
very much for joining us for another edition of mid Rats,
especially those in the chat room. I hope y'all all
have a great July fourth and a great Navy Day. Cheers.
Speaker 3 (01:05:05):
Molly Roy replies, worry Paddy, all like my lonely one
to marry me and to leave a friend of becardily
for you being to blame my love family to love
me sill faulting your tame.
Speaker 4 (01:05:28):
It's a long way to Dipper, It's a long way.
It's a long way to Dipper. Army to be Queen
gor B becdi.
Speaker 3 (01:05:49):
Farewell, leftwell, it's.
Speaker 4 (01:05:53):
A long long way to dinner, but my plum plum
Welcome to mid Rats with sal from Commander Salamander, an
Eagle one from Eagle Speak at seer Shure your home
for a discussion of national security issues and all things maritime.
And welcome on board everybody to your pre fourth of
July free for all. We really appreciate you all taking
time to join us today, whether you are live or
you're getting it via the podcast. But if you are
(00:52):
with us live, i'd like to extend the invitation. Go
ahead and head over and find the chat room. You
can roll right in there if you have some observations
you would like to show during the course of the show,
are some questions that you wanted to throw Mark or
my way, please do. This is a free for all format,
so we have the things that we want to chat
about today, but obviously if there's something that's tickling your
(01:13):
rib you would like for us to chat about, that's
the perfect place to do it. And as always, I'll
just put the altocol out there. If you are with
us Live and you aren't already subscribed to the podcast,
you can head over to iTunes, Spotify, Spreaker, wherever you
get your podcasts, find us subscribe that way, we will
be waiting for you can't beat the price. And on
(01:34):
that note, Mark, Hey, happy Sunday to you.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Hey, thank you very much. Well, I just disappear. Nope,
and hope you're still here. My screen disappeared. That's always shocking.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Yeah, we had a little experience we're talking about in
the pre show for the listeners, just so you know
you're not the only people that happens to. It's kind
of a running too. I don't know if we've been
keeping track of how many times I've been able to
log on like ten seconds before the those starts, even
when we have a guest and you had a little
trouble having to do a Chrome update, shaking a chicken,
(02:11):
make a sacrifice the ball, and everything else, but you
did get your computer up and running in time for
us to do a little bit of appreciative Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
It what's the what's the character that joebu or from
a major league mcclass of rum and a cigar and
then all of a sudden it came came.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Up so good nough, So I mean it's it's you know,
we did a free for all last week, but we
always joked and we only do an hour and we
could probably talk. Sometimes our post show goes another twenty
minutes if we don't ever record it. But there's a
lot going on. But what what what broke above your
background noise the most for you this week?
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Well, uh, you know, obviously there's been a lot of
discussion about the the success of the Irane, the Iranian
the attack on the Iranian nuclear program and uh so
you know that's that's been, that's been there. We've got
a lot of other stuff going on. We you know,
there Jerry doctor, Jerry Hendrix I see is on the
(03:07):
staff of the the people trying to get the ship
building program going. He sounds like he's doing doing well.
But among other things, there was a there was a
post an x what do you call him tweet? I
don't know what to call him now, tweet tweet, Yeah,
by a guy by a guy who goes by the
name of Infantry Dort and uh he he was, you know,
(03:29):
talking about he didn't want to slide into Islamophobia, I
don't think, but he talked about some culture shock issues
facing our forces who were involved in Afghanistan Iraq, and uh,
you know that that caused me to think about, Uh,
Samuel Huntington's the clash of civilizations, which has been critiqued
(03:52):
by a number of people has not been exactly right,
but a lot of other people are looking at and gone, yeah,
we see these these new boundaries. With the end of
the Cold War, the nation state and the and the
advance of globalization, the nate state, nation state becomes less important,
and then people are falling where their countries, you know,
(04:13):
I have have have kind of gone by the wayside
or are not as important to them as there as
other things that a lot of times, religion and some
of the other aspects of life have taken over their
their center spot in their lives. So, you know, it's
a pretty He makes a pretty good point somewhere along
(04:33):
the way that that he's unaware of people. You know,
you could be a French Canadian, you can be a
a Algerian French person, but he's never heard of anybody
being a half half Catholic, half Muslim. And you know,
there there are certain cultural things and we're seeing a
(04:56):
lot of this stuff come out coming into play these days.
But the Glastonbury event, a lot of other places where
we're seeing people who are not assimilating into the culture
of the of the nations they're currently living in, but
are hanging on to their their center, which is, you know,
their religion, not necessarily their race, not anything else or
(05:19):
where they came from, but the religion that they that
they belong to.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Yeah, you and I have done a good job over
the last fifteen years. We try to you know, it'll
touch on now and the things you can't avoid some things
and evolve politics or some of the cultural issues. But
I think, you know, inside the lifelines of a national
security discussion, I think I think there this is something
that's worthy of discussion because when we look at you,
(05:46):
within the last one hundred fifty years or so, two
of the major waves of immigrants came to this country.
I'll just use as a data point the Irish and
the Italians, because those big waves are you know, those
people that were third or fourth generation in But when
those individuals showed up in the first generation and the
(06:07):
second generation, one thing that characterized them more than anything
else were how much they loved this country and why
they came to this country. Especially on the Union side
and World War Two, you had a lot of Irish
that had barely been off the boat and they filled
out some civil War autist, I'm sure will correct me,
(06:27):
but it was a couple of regiments of Irish that
fought on the Union. There's actually some smaller units around
Charleston area mostly that fought for the Confederacy as well.
Very patriotic, very self sacrificing for their country. The big
wave of of Italians, it came over here in the
(06:47):
first couple of decades of the twentieth century, especially right
after World War One. We had no shortage of Italian translators.
During World War Two, they were great Americans. You look
at even the way they were treated after December seventh
of forty one. Japanese Americans, a lot of them at
that point were second generation. Even though they were put
(07:09):
in camps, they enlisted in tremendous numbers and produced the
most decorated unit in the US Army in World War Two,
or one of the Japanese Americans units. So you have
that data point. And the Japanese came here that was
mostly Buddhist culture, though a lot of them became Christians
when they came over here. And of course you had
(07:29):
a lot of the Christians from Nagasaki who came over
as well. But that is a different flavor of people
that have come here. And I'll use one example that
covers two different parts of the country and I'll name
names because she's been out there and been quite advocate
advocating her position. You look at Representative il Han Omar,
(07:52):
and there's also I can't recall her name off the
top of my head, but she's a state representative for
Maine from around Lewiston. They're both from Somalia. And when
you look at ill hand Omar specifically, her father was
a colonel in the communist government of Somalia that got
overthrown in a revolution, was in a refugee camp, came
(08:13):
to the US, I'm believe when she was nine years old,
and she got elected to Congress, and she's got a
lot of her family over here in the best country
in the world, and yet you will find somebody who
at every turn has the worst things to say about
her adopted nation that she represents in one of our
(08:34):
highest bodies an official can be elected to. And very
similar that's been echoed in Maine with that Somali community that.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
You have there.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
I am here to represent the issues of Somali Americans.
Completely flipped from what we have seen in previous And
you know, I don't agree with everything that Infantry Door
put in the comment section, but a lot of it
ring true, especially for those of us that deployed on
the ground in the Middle East that I spent most
(09:06):
of much twenty years and twenty one years involved in.
And it's something that it's difficult to have a conversation
about because people will immediately call you the most nasty
things in the world. Though I don't think it bites
as much as it used to. But we need to
look clearly at it because it's a different challenge when
you have people immigrate to this country who do not
(09:27):
want to not only don't want to assimilate, but are
actively hostile to it. And it's founding neath us.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Yeah, and some of the stuff that Infantry Door put
in there was reflects more culture shocked than cultural clash.
I mean, it's although sometimes hard to tell the difference,
but you know, what he reports is not much different
than what I saw when I lived in an Islamic
country back in the late nineteen sixties. So some of
(09:59):
the the activities are apparently timeless. Uh And and if
you have any doubt, you could watch lorens of Arabia
and see some of those activities continued there too. I mean,
it is is the question really is, is there is
it possible for people who are so wrapped up in
(10:20):
their culture to assimilate or even want to assimilate into
a culture they view as being totally counter to their
belief systems, And it is, you know, I find that
I don't I don't know. I'm not proposing that we
we intern anybody and and do all the stuff we
(10:41):
did to the Italians and and the Japanese in World
War two. I'm just curious as to where we're going
to go with this and how how long you know,
the classic line from Abraham Lincoln, you know, kind of
country divided against itself survive and how you know? Right now,
(11:01):
it's a fairly small group of people, but there are
also a lot of We've seen a lot more return
to religious religious behavior. Secularization seems to be kind of fading.
We're getting more young people involved in religion, in Christianity
and other religions. A lot of people are seeking something
to give them a basis because the society as a
(11:24):
whole seems to be a little bit of drift right now,
as whereas the shared values we had if we you know,
sixty eighty years ago, you know there was some we've
been all unite against the communist menace. We could well
not all of us. Some of us just became elected
representatives and centator from New Hampshire where he's from Vermont anyway,
(11:50):
So you know, it's a question, and I think that
is a national security issue. You can you have people
who were in this country who are acting against the
best interests of of the society they live in.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
And you mentioned something I think that also ties into it.
And there's a little bit of this that the you
have your relative distance that it takes to travel to
assimilate to a new culture. For instance, back when we
were kids, Dearmore and Michigan or my hometown had Lebanese
(12:22):
palesin what's now called Palestinians and Syrians have been coming
here for one hundred and twenty five years. But they
were Christians and they were no different than somebody who
had a German last name or Scottish last name. They
just their redneck accent was worse than mind. Their families
had been for so long, and there was very little
(12:44):
cultural difference, no more than there is between somebody at
English Extraction and somebody of Irish Extraction or the Italian
American Club on the other side of town. So there
wasn't much problem there. But you look at places like Dearborn.
Now are some of the other places where you now
have people who come over there are still wearing the
(13:06):
outfits they wore in Pakistan or you see in the
fundamentalist neighborhoods in Damascus. That's that's not assimilating, and that
is dangerous. So I think it dovetails with another trend
going back to Glastonbury is I think I mentioned it
here before, but I've written about it a few times.
(13:27):
I know part of it was the way I was raised.
Anti Semitism and jew hate was foreign to me because
I just had so many Jewish people I grew up
with here, no different than Methodists. I did not think
that we would have seen in our nation the level
(13:51):
of red and tooth and clawed jew hate that we've
seen in the last two years. And it's not realized,
not just here but another places. And you saw this
as a young adult. I was either still in diapers
or running around in early grade school. But you go
back to the Summer of Love. You look back at
(14:13):
a lot of the anti war protests against Vietnam, and
after that you had the anti nuclear Saint Freeze of
the late seventies and the nineteen eighties, and you've got
had green peace, the environmental movement. Yeah, they had some
fellow travelers on the edge, Students for a Democratic Society,
(14:36):
the IRA, various People's Front for the Liberation of Palestine
National Command. You know, they were on the fringes. They
weren't in the center and their call for violence and
killing or on the fringes at the center of it.
It was a relatively peaceful movement. But that's not true
where you have a very popular group of singers at
(14:56):
a music festival that are calling for the murder of
members of parliament that they disagree with them politically, and
they call for death to the IDF because it rhymes.
But we all know that they're more than just the idea.
If they're interested in and they get away with it,
(15:17):
it's a different vibe that I don't see what type
of positive direction that goes to if there isn't an
honest conversation about that type of violence that is coming
from that particular part of the political spectrum. Those folks
(15:38):
have got to police themselves, but we've got to police
them as well. It's just it, it spirals in a
direction nobody wants to go to if you allow that
type of stuff to go without being challenged.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Yeah, and it's part of the thing that I am
troubled by is that you know, certainly people are free
to express their views. Yeah. I may not agree with them,
but as as I certainly spent some time defending their right,
as as you did, defending their right to have those
opinions and to be able to talk about them. But
(16:12):
the other side of it is the minute you take
on some of these issues, then you can be accused
of all kinds of of anti you know, you're you're
anti Islamic, you're anti whatever, and it is it is
uh where where you know where? Why can you not
(16:33):
have a conversation about this that doesn't end up in
being resulting in it in a death threat or you
know we're going to I mean, it has just gotten
to the point where the people who need to stand
up and say this, this is not right, what you're
what you know, are not being there. They're being accused
(16:53):
of being a phobic of whatever thing that you're standing
up against, and that that is a problem. I mean
that happened a lot when when just take an example
of parents who were complaining about the some of the
materials their kids were being exposed to at school. You know,
that should have been a nice topic for debate. Why
you know, why the kids should see it when a
(17:14):
kid shouldn't see it, But it got to immediately got
to these parents are you know, accused of all kinds
of a criminal activity necessarily but opinion, you know, bad
think if you will, from nineteen eighty four, so wrong think,
and it's that that cannot stand in this country. We
(17:36):
you know, we need to defend the right for people
to be say what they want and to be right
or wrong and be judged on the merits of what
they say, rather than just attacking them blindly and incorrect.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
Freedom of speech. It's a messy area, but I think
you do have a line. Part of the problem is
we allowed ourselves to lose the language, especially over the
last ten years, where words you are violence, but violence
is words type of things. No, you know, people should
be allowed to be insulting, but you've got to draw
(18:08):
a line where there is a clear incitement to that violence.
And I don't think just because you're a musician. Music
is an art. Writing is also an art. And if
you write and tell people go out and kill MPs,
(18:29):
and you're in a society where other people have been
jailed who simply write something even more benign than that,
you are throwing kindling on a fire. And we have
similar challenges over here where you have to have equality
(18:50):
before the law and either you cannot incite violence or
you can incite violence. You can't have a situation where
one side of the political spectrum, or one side on
a socio cultural political view is allowed to do whatever
they want, but on the other side disagrees in any way,
(19:11):
then the full power of the law is going to
come down on these people. That is not only contrary
to a free society, it is throwing kindling on a
fire because that pressure will build up in a society.
Societies will take it, there's others won't. And it's something
(19:33):
that you're seeing in spades in the UK, and you're
seeing it a little bit here though. I think it's
gotten a little bit better now because there's a Department
Adjustice that's kind of let what had been abused previously.
Go And again I'm trying really hard not to be political,
but freedom speech should not be a political issue. That
(19:55):
should be bipartisan. You can say somebody is rude, that
was a little uncalled for, or I think that's a
bad faith argument. I think that's fine. But saying you've
said this, I disagree with it. So I'm going to
destroy your family, your name, your business, and I'm going
(20:16):
to dox your house. Those swat agents come over your
house at two o'clock in the morning and shoot your
dog that barks at him as a kick in the door.
That's a totally different matter. And I think the director
of the FBI, Cash Bettel, I think three or four
weeks ago his house was his house was docked. And
(20:39):
there have been other people who are living remotely from
their families. So it's we're reaching that stage with violence.
And I wish everybody from the right, the left, in
the center has a level of intolerance towards calls for violence,
because we should. We should encourage and allow everybody to
(20:59):
have the US debate. You can call people's ideas stupid, wrongheaded,
et cetera, and so forth, but what we can't do
is say will you use the wrong pronoun. That's the
violence is the same as somebody is saying go out
and kill your member of parliament or some other political
(21:21):
person because you disagree with them on a policy issue.
That uh, that's a different, different kettle fish altogether. And unfortunately,
and I hope that this will change, I have not
seen a full spectrum response to people in society saying
we will not accept that, just the opposite, and it's said.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Yeah, it's you know, you look at the universities, uh,
the stuff that's been going on in the Ivy League
and other UH schools where some of these you know,
these anti Semitic groups are taking over libraries, they're you know,
they're they're attacking the Jewish students and the on the campus,
not letting them go to class I mean, and then
(22:03):
you know, the resistance of the administration of those schools
to people saying this isn't right. You've got to enforce
the the the law, which is that they you know,
it is discrimination not to let your Jewish students participate
in the in the benefits of the university. And where
(22:24):
you know, when did the university has become places where
it's not just that you're you're you made a bad argument.
You know, if you disagree with someone, then you're evil
and and and they don't you know that if you're evil,
it's it's that justifies all their actions against you. And that,
you know, that is a deeply troubling, uh part of
(22:47):
our current society where people won't listen anymore, there is
no debate. You're you know, it's a it's become black
and white. You know, if you don't agree with me
on this, I will no longer communicate with you. And
because you're evil, and that that is that is a
very sad thing to have happen.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
And it's it's a culture of denouncement, which again has
as a pedigree. You know, it used to be calling
somebody a witch. I remember I lived in Norfolk, Virginia
Witch Duck Road, and I was like, that's a strange name.
And then I read up on some of the Norfolk
history in the first years that Norfolk Virginia, which is
(23:26):
one of the older parts of the US. Yes, that's
where they actually for you Monty Python fans, you know,
dunk the witch in the water. If she floats, she's
a witch. If she sinks, she's been embraced by the
by the water and she's not a witch. Either way,
she dies. But in more recent history, Uh, one thing
(23:50):
I forced my kids to watch is and I think
it's one of the best films ever made is The
Killing Fields about what happened at Cambodia, and they're the
plenty of stuff. There's not really an equivalent that I
can think of, except for maybe the opening episode of
I think it's on Netflix three Body Problem that went
(24:12):
through the cultural what happened during the Cultural Revolution in China,
where this logically leads. When you have a culture of
denouncing people in that type of political environment, it doesn't
have a good history. And again it's everybody should call
it out red life. I don't like when people do
it from the right. I don't like when people do
(24:33):
it to the left, because it has a history, it
has a track record, and it's something everybody should be
conscious of. And it is national security related because when
that feeds people to pick up a gun and shoot
at members of Congress who are playing baseball, are a
(24:55):
presidential candidate who's making a speech or tries to ambush them,
or leaves pipe bombs lying around. There's a connection. You
call for violence clear enough, or if you do not
hold people accountable properly who are planning or supporting violence,
(25:15):
then you're going to get more of it. And I
was born years after it took place, but the last
time we had a major political assassination in this country
it still resonates. That of course, was Kennedy's. You don't
want that in a society like ours, especially if it
is easily assigned to a group of people who, eitherby
(25:42):
political standing, ethnicity, race, or anything else type of advocates
a crazy person. People can deal with, because mental stability
has no flavor. But when it's done under a banner
of some sectarian organization or cause that has been encouraged
by people who are charted with being responsible, Uh, then
(26:05):
it definitely is a national security issue. And I'm glad
we talked about it.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
Yeah this, I mean, it's not like the US has
not had this in the past. I mean the the correct,
the Cake, the k k K, the the was, the
know nothings, and the I mean all these anti Catholic movements,
the certainly the anti Freeman. Uh yeah, I mean all
(26:31):
that stuff. We've had it, but we we we worked
to overcome it. You know, the the government, especially under
Grant UH enforced the the law against these people. They
sent troops down there. I mean, that's the whole reason
the pass Poss Comitantis Act got passed by Congress was
(26:53):
to stop the federal government coming in and assuming the
the law enforcement role because the Southern states didn't necessarily
like it. Well you know that, but a lot of groups,
I mean, the Mormons, they got discriminated against. They when
they their people were murdered, their temple was burned in
uh in Navu, Illinois. I mean, you could go through
(27:15):
a litany of almost every group in the country and
religious and otherwise that has been discriminated against. And that's
why we have all these laws that forbid it. But
you know, if you're not enforcing the laws, if you're
allowing these activities to to prosper, then you are you
are We're going back to those uncivilized times where certain
(27:35):
groups who had strongly held UH beliefs that were you know, illegal,
because that you can't discriminate on the basis of various things,
then that is that is that is contrary to the
American way. What we'd like to think of as the
American way when we've certainly had you know, discrimination against this.
We talked about the Italians, the Irish, the the you know,
(27:58):
the Hispanics, the America can Indians or Native Americans, the
I mean, you know, it is it is something we
have to strive to keep overcoming. And and it's the
to to foster the kind of resemblance that leads to
violence is simply wrong.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
And there are certain people that prosper from that unfortunately,
and I think it's it's good to call them out.
There are people who either they what's the old what's
the old cliche? There are some people who will let
the world burn just so they can rule over the ashes.
There's those people. They are also the people that get
a little tingle up the legs from getting crowds excited
(28:41):
and grabbing their pitchforks and their torches. Again, that's as
old as human history. We could literally entire library shelves
are full of examples of that. It's it's in the
dark part of every human heart to join in a
crowd like that, but it's it's to be called out avoided.
(29:02):
I think in our nation too, it's problematic because we
are as our founders said, we're an experiment, and self
government can a polyglot republic polyglot as defined throughout human history.
It does not share a race, creed, color with everybody
(29:23):
else can be united under a certain idea and a
concept of ambition, checking ambition, representative government, appeals, justice, all
those things that people used to be taught in civic class.
That would be nice if they brought that back so
people don' understand what's going on when you have people who,
(29:44):
whether they are the KKK or ibermex KINDI are the
no nothings or anything that when they take a wedge
and they try to find a crack, because there's always
going to be cracks, and they pound and pound and
open up that wedge, I think it's incumbent on the
rest of civil society, which we saw to our great
(30:05):
credit in the nineteen sixties and in the Civil rights era.
Did other people's society come in and say, no, it's like,
we're going to spot, well the cracks, we're going to
heal the crap cracks, We're going to pull it back together,
and we're going to make this strong and together again.
I think that's kind of the point that we're at
right now. We need to have civil society to come
(30:25):
in and call these people out and to try to
pull folks together, as opposed to going, yeah, let's throw
some more wedges in there, and if we have a
problem with people who are here. This is where I
had a little back and forth with a few folks
(30:47):
about deporting. I don't know, we want to go to
the step that we did one hundred years ago, like
we did with Emma Goldberg and some of the more
ridiculous anarchists about denaturalizing people. But people are guests in
this country, whether they're on a student visa or they're
on a visiting visa, tourist visa, whatever they're calling it,
(31:10):
at HR work visa, whatever. You and I, as citizens
of the US, you know it's our birthright to be
difficult with each other. That's fine. So if you're a
guest in this country, are to no obligation to let
you create discord in our street. If you want to
create discord in a society, go back to the one
(31:32):
that your passport belongs to. So that's one thing that
the Secretary Rubo I think, has been very strong about
and I support is a lot of these people who
are promoting division and are on the edge of civil
disobedience and violence, they're not holding a US passport. They
(31:54):
can go home and they can do that where they're from.
That's the type of steps you have to make the
point point. If you don't stop a line and make
an example, it's only going to get worse. And it'll
be interesting to see how much longer this path will go.
But if we want to halt the advancing tide of
(32:16):
whether it's people calling for violence in the street over
things that are happening overseas, are people accepting the fact
that we have people whose loyalty is not here in
the US, you're just going to get more. You get
more of what you encourage, you get less of what
you discourage. And I think we can do that inside
the lifelines of the liberty and freedom that we as
(32:39):
citizens have as a nature having a US passport. But
if you have a passport from country X, and you're
over here talking about my neighbor to my left or
my right, whether or not I agree with them, and
you're trying to promote people to create negative outcomes for them,
now you can take the first plane back. I will
not shed a tear for you are people in your family,
(33:00):
we don't need you here.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
Yeah, and we would be unique in the world if
we didn't have that stance. I know plenty of people
who became persona non groud in some country because they offended, uh,
some local national pride issue and got they got properly
sent home because they misbehaved. And I don't, I don't
(33:27):
that happens used to happen all the time. I just
you know, I and I want to make sure that
you know we're not we're not talking about any particular
group that we don't like. But it is, uh, it
is a question of having the groups conform to a
certain expected standard, that that this country requires to to
(33:52):
be able to function properly, and that that that standard is.
I mean, maybe it's civil discourse. Maybe it's if you're
going to engage in civil disobedience as the as certainly
a lot of people in the sixties did with the
with the during the civil rights movement. You know, that's fine,
that is that you're certainly entitled to that. But that was,
(34:15):
as you may remember, you might have been I don't
know two or three, Uh, you know, that was non
violent and that's what made that really helped make the
point when when the the TV in those days covered
the like the march in Selma, Alabama, or some of
the other activities that went on, you know, the violence
(34:36):
that was that was being inflicted on these on these
marchers and and people who were not engaged in the
activity which was violent enough to have anything happened to him.
That that really helped change a lot of minds about
about what civil rights meant in this country and what
(34:57):
it would how how things should work, rather than how
they were working. And I think that kind of consciousness
raising was important, is important, and uh, we're but we're
seeing that as you said, you know, the human mind
tends to revert to certain prejudices, and you know, so
now we're but to encourage it at the especially at
(35:20):
the university level. I'm appalled by the administration of those schools,
who are you know, allowed the stuff to happen without
calling in the police. And because in the in the
days when there was resistance to integration of the universities
in the South the UH we certainly had National Guard,
state Police, all kinds of folks coming in to help
(35:42):
enforce the the integration of those schools. Now, it may
not have been pleasant for the for the first students
who came into one of those one of those schools
and faced all that prejudice, but you know, you you
would not know what today, uh, that that that had
been an issue, that it was as big as it
(36:03):
was back in the sixties.
Speaker 1 (36:05):
Yeah, you can look at let's just use the timeframe
of the last twenty five years since two thousand. You
go twenty five years back from nineteen sixty five and
it's nineteen forty. The amount of change, and you know,
twenty five years after nineteen sixty five is nineteen ninety.
(36:26):
The amount of change that took place in that period
is absolutely amazing, and it's something that you know, a
lot of these people who are complaining, they're not dumb people.
They have to know their history. When you look at
how other nations have self corrected and then how our
(36:48):
nation has self corrected, we've done so with less bloodshed
outside of the US Civil War than almost anybody else has.
Because you look at especially Martin Luther King's early marches.
They were done and this is very smart on their part,
(37:10):
but also I think it was legitimate. A lot of
affection for their nation and what was the common rephrase,
you know, live up to its own ideals. That's very
different than what we have seen in other places where
it is we'll use the George Floyd riots in especially Minnesota,
(37:35):
where these people consciously let the worst players burn their
city down for mostly political reasons. And you can have
civil protests without violence, which is why it's supposed to
be perfect example for those that aren't tracking. In the
Free State of Florida, were setting up what we call
(37:58):
the Alligator Alcatraz for illegal foreign nationals who are found
in Florida waiting deportation, where out in the middle of
the Everglades. They're going to be building a detention facility
for five thousand people. And they had some protesters out
there during the construction, and it's because things happen pretty
fast in Florida. It'll be built here by August. However,
(38:22):
all the protesters were by the side of the road.
They weren't blocking the road, because one in Florida, if
you block a road, the police will grab a collar
and pull you off. Plus the governor has come out
and said that somebody is blocking your road and you
perceive them to be a threat you can run through them.
(38:43):
So the protesters are doing peaceful protests by the side
of the road, letting their opinion know, but they're not
interfering with the lawful commerce of the state in the process,
where as you see in other places where that is
where these protests are taking place, and that's where you
(39:04):
get with your reward. You get less of what you
punish that peaceful protest. Redress agrievances. That's as important as
freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and everything else. But
it needs to be done within those proper, proper guidelines
and you'll get more of the right type of redress agrievances.
(39:25):
Which if you don't think having five thousand people surrounded
by alligators and pythons is what we should do with
people in the nation illegally, then that gives you an
opportunity to say you don't agree with it and maybe
come up with other options in the process. So we
can have this radical thing called civil discourse as opposed
(39:47):
to what we've seen in other places where cars are burned,
people are run over, given wood shampoos all the nine yards.
So by having the right contacts, the right structure, and
the rights civil leadership, people can do their constitutional right
(40:09):
to protest and redraft the agrievances. It can be done,
but it has to be encouraged, so to speak.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
Yeah, being somewhat older than you, I remember there was
a lot of violence committed against the Civil War civil
rights people, everything from the I don't know they saw
the movie Mississippi Burning, but the the the the civil
rights workers who got killed and buried in a levee
(40:38):
somewhere in I think it was Mississippi. The you know,
Medgar Evers got shot, Martin Luther King got shot, Bobby
Kennedy got shot, jfk got shot. Uh. You know, the
history of of moving that process forward, it was not
as gentle and genteel as we sometimes would like to
(41:01):
think we got there. It was a hard grow The
people who who brave that the threats, I think, uh
deserve special recognition for the courage they showed and and
the fortitude it took to to to move it forward.
It's it's a shame that they just might At the time,
(41:23):
the the theory was they wanted to be treated just
like everybody else, and that you know, how hard is
that a concept? And having grown up in the as
a military brat during that era. You know, we the
military had been integrated a long time before the rest
of the country got there. And you know it, I
never I never really thought about it because I you know,
(41:46):
had we had a wide variety of people that we
lived with, we we played with, we you know, coaches
on your sports teams, the other kids on the teams.
I mean, it was, it was, it was just the
way it was. I was quite shocked when I first
got back to States from being overseas that there were
(42:07):
still places. Of course it wasn't it was it was
in the in the late sixties, but there were still
a lot of and still is probably a lot of
bigotry that is totally uncalled for.
Speaker 1 (42:23):
But the thing that's nice nowadays is a lot of
that bigotry. People are so ashamed of it, people that
still have that in their heart, and civil society rejects
it so much that it's hidden. It's not out out.
Look at you little rock. When they opened up the
(42:44):
high school, that that open vitriol. People say, yeah, see
my face, I want to say the most vile things
in the world. That's one thing to loop back what
we were talking about before that. I still am having
trouble getting my head around five. We allow circumstances at arguably, though,
(43:05):
I think this is going to change our best schools.
We're talking about Cornell Harvard, Columbia, where our fellow citizens
who just happen to be Jewish are prevented from walking
around campus, they have to hide their identity. They have
their Hellll Center, and they're predominantly Jewish sororities, fraternities having
(43:33):
rocks thrown at them, having protests outside that should not
be happening and would not be tolerated if that was
being done towards predominantly African American fraternities are cultural centers
by the general student population and being permitted by administrators,
(43:54):
and it doesn't have to be I think. I don't
think we've talked about it here, but I'm really proud
of the University of Florida. There are more Jewish students
at the University of Florida than any other campus in
the US, And right after the events of the seventh
of October of twenty three, Chancellor former Senator Ben Sas
(44:18):
made it very well known that whatever is happening in
Columbia and elsewhere, it's not happening here in Gainesville, and
that created a culture where people that wanted to protest
one side or the other could do it. But besides
a couple of individual cases, there is no organized and
systemic threat to anybody who just happened to be Jewish
(44:39):
on that campus, and it isn't to this day when
you talk to the people who are there. So again
it goes back to leadership, expectations and enforcements. That creates
an atmosphere where people can exercise right A without impinging
on right B and definitely with out making people feel
(45:01):
like they're in physical danger. And that is something in
twenty twenty five that more parts of our civil society
need to hit the pause button and ask why we
have allowed this to take place, and why are we
giving a pass to people politicians in office and running
(45:24):
for office who have been part of that. That is
a conversation I want to see more of because I
was told we weren't going to allow this to happen
again in civil society, but we are. It just happens
to be at somebody else's time.
Speaker 2 (45:39):
Yeah, I'm always back in during the Vietnam War days,
if you were an ROTC student, you could be you know,
there was a lot of violence and discrimination against people
who were willing to serve the country, and so there
were bombings of Ratza unit, there were threats of not
(46:05):
just threats. I remember we at one time at in college,
we were doing on our ow GC can remember it
was a Memorial Day march or some it was something
that we were marching through campus and a bunch of
protesters that came up and tried to tried to interfere
with that, and they were not they were not peaceful protesters.
(46:28):
And one of our senior midshipmen at the time got
bopped by one of them, and he countered and just
late laid this guy out. But I mean, the point
is that a lot of these I wonder how many
of these people, especially since when you see all these
older people at these protests, various protests, uh, you know,
(46:51):
how many of them are reliving as we've talked about before,
we lived in their glory days when they were anti
anti Vietnam War protesters and and and the kind of
violence that that as you said, the the SDS there was,
I mean, who were the ones who blew themselves up
in a basement in New York City? I can't remember
who they were.
Speaker 1 (47:10):
I think that was a branch of SDS. That what
the weathermen, the weatherman, yeah, Bob President Obama's friend, Bob
Airs and those guys.
Speaker 2 (47:23):
Yeah. So, you know, I just to to a certain extent,
I'm sure there's a group of people who idolized those
those ancient protesters and and admire how they stood up
for their beliefs. But that was not the right way
to stand up for your beliefs. And and they wouldn't again,
they would not engage in debate, really they would. They
(47:44):
would prefer to to go blow up a Rozza unit
someplace then, or one of them, I mean one of
them they killed a guard, robbing what a banker or
a armored car something to get money to fund some
of their operations. I mean, that's just that's just thuggery.
Speaker 1 (48:03):
Yeah, we haven't quite reached that type of revolutionary cell action,
thank goodness. It's a little just disaggregated. I guess the
closest we have to it are the the paid Antifa
types that are that that are busted all over the
country to go be the cell. I'm reminded that over
(48:24):
in my hometown some of those imported guys tried to
get involved in one of our protests, but the local
sheriffs after day one and all these people disappeared because
they're either in jail, the hospital, or they got they
got out of town because they didn't want to wind
up in the jail or the hospital. But yeah, that
(48:45):
that's that's part of the sixties. I think you're right
that sometimes we forget that they the Summer of Love
had some bookends on either end that we were quite
bloody from a different direction, whether you're on the receiving
end and the bull Connors fire hose, which is why,
unlike Europe we don't use fire hoses for crowd control anymore,
(49:10):
or on on the other end, you were a cop
in a restaurant somewhere that got blown to bits by
a bomb placed by the SDS. So yeah, that that
we haven't reached that level, thank goodness, and hopefully hopefully
we won't, but we will see. I do think though,
(49:34):
victories have a way of calming a lot of seas.
And when you look on the national security front, where
we've we've done what a lot of people said you
couldn't do, which was to go in and punch our
rent in the face real hard and go back without
(49:55):
leaving any boots on the ground. Israel has held create
the conditions where Lebanon might be able to exert a
little more influence over its southern part, where has Blah
has been able to do as one to two for
a long time, there might be an ability to moderate
what's his name, Jo Nani Jolani, whoever's in charge of
(50:18):
Syria now. Egypt is not having anything to do with
Hamas and hasn't for a long time. Israel will find
some solution to Gaza at some way. I think we're
about to see phase two of the Abraham A. Gord's
breakout and one of the other things that have happened recently.
(50:39):
We've got the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda has
signed a treaty. There are millions of people have died there.
So there's a chance where if you continue to have
some successes, maybe that will not encourage people to be
the water in which the bad players swim.
Speaker 2 (51:02):
Yeah, and we could use the respite we need to.
As one of the people in the chat room says,
we need a strategic pause to allow us to rearm
and and get you know, we're going through the weaponry
faster than we we can afford to do it. We
(51:27):
also need to I'm hoping, as I said at the
start of the show, that that the the movement to
get the American shipping industry and the Navy back on
track for the number of ships and the number of
you know, the vital equipment we need. I hope that
that comes to pass and that we're getting back on stable,
(51:48):
stable ground.
Speaker 1 (51:50):
I still think we're it's hard to believe that. See
what is at the end of June, so the from
of Administrations only bit office five months. It seems like
couple of years. A lot's happened, So you know, there's
a lot that we still need to see. But that's
a great point. It'd be nice for the world to
give us an operational pause where we can have a
(52:14):
few years maybe where we now just do six months
deployments without disgorging a couple of replenishmentships worth of weapons
every time we go out. That we don't do nine
months eleven months deployments, we don't short cycle our DDGs,
(52:34):
and we can concentrate on reconstituting and rebuilding to get
rather for larger challenges as opposed to being held down
by a thousand little putins pulling us down. One thing
that I'm wondering about, though, is on the Navy side
(52:55):
of the house. We'll probably know more by the fall,
but how we get ready for the Pacific fight if,
as rumors are playing out, the FA xx is defunded,
if we don't build the FFG sixty two, the Constellation class,
(53:18):
if we're not going to do that, I don't know.
I don't know how you build the navy that we
need for the Pacific when we're canceling the programs that
can maybe imperfect, but they need to be displacing water
and making shadows on the ramp. I don't know how
you get from A to B. But you've heard me
say before. You know we're predominantly a maritime and aerospace power.
(53:39):
In the maritime, we keep slipping and falling down. I
haven't really gotten our grip, but I'll tap a hat
to our aerospace friends, the boys in Blue. They're having
a pretty good year so far. Right out of the bat,
they said we're going to build the F forty seven,
which still cracks me up. There it the forty seven,
(54:01):
but it is.
Speaker 2 (54:01):
What it is.
Speaker 1 (54:03):
And they have with the strike on Iran, with their
probably all of their fully mission capable B twos that
they have, they underline the fact that the B twenty
one needs to be fully funded, the utility of having
a global reach with heavy strike. That also is going
(54:27):
to give them a boost to buy more tankers because
they still have a museum quality tanker force, even though
we do have some more coming online. That they've caught
the moment right, and how we're postured right now to
not be involved in all these little battles all over
(54:48):
the place. The Air Force has been able to say, hey,
here's what we're being, here's what we're doing in the
new strategic environment. Help fund all of our stuff that
is going to enable that. Now I look over the
Navy side of the house and uh, it's like looking
(55:08):
at a VW this uh disassembled into his constituent parts
that five or six mechanics are running around trying to
put together all of a sudden. So I will I
will tip my hat to the boys in blue that
they've caught the moment right, I think, to to get
the funding that they need for the programs that they
(55:29):
believe is the best answer to the Pacific fight. So
you know, here's the you boys in blue. You better
to be lucky than good.
Speaker 2 (55:36):
Yeah, there's a there's a pretty good piece and uh
and uh on the us NI website about uh. It's
probably locked up about Fleet Admiral Ernest King, the Navy's pope,
and and he was trying he got he knew that
the Air Force was winning the pr battle uh during
(55:58):
World War two. And but so his an was to
host a bunch of of reporters, you know, for beer
and in his place and all that. Well, you know
that's not what the that was not what the Air
Force or Air Corps in those days was doing. So
they kind of stole the march on him. And here
we are again. You know that the Navy's doing all
this stuff and a lot of the the hard work
(56:20):
and being there all the time. The Air Force flies
in typical Air force, I mean my dad for the
Air Force officer, typical Air Force. They fly in, they
do their thing, and they go home. You know it's
that when right now we've got what five destroyers out
there on the med carry a couple of carriers. I mean,
it's still you know, we had we're a presence that is.
(56:41):
I don't like the presence mission, but exactly what it
is is a presence and that that is the job.
And we need to have enough ships so that that
job and people so that the job doesn't become harder
than it has to be. And that's you know, that's
where the Navy needs to to push for with these programs.
Speaker 3 (57:03):
Now.
Speaker 2 (57:04):
I don't know if the cancelation of these programs is
a serious thing or it is a shot across the
Navy's bow saying, you know, if you don't get your
act together, we are going to cancel these things because
we can't afford to have you thither and waste money. Again,
this is you know, if you had a history of
(57:24):
being productive and getting this job done on time, like
the Coastguard has done with their National Security cutters, we
might cut you some slack. But since you can't even
decide what you want on your ship while you're building it,
that you know that that can't last.
Speaker 1 (57:41):
We have not, we have not done a great job
last quarter century to prove people that we can competently
run programs. Yeah, there's blood in the water. There gets
one to hope. And I don't think we've talked about it.
But Admiral Caudle the nominee. I think I'm pronouncing his
name correctly. If not, somebody correct me in the uh
(58:02):
in the in the chat room, who's due to be
the next cn O. He's a submariner, and he's got
a heck of a lot of experience of command at sea,
and he hasn't been a professional staff weenie or anything
like that.
Speaker 3 (58:19):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (58:20):
I have people who I know, I've talked to him background,
I have kind of people giving me mixed reviews of him.
But uh, I think in the in the present moment,
he would not have been picked for the position if
he wasn't somebody that was going to kind of move
that needle, because goodness knows, there's there's nowhere nowhere to
go but to improve. I don't think are from a
(58:42):
program management point of view, we could we could get
much worse than we've already been the last quarter century.
And one thing about nukes and submariners, uh, they uh,
they like their like facts and they like math, and
they're they're able to look you straight in the eye
about performance because there's a very little room for error.
So I think it would be interesting to see what
(59:03):
his priorities are and what type of moves we see. Again,
we're not really going to see anything until the fall.
Goodness knows when the Senate is going to approve his nomination,
and then it takes a few months before you actually
start to seize the movement one way or another.
Speaker 2 (59:19):
Well, hopefully somebody is telling me good his you know,
his people together, get his act together and be ready
to and he ought to be working already. Uh, you know,
if you're going to be designated and you think they're
going to get the job, and you've got to hit
the ground running in that that needs to be done quickly.
(59:40):
You know, he's got I think he's got the experience.
I don't know enough about him, but we're at least
he's uh, you know, he's had Fleet Forces Command. He
understands a lot of the issues.
Speaker 1 (59:51):
I kind of I just just shared it on the
live stream, said a comment. It is true that at
Fleet Forces Command his most re an announcement, the good
Admiral was wearing his his algae flage the Navy's a
little green. There's no reason for a submarine or to
(01:00:11):
ever wear camo unless he is on the deck somewhere
doing a staff job in country next to an Army guy.
I really hope that we don't see him as Cno
wearing the Navy's little camouflage uniform one or another. I
will give one thing that I've enjoyed because occasionally I
(01:00:33):
make fashion comments because I like to be petty. I've
gotten a kick out of Chairman of Joint Chiefs General
Kine wearing his Air Force uniform because whereas the Navy's
been bouncing around uniforms all day long, the Army's gone
back to World War two's pinks and greens. The the
(01:00:57):
Air Force, blessed their heart, they have stuck with their
old Cold War Air Force uniform that they've kept it
so long as it's kind of making me think that
like the Marine Corps, it's not archaic, it's kind of
retro and self identifying. It's not look as it's an
outdated fashion statement. It's just tradition. So you know, the
(01:01:21):
Air Force probably is at the point now kind of
like the Marine Corps. They shouldn't change their uniforms now
because it used to be the Air Force uniform just
the blue version of the Army green one. Now it's
kind of unique and it kind of looks professional, and
maybe it has to do with the fact that he
was in the civilian world for a while. But I've
also noticed that General Caine, what do the Air Force
(01:01:45):
call their equivalent of our service stress blue, their their
blue uniform with the tie that's been tailored. He did
not buy that off the shelf, which are our senior
any field grade officer or above, though I did it
even as as a as a lieutenant. Get your unit
if you have. If you can't wear stuff off the rack,
(01:02:07):
that because very few people can go get them properly
tailored to fit right. So there's the fashion observation of
the day from.
Speaker 2 (01:02:15):
Well, no matter what we wear, we're going to be
better off than the space for us. I don't think
I've ever seen such a horrible collection of uniforms.
Speaker 1 (01:02:28):
They tried, they tried, they and we're already over over
an hour, and I appreciate everybody sticking with us. We
covered a little bit of of nautical and military stuff
at the end, but you know, Mark and I were
talking in the pre show that the other issues that
we spoke about most of the show, I think because
(01:02:48):
we haven't really covered it much like we have. But
I think we're at a moment in time mark that
you're you're exactly right that it deserves to be talked about.
Speaker 2 (01:02:58):
Yeah, I think it's. Yeah, we need to have a
long national conversation about this stuff and get our act
together and quite allowing people to go beyond acceptable limits.
People need to be put in jail. I mean, not
for free speech, but for for violence in the name
and then pretending it's free speech.
Speaker 1 (01:03:20):
Yeah, if you if you throw a brick at somebody,
you need to go to jail, and uh, you know,
spend spend some money on attorneys. And halfway halfway through
our discussion, I realized that, you know, hey, before July fourth,
it's actually not a bad topic to talk about. That's
what you know. July fourth is for we have a
(01:03:41):
unique experience with our republic that we have a lot
to be proud of. There's always things that could be improved,
and there have been times that we we could have
done better at the time, but we didn't, but we
self corrected. So be part of the self correction and
not part of the destruction, and be proud of the
those that help us improve through the generation. So there
(01:04:05):
there's a there that's another reason why. I'm glad we
covered the topic because July fourth is more about more
than the hot dogs and warm beer.
Speaker 2 (01:04:13):
Yeah. Wait, we really do need to appreciate our freedoms
and and appreciate how we how we keep those.
Speaker 1 (01:04:22):
And on that note, we will not have a show
next week, but we will be coming back this summer
and we'll have some guests, which is which is always
a plus. And I wish you and yours Mark a
great July fourth and everybody else as well. Oh, thank
you and you too, and that we also have dogs
in the background. That was a good July for the
(01:04:44):
official dog of the mid Rats podcast. And thank you
very much for joining us for another edition of mid Rats,
especially those in the chat room. I hope y'all all
have a great July fourth and a great Navy Day. Cheers.
Speaker 3 (01:05:05):
Molly Roy replies, worry Paddy, all like my lonely one
to marry me and to leave a friend of becardily
for you being to blame my love family to love
me sill faulting your tame.
Speaker 4 (01:05:28):
It's a long way to Dipper, It's a long way.
It's a long way to Dipper. Army to be Queen
gor B becdi.
Speaker 3 (01:05:49):
Farewell, leftwell, it's.
Speaker 4 (01:05:53):
A long long way to dinner, but my plum plum
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