09/23/09 – Brad Friedman – The Scott Horton Show

This is for my Focus, you've got grill.
This for my Focus, I'm on check one two.
This is for my Focus, never live like a hog...
Me and you toe to toe, I got love for the hick and the dog.
Alright, y'all welcome to the show.
Antiwar Radio CHAOS959 in Austin, Texas...
Streaming live world wide on the internet at chaosradioaustin.org and antiwar.com slash radio and I'm happy to have as a guest in studio today寰ad Freedman.
Host of the Brad blog, author of the Brad blog and world famous progressive activist.
Welcome, how are you doing?
I'm doing great Scott, great to be in studio with you.
Haven't seen you since, I think, 05 in Crawford, right?
2005, the summer of Cindy Sheehan.
Unbelievable summer, almost as hot today, no, not actually.
In LA, almost.
In LA, not even close man, that was an unbelievable summer.
I'm glad I was, how long were you there?
Oh, I only got to go up, I guess, three different days.
It was an amazing summer.
I know, you were camped out, you were hosting your radio show from there and really, you know...
On the ground, under the tent.
Bringing the turnout, bringing people out there from all over the country, you know.
Well they were showing up, all we were doing was trying to tell the real stories that was going on down there.
You know, I think the people that showed up to make that what it was never really got as much credit as they deserve for discrediting Bush and helping to turn American public opinion against that war.
Hurricane Katrina came and shut down the Cindy Sheehan movement, but at the same time, it also kind of proved what the Cindy Sheehan movement was saying about these Republicans.
You can't let them run this world, run this society, run any other one.
Well, you know, it was the folks at Camp Casey who headed straight down to Katrina to start helping them out.
There was a lot of vets down there.
Where all the extra food went, down to the Astrodome.
Yeah, that was the turning point, I think, and you're right, I think she hasn't gotten enough credit and that entire movement that happened there that summer hasn't gotten enough credit.
That was the moment when things changed, I think.
So I think it was really cool to be there.
Somewhere, I've got about 50 hours of radio in the archives that I've got to pull out.
That story needs to be told.
Yeah, that should all be online, man, for the archives.
I think that's Woodstock, frankly, for our generation, what went on those couple of weeks.
It was an important thing, man, a really important thing.
It was actually amazing, wasn't it, that it lasted that long until finally you weren't the jerk for being against these guys.
They were the jerks and you were right, and they would never give you credit, Brad Wood, for being right all along, but you're right now, okay, you're right.
All those teabaggers would have been down in Crawford.
Had things been reversed?
Had that been Obama's war?
And I'll tell you that...
Well, what if 2,000 or 3,000 hadn't drowned to death in New Orleans with Bush sitting there doing nothing when that's his one job, supposedly, in that circumstance?
I've got photos on the Brad blog the day, I think it was the day after the flooding had already happened.
I've got photos of Karl Rove in Crawford, back-slapping, glad-handing with these anti-protesters that were there to protest Cindy, smiling, laughing, and people were drowning down there in New Orleans.
It's amazing.
And there was Karl Rove hanging out, driving around in a pickup truck.
I've got a theory about that, by the way.
You know, the famous rapper guy or whatever said that Bush doesn't care about black people, but...
Kanye West, yeah.
I think the bottom line there is Bush doesn't care about civilians.
Bush doesn't care...
You know, the whole program there with the FEMA...
Bush doesn't care...
It's not that FEMA wasn't there, it's that FEMA was assuring continuity of government.
It wasn't their job to rescue people from their attic.
So they didn't fail at rescuing people from their attic, that wasn't their job.
That was like 10th thing on the list.
The first thing was making sure that there's still the government around here and all this stuff, and that might take five days while you're drowning to death.
Well, when you say he doesn't care about civilians, I'd say he also doesn't care about the military.
He cares about corporations.
He cares about keeping money in his pocket.
That's what it comes down to.
Did you see the thing in the Post about how he's enjoying being retired guy?
All these people still dying in his disasters all over the world.
He's just kicking back.
Doesn't live in Crawford, never did.
That was just a prop for the 2000 campaign, which they admitted at the time it wasn't a secret.
So now he lives in the big city, of course.
Some people fell for it.
It worked for a while.
Well, these chumps, these same chumps who are out there now, the teabaggers, complaining about destroying the Constitution, what Obama is doing and this and that, it's unbelievable to watch the hypocrisy.
Seeing what they're doing with this acorn nonsense, for example, complaining about these bad apples of acorn.
We've got to defund the entire organization.
What about the bad apples at Abu Ghraib?
Yeah, you're talking about a couple tens of millions of dollars there or something, right?
We didn't defund what happened at Abu Ghraib.
We haven't defunded Blackwater, Halliburton, where people were actually killed by the low-level bad apples at these organizations.
I should try to add in here, though, that there's a major contingent of libertarians and Ron Paul-type conservatives who are trying to, you know, this sort of was their thing.
That's where the Tea Parties came from, was the Ron Paul money bomb for peace and liberty and sound money, and then Tom DeLay and these kind of right-wing fascist types, the red state fascists, as LeRocco calls them, they're trying to take over this thing, and they're probably successfully taking it over with Glenn Beck and all that, but there are a lot of good people out there who actually did love liberty the whole time and were anti-government just as much when Bush was in power.
And they ought to be in there.
And they were against his wars, the Patriot Act, and the rest of that.
And those cats, and I know, because I was on the air, I had Ernie Hancock, you know, Ernie from Arizona, had him on the air, I think he says he designed the Lovolution logo, and he brought a gun out to the Obama event in Phoenix, and I said, Ernie, what the hell are you thinking?
He's like, oh, we're seeing the same thing we saw with Clinton, and so we've got to fight back.
You don't.
You need to be protesting these jackasses who sat out for the last eight years, did nothing, showing up now, acting like they give a damn about the Constitution, acting like they give a damn about big government.
They don't care about that.
And so they co-opt that movement.
So when, you know, the Ron Paul folks throw in with those guys, I think they're being had.
I think they're letting them co-opt that movement.
They ought to be protesting the teabaggers, as far as I'm concerned.
I think that the line in there is still pretty bright.
I think a lot of the Ron Paulians want to try to lead these teabagger dudes, and toward some consistency, because after all, we can't get liberty without, you know, super majorities of people wanting it.
I mean, if we want peace and freedom, we've got to be able to accept right-wingers who are willing to admit that they gave Bush and Emway too much carte blanche, and that they wish they hadn't.
But they're not doing that.
Well, and I think that there's a point, as Jim Ostrowski said, that he wants to try to lead this Tea Party thing as much as he can.
But if it can't be done, and the results will be in very soon, and maybe they already are in, then we need to go ahead and completely break apart from it, and make sure that nobody in this society could possibly be under the misunderstanding that libertarianism is what Glenn Beck says.
Because that is the furthest thing from the message of the libertarian movement in this country now.
Well, you know, two thoughts.
There's somebody in that movement who stands up, bitching about, you know, big government, destroying the Constitution, but who is not willing to call for accountability to the guys who did this for the last eight years.
They're pretenders.
They're liars.
They have no idea what the Constitution is about, and, you know, I think they've had their chance.
I think they've been given their chance.
Well, and speaking of that, we have a perfect litmus test right here, Brad.
The litmus test is there's an investigation right now into torture under the reign of Dick Cheney, and it's already been trial-ballooned out into the media that they've already weeded out all of the torture claims, and they're only looking now at a few cases where people were tortured to death.
And so here's the perfect opportunity for the right-wing Glenn Beck rule of the Constitution crowd to stand up behind Eric Holder and tell him he is doing the right thing, only not enough.
We need more so here.
And, in fact, this is a great segue into the real discussion here.
Philip Giraldi on my show complained that the torture investigations are too narrow.
It is not right to go after, again, for the first time here, Phil's a former CIA agent, and he says it's not right to go after just the low-level guys, but would he like to see David Addington and John Yoo and perhaps Dick Cheney and the rest of the cabinet in the dock for war crimes?
Hey, if they committed them, let's convene a grand jury.
Let's do it right now.
And that is a real conservative point of view right there.
If the rule of law is the rule of law, then let's have, you know, Judge Napolitano, the Fox News judge, said Bush and Cheney ought to be on trial.
Absolutely.
Tortures against the law.
They admitted they tortured people.
Sorry.
I mean, he's a judge, right?
He's one of these guys who just lives and breathes and sleeps.
He didn't say it on Glenn Beck's show, I have a feeling, or if he did, yeah.
But it was on TV, though.
It wasn't just on the internet.
It was on his own little special Judge Napolitano's minute.
He said that Bush and Cheney ought to be on trial.
Well, they should be.
There's no question about it.
And you're right.
This is a conservative position.
This is why it drives me crazy when I read about bradblog.com, that it's a lefty blog.
You're a liberal.
You're a Democrat.
It's ridiculous.
I'm talking about the rule of law, the Constitution.
I'm talking about those very things that conservatives used to act like they believed in.
And if they're not willing to stand up and ask for that now, even for the accountability for the past eight years, then to hell with them.
They're liars.
Well, especially the same time they're out in the street talking about how the Constitution limits the power of the state to do whatever it wants when the Democrats are in power.
But so when the Democrats are in power, yeah, yeah.
So so let's get into, well, hell, you know, I kind of before we get into the subellum and saying I want to explore this left right thing some more, because, see, I'm of the opinion that what we need is a real realignment in this country.
It's my ultimate frustration that liberalism and conservatism in general are basically half libertarian philosophies.
And then liberalism and conservatism both pretty much abandon libertarianism, which I consider the real kind of ideological air of the Declaration of Independence.
And they abandon those for these different things, different sets of agendas, not too different that they want the state to do to everybody.
And it seems to me like when we have the left and the right and the so-called middle is dominated by Lindsey Graham and John McCain, right, you know, liberal middle, yeah, Lindsey McCain.
Yes.
Yes.
Joe Lieberman.
Yes, they are.
They they are the so-called moderates.
Right.
Because they're for everything.
And what I want to see is a new realignment where we understand this left right spectrum in at least, you know, X, Y axis here, where Lindsey Graham and John McCain and Joe Lieberman and all these centrists, the conservative Democrats, blue dogs, you call them right.
And the liberal Republicans and whatever the so-called moderates are, we define them as what they really are.
The extremists.
Yeah, they are the enemies of our liberty.
They are the bailouts.
They are the drug wars.
They are piles of dead Afghans and Somalis and Iraqis.
They are what's wrong with this country.
So what we need is to come to a new understanding, not where you, you know, become exactly like me and decide to become exactly libertarian or where the American conservative magazine audience becomes exactly libertarian like me, but where libertarianism is the new real center.
And what we have in common, what I share in common with the American conservative magazine crowd and what I share in common with you is what we are against, what we want the government to stop doing immediately, like kidnapping, torturing, murdering people, invading people's countries, spending trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars that we all know that they don't have, you know, that's going to destroy our currency and our economy, etc.
We can come, I think Obama would be doing a hell of a lot better right now if he was just trying to undo stuff instead of trying to accomplish a bunch of stuff.
Well, all of the things that you're talking about, these things, that is the center.
That is the middle as far as I'm concerned.
You're dealing with, the problem is when you talk about left, right and conservative liberal, you're dealing with a phony paradigm to start with, okay?
This whole right, left, red, blue, conservative, liberal paradigm is phony.
It's set up to divide people in the first place, and pardon me, but set up by Republicans to divide people because it ends up working better for them, or at least so they think.
A conservative, I can tell you what conservatism is.
I can tell you what real conservatism is.
You don't see it a lot.
You do see it over at places like the American Conservative Magazine, but it's going out of fashion real quick.
Liberalism, have no clue what that means.
I understand liberal interpretations of law and constitution, but that's not what it's, when they paint people as, oh, you're a liberal, that's not what they're talking about.
They're saying, oh, you don't agree with me, you're a Democrat, you're not, and culture essentially.
It's a phony paradigm for a start.
There's a hell of a lot of different kinds of liberals, too, right?
You do have your outright socialists and communists, you have your progressives, and you have your sort of moderate, more wishy-washy liberal types.
Socialists and communists aren't even on the map, Scott.
Those are my favorite, right?
Because those are the ones who hate the Democrats.
They may be, but they're not even on the map.
When you talk about what is considered to be the left or the liberals, they're talking about incredibly, quote-unquote, moderate Democrats, Republican-lite.
There is no left, and I play, when I'm on the air, my theme song is Stuck in the Middle with You, because I feel that I am stuck in the middle.
That's why I talk about progressivism, actually, which I think, for me, is an idea that works, because a lot of people have said, oh, progressivism is just a new word for liberal.
I disagree.
I think that there's a lot of liberals out there who want to say they're progressives, but the fact of the matter is, progressivism goes back to Teddy Roosevelt, who was a Republican and then became the founder of the Progressive Party.
He was a Republican, and yet he did things like set aside the national park system, busted the trusts, things that you would think would be characterized today as far-left liberal socialist communist ideas.
They weren't.
They were progressive ideas.
That's where I am.
I'll stand with Teddy Roosevelt on this one, but this right-left, red-blue paradigm is utter and complete nonsense.
We shouldn't refer to these guys as conservatives.
George Bush is not a conservative.
They are radicals.
They're radical rightists, especially if we're talking Dick Cheney and David Attington.
They were very liberal policies, neoliberal policies.
They grew the government.
George Bush grew the government like crazy.
Talk about his interpretation of the Constitution.
You want to talk about liberal?
Look at Alberto Gonzales sitting in Congress telling us that the right to habeas corpus doesn't really exist, only the right to not have it taken away.
Some insane liberal interpretation of this Constitution.
Big government completely ignoring the Equal Protection Amendment and using that to say gay people can't get married.
The conservative position on marriage equality is allow everyone to get married, equal protection under the law.
That's the conservative position.
I like the way you think, man, because the point is you get at the truth by taking these very misleading terms and beating everybody over the head with them in different directions.
I like to say Bush was a socialist, Obama's a fascist.
It's the same difference to a bunch of dead Somalis, and it's the same difference to a bunch of American taxpayers having their savings inflated right out from under them, etc.
Ultimately, what we're talking about is big business and big government together at war permanently.
This is like the real crux of the matter to me, is on your whole list of progressive agenda items, including protecting Yellowstone and whatever else.
What's the most important?
For me, the most important thing, number one, is bringing the troops home from everywhere on earth, and then number two is the first ten amendments to the Bill of Rights.
It's as simple as that, end of that.
That includes the ninth and the tenth amendments, too.
If we don't have our Bill of Rights, that's it, right?
Your great, great grandkid ain't going to have one.
If we don't have one by the time we're dead, he certainly isn't going to have this one, and this is pretty superior to most of the Bill of Rights people have around, and it's already on its last legs.
This is where I kind of think that every other issue ought to just go to the background.
No matter what you think about country and rock and roll, no matter what you think about abortion, no matter what you think about religion, no matter what you think about healthcare, no matter what you think about anything, we have got to fix our position, our relationship with the rest of the world, and we've got to save our Bill of Rights, or we're done.
I think we're pretty much like Wile E. Coyote teetering off the edge of the cliff here, a strong wind, and we're dead.
None of these things can happen, and this is, again, going back to what I consider to be the progressive position.
None of the things you talk about, the changes you're talking about, can happen until you get the corporations the hell out of our government, until you end corporate personhood, okay?
In the bargain, you end up reforming the media, and I think you and I, we've gone back and forth via email about that, disagreeing a little bit about that, and I, you know.
That'll be a fun issue to explore another time, I promise.
Yeah, I agree with you.
You're right to be wrong on that, but the point is, you know, the corporations have no business doing what they're doing, and as long as they are in the game, all of that litany of things you just mentioned ain't going to change, or it's going to be very damn difficult to get them to change.
You've got to get them out, get them out of corporate personhood, get them out of elections, so that we can restore what you're talking about, oh, the Constitution to this country.
What if we just abolished the state entirely, then all those corporations would go out of business if they had to compete in free market?
Abolish the state?
Yeah.
That way, all those guys would go out of business without all their giant welfare payments that they get.
The corporations that you're talking about.
Yeah.
You're saying abolish the government?
Yeah.
I mean, isn't the problem here the power to abuse, right?
I mean, do you really expect that one day we're going to have a Congress of 535 people that aren't a bunch of sick, big, fat, bald, corrupt, millionaire front men for Lockheed?
Yes, I do.
If we get the corporations out.
And you can do that by doing away with corporate personhood, and things change.
No, I don't want to do away with the state.
I think, actually, we have a damn good Constitution, frankly.
And I guess when you talk about doing away with the state, you're talking about doing away with the Constitution.
I think the Constitution works real damn well if only we bother to follow it.
Now, see, this is very close to my view.
It was my view for a long, long time, but I just got sick of making excuses for them.
I just can't deal anymore.
Have you ever read Lysander Spooner, Brad?
I have not.
I think you'll get a kick out of it.
You had mentioned Obama as a fascist, and I didn't even get to respond to that, but about the way the corporations, and again, it's not Obama here.
It's government.
It's just taken for granted now, and it is a fact that you cannot run for office unless you have corporate sponsorship.
And until that changes, this mess is going to continue, and as, you know, going back to the earlier part of our conversation, none of this is going to change.
You've got to get the corporations the hell out of our business.
Yeah, well, and it kind of really goes all around and around, because ultimately what you and I are describing as this kind of, you know, almost even semi-new problem that we're dealing with, or whatever, you know, in Chapter 3 of my 7th grade history book, it was called Henry Clay's American System, Welfare for Rich People and Permanent Warfare.
And that's what the Constitution was really made to do.
It was made to protect Hamilton's friends by socializing their costs onto the rest of the people and consolidating power, you know, for the Massachusetts set, the New York set.
And it was a Republican who tried, anyway, to warn about that, Eisenhower and the military industrial complex, which was originally, I'm told, the military industrial congressional complex.
And apparently they got him to remove the word congressional.
Well it made him sound a bit imperial, criticizing Congress from the position of the presidency, right?
And saying that, you know, he could have called it the presidential complex, too, for that matter.
For whatever reason it was, he was right on the money in trying to warn about that.
Well, you know, the teabaggers out there today, you know, didn't listen to him.
And they allowed what happened to happen, and I don't hear them calling for the end of corporations in the way that they've, you know, taken over the country.
I was watching, the weekend of the 9-12 demonstration out there in D.C., I was watching Glenn Beck.
And he was talking about how he needs to find, what was his, whatever nonsense scheme he had, you know, to find 52 members of Congress who are willing to go against their own party and to stand up for everything that's gone wrong.
And I'm looking at him as he's trying to find what the problems are that are going on here.
I'm sitting here, thinking in the back of my head, well, I'm wondering, how long is it going to take him to notice that the bad guys here are the corporations?
And is he ever going to say that out loud?
Because when he does, it goes against everything that Fox News and Rupert Murdoch and that entire establishment stands for.
Is he going to have the courage to call out the real villains here, the corporations?
And I'll bet you dollars to donuts, he don't got that courage.
Well, let me ask you this, and I know that you've got to get going here pretty soon.
But just to wrap it up, if it was 2012, would you support someone like Ron Paul, who's a libertarian who puts peace and the Bill of Rights first, and of course has always been and has a perfect record of always being 100% opposed to all welfare for rich people his entire existence?
I think he's also opposed to welfare for poor people, too.
That's only kind of half-true.
If you remember in the campaign of 07 and 08, and if you even listen to him now, he'll say, look, I know you're going to have some kind of single-payer something, but at least bring the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan and Korea and Italy, at least that way we can pay for it.
Oh, he was absolutely right on the money on that, no question.
He certainly wants to end the empire.
And then his thing for Social Security is he wants to let people who are 24 and younger opt out now, if they want, and not threaten the payments for anybody else.
I don't think that's a good idea.
Yeah, but is it a bad idea enough that you would re-elect somebody like Barack Obama or support a Democrat or somebody else like that if Ron Paul could actually win?
I'm going back to this whole realignment thing, because I think that the places where you and I are different are really, there are very fine points that need to be further investigated or whatever.
But ultimately, I like to believe that you and I see eye-to-eye on enough of what's wrong with this country and what needs fixing in this country and how much of an emergency it is that somebody like you and most of the people who would tend to believe like you would think that, you know what, Ron Paul's not just like me, he doesn't represent just like me.
Sure, I like the idea of young kids opting out of Social Security or whatever, but you know what?
I really like the whole troops home from everywhere on earth position and the, you know, no more billionaire bailouts, no more corporate welfare, no more bankers on our dime.
I mean, isn't that good enough to make that compromise, to move a little bit from your spot to over where he is?
In truth, well, you actually, you don't know where my spot is and if I, how close I am to that, that's absolutely true, but I tend to think from a lot of the things you say that you're, you may not be as far as you might think you are, but then again, maybe you think you're right next to him.
As far as from what?
From Ron Paul's position?
Yeah, for example.
No, I may not be as far as you think I am from his position.
So I'm not talking about, so my position doesn't matter, frankly, and I don't tend to talk about, you know, who I may or may not support, but I will make, I will pledge you this.
I will fight like hell in 2012 if he decides to run, just as I did back in 2008, for his right to be in the debate and to be a legitimate part of the debate, to have proper coverage in the media, you know, on the stage, you know, to have the same number of minutes given to him.
I'll also fight for that same right for other people who were denied that, folks like Dennis Kucinich, you know, and so I will fight for his right to a fair fight in a democracy.
And guys like him did not get a fair fight in this democracy.
Guys like Dennis Kucinich did not get a fair fight in this democracy.
And by the way, I don't work for Ron Paul, and I don't care about electoral politics at all.
I'm actually, I'm only asking because I'm trying to feel out this, where this space is and where these differences are, you know.
I believe in democracy, and I believe that, you know, that every vote, every legal voter should be able to vote and have that vote counted and counted accurately, and that we need a level playing field if democracy is actually going to exist.
We don't have that.
I will fight for that, and I will fight for it, frankly, whether it's Ron Paul, I'll fight for it for John McCain, I'll fight for it for Mike Huckabee if they're getting screwed, you know, because of the way the system works.
Democracy doesn't work unless we have a fair and level playing field.
Right now, we don't have that, and that's why guys like you and I in the alternative media are trying to level the playing field and trying to give these guys their proper due and their proper time and let the voices be heard.
And one more thing I'll do, I will remind all of your listeners who talk about wasting a vote because they vote for Ron Paul or anybody else, you know, you do not get a prize if you select the winner.
It's not a contest.
Isn't that like some kind of incredible insight?
I'm sorry, but it really is.
I mean, I got over this, I used to feel this way when I was like seven or eight years old.
I remember cheering for whichever team I found out was winning after walking into the room in the middle of a football game.
Who's winning?
Oh, okay, I'll root for him.
It didn't take me much longer than, you know, seven or eight to realize that actually, that's not good for anything, and I'm not we, and I don't have nothing to do with what they did today, and I can celebrate for them, but not with them, and it's a bunch of crap.
Why is it that people, grown adults, still think that voting for the guy that won means they guessed right, like it's a trivia contest.
Who do you think is going to win is who to vote for, and then if you guessed right, then you get crackerjacks.
It goes back to where you and I started talking earlier today.
It's the left-right, the Republican-Democratic paradigm.
It's a phony paradigm.
It is rigged to keep Republicans and Democrats in the system only, and I would argue help Republicans ultimately, but, you know, it keeps out all of the other voices, all of the other people.
You do not waste your vote when you vote for the person who you believe should win that office, and by the way, if it happens to be a third-party person in a federal race, that party gets more money in the subsequent election, you know, based on how many people voted for them in the previous election.
So that's not a waste of a vote.
Vote Libertarian, vote Green, vote whatever you want, because it helps those parties in the future.
So that ain't a wasted vote.
What's a wasted vote?
Oh, living in a state like California, where Barack Obama is going to win no matter what, and voting for Barack Obama.
That sounds like a wasted vote to me, but what do I know?
All right, everybody, that's Brad Friedman.
Check out the Brad blog at, you guessed it, bradblog.com.
Thanks very much for your time.
I really appreciate it, man.
Great sitting down with you, my friend.