Sorry, I'm late.
I had to stop by the Whites Museum again and give the finger to FDR.
We know Al-Qaeda, Zawahiri, is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al-Qaeda in Syria?
It's a proud day for America.
And by God, we've kicked Vietnam syndrome once and for all.
Thank you very, very much.
I say it, I say it again, you've been had.
You've been took.
You've been hoodwinked.
These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as fact.
He came, he saw, he died.
We ain't killing they army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN like, say our name, bitch, say it, say it three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
All right, you guys, introducing Thomas R. Edlum, and he is the author of the new book.
I don't know how new it is.
I think it's new.
A Rogue's Sedition.
His website is T. Edlum.
That's L-E-M at the end.
T-E-D-D-L-E-M.blogspot.com.
Well, just search for Tom Edlum.
You'll find it.
And listen, he wrote this really important thing that we ran on antiwar.com yesterday.
The immigration bigotry war nexus.
And we're going to get into that in just a minute here.
But first, welcome to the show.
How are you doing?
Hey, thanks, Scott.
I'm doing great.
How are you?
Cool.
I'm doing really well.
It turns out this is interview 4,999.
And coming up next will be 5,000.
Gareth Porter, of course, for number 5,000.
So I'm celebrating that.
And also, I'm celebrating...
Oh, I'm sorry, what?
I said it's quite an accomplishment.
Oh, well, thank you very much.
I appreciate that.
Your check's in the mail there.
But you won't be getting a check, although you deserve something.
I'll give you gratitude for your excellent forward to the brand new book, The Other Best News in the World This Week, is the publication of the book No Quarter, The Ravings of William Norman Grigg, your very good friend and mine, and former managing editor of the Libertarian Institute, of course, co-founder of it with me and Sheldon.
And this is a book that you guys together, I guess, you've been helping him edit and put it together for a little while there before he died two years ago, right?
Well, actually, I didn't have anything to do with it until he died.
He had put it together, and he'd put the project in the hands of Darren Williams, who got married and had kids, and things happened, and it got put aside for a couple of years.
And then when he died, Darren gave me a call and said, hey, would you write it forward?
I said, sure.
And I gave the book an editorial pass as well.
And then I said, gee, you know, maybe we should give the Libertarian Institute a chance to publish it.
And we consulted with Will's family, and they agreed.
So you have published a wonderful book.
It's Will Grigg, off the chain.
The guy was a genius and far and away the best writer of our lifetime.
We're about the same age.
I'm a little older than you.
But he could put together a masterpiece in just a few hours.
And this has got 65 different essays in it, and every one is unbelievable.
And you will laugh, you'll get enraged, you'll probably want to weep at some of the things that he has in the book.
But his perspective is just unique.
I mean, the only historical comparison I could make is H.L. Mencken or G.K. Chesterton.
He had those kind of witticisms in his writing.
And they came naturally to him.
As you know, having worked with him, they just came off the cuff in his speech.
And I just feel privileged to have known him, and I'm glad to have written the foreword for a couple of his books.
Yeah, I got to tell you, man, I just was never – I never stopped being impressed, not just by his language, his prose, and as you say, the way he spoke.
You can tell he just actually really did think and speak in, you know, every word the English language has available.
At some point, he was using that to reach the proper nuance of what he was really getting at in a way that just blows all the rest of us away, our whole libertarian movement.
There's nobody that compares to that.
But then also it was his historical knowledge, too.
He just knew everything about everything.
You know, not just about liberty and American history, and of course everything about totalitarianism in the 20th century and all those things.
And I know you know this a lot better than I do, but he just seemed to know the history of every country that ever was a country, whether it currently is or not.
And I remember him just breaking off and like, you know, in the year 900 and something in what we now call Eastern Hungary, there was a kingdom where blah, blah, blah.
And it's just like, gee, it's like he was there for everything that ever happened.
Can you tell me where he learned all that stuff?
Well, he wasn't in college.
I mean, you know, he had a four-year degree, but he wasn't a PhD.
He was a voracious reader.
I worked a little bit of background for the listeners.
I worked with him at the New American Magazine from about 1993 to 2000.
We had offices right next to each other, and his office was constantly a pile of books that he had read unbelievably quickly, and he was just cycling through books.
I wrote in the foreword that his one materialistic aspect of Will Grigg was he just loved books, and as long as he had a few books to spend on books, he was a happy man.
And, you know, his office was a pigsty.
I mean, it was just, you know, piles and piles of books and newspaper clippings and stuff, but he could put together an essay.
He could just converse with people who wanted great conversation.
It was just such a pleasure, and, you know, I feel privileged to have, you know, worked beside him for, what was it, like seven years, so that's that.
Yeah, well, and I'm really glad, too, that you wrote this foreword.
I mean, there's no one who could have done a better job of writing what's essentially a biography of Will, the story of his life and what he was about, and as you put it, you know, in his professional career, the rise, rain, and fall of the New American, and then after that, which was my favorite, but still, I mean, I started reading him in 95, 96 or something at the New American, and he stayed there through most of 2006, I think, was when he finally left, right?
So there's a lot of history there, and, yeah, and, you know, about this book, I think, you know, in the later part of his career, he's known more for all the great anti-cop stuff and the bogus charges and the police brutality and all these kinds of things.
He made such a heroic case on all that stuff, but as shown in this book, he never stopped writing about all kinds of different subjects, and he was just absolutely untouchable on questions of war and peace, all the different ones, and all the different wars and all that they mean, and so many other different aspects of the police state and surveillance and all the different stuff going on there.
You know, the book, as a selection of essays, I think it's really unique in the way that I'm at least willing to predict that it'll really stand the test of time as really showing as a prime example of what the libertarian movement was about in the early 21st century, you know?
Oh, for sure.
I mean, and it was great because even though, you know, after 2006, he did focus more on the police issue, and I could just picture him today.
I mean, you know, my wife was watching that Netflix series about the Central Park Jogger, Now They See Us, and he would have been right on top of that.
He probably already was.
Somewhere there's probably an essay of him talking about the Central Park Jogger, and how the police had railroaded these kids.
I mean, you know, some of these essays were the kind of essays you read them, and you almost want to go to the nearest police station and burn it down, even if you liked police before.
But he had so much, you know, in this selection, there's so much breadth.
I mean, it's not all just anti-police stuff.
There's a wide variety of topics, and I like that about the book because it's not focused on one thing because he was, as you had pointed out, he was so broadly read and so informed about so many different issues and countries and policies, and it was just amazing.
He's the one great genius that I've personally known, and with that came some of the other things that I've known about geniuses.
He had certain struggles in just the simple things of life, like keeping himself fashionably dressed or keeping a neat office.
I mean, his office was a piling system, and there were food wrappers and all kinds of different things that had nothing to do with the office in and among the things in his office, and he needed sort of a minder for the simple things because he was doing so much of the more advanced thinking.
Yeah, well, I could certainly see that, and yeah, it's really too bad.
He was only 52 years old when he died two years ago, right?
I think he was 54, but he was very young.
He was in his 50s.
He was a couple years older than me, and I'm 53 now, so I think he was 54, but obviously that's way too young, whether it's 52 or 54.
And of course, from my perspective, that's really too young, but yeah, to have such a brilliant life and a brilliant career cut short by illness is tragic, and this book, Will, will be used courtesy of the Libertarian Institute.
All the proceeds go to the family, so it'll help Will's family.
When he died, he had a wife that was unable to support herself.
She had health issues and six children, five of whom were younger.
I mean one was 19 at the time, but even still, kids at 19, I know from my kids, they still need help and assistance and parental guidance.
He's a great kid, William Wallace Grigg, Will's son.
He's a great kid, but boy does he have a lot on his shoulders here.
And I don't know how much it'll ever amount to, but you're right.
It is a fact that this money is going directly to the Grigg family.
It's not stopping at the Libertarian Institute on the way there or anything.
So for what it's worth, it should help them a little bit.
Yes, and a little bit has gone a long way.
After Will left the New American staff in 2006, he had a tough time finding employment.
I mean he worked for the John Birch Society, which is a pariah among the political right and the political left.
I mean it's tough to find a job.
I was very lucky.
I mean I found a job as a newspaper editor and later as a high school teacher, but it can be a struggle.
He also had the added responsibility of being the caretaker not just of his six children, but also of his wife, so he couldn't leave the house.
So basically when his blog went up, which is freedominourtime.blogspot.com, and it's still up there as a legacy, he almost could have put on the contribution button, your tips are my salary, because he really had very little to go on.
I mean there were some friends who were willing to help him.
That was why I founded the Libertarian Institute in the first place, was we've got to find a way to just make this a team and an official thing, and we'll raise money for the Institute and give this guy a job, and hopefully one day it'll pay me a penny too.
But more than anything else, that was the reason I created the thing, and I kicked myself for not having thought of that a long time ago.
Of course, me and Will and Sheldon, it's perfect, you know?
Just didn't last.
That's a great starting trio, that's for sure.
I'm telling you, man.
Sheldon Richman is great, and Will, he's a legend.
Now his legacy will echo louder, I think, as the years go on.
But he was certainly, anyone who met him personally will know, gee, this guy has so much on the ball and can think through a problem to its conclusion so quickly and come up with just the perfect solution and perfect reply and say it perfectly using the best words that could be used for it, not sort of a Trump get around to fumble through it.
He just spoke in complete sentences in a way that I don't.
I mean, I'd like to think I'm a fairly good speaker.
I'm getting dumber and dumber over here all the time, I've got to admit.
I used to speak in sentences, I think, and I can't even get a few words in a row out, but anyway.
I was having an issue with, you know, I was trying to talk about my wife's meatloaf the other night, and I said, that, that, that, and she goes, that, that, that, and I said, yeah, I had a stroke, okay?
It's pretty bad when you might as well have, you know?
Well, that's it.
I mean, and he had so many little slogans.
I was just trying to think them up before you called, and he just had just little things that he had put together, like government is the only profession where you can fail upwardly.
So give us more power.
You know, when we were talking about immigration shortly before he died, he said, nothing can get a conservative to defend the sustainability of the welfare state faster than an immigrant getting welfare.
You know, he used terms, even like as soon as he started, he would talk about, you know, beer-swallowing frat boys and chair moisteners and donut-laden police, and he just had so many little things.
I mean, I would tell your readers, go and get the book right now.
Right now, I guess, both the print and the Kindle are available on Amazon.
You got it.
They're up there now.
There's links at LibertarianInstitute.org, of course.
Very soon there will be banner ads all over ScottHorton.org and LibertarianInstitute.org, and of course at the Libertarian Institute and at my Twitter, which is now run by a guy named Tim.
So I'm not really back on Twitter, but my Twitter account is back on Twitter.
You can find the links there.
And as you say, Kindle and paperback versions are available now.
And hey, this is a call out to all the libertarian radio hosts and podcasters and writers out there to, well, first of all, for you hosts, to interview Tom Edlum about Will Grigg and about this great book.
And once you read the thing, once you even start it and read the great forward, the biography of Will at the beginning and start getting into this book, you're going to want to talk to Tom.
And I'm happy to do it, too.
I'm available to talk about this.
I'm a proud publisher of this book, believe me.
But Tom is really Will's best friend from the days and really has the best story to tell.
And for getting the genius here and everything, it'd really be a great help to Will's family if we could really make this an event and really make this a thing where the libertarian movement comes out.
You know, we really do miss Will that much.
We want to read him one last time here in this fashion and really make a show of that.
I think that'd be great.
Don't you think that'd be great?
What a great narrative.
Yeah, all the libertarians bought that book and they all told each other to buy it and read it.
And that was the thing that happened in the year 2019.
You know, that's what I want.
Yeah, I mean, Will would say, he would jokingly say, buy it and keep it with you all the time, even when you swim.
That was one of his lines about indispensable books.
So, yeah, absolutely.
You know, to promote this and just if you buy it, you'll get it.
You'll get why we're promoting this.
Oh, it's so good.
It's so good.
Yes.
Yeah.
Hang on just one second.
Hey guys, did I ever tell you about LibertyStickers.com?
It's just nothing but anti-government propaganda for the back of your truck.
I invented most of them, the good ones anyway.
Anti-war stuff, anti-cops, making fun of all the candidates in the upcoming election.
LibertyStickers.com.
All right.
So listen, let's talk about some more business here because you wrote this really important thing.
I really want people to read about it.
It is, again, it's at AntiWar.com, and it's the immigration bigotry war nexus.
And you talk about, well, you start with the polls about what Americans think and feel about Arabs and Muslims here.
So why don't you start with that here?
Oh, well, I just talk about how there is this, basically, the average American has a perception of Muslims and Arabs, which they see as almost synonymous.
There's some knowledge of it as watching Chuck Norris movies, and they're always the bad guy, they're always a terrorist, and there's a lot of prejudice against Muslims.
Now, I say this, I don't have any affinity for the Muslim faith other than where it believes the same thing as Christianity.
But there is an organized effort to sort of dehumanize Muslims, and this acts as sort of an enabler to our foreign wars.
I mean, there's a reason why we can attack and bomb Syria or Iran or Afghanistan and not bomb Britain or France or Germany right now, because the American people figure, well, they're not the same as us.
But people are people.
And I used a couple of poll examples from Chapman University, and I think there was a – I'm trying to remember.
I don't have it in front of me.
Where even to the extent that, you know, should Americans be required to learn Arabic numerals in school as part of their educational curriculum, and the majority said no, even though, well, that's what we all use.
One, two, three, four, five, those are all Arabic numerals.
But the focus of the piece was especially groups like the Gatestone Institute that are tied so heavily to the deep state.
They promote lies about Muslims that are then circulated across both the conservative and the liberal movements.
I mean, you know, many of the Gatestone board of directors are writing for not just Breitbart and places on the right, but also for the Huffington Post and other left-wing publications.
And, you know, the idea is, oh, well, there's this rape crisis in Syria, and it's brought about because Muslims are moving there from – rape crisis in Syria – rape crisis in Sweden because they're moving from Syria and Afghanistan and other countries, and they bring – they're basically barbarians invading Europe.
But the reality is Sweden, although it does have astronomical reported rape rates, it's all because of this 2005 law that they passed that multiplies the number of infractions by – to use one example, let's say a husband rapes his wife every night for a year, and then he gets arrested.
Well, is that one rape or 365?
Well, in Sweden, it's 365.
In America, probably not.
So, I mean, the way they changed it, it multiplied the number of cases.
And, you know, the Gatestone – Well, you didn't even bring up the Assange example where maybe he decided one time to not use a condom, and so now whether that counts as rape or not.
And it's funny here, right, because these are – I'm not saying you in any way, but I'm just saying essentially these stats or this explanation might as well be tailor-made for right-wingers that look at these ridiculous left-wingers in Sweden who've defined rape so broadly that it made their rape rate go way up when that wasn't even true.
Isn't that just like what some silly left-wing PC social justice people would do on some college campus around here that right-wingers would complain about?
Except in this case, they can point the finger at Muslims.
So instead, they go, Aha, even the social justice warriors admit that the number is so high.
Right.
And, you know, of course, in the case you explained, it is an immigrant that committed the quote-unquote rape, Julian Assange, but he's not Muslim.
He's about as white – he's almost albino.
Well, you could be an albino Muslim, but I'm pretty sure he's – if anything comes from a Christian background.
Right.
I mean, you know, there's no doubt.
I mean, let's face it.
Crime is committed by mostly young men.
So if migrants, as has traditionally been the case, if you look at the old Ellis Island records of 100 years ago, 150 years ago, at the beginning of any wave of immigration, there is a two-to-one or more incidence of men coming over first.
And then later they send for their wives and their younger sisters or whatever.
I mean, in my family, my grandmother was from Sweden.
She was the last of nine kids that moved from Sweden.
And it was the young men that came first in the 19-teens, and my grandmother came over in the 1920s.
So the men are going first, and they do tend to increase crime because they're young men, not because they're Muslims.
But Europe is also facing this other demographic change.
If you look at a website like populationpyramid.net, it gives you kind of an idea of, gee, Europe is aging.
And, you know, so most – the average age of the native-born Swede is now close to 50.
They're not committing crimes.
I mean, how many gas stations are held up in the United States by geezers and walkers and carrying oxygen tanks?
There aren't any.
So, you know, the overall trend in crime in Europe, whether it's Sweden, which has the highest rate of immigrants, at least from Muslim countries – I mean, actually Switzerland has the highest rate of immigrants – Germany, which has a large number from Muslim countries, they are both at or near record low crime rates as far as history goes because their population, even with all the young immigrants, it's still aging.
And, you know, those – but the immigrants do come in and they, you know, some of them will commit crimes, but it's not like you can say, well, we can't have any young men in our country.
So – and one of the things is Germany has basically realized that they don't want to be Detroit.
They – Detroit has this sort of demographic implosion.
In 1950 they had 1.8 million people.
Now they have less than 600,000.
So, you know, they used to be as big as Philadelphia.
Now they're not even as big as Boston.
And they have all the pensions for a city of 1.8 million and they can't afford to pay them.
So Germany realizes, gee, we have this problem coming up.
What are we going to do?
Well, let's import some more young men.
That's what has kept up population in America and Australia and other countries that have added.
Import them and tax them.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, that's – you know, the irony is, I mean, to go full circle, I mean, we talked about Will Gregg.
I mean I talked with him about it for a long time because we'd both authored immigration restrictionist pieces as late as 2006, more from the standpoint of, gee, let's follow the law.
And then, you know, per Tom Woods and a few others, I read the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions where James Madison and Thomas Jefferson argued that immigration is a state concern, not a federal concern.
And I learned that the federal government didn't control immigration until the 1890s really.
They didn't even have an immigration service.
It was handled by the states, the biggest one being New York.
They had Castle Garden, their system, which is what – when they opened up Ellis Island, they just basically copied New York.
But, you know, I was talking with Will and he's – we jokingly called it the Edlum Gregg strategy, which was sort of the flip side of this 1960s plan to socialize the United States by getting so many immigrants to come in and register for welfare.
I'm trying to remember the name of the program.
It was – I want to say Dunning.
I'm going to have to look it up here.
But the idea was to do that.
And Will and I basically said, well, okay, how about we try to break down the welfare state by importing all these people and putting them on welfare because we don't want the welfare state to be sustainable.
But the reality is a little bit more complex.
The average immigrant is not a drain on – I'd like to actually debate this with another libertarian at some point.
Maybe – I don't know.
Maybe you could use your poll with one of the other podcasters and maybe Stefan Molnar or someone else.
But if you look at immigrants, one of the arguments against immigration in the United States – I'm getting a little far afield from my story.
Yeah, that's all right.
Go ahead.
We've got time.
The funding of – if you look at immigrants, one of the points being made is, well, they're a net drag on taxation.
That, gee, they take more in benefits than they pay in taxes.
But that's only if you look at it in a particular way.
If you take the immigrants themselves, they don't.
If you take the immigrants' children, they're actually one of the few net taxpayers as well.
They're the strongest net taxpayers.
They're sort of first-generation native-born Americans.
But the way it's done with numbers to make it look like immigrants are a drag on the tax – on the government because of benefits is they say immigrant households.
And that way you get the immigrants who themselves are not a drag.
They pay very little in taxes, but they don't qualify for benefits for the most part.
And the children – but only while they're children.
Every child – I tried to make my three daughters a profitable situation, but I just could not do it.
Children are always, of course, a drag.
There's education and health care, whatever, and they – Get out there and mow their lawns, boy.
No, I'm just kidding.
I tried.
So, I mean, if you only count immigrants and their children while they're children but not while they're adults, well, then you can do it.
There's a little bit of gamesmanship there.
But to get back to my piece – And I just want to mention here real quick, the Independent Institute and Cato both have all kinds of studies and reports that justify and back you up on all that, too.
Right, but you have to sort of look at the different pieces separately and then together.
Because what an immigration restrictionist like the Center for Immigration Studies or many of the conservative and libertarian people who are skeptical of immigration, most of the statistics they cite are accurate.
It's just only a piece of the pie.
So that's where it comes from.
And a lot of this – not so much the Center for Immigration Studies.
They're, in my view, more moderate, even though they're listed as a hate group by the Center – what is it, the Southern Poverty Law Center.
But there are groups out there pushing actual false news, like the Gatestone Institute, like the Clarion Project, that say, oh, there are extremist training camps in the United States and then you go to the actual camp and it's a mosque.
It's not even a – there's no camp, you know what I mean?
Or the Gatestone Institute talking about the Swedish rape or crime in Europe because of migrants or the idea that there are these no-go zones, which became real popular a while back.
Daniel Pipes, who's a pretty radical pro-war guy, created the whole idea.
But then when he actually had to go and say, oh, gee, I went to Europe and I looked and there weren't no-go zones.
Immigrant communities sometimes can be a little bit higher in crime, but there's no such thing as a no-go zone anywhere in Europe, certainly not in an immigrant community.
But so many Americans are so distant from, gee, I've never been to Malmo in Sweden.
What do I know?
I'm just going to rely on whatever Breitbart tells me, whatever this blog that I'm following tells me.
And they're getting their information from the Gatestone Institute.
And the head of the Gatestone Institute until he was selected as Donald Trump's national security advisor was John Bolton.
And they're getting funding from different foundations and sometimes anonymized through this donor's trust, which I don't know.
I'm sort of ambivalent about it, but it's sort of a huge foundation where a billionaire or multimillionaire can give a donation and sort of have it anonymized through donor's trust.
They can basically say, I want to give to climate skepticism, which I think a lot of people have done.
But this way they can fund an anti-climate fearmonger and then say, okay, well, I don't know what you're talking about.
I don't know who funded it.
They don't get the blowback.
I mean, I do believe anonymous speech is a right, and that's kind of like anonymous speech.
America has this long tradition of anonymous political speech, going back to the Federalist Papers.
And even before that, the Federalist Papers were anonymous.
So I guess that's okay.
But if it's funding bigotry that provides the backstop to allowing our wars to continue, I don't want a government to come in and say you can't do that, but I think it should be exposed.
And there are a couple of groups out there doing a nice job with it.
There's a website called Sludge.
They are an investigative site.
They've done a couple of nice reports.
And the Muslim group, the CAIR, the Council on American and Islamic Relations, they've done something.
Although they kind of meld religious opposition to Islam with actual hatred of Islam.
And then even the Southern Poverty Law Center has, you know, I'm not a fan, but they have put out some information on some of these groups.
That was funny.
There was a click on your line right when you said that.
I want to mention too, Eli Clifton wrote a great thing for the Center for American Progress.
And Max Blumenthal has one at TomDispatch.com on all this as well.
But so, you know, one thing I want to talk about here is, to mention here is, you know, so much of this propaganda is about what's happening in Sweden and they can't really talk about Muslims in Austin, Texas without saying, well, they all make at least $50,000 a year and have advanced degrees and all these kinds of things that are highly integrated into our society and have mosques, you know, all over town and don't cause any problems for anybody.
And, you know, this kind of deal.
There's nothing to scaremonger about.
So they got to pretend, like you say, talk about Malmo, Sweden, which all I know that goes on there is a great skateboard contest every year.
But just betting on the fact that you and I aren't going to get on a plane and go check them out ourselves, it's far enough away that they can spin whatever tale they want.
I hear they practice witchcraft.
I don't know.
That's right.
I mean, but, you know, the thing is, you know, the statistics, you know, they can, I've caught this, the Gatestone Institute in a number of lives before.
They, you know, they'll say, oh, well, this means that, you know, crime is increasing in Sweden.
And, you know, they'll cite a Swedish government report.
But when you go online to the Swedish government report, it's only in Swedish.
But the wonder of Google is you can translate almost anything if you have a little bit of patience.
And, you know, you look and the report says exactly the opposite of what they're saying.
And, you know, there's a consistency to their reporting in the sense that when they make mistakes, it's always to promote more fear for Muslims.
You know, whether it's, you know, I'm really bashing the Gatestone Institute because they have the biggest deep state ties.
But the Clarion Institute has taken millions and millions of dollars to promote the idea of Muslim extremist camps and all kinds of, you know, pro-war, not explicitly pro-war, but generally, you know, gee, we should fear these people.
They are sort of a native criminal class.
Well, you know, one of their best methods has been pushing these.
You know, they've pushed these resolutions in the state houses to outlaw Sharia law before it's too late.
And just to leave the impression that there's something to be preempted here, that we were all about to be enslaved under the Taliban here in Texas until, you know, thankfully these Republicans stepped up to save us.
And that stuff really makes an impression on people that seriously, why would they be doing that unless there was a real danger?
People just take it at face value that way.
Yeah, I don't get that.
I mean, I read a Law Journal article a number of years ago that talked about how a little bit of American common law is based in Sharia law.
Not a lot, but I mean, there were a few things in Anglo-American common law that were taken from the Normans who had conquered Sicily, which was then a Muslim province.
And, you know, there were, you know, the Assis of common dissension and possibly, you know, the idea that a jury should have 12 people could be, you know, the same as the Lafif in Sharia.
Although there were juries before in Northern Europe, but they generally didn't always have, you know, they didn't have 12.
I mean, in the Lafif, it's 12.
So, I mean, there were a little bit of things that, you know, everything gets borrowed throughout history.
And so, you know, people are afraid of that.
And I would almost say, well, you want to give up a trial by jury?
Well, and, you know, I mean, the thing is, too, is the only time that Sharia law has anything to do with anything is like in divorce cases and stuff.
But tell the Catholics and the Jews that they're not allowed to go through their religious rituals for defining their marriages and divorces.
You know, that's essentially the same thing we're talking about here, as though Muslim traditions and their place in the law, as they affect only those people who are invoking it and using it, is any different in kind than exactly the same rights and so-called privileges afforded to Catholics and Jews and others in this country with their own, you know, rituals.
And, you know what I mean, in terms of property division and this kind of deal, they go with, and it's only in a limited way, and it's never in a way that overrides the rest of the civil law or anything like that.
Right, I mean, that's the way it works with other religions in America.
You know, and there's even, you know, voluntary arbitration.
You know, it doesn't have to be through religion.
There's all kinds of private courts, you know.
So, you know, whether arbitration happens to be headed by a Muslim or a Catholic or a Baptist or an atheist, it doesn't really matter.
I mean, arbitration is arbitration.
Right.
So, but there is this sort of hyped fear.
And, you know, what I've, and that's why I've sort of focused a little bit more on the immigration issue in the last, I don't know, five or six years, because I sort of see, gee, you know, when we tend to bash Muslims as a native criminal underclass, we tend to go to war with them, whereas, you know, the countries or the ethnic groups and the nationalities that we don't bash, we tend not to go to war with them.
And, you know, I can't help but think, not that there's like this, this James Bond, you know, guy stroking a white cat in their secret antechamber pushing buttons saying, you know, do this.
It's not like this super conspiracy, but there are interest groups that are promoting fear of Muslims because, hey, the more fear there is, the more weapons contracts there are, the more I can advance my career and, you know, it's not just the United States.
It's, you know, it's the Israeli lobby as well.
I mean, one of the biggest funders of GateStone is Nina Rosenwald, who was a former board member of the American-Israeli APAC, American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee.
So, you know, which is not to say, you know, I don't have anything against Israel.
I mean, I always have kind of a general affinity for it, but I don't think they should run our foreign policy, and I don't think ethnic squabbles should make it into our body politic.
We shouldn't be bombing someone for Israel, especially if they're like Iran, not really even a threat to Israel.
So, you know, that's where I, that's the perspective I'm coming from.
Yeah, and that was a big part of the report by Eli Clifton there was about Rabbi Yul Roshami and Pamela Geller and these people who, you know, clearly are part of the Israel lobby and have this agenda of, I mean, come on, like the people of Kansas are about to be taken over by Sharia, but it's just a great ploy to scare them, essentially.
And as you said, it helps just on the margin, in the overall sense, you keep people afraid of the other.
It's marginally better for arms sales.
It's better for Israel because it happens to be that most, about 80% of the people they're stealing land from are Muslims.
And the 20% of them who are Christians are, of course, completely ignored out of existence.
So it's very convenient for them.
And as you say, Iran, you know, their enemy is Muslim.
So it helps to just, and this is in Trita Parsi's book, right?
Radical Islam is the glue that we'll use to, you know, continue the alliance with the Americans after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
That was a quote from the, you know, a major Israeli strategist there to Trita Parsi explain it.
Well, it used to be we help keep the Reds out.
And so now it's like, well, we got to keep out somebody I know.
How about we'll keep out radical Islam, which is just great because it's so broad.
It means everything and nothing and whatever you want.
And so they've used that ever since.
The glue for the alliance.
That's what they called it.
You know, Scott, you're amazing also in the sense that you have this broad, you know, and you bring in these guests.
I mean, you had a guy on two days ago, and I'm sorry I forgot his name, but he did a great job talking about this bot that had been paid for by the Foundation for the Advance of Democracies that was promoting.
Yeah, that's Eli Clifton again.
Oh, okay, yeah.
He's so great.
I mean, just, yeah, I mean, it was a great episode and lots of information.
And, you know, the funny thing is, before I sent my piece off, just as I sent the piece off, an article about that, you know, the bots and the Twitter and the attacks on journalists in the United States came up on my feed, and I was like, should I pull back my story?
But then I said, no, no, mine was focused a little bit differently.
It was mostly the private and foundational, by foundational, I mean foundations that were funding explicit anti-Muslim hate groups that are underwriting the support for war.
And, yeah, by the way, did you ever see the four-part, formerly suppressed documentary, The Israel Lobby USA, the Al Jazeera thing?
No, I didn't.
Oh, yeah, well, so Al Jazeera made this thing.
You might have seen the British version, but they had suppressed the U.S. thing.
The Israelis went straight to the Qatari government and said, you can't publicize it, you can't publish this thing.
You know, run it.
And so it was buried for like a year.
And then somebody finally leaked it to Ali Abunimah over at the Electronic Intifada.
And it's devastating.
And the entire thing is based on a British Jewish liberal who signed up to be the undercover reporter.
And it is some of the, never even mind the subject matter, it is some of the best undercover camera journalism that anybody has ever done.
And it is really something else.
I will definitely look at that.
And it touches on this, believe me.
Yeah.
And anyone can find that.
It's at Electronic Intifada, and it's called The Israel Lobby USA.
And maybe if you search for suppressed documentary or whatever, it's four long parts, it's worth it for the whole thing.
But, yeah.
Hey, guys, check out Listen and Think Audiobooks.
They're at listenandthink.com and, of course, on audible.com.
And they feature my book, Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, as well as Brand New Out Inside Syria by our friend Reese Ehrlich and a lot of other great books, mostly by libertarians there.
Reese might be one exception.
But essentially they're all libertarian audiobooks.
And here's how you can get a lifetime subscription to Listen and Think Audiobooks.
Just donate $100 to The Scott Horton Show at scotthorton.org/.
All right.
Well, listen, this is such a great piece.
I love the way you end it here.
I guess I'll let you talk about this, the latest polls show that's not working so well anymore, huh?
Well, I mean, there is a reversal.
But I wonder if sometimes, see, it seems like good news.
The Chapman University polls, they polled in 2016, they polled in 2018, and they showed a general downward trend in anti-Muslim bigotry.
And they pulled on a variety of different topics.
Would you be comfortable living next door to a Muslim?
Would you be comfortable living next door to a mosque?
Would you be comfortable or do you think that there should be extra screening for Muslims at airports or whatever?
And it showed sort of general progress that, gee, Muslims are people too.
But I don't take too much stock in polls because they can be reversed by propaganda.
And, you know, there's, you know, if you think about it, I mean, you know, throughout our history, there's been tremendous opposition to war, and then all of a sudden the propaganda kicks in and, oh, well, everybody's for it.
Whether it's the Iraq War was very suspicious.
But as soon as, hey, as soon as they declared it, it became super popular, at least for a little while.
So I worry about that the propaganda machine has been turned off for a while because there hasn't been a need.
But if it gets turned back on in a bigger way than it already is, I mean, it's still tens of millions of dollars over the last five years.
But if it gets turned back on, you know, we could see it revert right back to where it was or worse.
So I try to plow the ground to make it so that it's at least people are more skeptical when the propaganda does get renewed.
Right.
It's amazing that anyone is still gullible enough to go along with this stuff at this point, but they are.
All right, so real quick before we got to go.
Did I get it right at the beginning?
This is your new book, A Rogue's Sedition?
A Rogue's Sedition, yes.
And it just came out.
It's about 60 different essays on a variety of topics.
It's sort of a pick-and-choose book.
Oh, it just came out this year.
Okay.
I wasn't certain if it was brand new or what.
Yeah, I would have promoted it last time I was on with you.
When was that, February, March?
I think it was February.
But it wasn't out yet.
Okay, great.
So it's just been out for a couple months.
So buy my book and buy Will's book, for sure buy Will's book.
I think my book is great, but his book is better because everything he does is better.
But definitely pick up A Rogue's Sedition.
Pick up Will's book.
You won't regret it.
You won't regret buying either.
Yeah.
Well, listen, man, I'm sorry I have not had a chance to take a look at A Rogue's Sedition yet, but it sure looks good.
And I always really love your writing.
And by the way, please keep submitting articles to antiwar.com.
I'm happy to run you any time.
Yeah, I've got some more that I want to...
I haven't put them together yet, but I want to submit more to the Libertarian Institute as well.
Great.
Please do.
More on economics, which is my field of study when I renew school in September.
So yeah, I'll keep sending them to both of your portals.
Wonderful.
Okay.
Well, thank you very much again, Tom, for everything here, especially for your great forward to Will's book and all your participation and all of that, and for your time on the show.
Really appreciate it.
All right.
All right, Scott.
Keep up the good fight.
All right, you guys.
That's Thomas R. Edlum, and his own website is teedlum.blogspot.com.
Lots of great writings there.
This one is at antiwar.com.
It's called The Immigration Bigotry War Nexus, and a really great one there.
And, of course, you have to read his forward, his great forward to the new Will Grigg book, No Quarter, The Ravings of William Norman Grigg, which you're going to love the forward and the whole book too.
It's so great, and it's brand new out in Kindle and in paperback.
So check it out.
Help support.
I know you'll love it.
Let me know.
Give it a retweet.
Thanks, everybody.
All right, y'all.
Thanks.
Find me at libertarianinstitute.org, at scotthorton.org, antiwar.com, and reddit.com slash scotthortonshow.
Oh, yeah, and read my book, Fool's Errand, Timed and the War in Afghanistan at foolserrand.us.
