All right y'all welcome back to the show it's anti-war radio I'm scott horton And our first guest on the show today is the heroic william norman grigg He's the author of the book liberty in eclipse And the great blog pro libertate at freedom in our time Dot blogspot.com welcome back to the show will how are you scott?
I'm doing great and I really appreciate the opportunity.
Thanks so much Well, i'm very happy to have you here So I was thinking that maybe uh, was it anatoly galitzin was right and that uh, the american ruling class is Embedded with uh, kgb secret agents and their plan is to destroy america the very best way they can Turning us into a world empire top heavy so it will implode Like the old soviet empire seemed to what do you think?
I don't know if we can blame the soviets for this or if this is something that's simply innate to People who aspire after power, but that's certainly what has happened whether you can indict the machinations of the kgb for our current imperial plight or not, the fact is that we are in that kind of a mess and The united states or united state singular as some people properly call it has reached a point of Almost trans soviet bloatedness in terms of the amount of power and wealth consumed by the nomenclature We might as well use that phrase In washington dc and its satellites throughout the united states and most importantly its satellites throughout the world when you've got a situation where Building a single piece of equipment for the military empire the joint strike fighter involves Manufacturing efforts in eight countries you're talking about an empire But for some reason we're not allowed to use that expression in polite company at least when we find ourselves carrying on conversations and Media organs that are controlled by corporations that profit off of the military industrial complex scott You probably remember that way back in the late part of the cold war Although you were probably in junior high school or grade school at the time there was a truism that was circled circulated rather by People of what we now call the neoconservative point of view which is to say people who are Incorrigibly dishonest for the most part.
They said that the united states has a military industrial complex But the ussr is a military industrial complex quite frankly If you take a look at the way our economy is organized today I think that that truism is exactly the opposite or rather the truth is exactly the opposite of that expression that we pretty much are living in a Society that is defined by a military industrial complex complex I think that our founding generation would be perfectly mortified by what we have become yeah, you know, um Like obi-wan kenobi said many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view and it seems like it could be true enough from a certain point of view that all of our homes and all of our front lawns and all of our small businesses and our You know religious buildings where we all meet on the weekends and all these things really are just the window dressing For what is ultimately just really a farm of of human beings and we exist to Produce things so that the state can suck off of it and build weapons with it.
Well, that would explain why Pretty much the american people are like, uh the front for a mafia business, you know front business for the mafia kind of thing Yeah, the mafia is nowhere near as greedy and nowhere near as insistent when it's rejected when his demands are rejected I mean, they'll go away leave you alone If you don't have anything to do with making a contract with them or live in a particularly geographic area But the people who presume to run the world out of washington and wall street Claim a writ that is universal And at the same time they insist that we don't describe this as an empire There's this terrific piece by david serota in salon.com yesterday Talking about this conversation he had on an msnbc program with I believe pj crowley a former state department spokes apparatchik in which serota said we have to acknowledge that we're an empire in order to have an intelligent conversation about priorities about budget priorities and what we're going to focus on as the economic implosion accelerates and Crowley, uh in the form of a victorian maiden who just learned where babies come from Said oh, you can't say such things.
This is a shocking thing.
We don't have an empire This is a liberal hegemony It's a project of liberal hegemony where we have a system that we invite other people to participate in of course That invitation is usually made in the form of ultimata the same kind of thing that we have seen for decades and If you take a look at the way that the soviet union discharged its affairs and conducted its business it doesn't really differ that much from the way that The united states the regime in washington has conducted itself.
The biggest difference I think is the degree of of purblind self-righteousness That you see from the people in washington because they act as if there's there's something objectively wrong and morally Objectionable about people saying we don't want to be part of this global hegemony administered Largely for the interests of washington and whoever is part of its coalition of bribed and browbeaten Well, you know This is exactly why I used to buy the conspiracy theory of the new world order that It ultimately is all treason and all these no-win wars are fought so that they're no-win wars They're fought so as to bankrupt us and all that because I thought well here i'm a teenager And I know that all empires fall and now here are the masters of the universe up there in New york and dc who run this thing?
Certainly they must know that all empires fall and so how could they be so careless as to overdo it and overstretch?
Our ability to pay for the projects that they embark on To such a degree unless it really is a matter of treason a grand design as jeter griffin used to say to ultimately reduce us To uh, you know colony status under the un or somebody and then right around I guess the time of the iraq war I figured out no, actually these people have less wisdom than me as a teenager.
This is why all empires fall It doesn't have to be treason.
It's just because uh, the people who run things are so narrow-minded And and self-interested that they end up committing national suicide.
It happens over and over again No conspiracy to deliberately do so required I think that we find ourselves looking at an example of that old expression from The french revolution that you need not You need not uh, see a conspiracy where mere ineptitude will suffice as an explanation I would offer a variation on that theme by saying that if you're taking a look at the pathological behavior of incurably self-fixated people with great power that eventually owing to high time preference and their ability to Alienate the costs of their ambitions to other people.
They don't really need to be following a grand design They'll just Descend to the level of the depravity and take us down with them and force us to pay the cost of their foolishness Dick cheney is paradigmatic.
I think of the type of people we're talking about Here's a guy who has never had an honest job that i'm aware of That hasn't involved being part of the parasite class usually one of these public private partnerships That led him to profit tremendously at the expense of people who are trying to do something productive And you take a look once again at the way that all of the wealth of this country has been siphoned away into wall street washington Where you have the imperial capital as this piece by gene haley pointed out yesterday Becoming literally the universal capital of crony capitalism the the imperial capital of this empire of crony capitalists while People throughout the length and breadth of the of the united states are literally wondering at what point they're going to be put out On the streets because they're no longer able to make their mortgage payments or even to pay the rent and things of that sort that's the type of stratification severe stratification That you see in an empire in the latest throes of its of its fatal decline Yeah, no wonder the people on tv can convince themselves that well Maybe we got some green shoots and the economy's doing okay after all because exactly I live in dc and everybody's doing fine Exactly the the length of their horizon basically is either the beltway Or whatever the last exit would be getting out of manhattan looking west Toward this this ominous and ominous and unknown realm that they look upon with with a sense of contempt and suspicion Because all they know about the people who live to the to the west of where they are Is that these the folks who pay the taxes and in cop of the revenue that we use to adorn our lives and to fuel?our ambitions and one of the things about what's going on with the occupy wall street movement that I I wish People would think about more deeply when they're when they're trying to do their class analysis of what's happening here Uh, most many of the people who are well-intentioned on the streets now processing what's going on seem not to understand That they're agitating on behalf of a solution that will make more powerful the entrenched interest that they are opposing And that's for the tea party, too Yes Well, that's a very important place to pick this up on the other side because you know my obsession is uniting the new left and the old right with the libertarians and And getting it right instead of having everybody come together over what couldn't be worse And further from the truth, which is seems to be the way we usually go.
It's the great will grigg We'll be right back with him after this All right, y'all welcome back to the thing here It's anti-war radio I'm on the line with will grigg You can find his most recent article at lourockwell.com today Of course, it's also at his great blog pro libertate freedom in our time dot blog spot Dot com and when we were interrupted By that rude commercial break you were about to tell the occupy wall street movement and the tea party movement that they're sort of right But they need to get it right so they can be all the way right instead of at least half wrong like they are a lot of the time I think that the best way to illustrate this is to talk about the case of scott olson Here's somebody who's a marine veteran of the iraq war That war being a project supported by a large section of the tea party movement at least that element of the tea party movement that's Firmly attached to the republican party or at least was I think there's a growing at least Possibility that there's going to be some daylight between them Scott olson was somebody who was a government employee for whom most of the tea party militarists would have some respect They seem to think that government is objectionable unless it's involved In killing foreigners and seizing property and territory on behalf of the government on the other hand He was attached to the iraq veterans against the war Which is a thoroughly commendable group that the occupy wall street movement would find very sympathetic on account of the fact that It's opposed to the war and most of the aws people at least To my perception seem to be so you've got somebody here who really bridges the the gulf between These two populist or para populist movements and he's somebody who caught around we don't know what kind of round That was fired at him by part of the army of occupation called police in this country That had been roused to a sense of of righteous indignation over the presence of peaceful protesters In a city oakland where there's a huge problem of violent crime that the police are indifferent to They don't really care about protecting persons and property but when it comes to protecting the stability of the government upon which they depend For their livelihood the police can always find some way to rouse themselves To a to a sense of vigorous pushback.
Well, uh, scott olsen may die He's in very powerless condition right now, but here's somebody really I think who embodies The problem he came back from iraq.
What's he going to do now in a ruined economy when he's no longer part of the empire's of apparatus of conquest and regimentation And that's a problem that is becoming very acute in a lot of places in this country As the op tempo slows down at least somewhat, of course It could be vigorously revived at any time depending upon what our would-be masters or our rulers those who presume to rule us Would decide to do with respect to iran and pakistan and central africa and any one of a number of other fronts They where they presume to hold sway, but the thing is these people are coming back to young men.
They can't find productive work They can't find even non-productive work that pays well of a non-productive.
I mean, of course government employment Here in idaho.
There is a tragic story A couple of weeks ago involving a man by the name of robert diaz.
He's 21 years old and he was in a A good job.
He'd become engaged right out of high school when he found out that his job was destroyed by the economic collapses So he enlisted in the army and ended up being Uh being killed when he caught an ieb over in iraq and that's typical the sort of things that are happening the thing is the tea party movement doesn't understand that War is a government program.
It is the most destructive government program.
It is government deprived of any veneer or patina or pretense of humanitarian or moral Defensibility it's government reduced to its pure visceral essence of destroying people and destroying property The occupy wall street movement doesn't understand that the corporations that they are fighting Are government entities in the sense that they batten on to the warfare state?
And so they're criticizing the corporations the aws is And the people in the tea party movement are defending the corporations While while uh while defending the warfare state the problem is that they don't understand that there's a natural synthesis here And I use that expression knowing that many people of a marxist point of view or a hegelian point of view I might have a different take on what that word should mean But these people have a natural affinity and they should recognize that affinity and they should be able to think beyond The categories that have been imposed on them and just recognize the fact that the problem is government aggression Government coercion the problem is the fact that there are people who are using this this entity this agency of coercion uh to To steal from them and that the problem is not that there are corporations in the world The problem is not that there are banks in the world.
The problem is that those people manage to to socialize Their losses and socialize the the price of their corruption through this agency called government I think in other words will the point is that the the occupy wall street people and the tea party people are agreed About what they're against mostly it's the things that they're for that are so wrong-headed Yeah for the most part and what they're for I think has more to do with the the slogans that they have been taught And the way they've been taught to perceive each other and one of the oldest tricks in The uh playbook of imperial elites since time immemorial Is to get people uh looking at each other laterally As enemies rather than focusing on the people above them who are manipulating The the conflict and as long as we're looking at each other horizontally, so to speak As common subjects of this metastasizing empire and looking each other with suspicion and hostility Because of whatever collective we've been assigned to rather than asking who are these people who presume to assign us to these collectives As long as we fall for that trick our situation is going to grow progressively, uh grave and and perhaps incurable And I would I would love to see uh an honest conversation Uh take place among people who are or not on Some kind of a stipend provided by a foundation or a party Uh who are actual grassroots activists on either side of this the ows the tea party actually see this conversation See these people compare notes realize how much they have in common and how much how much particularly they have in common with respect to the Predicament we find ourselves in and uh how Really the problem is that both both besides something i've talked about a lot in my blog Whether or not you're actually talking about people who consciously subscribe to to vladimir lennon's formula They've allowed themselves to define their politics in terms of lennon's famous maxim That the only question that matters in politics is who does what to whom?
Everybody wants to be the who rather than the whom And everybody looks upon everybody else as part of the whom that we want to have We want to do too if you will and I think that if uh, we were to focus, uh, and it's it's of course something that reflects my My, uh ingenuousness that I would even suggest such a thing But if if we would uh abandon vladimir mag vladimir lennon's maxim embrace the golden rule, you know Do what others as you would be done to?uh and Use that as the basis of political analysis that that's a big step Conceptually in terms of bringing together this type of a coalition and ron paul has done that to a large extent That's the thing that I find most promising about particularly this campaign that he's waging Is that this guy actually has the temerity?
To insist that the government has to obey the golden rule and that government is not morally or legally empowered To do that which we as individuals cannot do And once you accept that as the basis for analysis, I think if The tea partiers who are militarists would understand that And the ows people who want to use the government to expropriate the enemy would understand that That would be I think a wonderful development and potentially history making if it could if it could occur Well, you know It's little consolation in a way for those of us who warned them all along that all empires fall and just because you You know think you're rich now doesn't mean you can just conquer the whole world and it'll all last forever but um, you know, maybe we really can uh, you know do like ron emmanuel and connelly's rice said and You know forge some opportunity from this crisis I think people more and more are realizing that the libertarians are the ones who stay good on war when the liberals are in power And the libertarians are the one are the ones who stay good on taxes and spending and money when the republicans are in power and that you know more and more I think people are Are kind of washing out from those mainstream philosophies when they find out that there's a different one Uh a better one Um, and I hope that we can sort of be the new center.
We'll never be the majority But maybe we can be the new center So instead of having you know, john mccain the liberal republican and joe lieberman the conservative democrat defining the center with their extremism It'll be us libertarians that really show What we need to all agree to have the government stop doing and that'll be a good place to to get going And and of course the answers are corporate welfare bailouts, etc The world empire and saving the bill of rights from the department of justice and the pentagon Well, one of the things that uh may occur to some people is that having seen the ruinous consequences Of protracted aggression, maybe the non-aggression principle is a better foundation for genuine society And that's something that neither side in this Dialectic if you will this indian dialectic between the aws the tea party neither side fully understand And I think that's where our hope resides that eventually they'll understand the virtue of non-aggression Yep, well and again the virtues of ron paul because you have a ron paul campaign and those kids are at occupy wall street in New york and uh making their point about alan greenspan's bubble, etc And uh, so it's hard work, but we're making progress like george bush used to say About other things when he was lying.
All right.
Thanks very much for your time Will you bet take care scott freedom in our time.blogspot.com
