10/05/12 – Jacob Hornberger – The Scott Horton Show

All right, y'all, welcome to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
And this is my show, The Scott Horton Show.
Full archives are available at scotthorton.org.
More than 2,500 interviews now, going back to 2003.
You can also find me on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube at slash Scott Horton Show.
The Scott Horton Show is brought to you by the Future Freedom Foundation at fff.org.
Join the great Jacob Hornberger and some of the best writers in the libertarian movement, like James Bovard, Sheldon Richman, Anthony Gregory, Wendy McElroy, and more, for a real individualist take on the most important matters of peace, liberty, and prosperity in our society.
That's the Future Freedom Foundation at fff.org.
Yeah, it sure is.
And I'm very proud that this show is sponsored by FFF in part.
And I'm very happy to welcome the founder and president of the Future Freedom Foundation, Jacob Hornberger, back to the show.
Welcome back.
Jacob, how are you?
Thank you.
Great, Scott.
I appreciate it, and it's an honor to be here with you.
Well, I'm very happy to have you here, very happy to have you sponsoring the show, very appreciative of it as well.
And I'm actually really appreciative of this article that you've done on the Iran sanctions at your blog here at fff.org/blog.
I remember well that back in the 1990s, you were one of the few people, well, actually there was a little bit of an anti-sanctions movement back then, I guess, but you were certainly part of it.
Back when most Americans thought of the 1990s as peacetime, you never let the permanent war against Iraq go, including the horrible effects of the sanctions on the people there.
And now here you are picking up the same cudgels when it comes to the quasi-war against Iran.
But before I let you get into that, I wanted to give you a chance first to talk about this great Civil Liberties Tour that you've put together.
You've got Bruce Fine and Glenn Greenwald, so one right, one left, and you're the libertarian in the middle.
And then you've got Jack Hunter is moderating the thing, and you guys are doing a college tour all around the country, the Future Freedom Foundation's Civil Liberties Tour.
So please tell us all about it.
Sorry, I just sort of stole some of your thunder maybe, but tell us as much as you can about it, and especially places and dates.
Yeah, we're really psyched about this program.
We consider it quite possibly the most important program we've ever put on, or certainly in the top five.
We started out, part one of the tour was over here on the eastern part of the United States.
We went to Columbia University in New York last winter, along with Purdue, Indiana Universities, Middle Tennessee State University, Ohio State.
And now we're taking the tour out west.
We're starting with University of Washington at Seattle, University of California, Davis, University of California, San Diego, University of Arizona, Tucson, and then we wrap it up with the University of Colorado at Boulder.
It's the week of October 15th through the 19th, Monday through Friday, each evening.
It's open to the public.
It'll be predominantly students.
The co-sponsor is a great outfit called the Young Americans for Liberty.
And we're going to be addressing the most important burning issue of our time, and that's the severe violation, effectively the suspension of civil liberties by the federal government, post 9-11, where the military now has the authority to take Americans into custody, cart them away to a torture center, concentration camp, military dungeon, hold them forever without a trial, execute them perhaps after a military tribunal, kangaroo in nature.
And we're bringing the awareness of why this is so horrific, why it violates everything the founding fathers of this country stood for to college students and other people who attend these things.
And we're going to be live streaming them.
And we're going to be archiving the videos on our website at fff.org.
So if people are in these areas, we invite you to come over.
All the details are on our website at fff.org under the e-mail update.
And if not, watch it live streaming or watch it when we put it on there after it's archived.
So, yeah, we're really psyched about this thing.
It's important, it's exciting, and we're trying to move America in a better direction through the power of ideas.
Yeah, well, you know, I don't think you could possibly overstate how important this is.
And it's funny because we still have the kind of freedom of speech that allows for you and me to have a conversation about this, that allows for you and Greenwald and Fine to go around speaking at universities.
So it almost seems like the things you're talking about must not really be true or must not be that much of a concern or else why would the government let you be talking about it, right?
Isn't it kind of funny that way?
They really are claiming the right to just grab, you know, anybody's little brother if they feel like it and do whatever they want with him.
But they'll let you criticize them for it, at least for now.
Well, yeah, I mean, we've got to count our blessings.
I mean, let's face it.
We do live in a country where they're not rounding up people for what they're saying.
And we make severe criticisms of the government.
And if you read Glenn Greenwald's blog on The Guardian, I mean, he's relentless in the defense of civil liberties and the critique of what the federal government's doing.
You know, there's also the assassination of Americans and foreigners.
But let's face it.
This culture of the First Amendment and free speech is so strong in America along with freedom of religion and so forth that the government still isn't doing what, you know, authoritarian regimes do when people start pointing out the truth.
And that's a blessing that we should be grateful for.
But just because we have the freedom to speak out against these injustices and these horrors doesn't mean that they don't exist.
And it's incumbent on those of us that still wield this right of freedom of speech and freedom of the press that we continue doing our best to move our country in a better, more just, civil, and free way.
A better, more just, civil, and free direction.
Because you never know when this freedom can be taken away at any particular time.
You know, what emergency?
I mean, we saw that like in World War I and stuff where they were rounding up people for criticizing the draft and so forth.
So you just never know.
Right.
I mean, hey, if they can kill you, they can shut you up.
They just haven't made that choice yet.
So, yeah, it seems like if freedom of speech is, and for that matter, freedom of religion and freedom of people to assemble at their local religious establishments and things like that, if these are the few rights in the Bill of Rights, you know, supposedly protected by the Bill of Rights that we still do have, we'd better use them, you know, or else we're not even going to have them anymore.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
I mean, for people to remain silent during this period of time, there's just no excuse for it.
I mean, you can understand why people might want to remain silent if the government is rounding up people and critics of the government and torturing them and killing them and doing bad things to their family, sort of like, you know, what the U.S.
-supported Pinochet regime was doing in Chile.
But there's no excuse now.
I mean, now is the time when everybody should be fighting hard to move this country back on the right track toward a free society where the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments are as important as the First and Second and the entire Constitution.
Because for so long, those amendments have been treated like just technicalities, you know, especially with this idiotic drug war.
And it's time that we had this resurgence of passionate interest and love for those amendments just as we do for the rest of the amendments in the Constitution.
Right.
Okay.
Now, I really hope, I don't know, but I really do hope that talking about this Civil Liberties Tour on this show is going to help a little bit with attendance anyway.
Glenn Greenwald told me once that at virtually every place where he gives a talk, someone comes up and says, Hey, I heard you on the Scott Wharton Show, and that's why I'm a big fan now, or heard you on anti-war radio.
So, you know, maybe talking about this will get a few more bodies out, maybe many more.
If the people listening who want to come will do a little bit of work on their own and bring their own friends and see if they can get some people to bring some more people.
And maybe turn this into a gigantic standing room only kind of event.
We are talking about the most important thing in the whole wide world here.
Well, that's right.
And you never know.
And, you know, even if people don't come, you don't know what the power of ideas are.
People say, well, gosh, who's this guy, Greenwald?
They never heard of him, for example.
Well, not on your show, of course, but if somebody all of a sudden refers this particular show to somebody else who's never heard of him.
I mean, Greenwald's one of the greatest public speakers you would ever encounter.
You go to a program.
I saw these kids at these programs that we did over here on the East Coast and they were just enthralled.
Because here's a guy that's getting up and he's speaking from the heart and just so knowledgeable.
He's speaking extemporaneously.
And then he's followed by Bruce Fine.
Wait, wait, hang on, hang on.
I've got to interrupt you here to talk about the brilliance of Glenn Greenwald for a second.
There's a video of Glenn Greenwald debating the drug war at the Cato Institute with a former drug czar, and so Glenn gives his talk and then the other guy gives his talk.
And most of the time, the C-SPAN cameras are pointed only at the drug warrior doing his talk, but occasionally they pan out and they show Glenn, his opponent, sitting at the table waiting patiently for his turn for his rebuttal and that kind of thing.
And you can see, there he is.
He's just staring off into space, but you can see his eyes moving as he's writing an article or at least he's writing down all of his notes for the refutation of the drug warrior when the drug warrior is done.
And then when the drug warrior is done, you can see his eyes as he's sitting there reading his own notes that he wrote in his mind.
And just as he absolutely flawlessly, without a single um or a ah or anything, point for point for point, just goes through and rebuts and destroys this guy without jotting down a single note on paper.
And it's really something to see.
Wow, hey, you know, the gears turn and in that guy's mind I can see him right there and those are some fancy clockworks.
Oh, it's a sight to behold.
I mean, it's a sight to behold.
His mind is like a steel trap.
And you know, same goes for Bruce Fine.
I was so lucky to be your guest at the Restoring the Republic conference there in 2008.
And Bruce Fine was supposed to give a 45 minute speech and he gave a two hour and 45 minute speech or something.
And the whole thing, the founding father quote, by heart, all of them.
And he can use them at the, you know, snap of a fingers and destroy any argument against the Bill of Rights or any argument for sacrificing liberty.
Just unparalleled.
Oh, absolutely.
He's one of the most erudite guys and it's really funny watching the looks on the people in the audiences at this, at our tour because, you know, Greenwald is a younger guy, and he would, he would mesmerize the students.
And many of the students were there because of Greenwald.
I mean, Forbes magazine mentioned that he was one of the top, most influential liberals in the country.
So he's followed by a conservative and Fine sort of kind of ambles up there.
He's a lot older than Greenwald and you can just tell the kids they're thinking, oh gosh, you know, Greenwald's talks are being followed by this boring guy and Fine starts out kind of slow and starts building up steam and all of it, he's quoting Cicero and the founding fathers and he's getting into this whole crescendo and all of a sudden the kids are, their eyes are like huge because here's a guy that is as eloquent and passionate, if not more so, than Greenwald.
So it's like a great wrap up to the series.
And then we, to the event, then we have a big Q&A session where kids get to, or everybody in the audience gets to have fun.
Then we have a social hour where the speakers interact with the students.
It's just a great program.
Because, you know, a lot of these kids, Scott, think about it, they're 18, 19, 20 years old, they effectively grew up in these formative teen years under the cloud of the post 9-11 environment.
Right, well, I think too, you know, it's so easy for them to question that, well, whatever it is, I'm not a Republican, you know, after living through the Bush years especially, that whatever it is, I'm the opposite of that.
And then here's Jacob Hornberger saying, oh, you don't have to be a lefty.
You could be the opposite of a Republican.
You could be a libertarian.
And I think this is a big part of why the Ron Paul revolution was such a big hit too, is because there are a lot of people who did not want to identify and so, you know, basically Ron Paul, Jacob Hornberger, the libertarian movement amounts to an out.
You don't have to be stuck in this trap anymore here.
Well, you're absolutely right.
And I'm glad you mentioned that because I round out this panel by bringing the libertarian perspective on this and it's interesting because we all three share the same perspectives, but Glenn Greenwald comes at it from a liberal perspective.
He comes at it from a libertarian perspective.
So, you know, these kids, regardless of where they stand ideologically, can see that this is important to whatever you call yourself.
And so it's just a fantastic program.
And, you know, thank you very much for letting your listeners know about it.
Yeah, well talk again about the dates and the places, especially the upcoming events.
Okay, it starts a week from Monday through the 18th.
And so people can start live streaming it somewhere around 630, 730.
Just check our email update on fff.org for each event.
And each event's going to be live streamed and then each event's going to be archived, you know, a few days afterward.
But if people are in the area, Seattle, Davis, California, near Sacramento area, San Francisco, San Diego, Tucson, Boulder, you know, Denver area, if they're supporters of ours, we'd love to have them interacting with the donors.
But, I mean, with the students, our donors in this area, we'd love for them to come because, you know, a lot of these kids haven't yet been exposed to libertarianism, and it'd be great to have some of the libertarians coming on out to the event, hobnobbing with the students, exposing them to libertarian ideas, especially in an economic sense, if libertarians were there, kind of just, you know, nonchalantly talking about libertarianism to these kids.
Well, you know, there's something that's so important to me is in, well, really just reaching out to the left in general.
Because I think, you know, especially you go all the way to the left, what do they say?
They say they want the state to wither away.
So I say, all right, you know, or someone who's just kind of a de facto left type, it's ingrained in them, it's the knee-jerk reaction that a libertarian is ultimately just a front man for corporate America and wants them to be free to do whatever they want and screw everybody else, which means, in a sense, that Jacob, you're to the right of Dick Cheney, who even Dick Cheney says we need this regulatory state to make everything fair and all this crap, right?
That is actually not true, that the future freedom foundations of the world can be all for markets and yet carry no favor whatsoever for any particular businessman who may be guilty of fraud, that kind of thing, or may be guilty of getting away with murder this way or that other way.
And I think, you know, we all learn in school, especially, you know, in public school, junior high and high school kind of classes, the capitalists will get away with anything unless the government stops them, so we use our democracy to regulate them capitalists so that they don't ruin everything.
So when they find out that you actually are not representing those evil capitalists, you're actually just debunking that lie and pointing out how usually those very same people are using the state against the rest of us, that kind of thing, you can really change somebody's life in the course of one conversation.
And I don't think so.
You're a show for anything once they hear you talk.
Well, thank you for saying that.
I mean, you just never know the power of ideas.
I mean, you share the ideas with a group of people or just one person, and you just never know what's going to happen.
I mean, it happened to me.
I mean, I was a liberal and I discovered libertarianism and all the scales fell from my eyes and I realized that all this socialism that had been forced upon our land was destroying America.
It was hurting poor people.
I was concerned about the poor and now I understood that here was a system that was hurting poor people, not to mention the whole war on immigrants, of course, that liberals and conservatives love to wage against the poor.
So to me, libertarianism is the only way out of this morass, to be honest.
So yeah, you look at a so-called big presidential debate the other night where it's just two statists battling over which status reform is going to be adopted to try to save the horrors of the status system.
The real debate should be between libertarianism and statism.
Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
All right, well, and speaking of which, and especially where it applies it's squeezing the Iranian citizenry.
You can find it at www.fff.org/blog squeezing the Iranian citizenry.
What's wrong with that anyway?
Well, it's just really part of the horrors of this empire we have in the foreign interventionism, the quest of the U.S. government to force other countries to bend to its will, to do what the empire tells people to do.
And it's a war against the Iranian citizenry.
I mean, the government always says, no, no, no, this is focused on the leaders.
We're trying to hurt the leaders.
Well, they're not trying to hurt only the leaders.
They're trying to hurt the citizens, too, because they're trying to get the citizens to overthrow the regime.
So the citizens are the means.
And to the end, which is regime change.
And we saw this in Iraq where the sanctions were killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children.
In 60 minutes, the deaths of half a million Iraqi children were worth it.
I mean, imagine that, killing children and saying it's worth it.
It's just horrible.
And we've got this embargo against Cuba for 50 years or so because the CIA still is hoping to oust Fidel Castro from power and install a pro-U.S. dictator along with the Pentagon.
And now they're doing it to the Iranian people.
The value of the Iranian currency is struggling the same way that the Iraqi people were struggling.
Their life savings are being depleted.
There's been plane crashes in Iran because they can't get the parts to repair the planes because of the sanctions.
I mean, this is just immorality, Scott, to the nth degree.
It is amazing to me that a country like the United States of America is doing this to people.
It's just horrible.
And it's important that we libertarians continue battling to get rid of this type of horrific nonsense.
Yeah, that's what I think, too.
By the way, here's that clip of Madeleine Albright.
We have heard that a half a million children have died.
I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima.
And, you know, is the price worth it?
I think this is a very hard choice.
But the price, we think the price is worth it.
You know, symbolically, that is killing half a million kids, right?
I mean, if you're an Arab and you hear Madeleine Albright say that, I mean, if it's me, strap a bomb to my chest.
It's on.
Killing half a million kids.
Oh, and then saying that it's worth it.
I mean, you know, what could ever possibly be worth killing so many children?
It's just absolutely horrendous.
And here's the thing, too, is even if you accept their premise, you know, as far as their ends, it makes no sense whatsoever.
I mean, here's the crew.
Well, it wasn't them.
It was the Bush senior crew, but still same difference.
The American government told the Shiites and the Kurds, rise up and overthrow Saddam.
We'll back you up.
And then like the Bay of Pigs just left them high and dry to be slaughtered by more than 100,000 all at once in that one.
And then you put a blockade on them and starving is supposed to make them so angry that they somehow use their empty stomach to overthrow Saddam Hussein.
Now that they have even less power than they had before, it was a mathematical impossibility they were ever going to be able to overthrow him in that way.
If they couldn't overthrow him right after the war, they sure as hell couldn't overthrow him in 1996 for us.
Well, right.
And when they did, they just stood by while Saddam Hussein's helicopter gunships just massacred them.
I mean, it's just absolutely horrendous.
And here's another factor here.
The anger, the tremendous anger at losing your life savings, at losing your children or your spouse or whatever to malnutrition or infection because they can't get the medicines and so forth, they can't get enough with terrorist counterattacks.
And what does the U.S. say?
Oh, no, they just hate us for our freedom and values like they said in 1993 when they attacked the World Trade Center, 9-11, the USS Cole, the same old stuff.
They cannot acknowledge that their own policies, sanctions, invasions, occupations, assassinations, drones and so forth, are not what America is all about.
This is not what we want our country to be doing.
And unfortunately, that's what our country is doing.
It's contributing to the misery and suffering now of the Iranian people.
Yeah, it's funny, Fitzy G in the chat room is pointing out that Hussein was still in power at the time.
So how was it worth it at all even in the construction of the rhetoric there?
Like, what was worth it?
What was the price in 2003 to get that regime changed they wanted so bad?
So really, they could have not had a blockade at all and just waited until 2003 and then had their regime changed and they could have saved a million lives.
And then killed another million.
It's this perpetual hope that the sanctions are going to force people to overthrow the regime.
They had somewhat of a success story, I put it in quotation marks, in 2003, where they made, in Nixon's terms, made the economy scream so that people would overthrow the Allende regime.
Well, the military has a coup there which is fully supported and participated in by the CIA.
The Pentagon's in there supporting them.
And Pinochet uses this economic emergency to assume the same powers that the Bush administration assumed after 9-11 and exercise those powers, including two Americans that the CIA helped execute and tortured people, raped people, and so forth.
And the CIA and the military loved it because you see they were killing terrorists and communists and so forth.
And I think that's what they're hoping for in Iran is a military takeover that's pro-US, like the Shah of Iran's regime, or some dictator that's in there like the Shah.
Or some pro-US ruler in there who will be submitted, like another Hosni Mubarak.
That's what they're hoping for in Iran.
That's what they were hoping for with Iraq.
Well, the problem is they got away with it in Iran once before and so they think they can again.
I mean, I don't see how they really could.
I think even if whatever, if all the mullahs fall and the military takes over, why are they going to be our allies any more than the mullahs were?
That doesn't really ring true to me and I know you've got to go, but just real quick to bring it back to present day and the circumstances with Iran.
I talked with Mohammad Sahimi who's written about the effect of the sanctions in Iran and he talked about how he confirmed himself.
He was reporting himself.
He had relatives, two different brothers-in-law, I think he said, who are pharmacists in Tehran who said that they can't get their chemotherapy meds for the cancer patients to help their blood clot, which of course means that then they not only can just bleed to death with a scrape or whatever, but also it means that they can't get surgeries and other care that they need and whatever and they're dying.
Innocent people are dying right now and when, as you mentioned, the currency is breaking in Iran right now that the sanctions are working, the crippling sanctions are working and breaking the currency that there's no way to measure the depths of despair that we're living under, how many families destroyed, how many kids beaten to death in the dad's fit of drunken rage or whatever the hell it is when you destroy an economy.
It's a war that we're perpetrating on the people of that society, all of them.
You're right, it's a real war and you're right, the misery is unbelievable that they're inflicting on these people and the anger and rage that must be rising among those people to pay a price for it.
Somehow I think Americans, they just don't see it.
They hear, yeah, crippling sanctions or whatever, they just can't imagine that Iran is not a shape on a map, it's a real place with real innocent civilians who, just like us, they're just trying to live their lives and get by in the world and this is what we're doing to them for these bogus reasons.
Many of them love America.
They love the people in you.
You cost them their life savings and the lives of their spouses and their children and their loved ones and their fellow countrymen and all of a sudden all bets are off and this is what this government's doing, our government.
It's just creating more animosity, more anger, more hatred and when that manifests itself in another terrorist attack then they take away our freedoms and they start taxing us more.
It's the biggest scam in town.
Thank you, Scott, appreciate it.
Everybody, that is the great Jacob Hornberger.
He is the founder and president of the Future of Freedom Foundation at FFF.org and especially check out his blog there.
It's not really a blog, it's just article after article, full-sized articles there.
FFF.org/blog and we'll be right back here in a few.
So you're a libertarian and you don't believe the propaganda about government awesomeness you were subjected to in fourth grade.
What about economics?
Well, learn in your car from professors you can trust with Tom Woods' Liberty Classroom and if you join through the Liberty Classroom link at ScottHorton.org we'll make a donation to support the Scott Horton Show.
Liberty Classroom, the history and economics they didn't teach you.
In an empire where Congress knows nothing, the ubiquitous DC think tank is all and the Israel lobby and Washington too.
It's called the Council for the National Interest at CouncilForTheNationalInterest.org They advocate for us on Capitol Hill.
Join CNI to demand an end to the US-sponsored occupation of the Palestinians and an end to our government's destructive empire in the Middle East.
That's the Council for the National Interest at CouncilForTheNationalInterest.org Hey everybody, Scott Horton here for LibertyStickers.com If you're like me, then you're right all the time that we can't all get anti-government propaganda to stick on the back of our trucks.
Check out LibertyStickers.com Categories include anti-war, empire, police state, libertarian, Ron Paul, gun rights, founders quotes and of course the stupid election.
That's LibertyStickers.com Everyone else's stickers suck.
Hey y'all, Scott Horton here.
After the show, you should check out one of my sponsors WallStreetWindow.com He's a financial manager who's investing in commodities, mining stocks and European markets.
Mike's site, WallStreetWindow.com is unique in that he shows people what he's really investing in updating you when he buys or sells in his main account.
Mike's betting his positions are going to go up due to the Federal Reserve printing all that money to finance the deficit.
See what happens at WallStreetWindow.com Hey ladies, Scott Horton here.
If you would like truly youthful, healthy and healthy looking skin, there is one very special company you need to visit.
Dagny and Lane at Dagnyandlane.com Dagny and Lane has revolutionized the industry with a full line of products made from organic and all natural ingredients that penetrate deeply with nutrient rich ionic minerals and antioxidants for healthy and beautiful skin.
That's Dagny and Lane at Dagnyandlane.com And for a limited time, I'd like to introduce you to Scott Horton.
Hey y'all, Scott here.
As you know, I've been laid off from Antiwar.com and have embarked on a mission to make this show into a real business.
And as you can tell, I've been doing alright at lining up some sponsors and some great ones at that.
But it isn't enough, so the perpetual fund drive rolls on.
The Scott Horton Show needs donors.
Needs donors and more advertisers to sign up for a monthly subscription with PayPal.
You don't need an account with them to do so.
Or use Google Wallet, WePay.com, Give.org, and now even accepting Bitcoins.
And if you own or represent a company or organization interested in sponsoring the show, please email Scott at ScottHorton.org so we can work it out.
That's ScottHorton.org/donate.
And thanks.