03/21/08 – Murray Sabrin – The Scott Horton Show

Welcome back to Anti-War Radio on Chaos 95.9 in Austin, Texas.
And our next guest is Murray Sabrin.
He's an entrepreneur, an author, TV and radio commentator, and a professor and executive director of the Center for Business and Public Policy at Ramapo College.
And he is right now running for United States Senate in New Jersey.
Welcome to the show.
Thank you, Scott.
It's a pleasure being with you today.
Well, it's very good to have you on here.
And now part of our thing at AntiWar.com is that we're a non-profit, so we can't really discuss your campaign too much, and I'm not really too interested in electoral politics anyway.
So I just want to ask you about foreign policy.
Tell me this, Dr. Sabrin.
Is it the case, do you believe that the surge is working and that America needs to stay the course in Iraq until we achieve victory?
Well, the thing is we won in Iraq.
The irony here is that if the goal was to get rid of Saddam Hussein, his sons at his military command, we won a victory based upon the results of our actions.
So therefore, the Iraqi people were able to vote in a democratic election.
They had a multiple choice of candidates.
They selected a government.
Now it's up to the national government to secure the country for the Iraqi people.
After all, it's the primary responsibility of every nation's government, no matter where it is around the world, to make sure that the country's territorial integrity is protected, to make sure that the sovereignty is protected, and that the country is ready to repel any aggressors and to make sure that any criminals in the country or terrorists in the country are dealt with.
So from that perspective, from those benchmarks, we've achieved what we set out to achieve, namely to have a regime change.
The question is whether we should have had that.
That's a different debate.
But given the benchmarks that the President put down, we've achieved a victory, and therefore the troops should be brought home as quickly as possible, given that they've done their job.
Well, but, I mean, I think their argument is that the government that they've created is not yet prepared to take up all those responsibilities that you name.
And that's why we have to stay, is to help them get to the point where they are prepared to do all those things that you say a national government must be prepared to do.
Well, this is the conundrum that we face ourselves with in Iraq.
Iraq has oil revenue.
They should be able to take that oil revenue and rebuild their country, including a military force which would protect the people.
That's the purpose of every national government.
So we should work with the Iraqis to make sure that they can have their national security protected and we should do so as quickly as possible.
It seems to me that if the Iraqi people don't protect their own country, there's no reason that the American people, the American military should do that.
After all, we are not a social welfare agency.
The Iraqi people have responsibility to themselves to make sure that they're protected.
And the American people have given a lot to the Iraqi people over the past five years, and it's time for us to make that stand with the Iraqis, that they're ultimately responsible for their government, and the quicker they do that, the more secure they will be.
Well, now, many of the Democrats running for president and for various levels of Congress and so forth have talked about keeping a rapid reaction force in the region, that we ought to withdraw our troops from Iraq, they say, but we ought to keep enough soldiers nearby so that we can go back in in order to solve any problems and that kind of thing.
What do you think of that?
Well, this is another example of altruism on a worldwide basis.
I mean, we all want to live in a peaceful world.
I don't know anyone who says we should have more conflict in the world.
But the point is, to go back to my initial premise, is that every nation has to maintain the national security of its borders and maintain a sufficient military to repel aggressors.
That's what governments are for, that's the primary responsibility.
And every nation in that region has to make sure that they're in charge of their government and that if there are, quote, terrorists in the area, they're dealt with swiftly.
And then also there are regional arrangements that could be made, that if the Saudis think that they're being threatened or that instability in the region is going to affect their territorial integrity, they've got to work with other governments in the region to make sure that there's stability in the region.
After all, there's a lot at stake economically from that part of the world, since the portion of the world's oil flows through that region.
So I guess what you're saying is you think it'd really be better to let them work their problems out themselves, that America is kind of making it more difficult for peace to break out?
Well, let me give you an analogy.
During the turmoil of the 1950s and 60s with our civil rights struggle here in the United States, what if the European nations said, well, there's so much instability in the United States, there's so much conflict in the United States, we're going to send a military force to the United States to make sure that the Americans ensure equal opportunity and equal protection of the law for all its citizens.
I think we would have found that a little bit over the top, because we handled these issues on our own.
We didn't need outside intervention to make sure that people in the United States felt comfortable and secure, and that we had laws that respected human rights and human dignity.
So to turn that around to the people in the Mideast and saying, listen, we wish you all the good luck in the world, but the American people already spent a lot in men and treasure, and therefore they have to come together and make sure that their region, the world, is safe for their people to prosper and to live in peace and security.
Well, I believe the War Party would say that, well, we just can't leave it to them, that they're not going to create stability and work out their problems, and so that's why we need to be there.
We have to secure those oil resources.
We have to be able to get that oil to market, and we can't do that without the U.S. Navy and the Persian Gulf.
How do you answer that?
I think a case could be made that the sea lanes should be open and free, so that we have freedom of the seas, but that doesn't mean that we have to go internally into nations and patrol their streets, is what the American military is doing.
In other words, the American military has been turned into a police force in Iraq, which I don't think the Constitution authorizes that, and I don't think the American people necessarily agree with that.
In fact, we know that about 70% of the American people want the troops home as soon as possible, so there's a tremendous tide of opinion in the United States regarding our operations in the Mideast that the American people, I think, have come to the conclusion that we've done all we can, and it's up to the Iraqis and other people in the region to secure their own national interests.
Do you see Iran as a threat to American interests in the region, or to Israel?
And if so, what do you think should or shouldn't be done?
Well, if there is intelligence that says Iran is ready to bomb Israel, Israel is one of the great military powers, not only in the region, but in the world.
The Israelis have demonstrated they can take care of themselves in a conventional war.
I would have no doubt that Israel would be able to defend itself against Iran, but the question we have to ask is why would Iran do anything like that, because the regime is skating on thin ice, given the economic problems in that country.
So it seems to me that the Israelis can certainly handle themselves, and Iran is a country that doesn't have a very powerful military.
We have an extremely powerful military, and there's no reason that we can think that Iran could try to defeat us in any shape, way, or form.
I think it's the same for Israel as well.
So we have to be vigilant, that's the point.
Every nation has to be vigilant for what they perceive to be an external threat.
So if all nations maintain that type of vigilance, then Iran will be contained, just as we contained the Soviet Union for, what, 50 years after World War II.
Well, do you think that we should open up an embassy in Tehran and normalize relations?
Well, I think speaking to people does no harm.
In fact, here's the point.
The staunch anti-communist Richard Nixon went to Beijing in 1972 to establish diplomatic relations with China, a nation where its leadership killed tens of millions of its own people, and still has human rights violations, and Nixon opened the door to China when this nation was considered, in many cases, the pariah of the world, given its human rights record.
So for us not to engage Iran to have diplomatic relations, after all, that's why we have a State Department, so they can engage in talks with other peoples around the world, establish a dialogue, and see what the issues are that are causing so much consternation on both sides.
Do you think that America needs to continue to occupy the demilitarized zone in Korea?
Well, here it is, 55 years after the end of the Korean War, I think it's time for South Korea, which is a very powerful nation economically, they certainly have a pretty strong military from what I understand, North Korea is an economic basket case, and you've got to remember, that part of the world, China wants stability on its borders, China will not allow North Korea to do anything that could threaten the economic and political stability in that part of the world, so North Korea is contained, our troops should be brought home as quickly as possible, we have our own borders to protect, our north and south borders, and so that's what every nation's military should be used for, is that just as charity begins at home, I think national defense begins at home.
Well you know, if you're really serious about the U.S. military for national defense purposes only, you're talking about a major sea change in our posture in the world, we have at least a dozen, maybe more carrier battle groups patrolling all the seas, we have military bases in well over a hundred countries in the world, you're talking about undoing that policy?
Well what I'm talking about is having a debate finally in this country about what is America's role in the world and what's the best way to have a secure country and what's the best way to have freedom of the sea so goods can travel freely on the high seas, that's the debate we should be having instead of trying to make sure that every nation that we are involved in militarily has our protection because this is very costly and we see what the ramifications are with our own economy and with our own budget and with our own currency, our currency is falling, people are very gun-shy now of holding dollars and this is coming back to haunt us with the Federal Reserve intervening massively in the financial market so we need this great debate in this country, in fact President Clinton, Bill Clinton after Katrina on TV said we should have a debate in this country about the proper role of government in a free society and I think that's the debate that we should have as quickly as possible especially with the new administration coming to office in January 2009, that would be a great summit to have in Washington D.C. of maybe a week long on talking about domestic and foreign policy issues is what is America's role, at least the government's role domestically and internationally and I think here's where experts about foreign policy can get on, get in front of the American people, broadcast on C-SPAN and talk about the pros and cons of all the military expenditures we now have in our foreign policy of bases all over the world, I think this is something that has to be aired out as quickly as possible.
What about the larger so-called war on terrorism, we have these stateless groups who basically can only find safe haven where there are no states, where in Waziristan where the Pakistani government cannot even really control that mountainous area, certain provinces of Iraq where America has removed what used to be the state and yet there are I guess by reasonable estimates at least a thousand or two thousand of these guys who actually are dangerous enough to pose a threat to the United States of America, what do you think is the best way for the U.S. government to handle this problem and presumably in a way that will take care of it as quickly as possible?
This is a great point Scott, I think first of all we have to have good intelligence, I mean we had a total intelligence breakdown it seems to me prior to September 11th otherwise we wouldn't have had the hijackers do what they did on September 11th, so we need the best intelligence possible and so therefore we have to have people on the ground and whatever technological capabilities we have that would give us the information we need in order to find where these terrorists are and bring them to justice, after all the people responsible for 9-11 still haven't been brought to justice, at least not all of them, so I would think that that would be the highest priority of the federal government is to bring the people who planned and helped carry out 9-11 to justice, whether it's in the United States or some international tribunal or whatever the case may be, but since the acts were done in the United States I think it would be appropriate to have them tried in the United States, so we need to have a sort of a mobile force of highly elite specialists who can go into these areas, do their quick surgical attack and leave as quickly as possible, I think that would be the best way so we don't get bogged down in a multi-year civil war conflict in parts of the world.
Now one thing that's come to light really in my years spent doing this show since these wars have really begun is that the purpose of the September 11th attacks, as best as I can approximate the motives of the people who did it, I first thought, well that was really stupid of them from their point of view, they thought that they were fighting the American empire but all they did was give it a giant excuse, but later it came to light from talking with James Bamford, the great intelligence reporter, with Michael Shoyer, the former chief of the CIA's Bin Laden unit and other experts along those lines, that the reason they did September 11th was as a slap in the face basically, an attempt to anger us enough, they were tired of getting missile strikes from Bill Clinton, some cruise missiles from a battleship, they wanted a full scale American invasion of the Middle East to destabilize, to topple all their enemy governments, to bring Americans within rifle range, to bog us down and bleed us dry, to recreate what they did to the Russians with our help in Afghanistan in the 1980s, and I just want to know, I guess, what your perspective on that is, whether you think that that's right and whether you can explain to the people perhaps if that is true, then how that might prescribe a different policy to solve the problem rather than naming everyone an axis of evil and regime changing them.
Well I think you hit it right on the nail on the head, I think these analysts also hit on the head, namely that one way that these terrorist groups can get a great nation bogged down like they did with the Soviet Union, like they're doing now with the United States, is to bring them into their arena of the world and have massive troops and tremendous expenditure by the big government to fight them, instead of having them do their terrorist strikes, they now have a perfect excuse to recruit more people in the region, saying the United States is coming over to take over our land, so they're getting a great propaganda coup and unfortunately the United States policy makers haven't been able to figure this out, or maybe they have figured it out, and they prefer this type of military situation rather than making sure that our borders are protected, because since 9-11 our borders are probably more porous than they were prior to 9-11, and yet the cost of this war is approaching a trillion dollars, if not more, and if we stay there any longer, according to Joseph Stiglitz's new book, it's going to be three trillion dollars, so this is one way of bleeding a great economy through this continuous drip, drip, drip of military expenditures and all the cost involved with the veterans coming home who are going to need lifetime treatment and lifetime benefits for their injuries, so I think the terrorists, the Bin Laden group, really understand America better than many ways we understand ourselves, because no one likes to get slapped in the face and not respond, and so we responded massively, I think going into Afghanistan to get Al-Qaeda was, I think, what most people expected the United States to do, and that would be the mission, and get rid of Al-Qaeda and Afghanistan, and we could then withdraw from Afghanistan and let the people of Afghanistan have their own government, but instead we've been bogged down now for five years, and the question is how much open-ended will this commitment be, and given public opinion, it seems that the American people have decided in recent polls that even the war itself was not worth it, and therefore they would like to see the troops brought home as quickly as possible, in other words, the American people initially sign on to war if they think it's going to be a very short war, but if it drags on with no end in sight, that's when I think public opinion reverses dramatically, and now the policy makers in Washington will have to decide from a political calculation what would be the best policy for the upcoming presidential election and what would be the policies in the new Congress, because it seems to me that the longer this drags on and the more casualties that occur on both sides, I think, and the more the costs escalate, the American people will increase their opposition to the war.
This point was really driven home to me last night when I saw this new audio tape has come out, this CNN story here, says, quotes what's purported to be the voice of Osama Bin Laden declaring Iraq is the perfect base to set up the jihad to liberate Palestine.
Now, on one hand, I guess that disproves the idea that we're going to create a wonderful democracy and it was going to end terrorism across the world somehow by doing that, but also I think this is really cited by the government as, see, we have to stay.
This is certainly John McCain's line as he runs for president.
We have to stay because otherwise Osama Bin Laden is going to set up a perfect base there, never mind that it's their fault for invading the country in the first place.
They're pointing to this as a consequence and saying this is why we cannot leave.
Do you think that that's true, that Al-Qaeda will end up taking over parts of Iraq if we leave?
I think that's the great fear of U.S. policymakers is that if we do leave, Al-Qaeda will have a whole country which they didn't have before.
So this is, I think, weighing in on the policymakers, especially John McCain's view that we have to stay there until Al-Qaeda is defeated, but now that they're there, it's probable that they may be there for a long, long time because they're probably getting more recruits and therefore we sort of box ourselves in in terms of if we leave and the country is terribly destabilized and Al-Qaeda takes over, then the policymakers will say, we told you so, we should have stayed there.
But if we continue to stay there, Al-Qaeda may even get stronger as they get more recruits.
So we'll really be in a catch-22 situation in many ways.
So where this ends, nobody has the answer.
That's why in many ways I wish I had a time machine to go into the future to see where this thing all resolves itself.
But there are no easy choices here.
This is the whole point, that because of the decisions made a few years ago that we're reaping the consequences where people were saying if you go into Iraq and you get rid of Saddam Hussein, who was containing Al-Qaeda in the sense that they weren't allowed to operate, now that they're there, American policymakers feel that we have to stay there to prevent them from growing.
Well, people who were warning against military occupation and action in Iraq have seen their prognosis materialize.
I'm talking with Murray Sabrin.
He's running for the U.S. Senate in New Jersey.
What's your stand on torture?
Oh, goodness gracious.
My father survived World War II.
He fought the Nazis for five years in his native Poland, and he escaped death at least three or four times that I'm aware of.
And obviously he was nearly shot for being falsely accused of stealing a hammer in a prison camp.
So I'm absolutely opposed to the notion of torture because it's just so inhumane, and there are basic rules of war that everyone should follow.
And if we don't follow them, then I think our moral high ground is undermined substantially.
Well, what about the TV show where if you don't torture the guy, somebody's going to nuke L.A.?
That we don't know.
I'm sorry, that's the best argument I can make.
Well, we don't know for sure that person had that information.
So it's torture from what I understand from what I've been reading about.
It really doesn't work that people will say anything to make sure that they're not tortured.
And how do we know if they're telling the truth or not?
So it's not the way that we can get information.
That's why good intelligence is critical for national security, not to rely on people who are captured and try to obtain information from them by using means that we would find repulsive or were done to our troops.
Do you plan on making this an issue if you are elected to the Senate?
Well, I would certainly stand up for the notion that we have to have humane policies.
I think that's one of the strong suits of what I talk about in the campaign, given my family background of barely surviving the Holocaust, is that my parents were the only ones to survive from their families, and everyone else was shot by the Nazis or died in camps.
And so I'm a strong believer in having peaceful relations with all people and working out your differences peacefully, and that war can only occur when there are just reasons for going to war.
Like when we were attacked on December 7, 1941, or there's an imminent attack where we can demonstrate that the troops are coming here, the missiles are being fired.
That would be a just cause to have a defensive posture and then make sure that that nation doesn't engage in aggressive acts toward us.
But other than that, we've got to work out our differences because domestically, when you have disputes with your neighbor, you don't fight.
You go to a court, or you work it out through arbitration or mediation.
And so that's why, supposedly, we have the United Nations and other international agencies that are supposed to help nations resolve their differences.
All right.
Now, what's your view on the Bill of Rights?
Most politicians, if they stand for the Bill of Rights at all, they like to pick and choose that, well, they're for the Second Amendment, but they're not for the Fourth, or vice versa.
Well, here's a pop quiz for you.
What does the Fourth Amendment say, Dr. Saber?
Well, it basically says that we have to be secure in our homes, and that if there's going to be a search, there has to be a warrant signed by a judge to make sure that there's reasonable cause that the police can search our homes.
And so I'm fourth square for the Bill of Rights.
I became a United States citizen in 1959 because I was two years old when my parents arrived in America in 1949, and I swore that I would uphold the Constitution when I became a U.S. citizen in 1959.
So the Bill of Rights means something special to me.
It means that you're an American citizen, and you're supposed to protect and defend the Constitution.
And I've surrounded myself with people like Judge Napolitano, who's a good friend, who's written three books on the Constitution.
And whenever I have a question, I give him a call, and we discuss these issues.
But his books are really a breath of fresh air about saying that every president, no matter which party, has to uphold the Constitution and uphold the Bill of Rights, and has to have policies that are based upon protecting the American people's fundamental constitutional rights.
Now, you brought up Judge Napolitano, and I'm glad to know that he's a friend of yours, and I absolutely exclude him from this, other than he's a member, or at least used to be a member, of this group called the Federalist Society, which claimed to, well, and perhaps they really mean it, to defend the doctrine of strict interpretation of the Constitution enumerated powers.
The Constitution is an exile, they say, and it needs to be brought back and put into force.
And I like the sound of that, except it seems like these are the very same people who have come up with this theory of the unitary executive, where the president basically can rule the country without Congress of the Court saying boo about it.
And so I wonder what's your take on that?
If you interpret the Constitution strictly, do you come up with a unitary executive?
This is a very dangerous precedent, because there may be a president elected one day, possibly even this year, that my fellow Republicans will not like, and therefore there will be things done in the United States that will be contrary to their view of how the government should behave.
So the point is, as Benjamin Franklin said, if you give up liberty for security, you will wind up with neither, and I think that's a great motto that the American people should have somewhere in their home, because it's the essence of what America is about.
America was founded as a free nation where individual freedom and individual liberty were guaranteed, not that the government was going to give us freedom, the government was going to guarantee our freedom.
And therefore no president of any party, of any persuasion, can take away our rights that the Declaration enumerated, our God-given rights, and the Constitution elaborates in terms of freedom of speech, of religion, to defend ourselves with the Second Amendment, to be free from search and seizure, unreasonable search and seizure, and self-incrimination.
These are all the wonderful rights that people aspire to around the world, living in a free society, and we should be the model for the rest of the world, rather than, as Judge Napolitano and others point out, these rights have been chipped away over the years, and that's why his book is called Constitution and Exile.
So you think that while the president is not the chief of a unitary executive, what does that even mean, really?
Well, I think if you can say that, it means that the president can do whatever he or she wants, without consequences from the courts or the Congress, and that could be a very dangerous precedent, because we're supposed to be a nation where we have the rule of law, where laws are supposed to be adhered to, and no one's above the law.
I think that's what we saw in the 1970s with President Nixon, that not even he could be above the law.
So we saw that with the impeachment of Bill Clinton.
Admittedly, it was for what people would consider a relatively frivolous thing, about lying about sex on their oath, but still, the sense of the nation should be that every member of government, every person in the government, has to abide by the rule of law, and if we don't follow that dictum, then we're not going to have a constitution, and we'll be living in a post-constitutional age where presidents and Congress and the courts can do whatever they want to the undermining of what this nation stands for.
You've mentioned World War II a few times, and it sounds like being a child of World War II, you said your father fought as a guerrilla in Poland, I guess?
He was a partisan commander.
For one year, he headed up a group of 231 people, and then he was liberated in Poland in July 1944, and I have a picture of him on a plaque that he gave me many years ago with his firearm and surrounded by several of his partisans.
So his exploits were known far and wide during World War II and afterwards.
And it seems like this has been very formative for you.
You refer to it as, I saw a clip on YouTube where you were arguing the Second Amendment, and immediately you referred to that.
Well, this is the whole point about the Second Amendment, is that the right of self-defense, I think, is the most basic human right.
It's the most basic thing that separates us from totalitarian regimes, that we have the right to defend ourselves.
And the Second Amendment was put there because the Founders realized that people have the right to defend themselves from domestic criminals and foreign aggressors.
And they also understood that sometimes in the future, they realized that the reason you need a Second Amendment is because their experience with the British government, that the British government was so oppressive, they took away their firearms.
So they wanted to make sure that people could protect themselves no matter what contingency would happen in the future.
So they really understood the nature of government and the nature of man and the reason that rights come from our Creator or they're inherent to our being and not given by government.
So the Founders did something that was the most incredible thing in the history of the world.
They gave us the true understanding of what it means to be a human being.
And that, I think, we owe them an internal gratitude because they codified that in the Constitution.
And so when we stray from the Constitution, that's why we have all these problems.
This huge mountain of debt, the decline of the dollar, troops all over the world defending other nations rather than our own nation.
And so by not following that beautiful blueprint of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, we have immense problems today.
And that's why there are people who want to do something about it, including myself.
I really like the whole immigrant story of America.
All my family came to this country after 1900 at some point.
And here your father fought for his liberty in Poland under Nazi occupation.
And then the first thing he did was move all the way around the world to the United States of America.
And it's for the reasons that you just cited.
Because around here, you don't have to worry about Nazis taking over.
We have liberty here for real.
Well, this is why so many people want to come to America.
In fact, they're so desperate to come to America, they come here illegally.
And that's another issue we have to deal with.
But in the meantime, people come to America because tremendous opportunity here where you can start literally with nothing.
And I hear so many stories of people who literally start with nothing who built great businesses in America that are worth hundreds of millions of dollars today, whether it's in real estate, whether it's in the food business, whether it's in some sort of industrial product, whether it's in some service.
So America, despite all the problems we have, is still the place where people from all over the world want to come because of the tremendous opportunity.
But nevertheless, the federal government has become too intrusive in our lives.
The tax burden is still very high.
Our currency is depreciating.
We're stretched thin militarily.
And so we have these challenges that we have to face up to in the 21st century.
Otherwise, our standard of living will be a lot lower than it otherwise would be.
And that's the really key point, that we should have a much robust economy.
Instead, the other countries that are emerging from the dead hand of socialism are gaining on us.
China, India, Russia, the East European countries, they're going full speed ahead with capitalism and much lower tax rates because they lived under collectivism and they know how oppressive it is.
And so they're moving forward with economic reforms and we seem to be going the other way of creating more and more programs and making more and more people dependent upon the federal government.
Well, and as that happens, people, well, even in Barack Obama's race speech that he gave the other day where he said, you know, we should all come together, he basically implied we should all come together against those Chinese.
They're taking our jobs.
What's to be done about that?
Are you for free trade with China?
Oh, absolutely.
I mean, the point is, companies are going overseas because they get better returns given they have lower taxes overseas and less economic regulation.
We should be attracting more capital from around the world.
After all, we have a market of 300 million Americans, maybe even more with the illegal population.
But the point is, free trade is what's going to benefit the whole world as people are innovative, they're creative, they have breakthroughs in science and technology and medicine.
And so that's what's going to give us a much better world all around rather than each country trying to set up barriers to prevent capital and goods from flowing across borders.
So I think free trade, we have free trade in the United States and it works beautifully.
Here I am in New Jersey and we can get things from your part of the country and from California and from Florida.
And that's how free trade works.
If we have very few barriers among geographic regions and political entities, everyone's going to benefit and that's going to make the world more competitive and it's going to give us much better goods and services at much lower prices.
That's been the history of capitalism.
Well, how should we deal with the countries who have been pushed towards socialism, for example, in South America?
Should we, if they don't want to open their markets to our products, should we figure out ways to force open their markets in order to make them have free trade with us?
Or is that just up to them?
We should drop all our tariffs even if the other countries don't?
Or what is it exactly?
Yeah, I think unilaterally we could make our tariffs relatively low compared to other nations.
And as we know, socialism doesn't work.
The Soviet Union collapsed not because we defeated them militarily, it's because their whole economic system, as Litovan Mises and Hayek and other Auschwitz school economists predicted, that socialism will collapse because they just can't produce the goods and services that people want.
So as nations erect barriers and their people are poorer than they otherwise would be, I think it's up to each nation's people to force their government to free up their economy.
And that's going to happen over time, it's not going to happen overnight.
But when people see that they're not getting a good deal from their government because the price of imported goods is so high, they will demand a change.
Again, it takes time.
Unfortunately, sometimes it takes years and years and sometimes maybe even decades.
But given that we live in an integrated global economy, change happens pretty quickly these days because people are attuned to what's happening around the world.
And they see living standards booming in China now, for example, and they see that there's relatively free trade with China.
So people around the world have much higher expectations than they did years ago because the spread of knowledge is much greater today than it was just five years ago.
Indeed, that's true.
It seems to me, and I can't read minds of South Americans or anything, but it does seem like a lot of the reason that they've been pushed toward more socialist governments is in reaction to American imperialism calling itself the free market.
And they say, well, listen, if this is the free market, you're battleship off our coast, then we're not so sure that's what we want.
Well, this is why it's important to say what you mean to me, what you're saying.
Namely, free trade means that people are free to trade with each other.
You don't need military force to demonstrate that.
In fact, that's just the emphasis of free trade is that what free trade means is that people send their goods and we spend money, and that's how free trade operates.
And so the notion that you need a military presence at free trade is a contradiction in terms.
And that's why when people see that free trade means that there's going to be battleships off their shores, they get very nervous that we're going to force trade upon them.
And I think that's sending a wrong message, obviously, to people who we say this is an example of free trade.
So America should be a good neighbor to, the United States should be a good neighbor to South America, but not in an ironic way, but really.
Well, this is the point.
People's expectations are so high today.
They see that people are living much better lives, they have much better access to food, which of course is one of the primary needs that people have.
People want access to entertainment, they want access to better medicine, and you can only get that if you trade these things.
It doesn't come out of the sky.
Government doesn't provide them, at least they can, but they only do so by increasing taxes greatly.
And so the point is, free markets work, and freedom works, and that what we need is more freedom in the world, less freedom, and that means government withdrawing from the economy as much as possible so we can let the entrepreneurial spirit, whether it's the United States or South America, blossom.
And we know from de Soto's work that when you free up economies, and he was focusing on Peru, that people are very creative and provide goods and services to their fellow citizens much better than any government anti-poverty program.
Thank you very much for your time today, everybody.
It's Murray Sabrin.
He's running for Senate in New Jersey, and he is the Executive Director of the Center for Business and Public Policy at Ramapo College.
Thanks very much for your time today.
Thank you, Scott.
It's been a pleasure.
That's Anti-War Radio.
See you on Monday.
We'll talk at you on Monday.