03/25/08 – Bob Barr – The Scott Horton Show

All right, folks, welcome back to Anti-War Radio on Chaos 95.9 in Austin, Texas.
Our next guest is former Congressman Bob Barr.
He's also a former U.S. attorney.
He represented Georgia's District 7 in the House of Representatives, practices law in Atlanta, Georgia, works with the American Conservative Union, the NRA, and the Constitution Project.
He's also worked with the ACLU and the Marijuana Policy Project.
He's the author of the book, The Meaning of Is, The Squandered Impeachment and Wasted Legacy of William Jefferson Clinton, and he also sits on the Libertarian National Committee.
Welcome to the show, Bob.
Scott, it's great to be with you and your many listeners today.
Well, it's great to have you on the show, and I wanted to start off the interview asking you about the impeachment of Bill Clinton in the good old days, but I guess I'll have to save that for another interview since we're short on time here.
Let me ask you this.
Are you going to run for President of the United States?
There's been a tremendous amount of interest expressed both to me directly and indirectly on the Internet.
I take that support very seriously, and I think there also, and it also reflects a great deal of dissatisfaction with the current candidates and the current two-party system.
So it is something that, to be honest with you, that I'm looking very seriously at.
Well, I'm really glad to hear that, and you don't really have to respond to this beyond what you already have, but I'll go ahead and make somewhat of a case myself.
First of all, I always thought you were a great congressman back when you were in Congress.
A lot of the times, the right wing would err on the side of law and order, and you always erred on the side of the Bill of Rights, if you could even call it error there.
And I always appreciated that, and I know you've become even more libertarian since leaving the Congress.
And I think that the Ron Paul revolution right now is in neutral mode, and we're not sure where to go.
We need a rallying point, and you're perfectly positioned, Bob, to take up the mantle of the Ron Paul revolution and run it through, at least through November, and see where it goes from there, and to bring these people into the libertarian party.
We need to do that, Scott.
You've put it very eloquently and very accurately.
There is a tremendous amount at stake in this upcoming election.
It may very well be that if we don't get a handle on these fundamental liberties that are at stake in this election, we will not be able to again.
It is the growth of government, the limitations on individual liberty and freedom are accelerating so rapidly these days that this may be our really last opportunity to do so.
Ron Paul tapped into a great deal of that dissatisfaction and that awareness.
Unfortunately, working through the Republican Party structure, it became impossible for him to really move forward with his movement.
But we have to have, as you say, a rallying point out there to harness that energy, that freedom in this election cycle.
I also can tell by your actions that you really understand this realignment, that we have to take the best parts of the left and the best parts of the right and make an alliance.
Like you said, last-ditch effort for the rule of law here.
Either we have an emperor or we have a bill of rights, it's one or the other.
In your work with the Marijuana Policy Project, with the ACLU and other groups like that, I see you reaching out to the left and that's the kind of leadership we need, Bob.
What we need to do, Scott, and again you put it more eloquently than I could, what we need to do is recognize that among all of these different groups and organizations, the ACU, the NRA, the ACLU, the Marijuana Policy Project, all these other groups out there, we may have very serious disagreements on particular policy matters or particular programs or issues.
We can no longer allow that or afford to allow those differences to get in the way of reaching out to all of these different groups and doing whatever we can to protect our fundamental liberties which all of those groups that you enumerated believe in.
If we continue to allow the status quo two-party system to divide and conquer and keep these groups apart, then they will continue to succeed in diminishing individual liberty.
Well, you know, you say status quo, the number one thing that jumps to my mind is the perpetual, seemingly indefinite occupation of Iraq and I know that you're part of the Libertarian National Committee that issued this call just last month to get American forces out of that country post-haste.
Please explain.
The Libertarian Party is not a party of absolute isolationism.
The Libertarian Party, of course, as the vast majority of Americans do, believes in protecting our sovereignty.
We are a nation conceived in liberty.
We've strayed, but we were conceived in liberty.
And it's an important fundamental function and responsibility of government to protect its sovereignties, its borders, and its vital interests.
And from time to time, that requires defensive measures that might involve the use of force.
But importantly, and George Washington had this pegged exactly right over 200 years ago when, for example, in his final farewell, he warned against the United States as then a fledgling nation, but just as importantly today, to not involve itself in other people's troubles and to make sure that what was always kept foremost in our national security interest was our sovereignty and our interests, not those of other nations.
What we've fallen into in recent years, not just since 9-11, Scott, but particularly since 9-11, is this notion that in order to protect ourselves, we have to preemptively go into and, in the case of Iraq, occupy another sovereign nation and, in other areas, become involved affirmatively and proactively in military activities that result in loss of life and tremendous expenditures, wastes of our taxpayers' precious dollars here in this country.
We can't afford it from an economic standpoint, and we cannot afford it in terms of being true to our fundamental core beliefs and principles.
Yes, there are going to be times, I believe, when we have to engage in the use of force in order to defend ourselves and defend our vital interests, but simply saying that, gee, it's better to fight over in this other nation and destroy another nation so that we're not potentially attacked here, is the height of arrogance.
Well, you know, in the 1990s, one of the biggest controversies was the definition of the word is, and we've come a long way, because now it's, what's exactly the definition of torture and murder?
And you have this article here in the Washington Monthly in opposition to torture, and that's one of the things that you focus on is the language.
It turns out, you know, I always thought they called it enhanced interrogation techniques just because their government, they like to speak in newspeak and euphemism, but you point out that, no, they call it that because there's no definition in law for that.
It's a made-up term which helps them get away with torturing people.
It is sophistry of the worst and rankest order, because it's being used, these word games calling waterboarding simulated torture, when there's nothing simulated about the tremendous pain, physical and mental, that it causes to somebody to drown them.
And the other terms that they've used, enhanced interrogation techniques, it's not simply twisting and torturing, so to speak, the rule of law in order to circumvent the rule of law, but it also is resulting in the death of individuals, and that is absolutely unforgivable what our nation, this administration, is doing in terms of playing these word games in order to justify not only what is illegal, but highly immoral and unethical.
And I think it's important, too, that you're speaking from the perspective of a former executive branch employee, a U.S. attorney.
I was very proud to serve as a United States attorney under Presidents Reagan and Bush 1.
I was very proud to serve earlier in my public service career as an official with the Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, and I think in those capacities and in my capacity for eight years as a member of the United States Congress, particularly serving on the Judiciary Committee for that entire time, that it has given me a perspective that is perhaps a little bit beyond what the average citizen might know about these goings-on.
As a United States attorney, for example, I knew firsthand the tremendous power of the federal government to gather evidence and to invade people's privacy if it chose to, and to take people's liberties away.
As an intelligence official, I knew, even long prior to 9-11, the tremendous power that the government already had in order to invade privacy and gather intelligence information.
And as a member of Congress, also, conducting oversight hearings through the Judiciary Committee, for example, of everything from WACO to Project Carnivore and Project Echelon and other sorts of intelligence-gathering operations.
Know your customer.
Know your customer, exactly.
Having really worked on these issues and held hearings, I know just how vast the power of the federal government in all these areas is.
And then when they come along and say, oh, we don't have enough power already to do this or that or to protect the nation, it strikes me as the height of being disingenuous, because they have way too much power already.
The government doesn't need more.
They just need to use the power that they have much more effectively and within the bounds of the law.
All right.
Now, I know you have to go and teach a class.
I want to ask you one last question real quick.
There's an article by Bruce Fine in The Washington Times about a House resolution sponsored by Representative Walter Jones of North Carolina, which specifically, I don't know the exact language, but I believe it basically makes it a crime outright for the president to start a war with anyone without coming to Congress first.
It's basically a revision of the War Powers Act.
And I wonder where you stand on that.
First of all, I'd like to have tremendous respect for Walter Jones, a very, very courageous member of Congress who, like myself, from time to time has really had to stand up to his party, the Republican Party, to do what is right, and has taken tremendous scorn for his efforts in support of truth and justice.
I have also tremendous regard for Bruce Fine, one of the preeminent constitutional scholars in this country, not just in this country, but through his work overseas in behalf of constitutional formation.
I would look very carefully.
I'm not familiar with the specific language of the legislation or the resolution that you're talking about, but we need to do something in order to bring the rule of law to the proper exercise of the separate powers of the different branches.
The executive branch, while the president serves as the commander-in-chief, a technical term that was put in there for administrative purposes in the Constitution, that does not mean that the president should be able to, whenever he or she wants to, wherever they want to, in whatever manner they want to, deploy U.S. forces.
Congress has the power to declare war, it is the power, the specific power of the Congress to raise and support armies, to set the rules whereby the military operates, it is simply the president who carries out those responsibilities.
But nowadays, we have gotten to the point where presidents believe that they can do anything they want as long as they say, oh, we're doing it as the commander-in-chief, and that has proved very, very dangerous and very costly in a number of ways.
It does need to be reined in.
All right, folks, that's Bob Barr, former U.S. attorney and congressman from Georgia.
He has a website, bobbarr.org, is that right, is it .com or .org, I'm sorry?
Bobbarr.org.
.org, right?
And also, please check out the Bar Code blog at the website of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, that's AJC.com.
Thank you very much for your time today, Bob.
Thank you, Scott.
Look forward to talking with you again very shortly.
I hope so.