All right, everybody, welcome back to Antiwar Radio on Chaos 92.7 FM in Austin, Texas, streaming live worldwide on the Internet, ChaosRadioAustin.org and at Antiwar.com slash radio.
And our next guest is Mike Revell, former Democratic presidential candidate.
He's now running for the Libertarian Party nomination to be president of the United States.
Welcome back to the show, Mike.
Thank you, Scott, for having me, and thank you for welcoming me as a libertarian candidate.
Of course, my values didn't change.
You know, I changed party, but I had the same values as a Democrat, and I've got those values now.
It's the party that has changed.
Okay, well, now, speaking of that, I want to give the audience a chance to know a little bit of your background.
The greatest human evil, other than torture and murder, is slavery, or maybe that's right up on equal status with torture and murder.
And you led the effort as a senator back in the 1970s to abolish the federal slavery known as selective service, that is, the draft.
And I was wondering if you could tell the audience a little bit about how it was you got that done and why you were so driven to abolish the draft in America, Senator.
Well, I've never heard it articulated that way as slavery, but it does have some sense in that regard.
What happened was that many of us during that Vietnam era realized that Lyndon Johnson was able to expand the war through the use of the draft, because the young men at the time didn't have much political clout.
But we realized that we couldn't stop the war with that, but we recognized that we wanted to stop some future president.
But lo and behold, we did have an effect in ending the war by ending the draft.
It was a coincidence that the draft expired in 1973.
This started in 1971.
And when I announced and started the draft, Mike Mansfield, unknown to me, set it up.
And I didn't realize, because I was a freshman, I wasn't that schooled in the procedures, that he made it possible for me to do the filibuster by using a two-track method, where the legislative authorization, the military authorization, was called up every afternoon.
I was there to debate John Stennis, who was chairman of the committee.
And then the bill was called down, and the Senate proceeded to other businesses.
So this went on into September.
Now, of course, in June, Ellsberg got me the Pentagon Papers, and I released the Pentagon Papers as part of the draft, and that created a whole melee.
But then the debate continued on into September.
Stennis and Mansfield were able to persuade Nixon, the president, to cut a deal, saving face for the president and Stennis, to say, okay, because the draft had expired at the end of June, what we'll do is we'll put the draft back on, we'll let it go for two years, and we guarantee to let it expire in 73.
Obviously, I was going to be there in 73 and could start a filibuster all over again.
But Stennis is an honorable man.
The draft did expire at that point in time.
Nixon, later on in his memoir, said that he regretted that was one of his failures, was letting the draft expire at that point.
And, of course, it's one of the things I'm very, very proud of, but, of course, it has, like all things, unintended consequences, and that's what we have today with the mercenaries that we employ in Iraq to expand our forces.
Okay, now, you joined the Libertarian Party, quit the Democratic Party, joined the Libertarian Party, and then the next day announced that you're running for president.
You said at the top of the show, your values haven't changed.
Are they individualist Libertarian values?
Or, I could see how some critics would say, here's a guy who is not so much an individualist as a guy who really believes in democracy and running for president.
Well, if you look very closely at, you know, let's take the draft.
That's something that, obviously, the Libertarians feel deeply about.
Absolutely.
You were talking about slavery.
They would equate it with that.
Well, the Democrats didn't.
In fact, it was the Democratic Party that put the draft back in place under Harry Truman.
Let's talk about the war.
The Libertarians don't want the war.
They're opposed to the military-industrial complex, also.
Look at habeas corpus.
That's a big issue with the Libertarians.
It's not, obviously, a big issue with the Democrats.
They talk about it, but they don't do anything about it.
Look at the issues of rendition and the espionage and the Patriot Act.
Congress is in control of the Democrats right now.
You don't see any changes in this.
These are things that upset me and upset the Libertarians.
So, no, my values haven't changed.
Look at the things that I was able to do when I was in the Congress.
I ended the nuclear testing in the North Pacific.
Well, that threatens to poison the food chain in the North Pacific.
My God, that's a Libertarian position if there is one, the government doing that, topping, capping the number of nuclear power plants where the government has released, taken liability away from the corporations and put on the backs of the Americans.
That's a Libertarian position.
I took that.
I was building the largest private entity, corporate entity in the United States, private property of the Alaska Pipeline.
That's a Libertarian position.
I was doing that, and I had to fight the Democratic leadership to bring that up.
I was Scoop Jackson that I fought in that regard, and then releasing the Pentagon Papers to fight the secrecy of the government, and that was a Democratic government and a Republican government.
That's a Libertarian position.
Well, these are all Libertarian positions that I had when I was a Democrat, and I had to fight the Democratic leadership at the time to do it.
Here, I walk away from the Democratic Party, I take my values with me, it just so happens that those values are Libertarian values, and just look at what happened this last September.
The Democratic leadership in cahoots with the Republican, with the General Electric, to cut out my ability to debate the other Democrats, to silence my voice with the American people, and not one of the other Democratic candidates stood up and said, hey, this is corporate censorship.
Not one of them stood up to the Democratic leadership, the party leadership.
The value I have is that that is corporate censorship, and they should have fought it, and they didn't, and they're wrong.
I'm right on that one.
Now I just attended two debates put on by the Libertarian Party.
Both of those debates were fair.
Everybody had equal time, everybody had ample time to answer the questions, and everybody had the same questions.
That is not what happened in the Democratic sanctioned debates across the country that I was involved with.
I wanted to explore some of the differences that you have with the Libertarians.
In the last interview, you spoke a lot about direct democracy and that kind of thing, and yet, Libertarians are opposed to democracy.
Libertarians believe in, if they believe in any government at all, they believe in having a very limited constitutional republic whose job it is simply to protect people's rights, not to redistribute wealth, not to embark on any grand national programs or anything else along those lines.
And in fact, from my own personal point of view, democracy is just, that's what we have now.
Whatever 51% will let the government get away with, with no limits.
No, no, no.
First off, I've heard that the word democracy and the word republic are both the same.
It means that the people rule.
Now, whatever the people decide, and of course, I'm a great advocate, I want to empower the American people to make laws and to be able to repeal laws.
And so whatever the majority of the American people want, I buy into.
And so if you don't buy what the majority of the people want, then it means that you want the minority rule.
I'm not for the minority rule.
Well, the majority went along with the Iraq war.
I don't understand the point you're making about the libertarians.
The libertarians I've talked with believe in majority rule.
Well, it's just that simple.
I don't really think that's right.
I mean, if the majority wants to violate people's rights, start an aggressive war, the majority should get their way if they want to start an aggressive war, if Bush can convince them.
But did I answer your question?
I don't know if I answered your satisfaction, but I feel very strongly about majority rule.
And I know some libertarians don't believe in majority rule.
Well, the question is the limitation of the power.
The question is, does the majority get whatever they want or only within, say, for example, the powers enumerated to the national government by the Constitution?
Wait a second.
Who put the Constitution in place?
Nine to hear the conventions of nine states.
Right.
But the question, sir, is the question, sir, is does the majority have the power to assign their Congress to pass laws without limit just because they're the majority?
Of course they do.
Well, if you don't believe in the majority of the people making the decisions, then you believe in the minority.
And that's what's wrong.
We have a minority rule right now.
Well, I think the distinction that perhaps I'm trying to make that I'm not making well, sir, is that when it's majority rule, it's minority rule anyway.
The people, the elite are able to manipulate opinion and democracy ends up being simply what 51 percent will tolerate.
And and it's government without limit where Congress supposedly has the jurisdiction to pass any law they feel like.
Well, no, what you're talking about is the the majority of the people in government.
That's not what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about the majority of the people.
You're talking about the majority of the Congress.
I'm not talking about that.
Well, the American people supported the minority.
That's a minority of the American people.
The Congress.
Well, I agree with that.
I'm just saying that the Congress can get the American people to go along with pretty much whatever they want.
For example, starting a war.
I'm talking about Scott.
Please, please.
That's not the majority.
The Supreme Court is not the majority of the people.
None of that is the majority of the people.
Okay, I'm sorry.
That's not what I'm saying.
What I'm saying is, for example, the majority of the American people supported the invasion of Iraq and it didn't become the right thing to do just because they supported never had a vote.
They never had a vote, nor did the Congress vote on it either.
Yeah.
All right.
Let me ask you about the United Nations.
Do you think that America should stay in the United Nations?
I think the United Nations need to be entirely constituted.
In what sense?
What sense?
It's nothing but the tool of the Security Council where people had the veto including us.
It's our toy.
We use it when we want to.
Okay, it's unrepresentative.
Belize has the same vote as the United Nations in the General Assembly and we use it as a toy.
We want something.
We believe these two big countries and pay them off to get out to get the votes to make us look good.
Please.
Should we stay in the United Nations?
It's the only thing we have to any kind of moral attitude in the world today.
Well, if it's just a fig leaf for aggression, then why stay?
Not a fig leaf for aggression.
It tries to do some good in the world.
And and so if you don't have anything, then we might as well go back and which we have to a good degree.
But the world without the UN is pretty bad off.
Do away with it entirely and you're back into global jungle, the jungle.
Okay, anarchy, global anarchy.
Is that what you want?
Well, not necessarily, but I'm not sure I accept your premise.
I mean, for example, the invasion of Iraq was justified by citing UN tripwires, UN resolutions that were being defied and so forth.
It became an excuse for war.
We were lied to by that, UN tripwires.
So you're citing that the UN, George Bush lied to the American people.
All right, folks, we're back with former Senator Mike Revelle from Alaska on anti-war radio and we're discussing the United Nations.
Now, there's an entire sector of the war party that doesn't like the UN because they see it as getting in the way of their aggression.
And my more libertarian view of the UN is that actually it becomes the excuse for American aggression, just like when they say that Iran is defying UN Security Council resolutions and so forth.
And you were saying, sir, below the year, you've got a good you got a good example there with Iran.
Iran's not defying any Security Council resolution.
That's the garbage you're hearing from the White House.
You know, here, any human being has a right to self-defense.
That's that's an accepted moral concept.
Absolutely.
Nations have the same moral concept.
Any nation is entitled to defend themselves.
Iran has every right to get an atomic bomb.
We have one.
China has one.
Russia has one.
France has one.
Britain has one.
Israel has one.
Pakistan has one.
India has one.
They are surrounded with everybody.
Iran, with everybody, has an atomic bomb.
If they feel they need one for their defense, they have a moral right to do that.
Now, they're not doing that.
Our American phony intelligence is admitted that they're not trying to get one.
But the White House is trying to gin up a war to invade and bomb Iran.
That's part of the neocon plan.
But Iran has not been to war with anybody for the last 150 years, except when Saddam Hussein invaded them at our instigation.
And we, of course, gave him intelligence on that war and gave him a lot of chemicals as part of that war.
That's what the United States did.
So now, with respect to the UN, you're quite right.
I think it's shameful for the Security Council to put sanctions on Iran when, in point of fact, the five members of the Security Council put more weapons in the arms bazaar of the world than anybody else.
Talk about hypocrisy.
And we lead the pack in that regard.
But the UN is sort of serving that purpose for the American War Party in the sense that even though the Non-Proliferation Treaty says that they have the unalienable right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes, which is what they're doing, the United States has successfully gotten the rest of the Security Council to vote that they must suspend all uranium enrichment.
And they're refusing to do so.
So they are, in fact, in violation of UN Security Council resolutions.
Whether those are legitimate or not, I don't think is in question.
But isn't it the case that it makes Bush's case stronger?
That he can say, listen, Iran is defying the world community rather than just him.
But that's because Bush has manipulated it.
If you require right at the beginning when you raise the UN deal, I was saying that the structure of the UN is wrong.
The first thing I would do is I would do away with the Security Council, which is where we manipulate everything.
Then the second thing I would do is I'd make truly representative the General Assembly.
It's not representative now, it's a joke.
But you need an organization that could handle...
Here, if you wanted to go wage war in, and I think that's a questionable thing, in Afghanistan to get at Al-Qaeda, you ought to do it through the United Nations.
Why do it through NATO?
Why NATO?
Why do we need NATO at all?
NATO is anachronism from the Cold War.
There's nobody in Europe that wants to go to war within Europe, so why have NATO?
But then again, we head up NATO.
We've got 50,000 troops in Europe, why do we need to do that?
Well, but why would we need a UN occupation of Afghanistan?
All we need is the Marines to go in there and get the bag eyes and leave.
I don't need to occupy Afghanistan at all, I quite agree with you.
I was just saying that I'm using that as an example.
If you're going to do something in the world in that regard, let's do it through the UN.
If we need to do it at all, but not the UN that we have there.
You see, you're looking at the UN the way we manipulate it.
That's not the UN I see, or I think we need.
But we do need some international, and I would not say international, I would say global system of governance.
Not international, because that presupposes that it's controlled by nation states.
And that's the problem.
It needs to be controlled by people, vertically, by the sovereign individuals coming together as people, not nation states.
That gets into a whole other area from what I'm talking about when I say, let's empower first the American people to be able to make laws, and not empower the Congress, which of course is what's failing us now.
Well, Senator, I mean, the real teeth in the UN Charter is that the Security Council can start a war.
I mean, it's a war crime to start a war.
It's okay to defend yourself, but it's a war crime to start a war unless the Security Council says it's okay.
Do you think that that's how the new, improved UN should be?
That it should have the war power?
Well, wait a second.
If you read that very closely, you'd see that we could put George Bush on trial for going to war in Iraq under the criminal code.
Well, sure, and under American federal law as well.
What's the difference between Milosevic and George Bush in Iraq?
Oh, not too much, I wouldn't say.
That's right.
And so let's be very careful about who manipulates who.
Here, we are signatures.
Dear Bill Clinton, you know, when he left office, he was so busy pardoning Mark Rich and others, that when he signed right at the end, he signed the treaty and just snuck it under the door of the Senate, didn't push it, and so we haven't really got involved.
But the International Court is something that we should join, and then that means that we would be able to hold our leaders accountable for war crimes.
And that would mean George Bush and Cheney and others.
And so right at this point in time, and of course that comes under the aegis of the U.N.
The U.N. is extremely imperfect.
I mean, I'm very critical of representative government in this country.
I'm even more critical of the structure of the U.N.
The charter is not bad.
It's the way it's implemented, and of course the Security Council is a joke.
It's an anachronism of the Second World War, which is long over, and these people won't give up this veto power, which is what destroys the real effectiveness of what a form of global governance could be if we really approach it properly.
So you think that there should be a world government where the United States doesn't even have a veto about decisions they make about our country anymore, huh?
Wait a second.
Who the hell is the United States to have a veto over everything?
You're just critical of that one second ago.
Well, I'm for anyone stopping government from doing anything, pretty much.
I'm not in favor of, you know, it's not like America, well, to a degree, America can go ahead and unilaterally do whatever it wants on the Security Council, and that's bad.
But the fact that Russia can stop us with one no vote, the fact that France can stop us with one no vote, or the fact that we can stop them with a no vote, I think is good.
I just said I'm opposed to all vetoes.
Well, right, and I'm saying I'm in favor of one.
And it seems strange to me that you would want to let the French and the Russians and the Chinese and whoever else on earth vote about how things are to be done in North America as though they have any more say over our country than we have over theirs.
But wait a second, Scott.
You're forgetting the fact that you gave the Chinese say over our economy right now.
They could bankrupt us.
Yeah, okay, well, and that's good.
That keeps us from bombing them.
But what you're saying is give up our veto power so that if they and a bunch of other people or countries or whoever around the world make decisions about how things are to be done in North America, we can't stop them.
They give up their veto power, too.
I mean, we just throw that whole thing away.
Yeah, and just have a global democracy.
Please, please, Scott, just reason it out.
The structure is just bad.
Throw the whole thing out.
Okay, so you're talking about just a straight, just one central government for the world, direct democracy by the six billion people.
Is that it?
Yeah, what's wrong with that?
Well, I'm just asking.
Oh, I think that that's feasible.
We don't have to have a lot of it.
We only have to have a government to deal with the whole world monetary crisis so that we don't let the bankers of the world rule us all, which is what they're doing now.
We don't have to have.
We need somebody to make sure that we don't have wars, which are a continuum.
That's it.
We don't need anything else.
We don't need any governance much beyond those two things.
So we need peace.
It's interesting.
Eisenhower made a statement.
Someday people are going to want peace so bad they're going to push the government aside to grab at it.
And I think that's exactly what's going to happen someday.
But I'm sorry.
I get, because of my libertarianism, I get all hung up in the cause and effects here and so forth.
If there's to be a world government with the power to prevent war, that means it has to have the war power.
It has to be able to win any war that anybody else starts, right?
No, it has to be able to shoot.
No, hey, we won't have world government.
We won't have world government.
We'll just let everybody go to war when they want, okay?
Well, it just seems like the alternative is let one world government go to war when it wants, is what you're saying.
Let's just have world anarchy.
That's the kind of libertarian you are.
I'm not.
I'm not that kind of libertarian.
I'm a different kind of libertarian.
A libertarian for central global authority.
I'm a libertarian for world peace.
Okay, yeah, well, I like that part.
Okay, good, then fine.
Just buy that.
Forget the rest of it, okay?
Well, it's a means to an end.
It's a question of whether empowering a world state...
I know how I'm going to get there, but apparently you don't.
All right.
Well, shit, it's a good thing I'm not running for office.
That's good.
That's good, but then someday you should.
Someday you should, because we need more libertarians running for office.
But they've got to reason some things out.
And what you've got to do is take the next step.
You want world peace?
Then figure out how you're going to get it.
Yeah.
Figure out how you're going to get it.
Well, I agree with that.
Well, let's get to something that I'm sure we agree on, which is that I'm certain if you were president, you would just unilaterally bring the Army and the Navy home from all around the world, wouldn't you?
All of it.
All of it.
Here, we have military in 130 countries.
We have 725 bases around the world.
Explain to me, or you can ask Obama to explain to you why we need 50,000 people in the European community when they're more prosperous than we are right now.
That's a good question.
That's right.
Bring them home and discharge them.
We don't need all these people in the military.
Okay?
And then take this money.
We spend more in defense than all the rest of the world put together.
And there's nobody that's a threat to us.
There's not a country that even would dream of attacking us.
Here, and we have George Bush and the American Congress right now that are embarking upon building a $100 billion shield in Poland to shoot down missiles from Iran.
Now, why would Iran ever want to shoot a missile at us?
Or how long would it be before they could?
Well, who cares?
Right.
Obviously, as you maintained earlier, the Persians haven't invaded anybody in, what, 1,000 years or something?
That's right.
Well, 150 that I know of.
But here, why would they ever want to shoot a missile at us for?
So before you go spend $100 billion, you've got to have some evidence that they want to do something to us.
There's no evidence that they want to do anything to us.
My God, they helped us uproot the Taliban in Afghanistan after 9-11.
Right.
And really, I mean, everybody knows that it's just an insulting lie that those missile defenses are for the Iranians anyway.
They're for the Russians.
That's right.
And the Russians, here, the Russians are spending about 6% of what we spend on defense.
There's no threat to us.
And there's no threat to Europe.
They're selling all their oil and their gas.
Why would they want to do anything to Europe other than sell gas and oil and enjoy the profits from their sale of energy?
It's just like the Chinese.
Are the Chinese a threat to us?
Hell, they want to sell us their goods.
And speaking of which...
So what do we do?
We point nuclear devices at the Chinese?
I mean, we're insane.
Well, what's your position on trade with China and with the rest of the world?
Are you for NAFTA and GATT?
And sort of separately, are you for free and open trade, no tariffs or extremely low tariffs?
The problem is a lot more complicated than that.
Am I for black or white?
No.
You know, I think we have to approach the trade issue so that the workers benefit both over there and over here.
Okay?
And so right now, the trade agreements I've seen are all for the benefit of corporations.
And so since we have no global governance, because we're all afraid of global governance, then the corporations rule the roost and the ordinary person gets screwed to the wall.
But then again, we have some very poor thinking in some of these areas.
Well, you think that the average schmuck will have more influence with a world government than with their own national government?
If we structure it properly, yes.
Huh.
If we empower the average schmuck, as you say, to be able to make laws, the average schmuck is more qualified to make good laws than our representatives today.
Well, I know that, for example, it's a lot easier for me to have an effect on my local county commissioner's court or the local city council than it is for me to have an effect on my state government or on my national government.
To me, I've found in my experiences in government that you get as much corruption or more corruption at the local level than you have at the federal level.
But then again, that's my experiences.
Yours may be different.
Well, we just read about how Congress has $200 million invested in the defense industries.
There's no state government in America that's that corrupt.
Oh, I got news for you.
I got news for you.
Where state legislators have hundreds of millions of dollars invested in bombs and weapons?
Well, no, they've got hundreds of millions of dollars invested in road work and hospitals.
Sure, sure.
Just read the papers.
Yeah, but isn't it the case that it's easier to at least try to do something about that on the local level than it is on the national level?
If you have the power.
In Brussels?
If you have the power, but if you have the power to make laws.
You see, the whole thing is, it's not a question if you know the problem.
It's a question, can you do something about the problem?
And that's what I'm trying to do with the national initiative, is to empower you to make laws in every government jurisdiction of the United States.
Well, what if, I don't know, because I see opinion polls where most people think that freedom of speech is abused and all the press ought to have what they say cleared by the government first.
Where people support aggressive wars, some substantial proportions, if not majorities, think that people ought to do life in prison for drug possession.
Seems to me like the majority are a bunch of little dictators anyway.
That's not so.
If I believed that, I wouldn't be working to empower the people.
The people are smarter than their leaders.
And if you feel that the people aren't that smart, then fine.
You're one of the people.
Well, yeah, and I know I'm not that smart.
That's the thing.
I know that I can run my own life pretty good, but I can't see how I ought to be in charge of anybody else's.
No, you are that smart.
Don't belittle yourself.
Don't belittle yourself.
You are that smart.
Smart enough to tell other people what to do?
You're an authority on your life, and you can make all the decisions that affect your life better than any member of Congress.
Oh, right.
No, no, I agree with that part.
Me having the power to run anybody else's life, that I don't think I'm qualified for that.
Well, you have no choice, you see, because when you walk into society, if you want to live all alone, go out in the woods, live all alone.
But when you come into society and you interface with other people in society, you have no choice but to join society and realize that the only way that you can have a say is to be part of the majority or the minority.
And right now, you are part of the minority or the majority.
No, you're the minority, for sure.
Well, no, you're the minority, but the majority doesn't rule in our society.
It's the minority that rules.
And so that's why we have the mess we have.
And I'm trying to put in place a law called the National Initiative that will permit the people to be able to rule.
You see, when the politicians say, oh boy, you know, here's the problem, and you identify with the problem because you think that person knows the solution.
Well, when he gets to the solution, he says, oh, we Americans can do this.
Well, it's a burst of patriotism.
Well, this we stuff is no we, because that person on election day gets your power, and you can't do anything about it.
And so what I'm trying to say is that you may know the problem, but lawmaking is the only way to do something about it.
And we don't have that ability.
So are you calling for a constitutional convention, just rewrite the whole thing?
Of course not.
That won't do any good.
So tell me how this works.
You want the Congress to pass a law?
First off, I want to tell you that you go to, I've got a book called Citizen Power, citizen-power.us.
And you can just go on that site.
You can buy the book, $20.
Chapter 2 is a great detail about how the National Initiative works.
And Chapter 12 is how it was the power for the people to make laws was destroyed by the convention in 1787 when they cut the deal for slavery.
All our founding fathers felt that people should be able to make laws because of our democracy.
And so when they cut a deal for slavery, they had to exclude the American people from lawmaking because they would have destroyed, done away with slavery.
And so now the procedures, here we'll take another half hour to an hour for me to explain this in great detail.
Well, we only got four minutes.
I know that.
That's why I can't do that.
So what I'm saying is I'd be happy to appear on your program again.
All you've got to do is just match me a little bit, become a little informed on the procedures of this, and then we'll talk more intelligently on it.
All right.
Okay?
Yeah, that sounds fair enough.
And there's a copy of the UN Charter in this book.
There's a copy of the Constitution, a copy of the Declaration of Independence, which is the greatest document of all.
And there's a detail, the law that I prescribed, that I've written, that the American people – Congress won't enact this, but the people can.
And the procedures I have go right around the government because the government does not want to empower you.
And it's called The National Initiative for Democracy, and the book is citizen-power.us.
All right.
I will definitely take a look at that.
And I hope the American people can really become libertarians.
All right.
Well, good luck to you on your campaign, everybody.
That's former Alaska Senator Mike Revell.
Again, the website citizen-power.us, and he's running for president as a libertarian.
And thank you for having me, Scott.
And then we'll get on again, okay?
Okay, good.
Talk to you soon.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.
