Scott Horton 0:10
All right, y’all welcome it’s Scott Horton Show. I am the director of the Libertarian Institute editorial director of antiwar.com, author of the book Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan. And I’ve recorded more than 5000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at ScottHorton.org. You can also sign up to the podcast feed. The full archive is also available at youtube.com/ScottHortonShow. All right, you guys introducing James Bradley. He wrote the movie and the book Flags of Our fathers. And yes, the sequel was just called Eva Jima wrote the book Imperial cruise, and also fly boys and his latest is called the China Mirage the hidden history. American disaster in Asia. Welcome back to the show, James, how you doing?

James Bradley 1:06
Hey, Scott, thank you for having me again,

Scott Horton 1:08
good to talk to you. It’s been a little while. And you know what, I am so busy fighting the last war in the Middle East all the time. I am way behind on our problems with China. But I gather we’ve got loads of them and that you would disagree about many of them being necessary conflicts. I have this great press release sent out by the Institute for Public accuracy. Talking about the danger of even real war with China and an unnecessary war, in your opinion. So what do you think about what’s going on here recently?

James Bradley 1:50
Well, I, you know, I’ve been watching the news and the Chinese navy is not in San Francisco Bay and they’re not in The Caribbean and they haven’t built a base in Canada or Mexico. And it’s a mirage and, you know, ridiculous to think they would. So what is the problem with China?

Scott Horton 2:15
Yeah, what is the problem with China?

James Bradley 2:18
Well, I’d like to add, I mean, you know what we’re really what militarily? What’s the big problem? Ray McGovern, ex CIA briefer to Ronald Reagan. His name is Ray McGovern. He’s at Ray McGovern calm. Ex CIA briefer to Ronald Reagan. George Herbert Walker Bush just told me in an interview that the pivot to Asia that President Obama announced in Australia in 2011 was all about Raytheon and Lockheed popping champagne bubbles, big bottles, because war in the Middle East, you know, we’ve destroyed almost every building there and chasing terrorists down alleys. You know, it’s it’s it’s not hard. profit, whereas China biggest country in the world, population wise, there’s a, you know, generations of of business to be done there. So that the preparation for war is the key. And then the American media is, you know, hyping that China is some danger. But, you know, I’ve been living on and off in Asia since 1974. And, again, I’m looking for this danger to be defined.

Scott Horton 3:28
Yeah. Well, I mean, you really hit the nail on the head there when you talk about business and all the business to be done building up a cold war against China. But of course, when most people think of China in business, they don’t think of militarism at all. They think about all the trade back and forth between China all the American investment in China and all the cheap plastic crap we get from them. And not only that, but other quality goods as well. And so it would seem like war, or even the threat of war Cold War with China, like we have, you know, beginning right now are really beginning back in Obama years, but continuing now, that that would be a huge detriment to American big business. If you’re not Lockheed or Raytheon. What about everybody else? All the auto manufacturers, all the blue jeans and all the soda pop and all the whatever, you know, equipment that people use to run their businesses and all the other trade back and forth.

James Bradley 4:29
Well, again, I’m quoting another expert here a guy by the name of Michael Claire KLE. If people want to look up his many articles, he’s uh, you know, he’s deep into Washington and is consulted by the Pentagon. And he says that the few you know that we are decoupling from China. And if if any of your listeners are ever looked at 1920s or 1930s maps of the various trading entities, you know, Indochina was French, so it was this color. And then you use the French franc within these three countries, Cambodia, Laos, you know, and then over here was the British Empire and Malaysia and Singapore and then you use the British pound. So he says we’re going back to less world trade, less of a large economy. It’s going to be smaller and more trading bloc’s like I’m in New Zealand, New Zealand’s working with Australia to form a healthy bubble from the virus and they’re cutting off all tourists and then they’re just going to intermingle among themselves that will go on forever. But the idea is smaller trade and trade within these, you know, decoupled blocks.

Scott Horton 5:50
Yeah, I mean, the virus really has changed everything as far as the entire globalist project goes. for better and for worse, but you know, a lot of what you say they’re reminding Me of Jim Powells book about World War One, where the whole first I guess introduction or chapter one to the thing or something is about the different trade bloc’s that became the Central Powers and Allied Powers alliances in war. And that, you know, there were these multinational trade bloc’s not entirely, you know, they weren’t entirely seeking autarky, but they weren’t seeking global free trade either. They just had them within these two kind of minor alliances that grew into war alliances, you know?

James Bradley 6:33
Yeah, that that’s, you know, one of the recurring things in history, another recurring thing specifically between American China and the reason I named my last book, The China Mirage, is there there’s been since you know, George Washington’s time all the way up to ours, this recurring thing where we don’t like China don’t pay attention to China and then China comes into fall. Because, and the key is that China’s going to become more like us. And in the 1930s this was typified by Franklin Roosevelt perot buck, the number one author of the 1930s, Henry Luce of Time Magazine. I document it all in my book. And we’d love to China, because China was going to be like us. They’re going to have white Christian churches on hilltops, and they had a Christian leader and Chiang Kai check. And he posed for pictures, you know, holding the Bible. And we supported this dictator because, you know, China wanted to be just like us. We’re, you know, once he took control of all of China, then it’s going to be christianized. And our missionaries are going to be happy. And God, do you know, after Pearl Harbor, they did a poll who’s the number one most popular ally in the world, and it wasn’t that it wasn’t with Churchill. It was. Check. I check in China, because China wanted to be just like us. perot buck told us this. Franklin Roosevelt told us China is the best example of American democracy in the world. This is when it was being run by a dictator. Then the second that Milo came to power in 1949. The Chinese people wanted Mao overtake. I checked, there was a civil war. They fought it out. Oh my god, China didn’t want to be like America. So we cut relations. I don’t know if you know, but we fired everyone who knew Chinese in the State Department. We fired anybody who knew Mao Zedong and cut off relations for a couple decades. Now then, oh, globalization, China. What we’re going to do back in the bush in the Obama administration’s is the same thing that FDR and Henry Luce and Pearl buck are doing, we’re going to work with China say we’re Americans and then we’re so democratic and, and we’re just extraordinary people. And then we’ll go over you know what these Chinese who we view as a third world nation rising, and then they’ll liberal liberalize, the more they work with us. the more they’ll liberalize the more, in other words be like us, they’re gonna want to eat apple pie, they’ll probably give up their chopsticks. And they’ll have potluck suppers across the country. Now, if you look at the American media, which I don’t much, but I studied, you know, what they’re saying about China. You see this on the it’s on the, you know, the liberal spectrum that the conservative spectrum the up and down left and right, every Americans agree now, gee, we got screwed. You know, we worked with China so well over the past 20 years, and they didn’t liberalize and they’re, they’re still Chinese, you know. And it’s the same China Mirage, the China is going to change. Oh, look at New York Times front page article today. Look what China’s doing in Hong Kong, they are restricting democratic rights. We got to get involved in this you know, China should be more like a I mean, you know, whatever. We’re going to give it up. China’s the largest thing in the world. It’s one fourth of the world. And I’m not arguing for China’s policies. I’m just saying, hey, for a few thousand years, they’ve had this system. It’s the same system. It’s the Emperor system right now the Emperor is committed. But it’s the same system. They are Chinese, there’s 1.4 billion, and they’re not bombing America, you know, there are no threat to America.

Scott Horton 10:28
And then what was the thing to I mean over when you talk about americanizing them and all of that kind of thing, I mean, they did abandon communism for fascism, which is still a totalitarian system, but at least they have prices. So now instead of laying down dying by the 10s of millions to get rich, this glorious and they have improved the standard of living created a massive middle class and even, you know, like a pretty well to do working class. You know, all things considered over there. As Lew Rockwell wants to wrote an article called from death camp to civilization, about how the mouse had just raised the entire society all the way down to the ground. And to and it just had to be started all over again kinda and so when people demonize China now, you got to take into account. This is probably, you know, because of the artificial constrictions against them. This is probably the greatest rags to riches story in the history of the world. And then on top of that, I’ll also add was you say whatever you want about that, but also, it seems to me like maybe if America wasn’t soaking in the blood of a million dead Iraqis, and we hadn’t blown the entire 21st century being the most bank robbed and destructive, blood soaked hypocrites going around talking about freedom when we obviously have no idea as a society, what that’s supposed to mean, or you know, have absolutely zero commitment whatsoever to living up to it, then maybe the Chinese and everybody else in the world would have taken the American brand of liberty a little bit more seriously. But instead it’s it’s not liberty, we’re exploiting its democracy. And that means whatever the republicans say, or something, you know, which Why would anyone take that seriously, and then surprise, they don’t?

James Bradley 12:15
Well, it’s the greatest rags to riches story and the Pew Research Foundation and American polling organization polls and tells us that like, 80% of the Chinese, but this is before COVID 80% that the Chinese are happy with their leadership. And why would they be the leadership of China has put like 50 million people a year into breaking into the middle class. I mean, it’s a I saw it. It’s just an economic success story. Yes. China has a lot of problems. Yes. I’m not saying you know, I agree with all our policies. My point is, we have bridges to build in America. I mean, I was living in New York about three years ago. And, you know, I don’t know how many tires I had to replace just driving to JFK Airport from Connecticut, you know, potholes. We we can take care of our own country and let’s do that. And but why are we, you know, pushing way across the Pacific to dig around with China. We’re not going to have a fight with with China, if we just withdrew a bit. We don’t need our military out there. We need to work on some world problems. And we’re not going to change China is my message. Yeah. Am I agreed with China and my arguing for China? No, what I’m saying is China’s China, United States is the United States, Mexico, you know, let’s invade Mexico and try to change them. Right. Well,

Scott Horton 13:51
so. So now do you discount the accusation that they have this more aggressive foreign policy now as signaled by their rising Navy in their calling Have all those little hotels in the South China Sea and all that stuff?

James Bradley 14:04
Well, those are a lot of words. And you know, there’s a lot of information out there about it. The way I look at it behind the scenes is the Emperor looks at the maps and says, Hey, this lane from Singapore, when the oil comes out of the Middle East, and it turns the corner down there on the bottom of Singapore, and then it sails up the Malaysian coast pass Vietnam in between Taiwan and brings oil to the Emperor’s people. That’s a lane that has to stay open. I mean, you have highway 95, in the United States on the east coast of America, you have to keep it open for national security. So everything else is a detail in the bumpers ready to wait a few hundred years to, you know, consolidate that highway. But the Emperor would say, Hey, we’re not in the Caribbean. You know, nobody is stopping your movement around San Francisco, San Diego. So get off our bags.

Scott Horton 15:04
Yeah. Hey guys, just real quick. If you listen to the interviews only feed at the institute or at Scott Horton. org. I just want to make sure you know that I do a q&a show from time to time at Scott Horton. org slash show the old whole show feed. And so if you like that kind of thing, check that out there. Hey, guys, here’s how to support this show. You can donate various amounts at Scott Horton. org slash donate. We’ve got some great kickbacks for you there. Shop amazon.com by way of my link at Scott horton.org. Leave a good review for the show and iTunes and Stitcher. Tell a friend. Oh, yeah, and buy my books. fool’s errand time to end the war in Afghanistan and the great Ron Paul. The Scott Horton show interviews 2004 through 2019. And thanks. Hey, guys, check out listen and think audio books. They’re listening think.com Calm, and of course on audible.com and they feature my book fool’s errand time to end the war in Afghanistan as well as brand new out inside Syria by our friend Rhys, Eric, and a lot of other great books, mostly by libertarians there. Reese might be one exception. But essentially, they’re all libertarian audiobooks. And here’s how you can get a lifetime subscription to listen and think audiobooks. just donate $100 to the Scott Horton show at Scott Horton. org slash donate, it seems like part of the problem might also be just kind of a matter of projection by the Americans against the Chinese that as our empire is falling apart and is being forced to retrench, at least in some ways, that Well, obviously they’re going to try to fill the vacuum and be the global hegemon in our place. And yet, I wonder if you think that that’s true. I mean, they do have, as you said, a very long tradition of just being China and not intervening around the world. All but then again, it’s been 100 years of chaos over there. So who knows what they want to do now? I don’t know.

James Bradley 17:07
Well, no, we have history what, you know what the Emperor wants. The Emperor in that was at the 11th or 12th century sent this unique Admiral out, he had the largest fleet of ships that were ever out in the sea, it was only equaled until World War Two. If you can imagine they had that like 700 doctors in the fleet. And they, they built this huge fleet of ships. And they went all over the world, Australia, South Africa, Indonesia. And they brought back you know, the artifacts and food from all over the world. And the mandarins and the Emperor said, What is this there’s all we you know, in the world, there’s only barbarians a bad food, and they burnt all the ships and they said we’re not going out to the rest of the world. You China could have been conquering countries for thousands of years. And they weren’t interested in it’s it’s more of an inward looking country, you know, the capitals in Beijing, in the middle of the country. This is a land country. This is not a project power outside and invade other countries country. I’m not saying, you know, there’s such wonderful people and I’m naive. No, I’m just looking at history who invaded China and World War Two, the Japanese. The Chinese didn’t invade. Others, the South China Sea. Okay, let’s worry about the South South China Sea. Let’s look at the last 66 in my lifetime. Let’s count up the deaths from China in the South China Sea. I don’t know if Are there any? Let’s see Americans. john mccain was flying off aircraft carriers in the South China Sea. I interviewed hundreds of Vietnamese who are bombed from you know, South China Sea Ships 3 million people died because of the American presence in the South China Sea. So I don’t see this argument that the world’s gonna fall apart if the Emperor keeps open the South China Sea is his lane.

Scott Horton 19:14
All right, but the big one is Taiwan. How many million people live in Taiwan now?

James Bradley 19:19
daughter lives there in the downtown Taipei. I go to Taipei an awful lot. That is a big one. And short term. It’s just an argument, you know. And long term, it’s part of China. I mean, if you look at back long term in I, let’s see, I document this in the Imperial cruise, and also the China mirage. You can see that yes, Taiwan was under Chinese influence. And it was an American general who got the Japanese to invade I think it was an 1878 and start to poke around Taiwan. So historic. It was Chinese and someday it will be Chinese. And it’ll probably be, you know, folded in peacefully. But the Emperor has got a few centuries to wait.

Scott Horton 20:10
Now, so you don’t think it’s an emergency that the Chinese might attack and try to take over Taiwan sometime soon?

James Bradley 20:16
Well, who knows, but they didn’t do it yesterday. And, you know, but that See, that’s their waters. It’s like, let’s it to the American public, I just say, Okay, put an enormous Chinese presence in Bermuda or in the Bahamas. And and China’s sell in the Bahamas, you know, aggressive weaponry that could hit Washington, DC. Yeah. We’re not talking. I’m not talking right or wrong. I’m just saying. I don’t think you know, like I question Why are Americans debating what China doing and what about the I mean, what’s going on here? debate about San Diego. I mean debate about Miami or something. I’m from Wisconsin. And if you had taken, let’s say some people from New Orleans who really were in New Orleans well, and brought them up to Wisconsin and tried to run Wisconsin, like they ran New Orleans, we’d go absolutely nuts. They can’t understand Wisconsin, they don’t know our traditions. You know, it’s, it’s just it that can’t be done. But we think we can take the American military and send them someplace and have a good outcome where they don’t even speak the language. Hmm. So I just asked America, America to pull back. I mean, I just interviewed David vine who wrote bass nation. And he said, you know, James, if he cut the American military budget by half, we’re still the largest military by far. Right. And I mean, if you eat Ray McGovern, who says we have to have China’s in enemy because That’s the only reason you can squeeze the American taxpayer for 50% of his taxes is to have a huge enemy. And Russia got boring in the Middle East isn’t profitable enough?

Scott Horton 22:10
Yeah, it does seem like the Air Force in the army prefer picking on Russia and the Navy in the Marine Corps prefer picking on China, which is sort of all you need to know. Right? This is just parochial interests of, you know, corrupt, self interested bureaucracies here doing what they do. But here’s the thing I want to ask you about. I noticed this all the time, in regards to Russia and China, and all the war plans, you know, they have the air sea battle plan and all of this stuff. And they have their various theories for fighting with the Russians as well. And I just hear this all the time discussions in DC and among military people and think tankers and what have you about fighting Russia and or China with conventional weapons. And it’s discussed in a way where the best I can tell The phenomenon works like this. It goes without saying that they got nukes, everybody knows they got nukes, they got h bombs, they could destroy all our biggest cities in one day. And we all know that and everybody knows that it’s not in dispute. It’s not controversial or in discussion. But so because it goes without saying, it literally goes unsaid. And then, for time after time, after time, they talk about, Hey, you know, it could really be a lot of fun, fighting a big naval battle against, you know, big Naval War against China. And this could be, you know, all we ever dreamed of, in the excitement as naval warriors, this kind of thing. And just ignoring the fact that if we ever do really have a fight with China, that it’s almost certain that we’ll lose San Francisco and LA, and possibly Denver and New York and DC and Houston and every, you know, major city in America, and they only need hundreds, and that’s how many they have. But I just wondered, I mean, do you notice that there’s there really is More talk all the time about, you know, this air sea battle strategy and this kind of thing where we could really get into a war if you listen to these guys.

James Bradley 24:10
Well, let’s talk about listening to these guys. I mean, America has said, we’re going to have a I mean, we have a war college. It’s called the War College. We have West Point what I think that what’s the official name of West Point, the United States Military Academy, and we’ve got the Air Force Academy, we have the Naval Academy, so what are they studying, you know, gardening or, you know, surfing or or, you know, hydroponics. They’re studying war. So, yeah, there’s a lot of war plans when you’ve got colleges turning out really bright people whose job it is to have war plans.

Scott Horton 24:53
Yeah, well, and you know, I was still a kid during the Cold War. I remember it, you know, pretty well, but You know, even at the height of the brinksmanship in the early 80s, the idea was that Yeah, but we’re not really gonna fight them, because we can’t. And everybody knows that ronald reagan don’t want to fight them anymore. And they want to fight us, and so kind of don’t worry about it. But things seem actually worse now than then it seemed like it was a more stable kind of a situation with the Soviet bloc there the way it was, and all that and where are the Americans? Even the Reaganites seem to be a lot more rational than the people who represent the centrist foreign policy consensus now.

James Bradley 25:39
Well, I don’t know what exactly what to say about that. I, Trump doesn’t want more. That’s kind of obvious, if you look, you know, globally, but the president is not in control of the entire situation. And let’s say there was a mistake. See, this is what the the real geniuses, and I’m not in that category. But john Pilcher, the Australian journalist who did the great documentary that’s online called the coming war with China. I’m in it. And Michael Claire, who I mentioned in this interview earlier, what they’re concerned about are accidents. Not you know, President g wanting to go to war President Trump wanting to go to war, but oh my god, something happened and there’s 70,000 dead Chinese and the something came from Okay. Now. What could the president of China do? Even if he doesn’t want to fight? You know what I mean? Oh, 4000 Americans are dead in a sunken aircraft carrier. Control prevent it. Could any president stop war at that point? Right. What they’re concerned about is an accident that I brought up john Pilger, in his documentary the coming war with China in there. He interviews the guy who got the order on Okinawa to nuke China and Russia. So it was in the 60s. It’s a true story documents. And so these accidents have happened.

Scott Horton 27:14
And you’re saying, This guy got an order? That was the mistaken order that he refused to carry out?

James Bradley 27:19
Yeah. Oh, yeah. It’s a it’s a famous story. And it’s documented in in pillagers. I mean, it’s documented many places, but he brings it out and actually interviews the people. So, you know, accidents happen. We’re humans. And that’s what these big thinkers are really concerned about is that there’s just so much movement, intention, and tit for tat going on right now, between China and America that an accident could happen. accident, flames, public opinion. And then we’re not talking about the decisions of presidents in Beijing or Washington. We’re talking talking about forced hands.

Scott Horton 27:56
Yep. And when you talk about those different war plans, I mean, Oftentimes, it seems like, you know, the blue binder on the shelf there essentially is written in stone. And so if the war plan says in the event of x, you do that, then they just do that. And it seems like, you know, so many governmental type things, thinking goes off. And the the previously provided structure kind of takes over, you know, back when, as Ellsberg talks about in his book, the doomsday machine, when when he took over nuclear war planning in the Kennedy administration, the plan was that if war had broken out over Berlin, that they were to nuke every city in the Soviet Union and China, you know, and just kill however many hundreds of millions of people, even on the very first day, and that there were no other plans, that if, in other words, if the Soviets had decided to conquer Western Berlin that That’s exactly what would have happened. And there wasn’t anyone in the chain of command to say no, no, just let’s implement page two, but not page three of the plan or anything like that. You know, it’s all just kind of automatic at that point.

James Bradley 29:12
You know, reading daniel ellsberg books, I mean, just when it’s nonfiction, he’s talking about, you know, the egghead, high national security situation he was in if your listeners don’t know, you know, he was an assistant to McNamara and Vietnam and nuclear policy, and he’s just a fantastic guy. But reading his books, you know, you don’t need science fiction. When you read what Ellsberg was talking about, at these meetings, what they’re actually thinking about,

Scott Horton 29:41
yep, yeah. He says when he and his buddy from the RAND Corporation went and saw Dr. Strangelove that they walked out of there saying, Man, that’s not a satire, that’s a documentary.

James Bradley 29:50
This is ya know, really how we do business. What are we doing? No, it’s true. And then he, you know, he knew And then when Kissinger got promoted to national security director, what national security director, Ellsberg went to him and said, You know, you’re going to get more stupid, because there’s all these classifications. So let’s say we have a team of 10 people, well, I got the lowest classification. So I don’t know what you know, and you have a little more classification. So you know, more than I know, but you don’t know as much as the other person up the line. And then if Henry Kissinger is on the top of the totem pole, and so he’s listening to his team of 30 people, but he has a higher classification. So he has information they don’t. And then as he says, you just become stupid in this highly classified secretive machine.

Scott Horton 30:42
Yep, that’s exactly it and had no regard whatsoever for anybody with open source information because what could they possibly know since they don’t have access to the secrets, even though a lot of times the real context that matters is you know, much broader and not secret, but Those kind of voices get completely ignored by essentially this cult of, you know, je s employment, right?

James Bradley 31:09
Yeah. And you know, you mentioned today’s present leadership and I don’t want to talk politically because I don’t care Trump Obama Bush, you know, Republican left, right. That’s not my game. I’m out in the Pacific. You’re just counting who’s doing what. And, oh my god, Trump is Trump is a peacenik compared to Obama who was bombing nine countries at one point, the pivot to Asia is is a brock obama, Hillary Clinton thing, the the Clarion, the South China Sea as a place that we that America would fight. That was that was from the mouth of Hillary Clinton.

Scott Horton 31:45
Right. So she wrote that article in foreign policy announcing the whole thing.

James Bradley 31:50
So people, you know, Trump and there’s going to be war and I mean, I heard from friends, you know, we’re going to go to war with Korea and the beginning of the administration, and then there’s a We’re here and there’s war here and and what are you talking about? This is all mythical. This idea that Donald Trump is going to go to war, where is it? Whereas with Obama, there was a lot of war and a lot of droning. And the movement, the reason we’re even talking about conflict with China that came out of the Obama administration with Secretary of State Clinton.

Scott Horton 32:21
Yep. Although in the aftermath of the virus and all of that it looks like things are getting pretty ugly. Trump was talking the other day about just cutting off all trade with China altogether.

James Bradley 32:31
Talking. No, I got the talk. Can I get it? Can I talk about talking? Yeah, Australia, here in Australia, they’re rabidly anti Chinese right now. And I mean, some of the some of the commentary is almost comical, but you know, anti Chinese. Well, then, the Australian media exploded because the Chinese said, you know, your Australia, your mouth and off so much. We don’t want Buy your wine. And I think it was wine and beef, some types of wine and some types of beef and oh my god that newspapers are full of this. Well, a friend of mine said, look at iron ore. So what he says the game between China and Australia is all about iron ore. You can’t make steel with iron ore and Australia has 65% of the world’s iron ore. And so at the same moment that the Australian newspapers are saying, oh, they’re not gonna buy our wine, the Chinese and Australians we’re negotiating import IRS regulations that become easier for iron ore, we want to buy more. In other words, China is upping the amount of imports that they will take into China. But with the other hand, they’re talking talking, yeah, so Trump talks and says this about China and whatever, you know, he didn’t bond Beijing. Obama didn’t say all those words and he bombed places. So I’ll take Trump’s talk. I like it. It’s nice and it’s it’s peace. He was beating up the North Korean leader and you know, what was it a missile man or something? And, you know, but there’s no war. He went mad. It’s the I it’s a Trump way. I don’t understand it, but I’m out in the Pacific. And I don’t see Trump, you know, or mon green out here.

Scott Horton 34:20
Right? Well, yeah, like you say, if he wants to talk tough, who cares? As long as he’s doing the right thing, as we saw on North Korea, he’s made more progress than any president since the end of the Cold War. Well, I don’t know Clinton had that pretty good Agreed Framework deal in 94. But never did live up to that. And

James Bradley 34:38
I really don’t. And I don’t mean to get political for Trump or against Trump.

Scott Horton 34:43
Yeah, no, I hear you. It’s just a matter of policy. No partisanship on this show anyway, so it’s fine.

James Bradley 34:49
You know, but um, it people really do ignore the eight years of Obama and the amount of warmaking that went on there. And Trump is building up the military, but you know, we haven’t broken out into war. So he’s a piece like compared to the last two presidents.

Scott Horton 35:09
That’s true. I mean, Bush and Obama, conservatively speaking, probably killed about a million people each. And Trump at most is in, you know, probably half a million. He certainly helped to wage a genocidal war in Yemen has been the very worst bit of it. He escalated start.

James Bradley 35:28
Again, no defense of Trump, but that was the machinery was in place with Obama. Obama started that.

Scott Horton 35:35
Yeah, no, he inherited all of those wars, and he’s actually doing everything he can to wrap up the one in Afghanistan.

James Bradley 35:41
Yeah. Really.

Sorry. And, and again, I don’t want to Obama versus Trump, but right now. tough talk against China. Well, gee, there’s an election. Gee, the American people say no. document this in my book about World War Two. The American people, you know, we came from Europe generally, you know, especially at that time, and wow, they were the American people were debating, you know, you know, Northern Italy versus this place in France and should we move troops here and but in terms of in terms of Asia, they were just ready. It was like 90% ready to go to war with Japan. Lindenberg was saying, No, we shouldn’t fight Germany, America first and, you know, let’s stay peaceful. But you know, Japan was just bombed, you know, whatever out of them. And right now, it isn’t Trump beating up China. It’s Trump looking at the polls. 80 to 90% of Americans are upset with China, anti China. Well, guess what I’m running for president. I’m gonna say some anti China things. I need to get elected. You know, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in a campaign speech slide and his eldest son sent to them after the speech, Dad, you lied. And Roosevelt said, you know, the job of the President, I gotta get elected first. That’s the only thing that matters.

Scott Horton 37:10
Yep. Well, of course, they rationalize everything that they do and say like that. And always, my

James Bradley 37:16
point is my point is Trump, you know, why is Trump gonna say something in the next few months? It’s to get elected?

Scott Horton 37:24
Well, you know, Biden also is talking it up against China and claim Yeah, that yeah, it’s Trump, who’s the one who’s rolling over for them all the time, etc.

James Bradley 37:34
But I mean, you know, and then I could sound cynical when I say that people might think that cynic No, no, this is the system we set up. This guy’s got to get elected, you know, and they look at what the American people want. And if the American people are all of a sudden polling 90% for Red Hats, or I don’t, I don’t mean to say that because that’s a trump hat. But if they’re pulling for you know, surfboards, Trump is going to To be talking about surfboards, and the American public, our polling anti China once again, you know what all this trade stuff about how China rip this off? Why don’t we do this? I’m in New Zealand, I’ll fly to America. Let’s go into an American home. And there’ll be a big screen TV now we’ll do some deep research. We’ll look at that TV. Oh my god that’s made in China. Okay, we’re getting close here. Now we’ll look at the receipt. Where’d that come from? We got to get them. It came from Walmart. You know what I mean? If we have a problem with trade with China, let’s talk to Walmart, which was the front for Chinese goods. That’s how Walmart grew. That television is in that American consumers house because it’s an excellent value because it’s high quality and kept American inflation down. So it’s a bigger story than this simple black and white China’s bad but If you keep it black and white, China’s bad 80 90% of Americans, Democrats, Republicans left right are polling with you.

Scott Horton 39:09
Yep. Well, I wonder if they’ll regret it for one, you know, half of a fraction of an instant as they’re being vaporized by hydrogen fusion one day not too soon over it, but hey, as long as it makes them feel better for now, I guess that’s all right.

James Bradley 39:29
Well, I don’t know that’s above my intelligence level, the hydrogen fuse. You’re gonna have to take us through that once again. I’ll just watch the

Scott Horton 39:38
nukes they burn real hot. I mean, that’s really all you need to know.

James Bradley 39:44
Yeah, it’s it’s, uh, I don’t know, there’s a lot of rhetoric and there’s a lot of tension. But I don’t. The guys I’m interviewing on I have a podcast channel called untold Pacific and I have a section called war. with China question mark, and I’m bringing experts on who really do know, deep knowledge. And they all say there’s, you know, the leadership has no intention on either side. But there’s a potential for accidents is kind of the bottom line, right? So all the anti American stuff in China and all the anti Chinese stuff in America, these political leaders have to maintain their power. And it’s, I’m saying it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s well enough from the people. I don’t look at Trump. And what he’s saying about China, I look at the American people saying 80 90% were mad with China, and then it comes out, of course, out of Biden’s and Trump’s mouth,

Scott Horton 40:42
yeah. necessarily translate into any specific policies against them. I mean, that much is up to the government to exploit that sentiment. But it is always regretful when the people are even worse than the politicians on their feelings toward foreign countries. That’s the last thing we need in the World.

James Bradley 41:01
Well, the, I mean, I wrote a whole book about this. When when Mao said, you know, the Christian leader Chiang Kai Shek, you get out of here and Chiang Kai Shek was flushed out to Taiwan. We just this this was unspeakable. I mean, we just couldn’t face it. And we stopped relations with the biggest country in the world. See, everybody says Nixon opened up China. No, I documented my book. Mao was right into Franklin Roosevelt, hey, you’ve got the capital. We’ve got the workers and we need to work together, you know, to have this globalization industrialization. Mao, Mao didn’t like Moscow. He wanted Wall Street. Right. So the globalization, the industrialization that’s taken place in the last 20 years, Mao was writing to FDR about that Mao wanted to come to the White House to explain the benefits of American Chinese friendship. America slapped his hand over He tried with trohman he tried with Eisenhower. He tried with Kennedy. He tried, you know, and then he

Scott Horton 42:06
tried communism. It was a disaster. It’s too bad. They didn’t take him up on his offer in the first place.

James Bradley 42:13
But I’m talking about relations between I’m talking about Nixon opening up China. Yeah. Mao had his hand out all that time, Nixon was the one who, who finally shook his head. Yep.

Scott Horton 42:26
All right, well, listen, I sorry, I didn’t have a chance to read this book. But I’m gonna get my hands on it. And and maybe this will be my first step on catching up on the, you know, China, part of the American Imperial story as it’s being written now. So Scott, really appreciate your time, James.

James Bradley 42:48
Yeah, and I appreciate it if you’re agreed my book, The China Mirage, but I also want to say take a look at the documentary that’s online. It’s called common war with China by john Pilger. brilliant guy. And then take a look at the writings of Michael Claire KLRE. Oh, yeah.

Scott Horton 43:06
Claire well,

James Bradley 43:08
so war with China is already happening in there. He talks about the motivations of both sides. And it’s brilliant.

Scott Horton 43:17
Great. Yeah, I was. I had that queued up to watch. But then I saw it was two hours and I just didn’t have the chance to get to it today, but I definitely will watch that. And I’m sorry, it’s john pillager is the director and then what is it called again?

James Bradley 43:29
the coming war with China coming to China.

Scott Horton 43:32
Okay, great. All right, you guys. So that is James Bradley. He is the author of the China Mirage and of course, Flags of Our fathers and imperial cruise. And, and, oh, you can find his own website at untold pacific.com as well. Thanks again.

James Bradley 43:53
Okay, Scott, thank you for having me.

Scott Horton 43:56
The Scott Horton show, Antiwar Radio can be heard on kpfk 90.7 FM in LA, APSradio.com antiwar.com ScottHorton.org and libertarianinstitute.org

Scott Horton 0:10
All right, y’all welcome it’s Scott Horton Show. I am the director of the Libertarian Institute editorial director of antiwar.com, author of the book Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan. And I’ve recorded more than 5000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at ScottHorton.org. You can also sign up to the podcast feed. The full archive is also available at youtube.com/ScottHortonShow. All right, you guys introducing Michael Maharrey. From the 10th amendment center. He is the National communications director there at the 10th amendment center and he also writes for us at the Institute, libertarian institute.org including one on the front page today. Supreme Court rules against Fourth Amendment? Well, I’m not sure you could be referring to a great many different cases there. So we’ll have to get into the details. Welcome back to the show, Mike. How you doing?

Mike Maharrey 1:11
Thanks, God. It’s always a pleasure to be on the show. It’s one of my favorites.

Scott Horton 1:15
Cool, man. Well, happy to have you here. So a Kansas versus Glover film in?

Mike Maharrey 1:24
Yeah. So this was a case from a couple of years back and involves search and seizure. As all these Fourth Amendment cases do, basically, the deputy pulled over a car because the driver came back as having an expired driver’s license. So he used that as probable cause and dude ended up getting arrested. And the defense was and I think this is a legitimate defense. Just because the driver of an automobile has a suspended license doesn’t mean or just because the Winter has a suspended license. That doesn’t mean the person driving has a suspended license. You know, a lot of people drive cars, you know, especially like if you’re in a family, my wife drives my car, I drive her car. And so the argument was that the police couldn’t really assume that there was a crime being committed, so therefore had no justification in pulling over the driver. And interestingly, the the states started out in state court and the state court agreed and it ended up working itself up through the system eventually got to the US Supreme Court. Now, the Kansas Supreme Court said that in an eight to one decision, said that the police were not justified in kept that protection on search and seizure in place. But the Supreme Court got the case because they made it a fourth amendment case they made it a constitutional case. So therefore, it was able to go to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court ruled to one, that indeed, it’s perfectly legitimate for the police to pull over a car if the registered owner has a suspended driver’s license. So another chip away from the protections of illegal search and seizure under the Constitution. The only dissenter was Sonia subtle, subtle millyar. I never can say her name, right. But she said that the opinion destroys Fourth Amendment jurisprudence that requires individualized suspicion even though she’s not wrong. But she was the only one that thought that way. And so here we are, with, you know, yet another Supreme Court case that erodes away these limits that were supposed to be put on government power.

Scott Horton 3:40
But then, so in the article, you say, this is the big mistake of asking the federal government to intervene here and the incorporation in tech the entire concept of incorporation of the Bill of Rights by the Supreme Court against the state. So what the hell is all that about?

Mike Maharrey 3:57
Yeah, so this is where I am I tend to make a lot of libertarians angry. And I you know, I’m almost almost feel the Oh yeah, I almost feel like I’m, I feel like I’m spitting into the wind saying this. But there is this this impulse to use the Supreme Court to use the bill of rights to use the Federal Constitution to basically police the states and ensure that the states don’t violate our rights. And I get the impulse because obviously, we don’t want governments violating our rights. And the reality is, all governments at every level are going to violate our rights, that is the nature of government, governments are, are, by their very nature and typical antithetical, I should say, to individual liberty and freedom. So there’s this impulse like I said, the problem is, it is a misplaced impulse because it places too much authority in the central power it centralizes a monopolizes power at the federal level. And this was never intended, the first thing that people need to understand is that the Bill of Rights, as written and ratified was never intended to apply to state governments. And this is not debatable. People will try to debate me but I simply say find me any place during the ratification of the Bill of Rights during the creation of the Bill of Rights. Even when the Bill of Rights was being conceived that it was intended to apply to the States. It doesn’t exist, you can’t find it. People try this legal reasoning and whatnot. But the fact of the matter is, they did not want the federal government having that much power over the states, James Madison, during the drafting of the Constitution actually tried to put in a provision that would have allowed the federal government to veto any state law. And that was rejected. It was rejected resoundingly, because the biggest fear at the time was that the centralized power would be too big and strong, and it would overwhelm the individual states. And so the Bill of Rights was crucial. To limit federal authority,

Scott Horton 6:02
and I don’t want to be too much of a technicality terian about it or anything. But it says in the preamble to the Bill of Rights, that this is a list of declaratory and restrictive clauses. In other words, it’s not a bill of rights at all. It’s a bill of restrictions by free people against the new government that they had created.

Mike Maharrey 6:21
I am so glad you said that actually did a little short video yesterday for the 10th amendment center that we put up on our Instagram and maybe on Twitter. And I said that exact same thing the Bill of Rights was Miss named it should have been called the bill of restrictions. It does not give you any rights. It doesn’t even really, you know, it’s not giving the government permission to protect our rights. It’s restraining the actions of government. And in this case, the federal government’s

Scott Horton 6:45
You know, I’m glad you said that because, um, you know, I know much more about the Texas constitution than the other state governments constitutions, but I’m pretty sure they’re all like this are much more along these lines. Is that Texas Bill of Rights says the Texas government must protect your right to go to whatever church you want, carrying a gun, whatever it is free speech, etc. It’s not just a list of restrictions. It’s a mandate to the state governments, which makes their bills of rights actual bills of rights in that sense. And sort of the opposite take then the national one, right.

Mike Maharrey 7:23
I did not know that about the Texas Bill of Rights. That’s interesting. So the bar is set even higher for the state of Texas. I’m more familiar with the Kentucky Bill of Rights and it is more it’s written more along the lines of the Federal Bill of Rights. It’s it’s more framed as restrictions. But interestingly, a lot of the restrictions are actually better than what you find in the federal Bill of Rights. For instance, I was just looking at the Kentucky bill of rights on the freedom of religion. And this has been an issue up there because the governor has shut down churches with Coronavirus lockdown. And interestingly one of the phrases that’s in the Kentucky Bill of Rights I’m kind of paraphrasing here, but it basically says the the right of conscience will not be infringed. That’s pretty broad. You know, basically it’s saying that that your your right to act in a way that that corresponds with your religious beliefs. And of course, religious beliefs can also be non religious, that the government cannot infringe upon that so even stronger than the First Amendment. But like I said, the libertarian impulse and the conservative impulse is to use the federal government to us this incorporation doctrine. I don’t know if you want to get into the nitty gritty details of the incorporation.

Scott Horton 8:42
Yeah, go ahead, though. Okay, well, we got time let’s,

Mike Maharrey 8:45
let’s do it. incorporation doctrine was a basically a legal principle that was, in essence created out of thin air based on the 14th amendment. It was some 50 plus years after the 14th amendment was ratified, and it actually kind of goes against what the Supreme Court said the Fourth Amendment was intended to do when the Fourth Amendment was originally was originally ratified. And what that was the fourth amendment 14th amendment, when it talks about, you know, the privileges and immunities and the right to due process, basically what it was doing, it was ensuring that the freed slaves would be recognized as citizens, and that they would have the same basic fundamental rights, such as being able to enter into contracts, being able to travel, those types of things. And they were actually specific things that were laid out in a civil rights act before the 14th amendment was even ratified. Those things were specified, it was never intended to apply the bill of rights to the States. And yet 50 years later, the Supreme Court comes up with this incorporation doctrine using quote unquote due process to in effect allow the federal government to police states and to say, you know, even though the First Amendment says Congress shall make no law, it now means no state No local government shall make no law. According to the Supreme Court, a lot of libertarians, a lot of conservatives, a lot of people who care about Liberty like this because they think the federal government is going to clamp down on the states, and they’re going to keep us free. They’re going to police the states. My objection to this is number one, it never works. As we see with this case, I shouldn’t say never. But very rarely does the federal court limit government power most of the time, it erodes away those restrictions on government power. And when that happens in a Supreme Court case, it applies to the entire United States. So let’s think about this Kansas vs. Glover case had it stayed in the state as it was supposed to? Well, in this case, it actually would have been good because the state Supreme Court ruled in a way that was favorable toward liberty, you restricted the activities of the police. What we got instead when it went federal is now we have a chipping away of the right to protect are persons places and papers and and vehicles. Now that applies to the whole United States that decision is going to be viewed by every police department in every county in every state in this country. As we can now stop people, if we see that the owner of the cars driver’s license is suspended.

Scott Horton 11:18
So what we’ve done course they can program their computer like that to to read license plates and just say, any car that’s connected to somebody who’s licensed and suspended Litem, right.

Mike Maharrey 11:29
So my point is that, in some few cases, if we use the federal government as the I call it, the Liberty enforcement squad, if we use it that way, every once in a while we’ll get some some crumbs of liberty, that will be good, but in most cases, we’re going to get this kind of garbage that’s going to be imposed on every state in the union. And I think we’re better off keeping it decentralized, keeping things within a state work under your state constitutions in your state Bill of Rights. Instead of making everything into a federal case, I scream this until I’m red in my in the face, but then people yell at me and say, Well, what happens if the states violate our rights? Well, what happens when the federal government violates all right? I say just pretend like the state is the upper highest level, and then do whatever you would have done when the federal government have violated your rights, but just do it at the state level instead of taking it and centralizing power at the top.

Scott Horton 12:24
Yeah. It’s like trying to go to your boss’s boss to get him in trouble. It’s usually not going to work for him.

Mike Maharrey 12:30
But exactly, it’s a good analogy. Actually. I’m gonna steal that.

Scott Horton 12:34
Yeah, I’ve been using that one for a while. In fact, you reminded me of it. It’s been a while since I used it. But you know, so here’s the thing, though, is you have Brady and Miranda and all of these great decisions enforcing the Bill of Rights on the states where the police department’s before used to get away with a hell of a lot more blue bloody murder than they even get away with now, and the people did not say hey, we have an ideology of freedom and We demand that our local prosecutors are accountable to the law. They don’t, you know, all this stuff about you have the right to remain silent and all of that that never came from the bottom up. And so, and especially for the poor and minorities, you know, it’s easy to be a middle class white guy, and think that, you know, maybe the good old days were better for somebody like me, but and, of course, you know, poor minorities still are getting the shaft. I’m not saying that, but but, you know, there’s the exclusionary rule on the Fourth Amendment. I mean, that was the federal government that made that up. Right.

Mike Maharrey 13:38
Right. And like I said, you will get you will get good outcomes from time to time. And and and I guess that’s the temptation of it, because it’s easier to try to do it all at the centralized authority, but there’s no reason every single state has a an equivalent to the Fourth Amendment. So there’s absolutely no reason that those legal cases that went to the Supreme Court and made that change. There’s no reason that those couldn’t have happened at each state level. Granted, it’s, you know, it’s more difficult because you’ve got 50 states. But I think you could have had the same outcome without centralizing authority at the top, my position is that liberty is going to be threatened the most when power is centralized the most. And I always try to remind people that any power that you give any government is ultimately going to be used against you. So when you’re giving the the federal government the power to police, the states, you’re also giving them the power to basically determine what those rights are going to be. And you’re going to have an unequal outcomes. There’s some states that are absolutely going to suck. But I think it’s worth taking that risk rather than taking the risk of centralizing power, monopolizing power and giving the federal government that kind of domination, where essentially you have five government lawyers who are determining what your rights are going to be? That just doesn’t seem like a wise system to me. So I think we could do it in a more decentralized way, get the same outcomes, maybe better outcomes in a lot of cases and not risk this centralization of authority that we have going on today. I could name all kinds of horrible cases, you know, you can pick out a few good things, but you know, just for an example, the, the the gun cases like Heller that everybody thinks are great, there are all kinds of holes in that that are going to allow the right to keep and bear arms to be eroded away because of the way that decision was written everything. Oh, it’s great, because we have an individual right to keep and bear arms. It’s not as good as it looks, because there are all kinds of holes in it.

Scott Horton 15:40
Yeah, well, you know, it’s the Supreme Court that invented and you know, conservatives pay attention judicial activism here. The Supreme Court invented qualified immunity. That right essentially gives a license to kill to any cop to murder whoever they want, as long as they’re on the clock and maybe even if they beat their wife to death on a Saturday. Night.

Mike Maharrey 16:00
Yeah. Well, and, you know, the Supreme Court’s also the Augusta body that decided that it’s perfectly acceptable to lock, you know, 100,000 Japanese Americans behind barbed wire for years for no reason. You know, if you want to go back farther, it’s the Supreme Court that decided the black people essentially weren’t humans. So, you know, the Supreme Court doesn’t have a great track record in terms of protecting our liberty. And again, there are certain things that I think that they have gotten right. But by and large, they erode away our liberties. And again, I think we could do this and approach it at a centralized level. It requires more work by more people. But you know, freedom requires work. It’s not just gonna happen, because because we sit back and hope for some new president to appoint the right supreme court justices

Scott Horton 16:49
Hold on just one second Be right back. So you’re constantly buying things from amazon.com. Well, that makes sense. They bring it right to your house. So what you do though, is click through from the link in the right Hand margin at Scott Horton. org and I’ll get a little bit of a kickback from Amazon’s into the sale won’t cost you a thing. Nice little way to help support the show. Again, that’s right there in the margin at Scott Horton. org. Hey, I’ll check it out the libertarian Institute. That’s me and my friends have published three great books this year. First is no quarter, the ravings of William Norman Greg. He was the best one of us. Now he’s gone. But this great collection is a truly fitting legacy for his fight for freedom. I know you’ll love it. Then there’s coming to Palestine by the great Sheldon Richmond. It’s a collection of 40 important essays. He’s written over the years about the truth behind the Israel Palestine conflict. You’ll learn so much and highly valued this definitive libertarian take on the dispossession of the Palestinians and the reality of their brutal occupation. And last but not least, is the great Ron Paul. The Scott Horton show interviews 2004 through 2019 interview transcripts Have all of my interviews of the good doctor over the years on all the wars, money taxes, the police state and more. So how do you like that? Pretty good, right? Find them all at libertarian Institute. org slash books. You need stickers for your band your business will Rick and the guys over at the bumper sticker comm have got you covered great work, Greg prices, sticky things with things printed on them. Whatever you need, the bumper sticker comm we’ll get it done right for you. The bumper sticker.com Well, you know, I’m on the issue of cops killing people. I think it’s important that to point out that activists a lot of times on the local level, you know, you’ll have people who are, you know, interested parties, say NAACP offices and whatever organizations have activists in certain cities, that when there’s a bad police shooting a certain percentage, maybe a plurality or a majority of their effort gets expended asking the federal government Justice Department to come in and review it as a civil rights case. But that seems to me like most of the time, it’s expended effort, you know, wasted effort, because what happens is, and I don’t know if they realize this or what but the Supreme, the the civil rights jurisdiction of the federal government is extremely narrow, like, essentially, the cop would have to go ahead and put his Klan hood on in the middle of beating a black guy to death or shooting them to death. And and say, I’m doing this because I hate people of your race as he does it, for them to have the jurisdiction to prosecute him for that. And so what happens is they end up asking the boss’s boss to come in and review the case and the whatever you 99 times out of 100, or whatever the number is, the Justice Department says, Well, yeah, he didn’t go that far and use the N word during the crime. So he’s okay to escape. But meanwhile if they take in all of that same effort, and just be seized the DHS house or something like that, then probably they could get a lot more bang for their buck.

Mike Maharrey 20:21
Right. And that’s generally my my philosophy when it comes to activism to begin with, that you’re much better off focusing efforts on a local level, or you know, even a state level than you are the federal level because you have more push as an individual or as a as a activism group, with your state and local officials than you do trying to, you know, get some congressmen to pay attention to you unless you have big lobbying money. Your congressman didn’t give two craps about you. Now, you know, granted your state rep doesn’t either but it’s far more likely that you’re going to run into your state rep at the grocery store and make them uncomfortable in you are your representative just popped into my head. Are judges in Texas elected? Yes. Okay. So it’s it’s also true in Kentucky, I believe in Florida. I think a lot of states have elected judges. So you do have some as as a population. Now, I’m not big on electoral politics. But, you know, theoretically, if a judge makes a really crappy decision, you can get them out of office through the electoral process in a lot of states. So once you get these supreme court justices, they’re there forever. I saw I saw on the other day that they were going to put Ruth Bader Bader Ginsburg on, like, they’re going to use the Han Solo with that genic stuff so they can keep her on ice. Carbonite.

Scott Horton 21:39
Yeah.

Mike Maharrey 21:41
Yeah, but I mean, that, you know, I still feel like, you know, people say, what do you do if your state violates your rights? And that’s certainly a legitimate question. States violate rights. And I don’t want anybody to say Mike Maharrey doesn’t think states are going to violate your rights because I absolutely know that they do. But I think there are remedies at the state level. Just Like that go beyond what you have at the federal level. And, you know, I don’t think anybody would accept that. Let’s have the world court, you know, make sure that the Supreme Court in the United States protects our liberty. I don’t think anybody would go for that. So why do we count on the Supreme Court? Let’s take it down another level. And let’s let’s focus in in our states and not break up the decentralization. What little decentralization we have left because I think think decentralization protects literally.

Scott Horton 22:29
Yeah, well, and you know, you look at the history these guys too, and the way that the liberal justices might be a little bit better on some civil liberties issues, right. They usually are the dissenters who lose when they are very rarely their victory there and the right wingers on the court are 100% Law and Order full till I mean, Scalia even wanted to get rid of the exclusionary rule because Come on, cops are so professional these days, we hardly even need it anymore. This kind of thing right? And then but at the same time where the right wingers are better on some economic Issues maybe? Or on guns at least. You know, mostly that’s not what rules mostly it’s the liberals interpretation of the vaster, even more vast powers of the federal government to regulate every little thing that ends up winning the day. And so it’s, you know, essentially what they can compromise on. in the worst way. Instead of protecting our liberty, it’s almost always enhancing the power of the state at our expense, like in the case we brought up here at the beginning, right, where it would have been just as easy for them to say no, actually, it does say particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized. And so yeah, if soda Meyer had a good point here, how come the other eight just couldn’t get it? And it’s because they love the state more. They don’t have an ideology of freedom at all. Yeah, and in fact that they’re Americans not withstanding,

Mike Maharrey 23:54
right. And when you get to the big things, you know, when you get to things like war powers or emergency power, In those type of things, you know, emergency measures to spy or emergency measures to lock people up without due process. It’s almost always 100% behind the government, because these are extraordinary times that we have to, you know, allow the government to do its thing. So anytime that there’s an emergency or a war, you can count on your liberties being eroded by anybody who’s who’s in any judicial position in the federal government, because that’s just how they operate. You know, I’ve actually read a couple of times this in the last couple of weeks, these these statements that, you know, your rights are not absolute. And I, you know, I guess when the government’s interpreting them, they’re not, but the interesting

Scott Horton 24:42
I thought that’s what a right was, but Okay,

Mike Maharrey 24:44
anyway. Exactly. And that’s the problem with looking at the Constitution in the bill of rights as a protection of rights as opposed to a restriction on government because restrictions are absolute. You know, there’s no buck clauses in any of those, any of those restrictions on government, you find In the Bill of Rights, right, it can’t be interpreted away. But when you start interpreting things like rights, which are vague and ambiguous to begin with, then sure, you know, some guy can come up with some some reason that well, we need to whittle away at it here because we have this emergency or we have this war or, you know, we have

Scott Horton 25:16
it’s defining rights down in a really important way. We see this with free speech, right, where, you know, someone will say, I guess, you know, advocates for censorship on things like Twitter or Facebook, they’re used to people saying, hey, you’re, you’re violating the First Amendment, which is a red herring, right? No, they’re not. It’s not a you know, Twitter is not a public Commons owned by the state. And it ain’t your private property. And so, you, you know, they have every right to censor you as far as that goes. But then when people say, listen, the way Twitter censors things, it’s really a violation of free speech. And then people say no They have every right to do it and that kind of thing, where even if you don’t mention the First Amendment at all, people will say the first amendment is only about government action. But meanwhile, you’re trying to talk about a principle of free speech, where, you know, Twitter and Facebook and YouTube I mean, look at what’s going on with the virus stuff. They take, you know, these kind of cranky documentaries, and they just 86 of them so you can’t even look at them anymore. You know? And, and which is a severe violation of the principle of free speech forget the First Amendment has nothing to do with it, but then people hide behind the first amendment to say any censorship short of Congress outright outlawing this or that kind of speech is perfectly acceptable and in fact, even Haha, how do you like it? right wingers who say that, you know, private property owners have the right to choose what to do with their property. You hit the nail on the head, man And I said this the other day, I was telling my wife that the this taking stuff down office total social media platforms and granted a lot of this stuff like you said, it’s cranky, and and a lot of it’s just stupid. But the fact of the matter is taking it down is the modern day equivalent of burning a book. And, you know, everybody gets all bent out of shape about book burning. Well, you know, when you start when you start picking and choosing what ideas are allowed to float around out there and the land of ideas, that’s a problem. And, you know, it’s not long before somebody starts deciding what you think and what you you believe is not worthy of being out there too. So that’s a slippery slope.

Yeah, yeah. They don’t have to burn the books. They just remove them. Yeah, right. So hey, listen, now I one time, oh, 12 years ago now. I went to a future Freedom Foundation conference in Virginia, where Jonathan Turley, the famous lawyer gave a big speech and he went on and on for like, an hour. Doing case after case after case after case where the Fourth Amendment was eroded just on the question of what are your rights as an automobile traveler on the American public roadways, and it was like case after case after case where it was actually in a way, it was instructive that they really only whittled it away a little bit at a time. But you had things like the big example was, they said, Well, what are we going to do? send another deputy out to the judge’s house in the middle of the night and wake him up so that we can get a warrant to look in your suspicious trunk? So come on, let’s Yeah, but then once everybody got cell phones, then did they go back and revisit that decision? and say, well, the justification has been changed by modern technology. And now that the deputy sheriff can just call the judge at home, no problem from the side of the road. Then I guess we’ll have to go back to the Bill of Rights. Again, no They, of course kept that and just like Higgs ratchet effect, you know, these, cumulatively, you know, these 10 or 20 decisions, however they are and up to and including this latest one, it’s just completely eviscerated. What previous generations would have considered their fourth amendment rights as they’re traveling.

Mike Maharrey 29:21
Yeah, I mean, you can look at the same thing. And in terms of the way the the protections of, you know, personal papers and effects, you know, your email is every bit a paper, even though it’s an electronic form, as a piece of mail in your mailbox, and everybody would throw a fit if some FBI agent showed up at their house and got their mail out and started scanning their mail and putting it in a big database. And yet, nobody blinks an eye when, you know, they grab up emails or web browsing histories, or location data, all of this stuff. And a lot of this has been, you know, well, you know, because it’s electric. It’s different. So, you You see it on both sides of it, the old established things. They say, well, technology’s changed. So the limits of government are expanded now. And so you know, you get it coming and going, basically.

Scott Horton 30:12
Yeah. Oh, there’s the third party doctrine is a huge one, right? Where, hey, as long as you’re doing business with another private party, then hey, those are public records in the NSA, and the FBI have every right to all of them.

Mike Maharrey 30:29
Yeah, you know, who’s a big fan of that Trumps Neil Gorsuch. He’s a big third party doctrine, guy.

Scott Horton 30:34
Yeah, there you go. And, I mean, that thing is a loophole. You could drive a Mack truck through, you could drive an entire FBI through.

Mike Maharrey 30:41
and they do on a regular basis. I mean, that’s, that’s part of the justification they use for snapping up all of your phone, phone data, because it all goes through at&t or Verizon or sprint or whoever. It’s a it’s it’s a big mess. And here’s, here’s the thing that I would, I would ask them libertarians to to consider. Because the notion is is that we can we can finally get control of this government. If we can do that, then we can impose Liberty from the top down. Do you really believe that libertarians are ever going to control the apparatus of the federal government, our true libertarians ever going to control the supreme court? I mean, conservatives can’t even get control of it. Or, you know, there’s always that swing vote, like you said, Where, where it shifts back and forth. I think it’s a fool’s errand to steal the title of a really good book on the Afghanistan war. It’s a fool’s errand to think that you’re going to take over the federal government and use that power to impose Liberty it’s never ever going to work.

Scott Horton 31:44
Yeah, no, that’s totally true. Although, you know, I think the real role of the libertarians should be to set the agenda and the the list of priorities for the left and the right. And so that we don’t have to, we shouldn’t have to convince them to really be libertarians and change their identity from one thing to another. That’s a fool’s errand itself. But if we just say, Hey, listen, saving the Bill of Rights, such as it is, for the future generations, that is our responsibility. We have to care about this stuff. And we have to insist that these are the most important things. And, you know, we live in a society where people by and large agree with you and me, then we’ll be a lot better off when it comes out in practice, even at the hands of the nine Kooks and robes up there,

Mike Maharrey 32:35
I think, Hey, I think that’s a good point. It’s, it’s about, you know, taking over the narrative and, and helping people to realize the libertarian tendencies that they have, that have been buried under the mantle of statism all of their lives, because I think a lot of people do when you really boil it down. They do care about civil liberties, and they do care about you know, they don’t With the police being able to bust into their house in the middle of the night and shoot you in your bed is just happened in Louisville, Kentucky, because somebody messed up a warrant address. So, yeah, I think that I think you’re right when it comes to overall libertarian strategy. Unfortunately, libertarians oftentimes don’t do a very good job of articulating their own ideals. Yeah, well, and that includes Me too. And I’m sorry that we don’t have time to talk about that case that you just brought up because it’s so important. I want to do a show on it, but I can tell people that they can read all about it. The Free Thought Project is empty. That was shot by the cops, you know, after midnight, in this horrible rate. But anyway, I’m sorry, I’m so late. I gotta go. But I appreciate you so much coming back on the show, Michael.

It’s always a pleasure, Scott and appreciate everything you’re doing, and Just keep it up.

Scott Horton 33:47
Aren’t you guys that is the great Michael Maharrey. He is at the 10th amendment center over there with Michael Bolden. And that is 10th amendment center.com and this one is at the libertarian Institute Supreme Court. rules against Fourth Amendment. The Scott Horton show, Antiwar Radio can be heard on kpfk 90.7 FM in LA, APSradio.com antiwar.com ScottHorton.org and libertarianinstitute.org