All right y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott Warren.
I'm happy to welcome Jacob Hornberger to the show.
Back to it.
He's the founder and the president of the Future Freedom Foundation, FFF.org.
And they host a bunch of great writers, including my good friends, Anthony Gregory, Sheldon Richman, and James Bovard, also Richard Ebeling and Bart Fraser.
And I know I'm leaving a couple out.
Welcome back to the show, Bumper.
How are you doing?
Hey, fine.
In fact, we got some new writers writing for us and it's pretty exciting.
They're expanding our staff of contributors.
Maybe it's time for Scott Horton to send us an article.
Sorry to put you on the spot here on the air, Scott.
Actually, I started writing one for you last night.
I was going to send you, but it ain't done yet.
All right.
So yeah, good timing.
I'm glad you want to hire me because I want to write for you.
Great.
Fantastic.
Great.
See, it's like George Bush used to say, it's hard work, but we're making progress.
All right.
So that's true.
Now, listen here.
I wanted to talk with you about they hate us for our hypocrisy, too.
But first, I'm looking at FFF.org/blog where you write great stuff, I think every single day.
But I want to talk with you first about the new America.
And I like the way it starts here.
Periodically, it's important to sit back, reflect and contemplate what kind of country America has become and all that, because I really think that, you know, I think of my nephew.
He's basically lived in wartime his whole life since he was a toddler.
It's been war.
And, you know, basically, when I was real young, it was the Cold War.
But other than that, it's pretty much been war the whole time because I wasn't ignorant during the Clinton years, you know, and I'm kind of used to it, too.
I sort of think, you know, you're not that much older than me, but you got a little bit better perspective on maybe the difference, at least between what we are and what we claim, where I don't even know we claim the things we used to, you know.
Right.
I mean, you know, when I was growing up, I just I came up with this idea that the United States was just different from other countries.
I mean, you know, torture to me was what happened in those medieval houses of horrors, like in Italy or Spain, the Inquisition, the Tower of London.
And that, you know, it never even remotely occurred to me that there would actually be U.S. officials and American private sector people that would ultimately say, we believe in torture.
We like torture.
We think it's necessary.
And this is what America now has to be all about.
And yet that's where we are as a country.
To me, when you just stop and you start reflecting on, you know, growing up in this country and what America's ideals were and what kind of country you're supposed to have.
This is shocking.
I mean, it's absolutely shocking that not only is our government engaged in what these medieval, horrible, tyrannical regimes were doing or what the Nazis were doing or the communists were doing, but that there's actually people saying this is what America now stands for.
And they're kind of like proud of it.
I just find this astonishing, you know, along with all the other stuff, the kidnappings, the renditions, the invasions, the occupations, the killing, the humiliation, the foreign aid, the dictatorships.
This is this is something I got a feeling that a lot of the school kids still don't really have not come to grips with this new America that we're living under.
But, you know, thank goodness, I think, for us libertarians, because we're the only light shining through this darkness.
Think of how depressing, Scott, everything would be if there were no libertarians.
Well, and just think about how much progress libertarianism has made just in the last few years where, you know, the idea that you would have Judge Napolitano show where instead of representing the left or the right with a Republican and Democrat talking head doing their thing, you actually have a libertarian based show on TV every day coming up next, Jacob Hornberger from the Future Freedom Foundation.
Tell us why they're both wrong.
I mean, it's a lot's changed in a very short time.
Well, that's the bright side of this.
That is, things have gotten darker and darker and stormier and stormier.
People have finally, I think, start started to realize that this is not a normal way of life.
This is aberrant.
This this is just a weird way of life.
And so they hypocrisy that you talk about in the first thing, you know, I learned, I think my mom taught me this when I was real young, that America was different, for example.
And, you know, my grandfather was an Air Force guy.
And, you know, she grew up, I think, in Japan and in Europe for a time.
And she said, well, look, we're different because, for example, after World War Two, we made best friends out of our enemies.
And instead of just conquering them and taking their stuff like all other countries do in a situation like that, we made them our friends.
And instead of bossing them around, you know, try to make them, you know, equals to us, partners with us and whatever, because that's the way she certainly learned it.
And the thing is, I mean, propaganda like that goes a real long way.
I can tell you it lasted on me until I guess I first started learning about the CIA selling cocaine and burning the branch of Indians to death, you know.
Well, that's what the whole idea of public schooling is, is to inculcate this mindset that the U.S. government is is good and caring and compassionate.
And we all just grow up with that molded mindset.
And I remember when all of a sudden I just achieved this breakthrough.
And I think many, many libertarians can achieve, can point to the time like a road to Damascus experience that says, that's when I realized that all this false and deception just broke through it.
And I now see reality for what it is, that this is a military empire that's very brutal, that has brutalized people around the world and that those people have retaliated.
And then they use that retaliation, the government does, to take away our freedoms here at home with the Patriot Act and the TSA stuff and the enemy combatant doctrine, the Guantanamo Bay junk.
And that's where we libertarians have provided the light that I think people are now gravitating toward, which is very exciting, including a lot of young people across this country.
So, you know, what I'm pointing out to people now, Scott, is that, you know, the battle is not between the government and the Muslims or government, the terrorists or the drug dealers.
The real battle facing us in this country are the libertarians versus the statists.
That's the real battle right there.
Will the statists win so that we got another hundred years of this status junk, or will the libertarians win and we restore a limited government constitutional republic to our land?
Right.
Yeah, I mean, once you kind of break away from the left-right thing and just consider it a matter of individualism versus collectivism, then individualism clearly wins the contest for who's morally superior or what philosophy is more morally superior.
And, you know, besides, collectivism doesn't work anyway.
It provides only misery.
We've got the last hundred years that proves that in every way.
So, you know, I guess there is there should be real reason for long term optimism since we're so right about everything.
Well, I think we just need to keep pointing to people that you have this choice that you have to make.
This is a choice facing you.
Do you want to continue living the rest of your life until you get to your deathbed with this kind of environment where you've got all these color coded things, where they're fondling your private parts at the airports, where they can search your homes without warrants, where they can get your financial information, the bank secretly, where the government's borrowing and spending and taxes and inflating out the gazoo?
Because if you like this life, if you like the life of big government, oppressive government, welfare state government taking care of you and plundering and looting you, then, yeah, go ahead and support the statism.
Continue supporting the welfare state.
Support the warfare state.
But for those of you that say, you know what, I want to know what it's like to live the life of a free person before I die.
Some people in history have actually lived the life of a free person.
If you want to know what that's like before you die to live at least one day as a free person, then join up with us libertarians.
That's the choice, Scott.
Yeah.
Well, you know, it's really important that people get their act together quick, too, because soon enough there will be another massive terrorist attack in this country will be that color code will be at red.
And then what?
We're going to have David Petraeus in the Pentagon just take control of the country from now on?
Or are we going to go the Ron Paulian route and say now it's time to finally knock this off?
Well, you're right, because they use crises as the opportunity to centralize their power.
And that terrorist strike, as you well know, doesn't necessarily have to come out of the Middle East, where the government's got, you know, occupying these countries and assassinating people and kidnapping people and torturing them, abusing them and so forth.
It may come out of Latin America, because you've had decades down there where the U.S. military has been horribly abusing people with this drug war.
Yeah, Chalmers Johnson on 9-11 thought, I wonder if it's Chileans, because September 11th was the anniversary of the coup down there.
Right.
Hold on one second, everybody.
It's Jacob Hornberger, fff.org/blog.
All right, welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
The boys in the chat room are coming up with funny things to say to humiliate the TSA agent in line.
I don't think I can repeat any of them out loud here.
Well, in chaos, I could, but not on LRN.
Anyway, we're talking with Bumper Hornberger.
He's the founder and the president of the Future of Freedom Foundation, fff.org.
And he's got a great blog at fff.org/blog.
And, you know, well, the threat of terrorism from South America.
I don't know about suicide attacks and stuff.
Maybe you've got to be brainwashed with a certain kind of something to go for that.
But yeah, there's certainly I mean, the point there is really from anywhere in the world.
Now, you could find people who hate America enough to want to come here and kill people.
Well, you know, that's part of where the hypocrisy comes in, Scott, that, you know, we don't allow the military to enforce criminal laws here in the United States.
That's the posse comitatus law.
And why?
Because we don't want the military enforcing criminal laws.
The military's mindset is totally different from the police's mindset.
The military is kill, conquer, invade, occupy.
The police attitude is bring to justice, arrest, incarcerate, put on trial.
And so our longtime history is don't get the military involved in this.
And we've seen, of course, the results in Mexico of that.
I mean, people are now protesting against the military in Mexico enforcing the drug war.
Well, guess what?
We send our military into Latin America and other parts of the world to enforce the drug war down there.
We say it's a bad idea here.
But hey, we're going to send our military down into your country to do what we won't do here.
I mean, that's hypocrisy to the utmost degree.
When you think about the way they talk about our military down there, you think about the way they talk about Iraq.
It just goes without saying that the purpose of the army there is to, you know, war against the people of Iraq.
If they, you know, dare try to undo what we've done.
Right.
Barging down people's doors, never even thinking about going to a judge for a warrant, warrantless searches of people, making, lining them up inside their own houses and searching through their belongings.
I mean, there is total military power in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The military can do whatever it wants.
I mean, this is total military dictatorship.
There are no constraints.
And in Latin America, you've got the military fighting the drug war, supporting many of these brutal regimes, abusing people, harassing people.
And yet we come back here and we say, well, no, we don't want the military doing it here.
We just want the military doing it to other people.
Well, why wouldn't people be angry over that kind of hypocrisy along with the abuse?
Well, and so I guess back to the question of, you know, libertarianism versus statism at the next crisis, like, let's say if there was another September 11th sized attack from, say, I don't know, some Pakistanis who resent their little cousin getting killed in a drone attack or something like that inside this country.
You think the demagogues are just going to win hands down?
You think the the, you know, voice of reason stands a chance at this point?
That's a fascinating question, because, you know, we saw what happened after 9-11.
You know, they got like the Patriot Act passed without even reading it, which contained powers that they had been fighting for throughout the years before 9-11, especially as part of the drug war.
And but, you know, people, I think, are waking up to this, that that a lot of these crises are U.S. government induced, like with foreign policy, getting people all riled up and so forth.
And then you've got this drug war business.
And, you know, the problem is that we now have the other problem of the fiscal crisis, the economic crisis that's facing us, like, you know, a Great Depression type crisis, where Franklin Roosevelt assumed dictatorial powers when he established the welfare state, the socialism, the fascism of the New Deal.
So we're looking at the possibility of a perfect storm of crises hitting us, a foreign terrorist crisis arising out of U.S. foreign policy, a domestic economic crisis arising out of U.S. economic policy.
And then what will be the reaction of the American people?
Will they listen to us libertarians and say, hey, this is what the federal government has brought on us.
We need to dismantle the statism.
Or will they look for the president to have dictatorial powers like they did with Franklin Roosevelt?
You know, I think the jury's out on that one.
Well, you know, I don't know.
I guess a crowd can be, you know, deceiving to just guess or whatever.
It seems like the general public mostly aren't interested whatsoever anymore.
Like at the very beginning of the Iraq war, whenever he was on board and was cheering along with Richard Perle and all them, then, you know, they were into it.
But since then, never really wanted to pay attention at all.
And like, I think, you know, if you did a poll of how many Americans know about our intervention in Somalia or or in Yemen, even you probably get very little response.
People who even have any idea of this stuff.
So, you know, we've had a lot of Somali Americans, like 10 of them or something, go to Somalia to fight on the side of al-Shabaab against the American empire.
So what if one of them blows up the Mall of America up there?
That's where all the Somalis live is up in Minnesota, I think.
You know, they do something like that.
Will the American people be able to hear you when you're telling them, wait, wait, we've been we've been blowing up Somalia?
You're not justifying it, but you're explaining this.
What happens when you keep blowing up Somalia is eventually a Somali blows up America kind of thing.
Or or is it they're just too uneducated in the background?
It might be it might as well be out of the clear blue sky again like 9-11.
Yeah, I mean, in the in the immediate post aftermath of a terrorist strike like that, I think that the average American is going to just say, you know, go out and nuke whoever you can find.
But as things settle down or, you know, a good example, this is Waco.
After the Waco massacre, I remember listening to a talk show I was driving at the time, and there were people calling in saying good riddance.
They deserved it.
Thank goodness this problem is finally over and all this.
I mean, there was this callousness, horrible callousness over this federal massacre, including children that were burned to death with that flammable gas that the feds were injecting into that building.
And but over time, libertarians predominantly were speaking out against what had happened, and we were raising people's consciousness of how wrong this is and how horrific it was.
Well, the result has been there's been no more Waco's and, of course, no more Timothy McVeigh's retaliating against federal buildings.
So, you know, our solution was stop doing this type of thing so that you don't give rise to these people like McVeigh.
And we've succeeded.
There's been no more Waco's and therefore no more retaliatory thing.
That's what we've got to do with foreign policy.
The problem with that is, though, that really there's been 100,000 Waco's since then.
It's just it's very rare that the people fight back and win at the beginning and create the long term siege and all that kind of thing that ends with the fire and all that.
But they're kicking down 100 doors right now during this interview.
You mean with the drug warrants?
Yeah, and the dynamic raid, the Powell doctrine of overwhelming force instead of minimal force to get your arrest, etc.
Well, there's no question that what they've done in Iraq and Afghanistan and in the Middle East is a thousand times worse than what happened at Waco.
I mean, you know, as much as people were angry, at least some of us at about the Waco thing.
I mean, imagine I mean, it's not difficult to see why people are so angry in the Middle East.
I mean, what they've done over there is, like I say, a thousand times worse.
But what I'm suggesting is, is that there's been no more massacres here in the United States a la Waco.
OK, yeah, they're still incarcerating people for the drug war and stuff, but they're not going in there and attacking them and burning them up alive and so forth.
And if we can achieve that as libertarians, bring the troops home from these countries, get them out of the Middle East, dismantle that empire, get rid of those overseas military bases, you know, in some hundred and thirty countries that people resent us.
Look, we won't let foreigners build military bases in the United States.
Why?
Because we'd really resent a foreign military base in the United States.
Why don't we see that that causes resentment overseas?
Well, if we libertarians can succeed in that, and of course, that's what Ron Paul's trying to do is dismantle that empire.
Well, then all of a sudden there's no more terrorist counterstrikes.
All of a sudden people say, well, if there's no more terrorist counterstrikes, why does the government have to be in charge of the airports?
Why do we need those TSA fondlers?
Why do we need the Patriot Act?
And then all of a sudden the dominoes start falling in a pro-freedom direction.
Right.
Well, we could get it done.
You know, I'm sure you're familiar with that old quote from Garrett Gourette, where he complained that the American people never had a choice between the Republican empire.
It was always Wilkie versus Roosevelt or Dewey versus Truman.
And nobody ever said the American people are right.
This is it.
This is your choice.
Republic or empire.
And now here it is.
They told him no last time.
Unbelievably, but predictably.
But this time, you know, I don't know.
Here it is right, right in front of you on a silver platter.
Oh, yeah.
Liberty on one end or perpetual war and bankruptcy and slavery on the other.
Simple as that.
That's it.
I mean, this is what it is.
It's freedom versus statism or freedom versus slavery, serfdom, whatever you want to put on it.
That's the battle facedness, Scott.
Yep.
And the lines are so clear.
So join up the good side, everyone, please.
FFF.org.
Read Sheldon Richman and Anthony Gregory and Jim Bovard and Jacob Hornberger.
FFF.org.
Thanks, Jacob.
Appreciate it.
Thank you, Scott.
Bye bye.
