All right, y'all welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton and our first guest on the show today is Jacob Hornberger.
He's founder and president of the future of freedom foundation.
And, uh, he does a show Saturdays from seven to seven 30 Eastern time at, uh, you stream.tv.
You can find the link from FFF.org/blog, which is where he blogs.
Welcome back to the show.
Jacob, how are you doing?
Hey, fine.
Scott honored to be back.
Well, I'm very happy to have you here and especially to give you a chance to promote for as much reach as I can provide here, which is not much, uh, a little bit of publicity, uh, for this thing, the college civil liberties lecture tour.
Uh, what's that when and where, and how do people take part?
Well, this is one of the most exciting programs that we've done in our 22 years here at the future of freedom foundation.
It is really great stuff.
We've got a panel program, uh, that we're going on tour with, uh, to various colleges.
We're doing it in conjunction with the young Americans for liberty, which is a great, uh, organization nationwide of young libertarians, mostly on college campuses, and, uh, they're putting together the events there.
They're in charge of organizing the whole thing, getting the venue, getting the promoting and marketing there.
And then the future freedom foundation is putting together the program itself.
And it consists of, um, Glenn Greenwald, you know, who Forbes magazine, uh, called one of the 25 most influential liberals in the country.
Um, Bruce fine, who served in the Reagan administration.
Of course, he's a conservative.
And then me as a libertarian.
And we're, we're all three of us are lawyers.
Uh, the moderator of the panel is going to be Jack Hunter who writes for American conservative magazine.
And, um, it is the, the commonality here is that all four of us have a fierce, um, uh, defense of civil liberties and oppose all this war on terrorism junk and the interventionist foreign policy, the pro empire foreign policy.
So you've got people of different ideological and political philosophies coming together to argue to people on these college campuses and to everyone else, it's open to the public, why it is that, that this country's headed in such a horrible direction, how it is that, that, uh, that we're heading in this totalitarian type direction with respect to civil liberties.
So we're starting in New York city at Columbia university on Monday night, this coming Monday.
We then go on Tuesday night to, uh, Indianapolis, uh, with a combination, Indiana university and Purdue university.
Then we fly to, uh, Tennessee from a program at middle state university, middle Tennessee state university on Wednesday.
And then we wrap it up Thursday night with a program at Ohio state university.
Uh, so we're psyched.
I mean, we're just really psyched about this program.
We think it's so important and, and we think the dynamics are going to be fascinating because of the cross ideological, uh, dynamic taking place here.
Well, uh, there's this one certain presidential candidate who keeps saying that the bill of rights and individual freedom and the constitution itself, um, really is a unifying force in this country, Democrats and Republicans, liberals, conservatives, and libertarians, uh, mostly at least prefer it to what we have now, if they don't, uh, you know, if they're not completely obligated to it in every way, like, uh, Ron Paul is, you know?
Well, right.
I mean, you know, Ron's the only one that is showing a, uh, a deep and abiding concern for civil liberties.
And yet, you know, as you know, civil liberties are, are arguably the most important aspect of freedom.
Now, you know, it's hard to quantify different aspects of freedom, but when the, when the government's got the power to just seize a person and cart him away, uh, that pretty much in my mind, Trump's, you know, a socialist system or a gun control system, I mean, they may take your gun away or whatever, but at least you're still in your home.
This is the power to just go grab a person, take him away to a concentration camp or to a military prison, torture him, keep him indefinitely detained for the rest of his life with no trial, no due process of law.
Just keep him in jail, torture him the rest of his life and execute it.
Or as, as you know, we now live in a country where the president, the military and the CIA have the power to assassinate anyone they want anywhere in the world, including Americans.
And they don't have to account to anybody.
They don't have to tell the standards under which they're assassinating people.
They don't have to explain it.
This is not the kind of country that was envisioned in 1787 when the, when the constitution was proposing to call into existence this federal government.
Well, you know, 10 years of terror war has really provided for, you know, just the time itself ratifying this revolution.
I mean, George Bush and, and his lawyers and that group and Obama continuing on, of course, but they've just drawn lines just to cross them just to see how bad can we torture people to death and brag about it on TV?
Yes, we can.
That kind of thing where now, and the wiretapping and the, like you say, the prison without trial, these kinds of things, but now it's been a decade of this kind of thing and the revolutionary fervor against it.
I don't know if it's growing or not.
I would think not, you know, it's becoming just a permanent fact of life.
Like any other set of government programs or laws that are instituted, you know?
Well, that's right.
And, and, and, you know, while we, we see the effect, they're, they're much more audacious and, and they've, they've openly proclaimed that they now will these powers because of 9-11, which of course is nonsense.
They've actually been doing this a long time.
I mean, we can go back to what the CIA has been doing with respect to torture and assassination for decades.
And we see, you know, what the military has been doing with regime change operations and go back to Cuba, the sixties, Mosaddegh in Iran in the fifties, Guatemala and Arbenz.
So, I mean, they've been doing these things sort of, you know, off and on Operation Phoenix and the Vietnam War, but 9-11 brought it all to the front.
And, and most important, they, they made it a, what they consider is a permanent part of American life.
They're saying this is, this is going to last generations, get used to it, deal with it.
And that's just not the case.
And I, and I think, well, many people have come to accept it and said, well, okay, you know, we're, you know, they would just have to do this just like they do in Egypt and other totalitarian regimes.
I mean, the Ron Paul campaign has shown that there's a large segment of society that's saying, bull on this.
This is not what America should be all about.
The federal government itself is responsible for the cause of the problem, the terrorist threat, you know, with what they've been doing with their foreign policies overseas.
And they're realizing, hey, there's a way out of this.
And that's what's exciting.
Now, it's not so far enough to win a presidential election, but I guarantee you when, when there's, you know, 10, 15% of the, of the population that are saying, uh-uh, we don't want this anymore.
That's a large number.
And, and you have to wonder sometimes how close we might be to a critical mass that shifts public opinion in a society.
I mean, clearly the Republican candidates are getting influenced to a certain extent, uh, by Ron Paul's beliefs.
You know, some of them are saying the Fed now needs to be audited and the Fed is dangerous.
And while the same darn thing can happen with respect to foreign policy and civil liberties.
Yeah.
Well, the only thing about it is it has to be, you have to do a lot of convincing, uh, at these, uh, at these forums that you're holding and, um, and the opposition has got to be strong and consistent.
And that's the problem is the way it all waivers with depending on who's in power and everybody switching, uh, which things are their priorities, where it seems to me as a libertarian, and I know you're the same way, uh, you know, peace and the bill of rights and an end to the government instituted business cycle.
Like these are things that ought to be, uh, you know, the easily agreed upon top priorities for everybody.
This is basics, fair trials and stop the killing and, you know, stuff like that.
We can get to arguing about social security and whatever on the next go around.
Well, that's right.
And, and, and I, you know, I think what, what happens is in these crises, people think, oh my gosh, this is the only way I can be kept safe.
If I give government this power and, oh, they're going to do it only on the bad guys.
I never have to worry about this.
Well, we all know that's not the nature of government because their definition of a bad guy starts expanding, especially if things start going bad for him.
I mean, that's why they start considering critics of their foreign wars is enemies, fifth columnists and so forth.
They start spying on their own people.
That's what they do in totalitarian regimes.
Yeah.
Well, when we get back, Jacob, I'm going to ask you, well, you can hear it now, whether you think this NDAA thing was a direct response to the Occupy Wall Street protests, or is that just a correlation without causation?
It's Jacob Hornberger from the Future Freedom Foundation.
We'll be right back after this.
All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton and I'm talking with Jacob Hornberger, the founder and the president of the Future of Freedom Foundation.
That's FFF.org and check out his great blog at FFF.org/blog.
You can remember that even if you're driving for later, you know?
Uh, and he's put together this great thing.
Uh, I already know it's great, even though it has not yet begun to happen.
Uh, it's the College Civil Liberties Lecture Tour.
Seriously, Bruce Fine, the guy that wrote up the articles of impeachment against Bill Clinton, which makes him a friend of mine and, uh, the great Glenn Greenwald, who's every essay I read and, uh, most of which I refer you to on this very show.
And Jacob who gets it, who has been, um, hosting such a great stable of authors at the Future Freedom Foundation and, uh, putting together conferences and doing all kinds of great activism to force that realignment in American politics where people get their priorities straight.
Peace and the bill of rights and, uh, things like that first and foremost.
And, you know, geez, can you imagine some college freshmen, some college sophomores get to sit down and hear Jacob Hornberger, Bruce Fine, and Glenn Greenwald all in one big conference and, and the whole thing, uh, narrated, moderated by, uh, Jack Hunter, the Southern Avenger.
You gotta be kidding me.
When is this and how do people go to this again, Jacob?
Well, they come to our website and they can look up, um, our FFF email update and they can see that the big logo for the conference at the top of the email update, and they click on that and, um, it gives all the details as to the, it's, it's in the evening, every night, Monday, night, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.
And it'll give the times and the places on each campus, but here's the best part.
The Young Americans for Liberty are live streaming the event.
So to do that, they, when they click on that logo at our FFF email update, it'll take them to a page where at the top, it'll say, click here for live streaming.
And so everybody all over the country and the world can, can access this live.
And, uh, yeah, I think it's going to be a fantastic event.
I mean, I, I'm like you, I read every blog that Greenwald writes and I, and every day I look for an article by Bruce Fine and, uh, I think, and, and I'm sure you've heard both these guys.
I mean, they're fantastic speakers.
You know, they don't use notes.
They get up there and start talking.
They're committed, they're, they're ardent proponents of what, uh, civil liberties and freedom, and it's going to be a fun event all the way along.
And, and yeah, talking to young college students who are, who are seeking, you know, that they're still idealistic.
That's the thing about being young.
You still have your ideals and it's not to say that you loosen necessarily when you get old, but this is a time of life where people are saying, yeah, it is possible to achieve things like freedom of speech and freedom of religion and freedom of the press and the restoration of civil liberties.
I mean, let's not forget, Scott, that in the bill of rights, you know, our ancestors devoted four amendments to this problem, you know, of, of, of when the government can seize you and punish you and incarcerate you and do bad things to you.
That's the fourth, fifth, sixth and eighth amendments all surround the power of government to take people into custody and do bad things to them.
That shows you how important it was to our ancestors.
That's what Magna Carta was all about, stopping the kind of thing that we now live under here under this regime.
Yeah.
Well, and you know, this is the kind of thing too, where, well, do people have to be students so they could bring their cousin or how's that work?
No, it's open to the public.
In fact, we're encouraging, excuse me, FFF supporters to come to the event, interact with the students.
I mean, clearly our, you know, our economic philosophy is, is going to be different and so forth, but we're not going to get into that in the panels, but in the informal periods, I'm sure there'll be plenty of conversation and discussion.
There'll be refreshments.
I mean, this is a chance for libertarians to be interacting with people from all of the political spectrums, especially young people in a nice, cordial, friendly environment.
And so people just, you know, you don't have to register.
You don't have to sign up.
You just come to the event.
There's not going to be an admission charge.
You just walk in and it's a free program and it's going to be, you know, well worth the amount of money that people will have to pay, which is zero.
So, yeah, it's going to be a great event.
So we encourage everybody, bring your friends, your neighbors, relatives, whatever.
Well, now part of what's going on here is that for people who are, you know, I guess Glenn is some kind of progressive or another.
He always tries to leave it kind of vague, I guess.
But a libertarian like yourself, a conservative like Bruce Fine, for y'all to be able to come together, for our society to be realigning the way it is on these priorities is a sign.
It's really just, it's the reaction to the crisis we're in.
This is part of the, you know, Ron Paul quintupling his numbers in all these states that he's running in.
Even if he's not actually winning states yet, he's doing so much better.
It's because things are that bad.
And here's the one guy who, as Jess Romano says in his article today, kind of provides this ray of hope for getting to the way things are supposed to be instead of on the wrong track, like people call it.
Like the polls say, super majorities agree that we're on the wrong track as a country or whatever, that kind of thing.
We're in a real crisis here.
We do have huge protest movements and we have huge squads of riot police who, you know, I don't know how many of them are still active duty at this point or how long when they come and get you and me, Jacob, how long we'll be gone before there's ever a writ of habeas corpus or exactly how that works.
But we are really kind of messing around with abandoning our bill of rights completely and adopting a kind of nationalist, militarist, fascist government way of life in this country where I don't know how far down the slippery slope you can go before they just quit pretending anymore.
Well, and, you know, people, people, you know, naturally say, oh, well, they're not exercising these powers over large groups of people, you know, like they are in Egypt.
I mean, the Egyptian government has the same kind of powers that the U.S. government now has post 9-11.
And so they say, oh, well, it's not really a problem because you're not doing it to large numbers of people.
But part of our message here at these programs and, of course, here at the Future of Freedom Foundation, in fact, if I didn't mention it, our website, FFF.org, where people can go to the email update to find more about the conference.
But.
Oh, I lost my train of thought.
Well, something about the crisis and the realignment.
Yeah, well, well, the point is, is that we've got people from all political stripes that are coming together and argue, oh, yeah, that a free society does not go on whether how many people the powers are being exercised against.
A free society depends on the power not even existing in government.
I mean, that's the purpose of restrictions on power in the Bill of Rights is to say you don't even have the power to regulate speech.
You don't have the power to regulate religion.
So, you know, it's not a question of, oh, you're not controlling too many religions here.
You're not subsidizing too many.
It's you don't even have the authority to do that.
And that's what we need to remind people.
That's we're going to be reminding people at at these programs is a free society turns on them, not even having these powers, not the fact that they're only doing it to say it, but the or and we're all a lock here, two or three other people is remove the power from these people so that they don't even have it.
Well, and you already see how they went from Hamdi or a locky, somebody with a name like that to somebody named Jose Padilla, who, OK, well, maybe he's from here, but he's still some sort of Hispanic minority, something not of us, the people with the power from their point of view, the media people, that kind of thing, still outsider or whatever.
But then here comes Bradley Manning.
He's as white as can be and has a name to go along with his skin tone and everything.
I guess he's gay.
So that makes him a little bit of an outcast somehow.
But basically they can go on a slippery slope right to the people who are, you know, supposedly the ones this ring of fire is meant to protect from everyone else on the outside.
You know, well, that was my point is, is that, you know, when when Padilla when they do this to Padilla and he's an American citizen and they say we we have the authority to seize him, put him into a military dungeon, deny him access to the courts, deny him access to a lawyer, isolate him, subject him to sensory deprivation for three years, mentally damage him.
What they're really saying is we have the authority to do this to every American.
And this is what we kept stressing about why that case was so important is that it wasn't just the power to do it to him.
It's the power to do it to all Americans.
And once they have that power, there is no free society.
I mean, and now they're doing it to Bradley Manning.
He might as well be Spider-Man or something.
He's the greatest American that ever lived.
And they're torturing him.
Well, right.
I mean, you know, they can't even treat him decently, even though they, you know, they claim to have a system that presumes people innocent, even within the military justice system.
They treat him as if he's already a convicted bad person when really what has he done?
All he's done is embarrass the government by exposing the truth about what the government's been doing.
That's that that shifting notion of national security, that if you embarrass them, they consider that a threat to national security.
And then and it subjects the citizen to whatever they want to do to him.
Yeah, they got a bunch of guilty consciences up there, don't they, in D.C.?
All right, everybody, it's FFF.org, Jacob Hornberger, Glenn Greenwald, Bruce Fein, they're coming to a college near you starting Monday.
FFF.org.
