Speaker 1: Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio of the
Speaker 1: George Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty.
Speaker 2: Arm Strong and get Katie and now he Armstrong and Getty.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 4: I just saw this from Peter Baker of the New
Speaker 4: York Times. He's at the Dick Cheney funeral. We've been
Speaker 4: we're talking about that last hour, all the people that
Speaker 4: are there, Peter Baker, New York Times Rights. If anybody
Speaker 4: needed more evidence of how politics have changed in America,
Speaker 4: Rachel Maddow is at Dick Cheney's funeral. Wow, because he's
Speaker 4: now he's now kind of seen as like the grown
Speaker 4: up Republican Party as opposed to the evil, crazy Trump Party.
Speaker 1: Because the Cheney family was anti Trump. Yes, yes, okay,
Speaker 1: all right? Oh my god, why that took the wind
Speaker 1: right out of my sales? Speaking of things that exhausted me,
Speaker 1: the Epstein Document Release Act of twenty twenty five or
Speaker 1: whatever they're calling it to pass both houses. The President
Speaker 1: said he'll sign it. I think he did sign it.
Speaker 1: But here's the problem. No one will ever be satisfied.
Speaker 1: There are enormous loopholes for things that should not be
Speaker 1: and probably will not be released, at least not now.
Speaker 2: To an extent that again, we'll leave everybody unhappy.
Speaker 4: I think, well, there, Like I said, there's going to
Speaker 4: be tremendous political pressure on everyone if there's a whole
Speaker 4: bunch of stuff redacted to unredacted, and I think it'll
Speaker 4: be enough that there'll be pressure on the President to
Speaker 4: tell Pambondi to tell the Justice Department to get more
Speaker 4: stuff out there.
Speaker 2: I mean, what.
Speaker 4: Passed what for twenty three to one in the Senate
Speaker 4: didn't even bother to argue about it.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's so overwhelming.
Speaker 4: Eighty five percent of Americans or something like that want
Speaker 4: it all to come out. There's gonna be so much
Speaker 4: political pressure to have as little hidden as possible. So
Speaker 4: it'll be interesting to see how that plays out. I
Speaker 4: just read this from one of my favorite thinkers. The
Speaker 4: Epstein files release sets a horrible precedent as cowardly politicians
Speaker 4: abandoned long standing norms regarding privacy and the presumption of
Speaker 4: innocence to the mob. And they've got a picture here
Speaker 4: of Larry Summers. Yeah, Larry Summers driven out of his
Speaker 4: final job. He'd quit everything, the former president at Harvard,
Speaker 4: but was going to hang on to his teaching position
Speaker 4: at Harvard.
Speaker 1: You know why, because he's an expert in the area.
Speaker 4: He was teaching, one of the best experts on planet
Speaker 4: Earth in what he was teaching at Harvard. And we
Speaker 4: found out something from many years ago that was very untoward.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's definitely bad behavior.
Speaker 2: But that shouldn't have come out. He didn't commit a crime.
Speaker 2: He wasn't He's not accused of a crime. He didn't.
Speaker 4: He just tangentially related to an investigation. And that could
Speaker 4: happen over and over and over again, just on this
Speaker 4: Epstein thing. And if it becomes the norm that we
Speaker 4: release all this stuff with every investigation, well then forget it.
Speaker 2: Any of us could get caught up in something.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It reminds me metaphorically if you've got a really, really
Speaker 1: good reason to murder somebody, Once you start murdering people,
Speaker 1: oh my god, it's you know, Katie bar the door.
Speaker 1: There are plenty of good reasons to want to know
Speaker 1: are there more victims that are there more perpetrators you know,
Speaker 1: sex trafficking, sexual exploiting underage girls and that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, the government, the cops, local, state, federal.
Speaker 2: FBI, whatever.
Speaker 1: They have the right literally to go through your underwear drawer,
Speaker 1: paw through all of your phone records and texts and emails,
Speaker 1: all your financial records and everything, and the idea that
Speaker 1: everybody's so pristine and has never done anything at all
Speaker 1: embarrassing or untoward or immoral or at a momentary lapse
Speaker 1: of whatever. And therefore the authorities ought to be able
Speaker 1: to just broadcast that to whomever they want, any time
Speaker 1: they want. I mean, that's anathema to our system. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I was this bothers me, and I understand the desire
Speaker 1: to look into it.
Speaker 2: I really do.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was going to say, because I can hear
Speaker 4: people saying, yeah, well I don't care, because I don't.
Speaker 4: I wasn't emailing Jeffrey Epstein about how to get an
Speaker 4: underling in bed, which Larry Summers was, and that's why
Speaker 4: he's lost all of his jobs. Now he's completely he's
Speaker 4: got out of public life. But that's not the way
Speaker 4: we're Are you going to tell me you got nothing
Speaker 4: in your past, nothing at any at any point in
Speaker 4: your past, professionally, personally, romantically, anything that if it were
Speaker 4: acts as criminal, and that if it were exposed it
Speaker 4: wouldn't look bad without explanation.
Speaker 2: Of course you do. Everybody does, and.
Speaker 4: It could be part of an investigation where you're not
Speaker 4: You didn't come in a crime, You have nothing to
Speaker 4: do with the investigation at all. You just got emailed
Speaker 4: the person once, or you know, you hired them once
Speaker 4: to do a jobs here in their tax records or whatever.
Speaker 4: The hell do you want all that sort of stuff
Speaker 4: to come out every time there's an investigation.
Speaker 2: No, you do not well.
Speaker 1: And we were talking more specifically the other day about
Speaker 1: how both of us have been with people that seem
Speaker 1: like they are super fun to hang out with, they
Speaker 1: really like to party, and then as you got to
Speaker 1: know them a little better, you realized, oh, they're going
Speaker 1: well beyond my definition of a good party into something
Speaker 1: I don't want to be part of.
Speaker 2: But you could absolutely be tied.
Speaker 1: To that person he attended one of his several of
Speaker 1: his parties. You of course had no idea that they
Speaker 1: were doing cocaine with twelve year olds or whatever.
Speaker 2: But the minute you got a.
Speaker 1: Hint that, wow, they're doing really bad stuff that I
Speaker 1: have no interest in, you don't go back again. But
Speaker 1: you could easily be tired with that information, and again
Speaker 1: I get we're talking about exploitation of underage girls, and
Speaker 1: there's absolutely the stench of the powerful protect each other.
Speaker 2: But oh man, this is this is a line.
Speaker 1: If we cross it here and again, there are tons
Speaker 1: of documents that are not going to come out for
Speaker 1: various reasons. I want if we cross the line, I
Speaker 1: hope it's just this. Once I walked home from a
Speaker 1: party one time.
Speaker 4: I thought it was just a regular whoopee party, like
Speaker 4: a drink of beer and everything like that.
Speaker 2: That's what we're doing, and that's the way it started.
Speaker 4: And then this guy was brought in that everybody was
Speaker 4: talking about these people I knew and using They called
Speaker 4: him the doctor, and he was coming over and he
Speaker 4: got there and everybody's happy, and then all these crazy
Speaker 4: things came out and it became a different party than
Speaker 4: I want to be at.
Speaker 2: And I left.
Speaker 1: I just I will like sex toys or wild animals
Speaker 1: or dru drugs.
Speaker 4: I walked home and it was not long after that
Speaker 4: that that guy is probably still in prison. He got
Speaker 4: busted big at that kind of a party. The police
Speaker 4: had been keeping an eye on him, and they all
Speaker 4: came in and swarmed in.
Speaker 1: I was always glad that I decided, Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: not what I came here for, and I just walked home.
Speaker 2: I staggered home.
Speaker 4: That's like the it's five minutes to the bar and
Speaker 4: fifteen minutes home. Why the difference is staggering? I staggered
Speaker 4: home from that party, glad I did. There's lots of
Speaker 4: people got caught up in that one total.
Speaker 1: Change topic speaking of good judgment and bad mikey Manual
Speaker 1: of Fox News here story just breaking.
Speaker 2: I think in the last couple of days cliped fifty Michael.
Speaker 5: Some prominent national security Democrats are preaching anti fascism while
Speaker 5: urging US military personnel to defive President Trump.
Speaker 6: Right now, the threats to our constitution aren't just coming
Speaker 6: from Rod but.
Speaker 2: From right here at home. Our laws are clear.
Speaker 1: You can refuse illegal orders.
Speaker 6: You can refuse illegal orders.
Speaker 2: Hmmm, So what is that more specific? Next clip Michael.
Speaker 5: White House Deputy chief of Staff Stephen Miller calling this
Speaker 5: unbecoming of their office.
Speaker 7: There is nothing graver that you could possibly say. It
Speaker 7: encouraging urging directing members of the armed forces of the
Speaker 7: United States are the clandestine services of the United States
Speaker 7: to defy their president, defy their chain of command.
Speaker 4: This has been burbling around for a couple of weeks.
Speaker 4: Now I guess it's now out in the open more.
Speaker 4: There've been opinion pieces and that sort of stuff urging. Well,
Speaker 4: first it started with the people that are blasting the
Speaker 4: boats down there by Venezuela. Are they guilty of a crime?
Speaker 4: If it turns out the Supreme Court says the president
Speaker 4: doesn't have the right to do this, doesn't have the
Speaker 4: authorization to do this, Are they guilty of crime? Then
Speaker 4: there was a ruling that no, they're not guilty of
Speaker 4: a crime. But then there was the push out there
Speaker 4: that you should these orders, it's a crime. Well, then
Speaker 4: the obvious conversation started at how far down the road
Speaker 4: are you going to go of people get to ignore
Speaker 4: orders because they're afraid they might not be legal. And
Speaker 4: what am I supposed to do if I'm a don't know,
Speaker 4: what's a rank above private but slightly higher than that,
Speaker 4: But what am I supposed to hire? I'm told to
Speaker 4: do something, And then I got to get a lawyer,
Speaker 4: have them look it over and write me a paper,
Speaker 4: and then maybe run it by another lawyer to make
Speaker 4: sure I'm on the right side of whatever I'm about
Speaker 4: to do.
Speaker 2: It cares to me.
Speaker 1: This operation is going to destroy private property and I'd
Speaker 1: rather not be prosecuted for you know, vandalism or whatever.
Speaker 1: So I got to have my attorney look look at
Speaker 1: this first. Thank you, sergeant. Yeah, no kidding. So here's
Speaker 1: a Republican and Democrat commenting. First, this is Pat Fallon
Speaker 1: of Texas, the Republican.
Speaker 2: It's just as broad. You don't follow illegal orders. Well,
Speaker 2: guess what.
Speaker 6: As a former active duty member of the US military,
Speaker 6: that's one of the first things they teach you is
Speaker 6: that you don't follow illegal orders.
Speaker 2: So they're being redundant as well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, worth Worth pointing that out. That is the rule
Speaker 4: constitutionally and in the military. You do not have to
Speaker 4: fall in illegal order. But it has limits, obviously, or
Speaker 4: the whole thing would fall apart. You couldn't You couldn't
Speaker 4: run the military at all.
Speaker 1: He flies and steals things out of golf carts. He's
Speaker 1: representative Jason Crowe, the Democrat of Colorado.
Speaker 6: As a military officer, what I think is important is
Speaker 6: we train people, we give them information, We prepare people
Speaker 6: for challenges coming down the pike. That is what I
Speaker 6: did as a commander in the military. That's what I'm
Speaker 6: doing now, as we are standing by our troops, we
Speaker 6: are reminding them of their obligation.
Speaker 1: The Interestingly enough, nobody cited anything specific, and they didn't
Speaker 1: say which service members might have received or have received
Speaker 1: illegal orders.
Speaker 2: It just the general.
Speaker 1: The crows seem to be calling his name said call
Speaker 1: that's one of my favorite.
Speaker 2: Tjope, hilarious.
Speaker 1: I don't know that this has been really hot in
Speaker 1: your left wing circles for the last week or so.
Speaker 1: Should be defying orders from an illegal president?
Speaker 2: Got this note from Henry.
Speaker 1: Democrats encouraged American servicemen to disobey presidential orders if they
Speaker 1: felt they were legal, but refused to give an example
Speaker 1: of such an order from Trump. So grand standing from
Speaker 1: the left, who risk nothing from encouraging others to violate
Speaker 1: their sworn oaths. I hope no young soldier, sailor, or
Speaker 1: airman gets deceived by these scoundrels to commit a foolish
Speaker 1: decision that could ruin their life. Oh, the Left would
Speaker 1: love their martyrdom and the media would make them celebrities,
Speaker 1: But when it came to paying the price, these demagogues
Speaker 1: would hide behind their lawyers that's true. Pity the young
Speaker 1: sergeant who goes the way of uh, you know, Chelsea Manning.
Speaker 2: Or you know, yeah, person like that. We like telling
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Speaker 4: There's a little talk about how the TSA is going
Speaker 4: to be handling the airports maybe over Thanksgiving, bigause travel
Speaker 4: week of the year coming up next week, and we
Speaker 4: ought to check in on that story, among other things.
Speaker 2: Stay with us.
Speaker 3: Strong.
Speaker 2: So I'm just looking at this. We got a clip.
Speaker 4: Man screams when he runs into the neighborhood goat. Let's
Speaker 4: hear what that sounds like.
Speaker 1: Smokey, here is a neighborhood favorite.
Speaker 2: He's scared the female out of me. I mean, look
Speaker 2: at them. Just looked at the window, make sure he
Speaker 2: was okay. And my mom running outside with a knife.
Speaker 2: But she's so scared of animals. Go trying to hump us.
Speaker 2: Goat trying to hump us? Is that what he said?
Speaker 1: Is the end? Mom ran outside with a knife. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna stab the goat man. Card, Please hand it over
Speaker 1: feel you overreacted to a goat. The goat we're talking
Speaker 1: about now, if it were a substantial goat and it
Speaker 1: were indeed trying to end I quote humph Us, that
Speaker 1: would be alarming.
Speaker 2: It would.
Speaker 8: I have a feeling this was like a pigmy goat.
Speaker 4: Probably in a city area, they're almost always your little
Speaker 4: dwarf goats.
Speaker 2: Pigmy goes in there. Yeah, probably working sweater.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he jumped on his car and then started screaming.
Speaker 1: That's what goats do, man, they jump on top of
Speaker 1: every vehicle you got. I think the guy jumped in
Speaker 1: the guy jump in the car. He jumped on streaming goats,
Speaker 1: screaming guy because of a goat. Well, you can't get
Speaker 1: away from a goat that way. It'll just jump on
Speaker 1: top of the car with you. Hey, what are you doing?
Speaker 1: Cool up here in nice view?
Speaker 2: Nice view? Mind? If I help you. That's some square
Speaker 2: he's got. It's like goes. It scared the female out
Speaker 2: of him.
Speaker 4: I'm trying to think if there's a situation where I'd
Speaker 4: ever scream like that.
Speaker 2: I'm fortunate that well.
Speaker 1: I've had some bad things happen or startling things happen,
Speaker 1: and I've never screamed I don't think.
Speaker 2: No, I don't I.
Speaker 1: Or something like many times in my life, but I've
Speaker 1: never gone ah like that, like I have a like
Speaker 1: I got a vagina. Wow, that was unnecessary. Yeah, tell
Speaker 1: me more, Jack, I'll step back and let the lady
Speaker 1: have some.
Speaker 2: Just go ahead, Jack, keep going with that.
Speaker 4: Though, I think in general, screaming is more the female
Speaker 4: persuasion than the male persuasion on the whole, on the whole,
Speaker 4: not obviously working with Larry Summers right, disgusting misogie.
Speaker 2: On average, I think it's more often women than men
Speaker 2: who scream.
Speaker 1: When I crested a small hill and him face to
Speaker 1: face with a mountain lion a number of years ago, no,
Speaker 1: I yelled, holy y yeah, yeah, and the mountain lion
Speaker 1: turned and looked at me with a look at its
Speaker 1: face like holy yes are you?
Speaker 2: That's Joe Getty from Armstrong and Geddy. Do you love
Speaker 2: your shows? Do you have you ever screamed Katie been
Speaker 2: startled and screamed No, I don't think so.
Speaker 8: I can think of two times I've been really startled.
Speaker 8: My first reaction was to swing at whatever it was, So.
Speaker 2: There you go.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you don't picture me as a screamer. You picture
Speaker 4: me as more of a swing on whatever it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, kick it in the face.
Speaker 1: Yeah, pretty much went in doubt.
Speaker 2: Yeah, kick it in the face. Do you have any
Speaker 2: control over that? No?
Speaker 9: No.
Speaker 8: My one of one example, it was a dear friend
Speaker 8: of mine and I was standing outside and he came
Speaker 8: up behind me and thought it would be a good
Speaker 8: idea to pinch the back of my neck and scream
Speaker 8: really loud when he did it, and I came around
Speaker 8: with an elbow and followed through and just clocked him
Speaker 8: and I didn't realize it was him until laughter.
Speaker 4: So so you're your reaction to fright, you don't think
Speaker 4: you have any control over Maybe you don't.
Speaker 1: No, except through training, But it'd take a lot of
Speaker 1: military training, police training, that sort of thing. And it
Speaker 1: could be there's some people who just they for whatever
Speaker 1: anthropological reason, they just can't.
Speaker 4: Or a lot of experiences. Maybe you're not trained, but
Speaker 4: it just happens to you a lot. I'll bet you
Speaker 4: get numbed to it if you you know, I imagine
Speaker 4: the first time a bomb hit your apartment complex in Kiev,
Speaker 4: you might scream, but the tenth time, it's like here,
Speaker 4: we go again.
Speaker 1: M hmm, yeah, speaking of which, there's a peace plan
Speaker 1: in the works that will never work for a single second,
Speaker 1: but Trump is trying anyway.
Speaker 4: I got a question about the ken Burns American Revolution documentary.
Speaker 4: I only watched like three minutes, and I thought, that's weird.
Speaker 4: I've never heard that. It's already turned into a controversy
Speaker 4: the first three minutes. I think I'll see if Hanson
Speaker 4: could grabbed the audio because I want to discuss this.
Speaker 4: I'd never heard it before, and I'll see if Joe's
Speaker 4: ever heard it before.
Speaker 1: Armstrong and Getty.
Speaker 4: So we're going to talk about this Ken Burns documentary,
Speaker 4: the American Revolution, which I watched like five minutes of
Speaker 4: It's twelve hours long. I've seen five minutes of it,
Speaker 4: and already in the first five minutes, I was like, hm,
Speaker 4: I never heard that before. I'll have to look into that,
Speaker 4: and it's kind of erupted into a controversy already.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 4: I'm from South Dakota, so I'm well aware of how
Speaker 4: the Indians got host I mean, I've been hearing that
Speaker 4: my whole life and reading about it my whole life.
Speaker 4: And I'm also called Kansas home and I think that's
Speaker 4: where the last Indian battle was in American history, but uh,
Speaker 4: yeah it was.
Speaker 2: But I don't know. I just maybe it's.
Speaker 4: Because I'm a white guy, or just because I think, yeah,
Speaker 4: that's the history of the world. And one team wins
Speaker 4: and one team loses, and I don't know, what do
Speaker 4: you want me to do?
Speaker 6: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, like we could go over the history of
Speaker 1: the part of like you Germany slash Austria, a lot
Speaker 1: of my family's from, and how many warrior tribes have
Speaker 1: held it, taken it, slaughtered, somebody else gotten slaughtered, blah
Speaker 1: blah blah. So I just it's it's unquestionably true, but
Speaker 1: I just know. So what is my question? I mean,
Speaker 1: some of the the dishonesty and double dealing by the
Speaker 1: government was shameful back in the day.
Speaker 2: But again, what am I going to do?
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, it's so horrifying, but probably very similar, if
Speaker 4: not much less brutal than what those Indian tribes were
Speaker 4: doing to other Indian tribes when they decided they wanted
Speaker 4: their land. What's that Summer Moon book you read, Empire
Speaker 4: the Summer Moon. Oh my god, is that a good book?
Speaker 2: But brutal right, very not for the kids. Get time story.
Speaker 4: God, that first chapter, I that's funny. It pops into
Speaker 4: my head every now and then, like it gives me
Speaker 4: a shudder. That's how bad it was. Any horrific torture.
Speaker 4: That's all you need to know.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: So this is from the very like first couple of minutes.
Speaker 4: This is a couple of minutes long, two minutes long.
Speaker 4: Stick with it if you will, because we'll discuss afterwards.
Speaker 4: I don't feel guilty about playing it since it's PBS
Speaker 4: and my tax Paramonney.
Speaker 2: Paid for it, at least partially. Anyway. So it's ken Burns.
Speaker 4: It's about the American Revolution, and I knew it was
Speaker 4: going to have more how the Native Americans got hosed
Speaker 4: than you usually get out of.
Speaker 2: Founding Father stuff.
Speaker 1: I thought, yeah, that's probably fine, you know.
Speaker 2: Anyway, here's how it goes.
Speaker 9: This is the very ow we know our lands are
Speaker 9: now become more valuable. The white people think we do
Speaker 9: not know their value, but we are sensible that the
Speaker 9: land is everlasting. Knastego, spokesman for the Six Nations.
Speaker 3: Long before thirteen British colonies made themselves into the United States,
Speaker 3: the Six Nations of the Iroquois confederacy Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Tuscarora, Oneida,
Speaker 3: and Mohawk had created a union of their own that
Speaker 3: they called the Hoda Nashone, a democracy that had flourished
Speaker 3: for centuries.
Speaker 2: We heartily recommend union.
Speaker 9: We are a powerful confederacy, and by your observing the
Speaker 9: same methods our wise forefathers have taken, you will acquire
Speaker 9: fresh strength and power. Therefore, whatever befalls you never fall
Speaker 9: out one with another.
Speaker 3: In the spring of seventeen fifty four, the celebrated scientist
Speaker 3: and writer Benjamin Franklin proposed that the British colonies form
Speaker 3: a similar union.
Speaker 4: Okay, so the implication being there that the Indians had
Speaker 4: a democracy going for centuries.
Speaker 2: That's what they said a couple hundred.
Speaker 4: Years before we got here, and we Benjamin Frankin took
Speaker 4: our kind of cue from them on starting the similar thing.
Speaker 2: I'd never heard that before.
Speaker 1: Specifically a union of separate entities.
Speaker 4: I'd never heard that before, and it made me go, hm,
Speaker 4: have to look into that anyway. So it's kind of
Speaker 4: turned into a controversy a little bit, with a variety
Speaker 4: of my favorite thinkers arguing on Twitter, which is where
Speaker 4: you argue if you're a part of the intelligence. Less
Speaker 4: than three minutes into the Ken Burns documentary on the
Speaker 4: American Revolution, we get one, white people are bad. Two
Speaker 4: Native Americans had a centuries old democracy before British Collins arrived,
Speaker 4: and three Benjamin Franklin copied the Native American Blueprint. A
Speaker 4: different thinker with a different point of view said, the
Speaker 4: League of the Iroquois being a framework for the Constitution
Speaker 4: is pretty basic middle high school history textbook stuff.
Speaker 2: Sorry you didn't pay attention.
Speaker 4: I hadn't heard that, and I've done a lot of
Speaker 4: reading about this over my life that we took our
Speaker 4: cue from the Indians on the whole democracy thing, it
Speaker 4: was a model for the Constitution.
Speaker 2: And then Charles C. W.
Speaker 4: Cook, who we both like, from the National Review, said
Speaker 4: it's also pretty basic nonsense. So I would like to
Speaker 4: get Tim Sanderfer involved in this because I had never
Speaker 4: heard that.
Speaker 2: And to lead with that, I.
Speaker 4: Mean, the opening of the Twelve Hours is, you know,
Speaker 4: it really came up with the idea from the Indians
Speaker 4: who were already here and doing a democracy, and everything
Speaker 4: was just hunky dory, and then we know killed them
Speaker 4: all off and took their idea, is that what the
Speaker 4: point of this is?
Speaker 2: Wow? Wow? Is that a reach? That's what I sa
Speaker 2: several different ways. That's what I thought.
Speaker 4: It just seemed like such a reach, And to lead
Speaker 4: with it makes me think. I was really looking forward
Speaker 4: to this because he's such a great documentary filmmaker. I
Speaker 4: was really looking forward to it. And I'm sure there's
Speaker 4: a whole bunch of stuff in there that I'm gonna love.
Speaker 4: But if you lead with that, how much? Oh, this
Speaker 4: is gonna be hard to watch.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The subtitle is how British colonists imitated the Indians and
Speaker 1: built a country and kicked the Indians off their country?
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, great, all right?
Speaker 4: Had you ever heard that before that Benjamin Franklin got
Speaker 4: his idea that he pitched to the colonists from the Indians.
Speaker 2: No, no, it doesn't ring a bell.
Speaker 1: You know, the fact that there were democratic systems quote
Speaker 1: unquote among the tribes I'd known, but like as that was,
Speaker 1: that was portrayed as a direct inspiration a b C.
Speaker 1: As opposed to you know, the Roman and Greek republics
Speaker 1: and the you know, the various philosophers and John Locke
Speaker 1: and all sorts of you know, I could.
Speaker 2: Go on and on John Stuart mill.
Speaker 1: Later, ah, but to be no, that was there was
Speaker 1: a way to direct a line to draw, and that's
Speaker 1: an odd place to begin. That is not what the
Speaker 1: the documentary is not about the receding of the Indian tribes.
Speaker 4: Well, I'm willing to be corrected, but I've done scrunching
Speaker 4: up my nose at the idea of a multi century
Speaker 4: long successful democracy among the Indian nations.
Speaker 2: I just don't buy that.
Speaker 1: It could have been a confederation and there could have
Speaker 1: been some sort of voting, but it's not like the
Speaker 1: individual tribal members probably with regular wars to the death
Speaker 1: in which they you know, redraw the boundaries and come
Speaker 1: to some sort of truth for a little while, would
Speaker 1: be my guess. Yeah, it's more likely that, you know,
Speaker 1: the leaders of the various tribes got together and said, hey,
Speaker 1: all right, four to three, we're gonna go to war
Speaker 1: with the Sioux or whatever. But yeah, yeah, that's a stretch.
Speaker 1: I tell you what if that's the beginning of the
Speaker 1: very beginning, that's the first very minutes collect I know,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to enjoy this. Why is everybody so
Speaker 1: not everybody, But why are why is a certain crowd
Speaker 1: so re existent to just tell him the story of
Speaker 1: what happened.
Speaker 2: Because they getting over from a.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Ken Burns would get the hell beat out of
Speaker 1: him by the people he holds dear the left if
Speaker 1: he were just to tell the story of the formation
Speaker 1: of the most successful country on.
Speaker 2: Earth that change the world forever.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: They did have that in the run up.
Speaker 4: They did have that in the run up, Like the
Speaker 4: previews before the thing started about how this is the
Speaker 4: most important revolution in world history and this kicked off,
Speaker 4: you know, an entirely different era from mankind, and all
Speaker 4: the importance of it was not left out. And I've
Speaker 4: heard him doing interviews where he talks about that. He doesn't,
Speaker 4: I mean, he's definitely not leaning into the America as
Speaker 4: a force for evil. It was founded on slavery. The
Speaker 4: world would have been better off if we never happened.
Speaker 4: Fang that the you know garbage Hannah Jones, whatever her
Speaker 4: name is, pitches Howard's in filth. Bet he wouldn't have
Speaker 4: been able to get the funding to even do the
Speaker 4: damn thing if he hadn't leaned this hard into We
Speaker 4: just copied the Indians really, ain't it.
Speaker 2: They'd already done it. Why didn't we just let them
Speaker 2: keep it? All right?
Speaker 4: Eh, I'll watch a little more of it out before
Speaker 4: I can get if that's what happened in the first
Speaker 4: one hundred and eighty seconds, damn it. It was like
Speaker 4: there have been a couple of shows that have been
Speaker 4: fairly highly recommended, including one in particular, Slow Horses, which
Speaker 4: is a really good British drama with what's his face?
Speaker 1: The actor, you know, the guy with two arms? Anyway,
Speaker 1: what is it, Gary oldman?
Speaker 2: You know it? And it became Rudy Calhoun.
Speaker 1: And the plot was there'd been an Islamic extremist bombing
Speaker 1: in London. But then the twist was quickly early that no,
Speaker 1: it wasn't Islamic terrists. It was white nationalists, racists trying
Speaker 1: to fake a Muslim attack to discredit them because there's
Speaker 1: such bigots. I was like, I'm out, and it's set
Speaker 1: in London. We'll test out an enormous problem with the
Speaker 1: Islamization of the great cities of Britain, much like most
Speaker 1: of Europe, having let in rampant immigration from North Africa
Speaker 1: for years and years and years. I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: come on, and I tell you what, Ken, you screw up.
Speaker 2: Your woke little dwarf and you die your hair.
Speaker 1: What there's no reason to go through him and shot
Speaker 1: him in this very studio.
Speaker 4: He dies his air. We saw it up clothes. I'm
Speaker 4: not denying it's true. He's like eighty years old and
Speaker 4: he protects thirty five. It's not salient, is my objection.
Speaker 4: Well that's probably true.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Oh, you're gonna make it about okay. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe he feels like he has to buy off his
Speaker 1: crowd so then he can get to the story of
Speaker 1: the revolution.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'd love to ask him that question. Dude, why would
Speaker 1: you start with that? I mean, even if they had
Speaker 1: a functioning democracy in you know that we modern people
Speaker 1: would recognize as a quote.
Speaker 4: Unquote demonscription out of my face. And it hasn't been
Speaker 4: covered very well. I'll tell you that that may have.
Speaker 1: Been one of many inspirations and examples that the Enlightenment
Speaker 1: generation studied. Tact like it's abc. Like I said before,
Speaker 1: it's just not true. The hair on your head doesn't
Speaker 1: match your beard at tall All right, then I'm done.
Speaker 1: I'm through here.
Speaker 2: I've tried.
Speaker 1: Any thoughts on this text line four one five two
Speaker 1: nine five KFTC.
Speaker 3: In the spring of seventeen fifty four, the celebrated scientist
Speaker 3: and writer Benjamin Franklin proposed that the British colonies form
Speaker 3: a similar union.
Speaker 4: So that's from ken Burn's new twelve hour documentary The
Speaker 4: American Revolution, which I was really really looking forward to,
Speaker 4: and three minutes into it, they open with the Indian
Speaker 4: tribes having had a democracy for several hundred years and
Speaker 4: it worked fine, and Benjamin Franklin thought, man, that's a
Speaker 4: good idea.
Speaker 2: We should try that here.
Speaker 4: And it took that queue from the Indians to try
Speaker 4: to create a democracy ourselves and.
Speaker 1: Put at them off the land, which did their form
Speaker 1: of government, which was news to me. I had never
Speaker 1: heard that angle before, and I thought, and now it's
Speaker 1: kind of turned into an online argument.
Speaker 2: Well, Jack, I'd forgotten.
Speaker 1: I've spent my life studying this and I totally didn't
Speaker 1: just do an AI search on the question, and I'm
Speaker 1: not reading that. I'm just recalling my schooling and reading.
Speaker 1: So this is chat GPT. It's probably worth mentioning that
Speaker 1: a new university study of mental health literature found that
Speaker 1: chat GPT fabricated fabricated roughly one in five academic citation.
Speaker 2: Hey, I've got a theory on that.
Speaker 1: By the way, the whole hallucination thing.
Speaker 4: Since AI is learning from us, I wonder if it's
Speaker 4: just that, since we found out years ago, like half
Speaker 4: of papers and studies can't be replicated, maybe it's just
Speaker 4: figured out that's the way humans do it.
Speaker 2: They make so AI has figured nobody checks anyway.
Speaker 4: People make stuff up all the time. They're like they're
Speaker 4: called university professors.
Speaker 1: Yeah maybe so anyway, Yes, many North American natives had
Speaker 1: sophisticated systems of governance that qualify as functioning democracies, often
Speaker 1: more participatory and consensual than European models of the time.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, that's because they're mostly monarchies. But anyway, they
Speaker 1: varied enormously by region nation. But to the point of
Speaker 1: the one that ken Burns was citing, the Iroquois Confederacy,
Speaker 1: which indeed hung together for hundreds of years, there were
Speaker 1: six Indian nations united under the Great Law of Peace.
Speaker 1: Here is this so called democracy. They had a grand
Speaker 1: end Council of fifty civil chiefs known as sachems, that
Speaker 1: were chosen interestingly by clan mothers, so the women, the
Speaker 1: senior women of the tribes, would choose their senators. In effect,
Speaker 1: decisions required unanimity, not simple majority. Satams could be removed
Speaker 1: by the clan mothers if they failed to serve the people.
Speaker 1: And there was a separation of war chiefs and peace chiefs,
Speaker 1: which was viewed.
Speaker 2: As something like civilian control of the military.
Speaker 1: But the idea that fifty emissaries would get together it
Speaker 1: could be described as an oligarchy as easily as a democracy.
Speaker 1: I think these fifty chiefs got together and had a vote,
Speaker 1: and it had to be unanimous over thousands of people,
Speaker 1: thousands and thousands of people.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't call that a democracy exactly. Well, so that's
Speaker 2: one thing that's just confederation.
Speaker 1: Oh and Ben Franklin, John Adams and other founders explicitly
Speaker 1: referenced the Confederacy as an example of the sort of
Speaker 1: union that was possible.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 4: But well, anybody who's into this stuff has done enough
Speaker 4: reading on all the founding fathers that they were super into,
Speaker 4: as you already pointed out what the Greeks and the
Speaker 4: Romans had done, and writers like John Locke and all
Speaker 4: that sort of stuff. I don't remember regular references to
Speaker 4: what the Indian tribes have pulled off well, right, And
Speaker 4: it's easy to.
Speaker 1: Imagine John Adams or Ben Franklin saying, I mean, for instance,
Speaker 1: right here you witnessed that these tribes came together and
Speaker 1: confederated and work out their differences.
Speaker 2: So it's possible.
Speaker 1: But yeah, they studied the Greek and Roman systems in
Speaker 1: particular in their strengths and weaknesses exhaustively. So again the
Speaker 1: idea that hey, wait a minute, look at those what
Speaker 1: there's Indians are doing. I got an idea, and that's
Speaker 1: what launched the American Revolution.
Speaker 2: That's just silly, ken.
Speaker 4: So each of those representatives that would go in and vote,
Speaker 4: were they taking a vote back at home with their
Speaker 4: tribe or were they just decided what was best for them?
Speaker 1: Oh, they were just you know, they were probably reflecting
Speaker 1: the desires of the tribe.
Speaker 4: Maybe they could be booted knowing human nature. Maybe maybe not.
Speaker 1: If the old gals of the tribe didn't think they
Speaker 1: were doing a good job, they could say, no, you
Speaker 1: don't get to be a satiem anymore. But yeah, to
Speaker 1: call that a democracy is a hell of a stretch.
Speaker 4: And then the other stretch to say that's what gave
Speaker 4: Ben Franklin the idea for forming a democracy in the colonies.
Speaker 1: It's trying way too hard, it really is. Yeah, Ken,
Speaker 1: you're guilty of trying way.
Speaker 4: To art in the first three minutes of the show.
Speaker 4: You're a little more excusable if that had come in
Speaker 4: an hour eight. And by the way, the Indians had
Speaker 4: done something similar that the Founding Fathers had fired among
Speaker 4: the structural examples they followed happened to be. Now that
Speaker 4: would be interesting, sure, but to act like that was
Speaker 4: the uh, you know, what's the Latin phrase? That's the
Speaker 4: moment of genesis, that is the seed of the American system.
Speaker 2: No, it's not. Hmmm, I'll watch more of it. See
Speaker 2: what I think. Democracy is a terrible idea.
Speaker 4: Speaking of history, I was told the new Netflix series
Speaker 4: about the assassination of James Garfield is really really good,
Speaker 4: like really good with big time actors and stuff.
Speaker 2: You was that just last night? No?
Speaker 1: No, I hadn't, but a friend who's very very sophisticated
Speaker 1: recommended it quite strongly.
Speaker 2: I'll have to check that out. Maybe I'll get to
Speaker 2: that before I get to the American Revolution.
Speaker 1: Oh what I was it's starting to say was democracies
Speaker 1: are a terrible idea just because the.
Speaker 2: Mob rule is terrifying. It's horrible.
Speaker 1: You have to have, you know, sober representatives who have
Speaker 1: allegedly the good of the people in their hearts. I
Speaker 1: think we've gotten a little off track with that, I'd
Speaker 1: say anyway, Okay, well I'll check it out and report back.
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