Speaker 1: Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio the George
Speaker 1: Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong Show, Getty.
Speaker 2: Armstrong and Getty, and he.
Speaker 3: Armstrong and Getty.
Speaker 2: We've been talking to Tom McLintock for twenty five years
Speaker 2: something like that on The Armstrong and Getty Show, going
Speaker 2: way back to when we were all much younger, and
Speaker 2: he was a just a California Assemblyman and then eventually
Speaker 2: making it into the Congress of the United States of America,
Speaker 2: currently representing the fifth District of California. He's the chair
Speaker 2: of the Immigration Subcommittee. Tom McClintock, welcome back to The
Speaker 2: Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 1: Well, thanks for having me back. And you realize it's
Speaker 1: been closer to thirty years.
Speaker 2: Now, Jack, Really, man.
Speaker 1: I hate doing that math, but there it is.
Speaker 2: I know. The waytime moves when you get older is shocking.
Speaker 1: Very Goldwater Junior once told me that life was like
Speaker 1: a roll of toilet paper. The closer you got to
Speaker 1: the end, the faster it goes.
Speaker 2: That's certainly true. I'm gonna give you a little warning
Speaker 2: that you can work on in your subconscious before we
Speaker 2: do these other topics, because it was driving me crazy
Speaker 2: over the fourth July two hundred and fifteth anniversary, some
Speaker 2: of the stuff flying around on social media and on
Speaker 2: cable news of people that hate this country and think it's,
Speaker 2: you know, a force for evil because you're so good
Speaker 2: at your up with the United States and why we're
Speaker 2: a good country. Stuff. I'm going to hit you with
Speaker 2: that before we let you go today. But starting here, DOGE,
Speaker 2: I guess officially wrapped up Elon Musk and other's efforts
Speaker 2: to try to rain in government spending and waste and
Speaker 2: all that sort of stuff. Is How successful were they?
Speaker 2: Why was it so hard for them to do anything
Speaker 2: about government waste? We've had stories exploding just in the
Speaker 2: last couple of weeks in the California Post and other
Speaker 2: places about the amount of waste of federal dollars in California.
Speaker 2: Where are we on that story?
Speaker 1: Well, well, again, that's largely because of the work that
Speaker 1: DOGE did turning over rocks and shining the light on
Speaker 1: on the bureaucracy and watching the bureaucraft's scurry for cover.
Speaker 1: It was always slated to expire on July fourth of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty six. It was never considered to be a
Speaker 1: permanent agency you know, Musk thought that they could eliminate
Speaker 1: a trillion dollars in waste. And it's possible when when
Speaker 1: you look at the Medicaid, hospice, daycare, student Aid, DEI
Speaker 1: and other frauds that are now being fully investigated by
Speaker 1: the Department of Justice. I think using the ballpark, they
Speaker 1: documented savings about two hundred and fifteen billion dollars. That's
Speaker 1: nothing to sneeze now, it is not seventeen hundred dollars
Speaker 1: per household, but the work they did is now being
Speaker 1: carried on by the Department of Justice and all the
Speaker 1: other agencies. And just to give you one example, mement
Speaker 1: Oz told us recently that when Biden entered office, there
Speaker 1: were just eighty fraud investigators in the entire Medicaid program.
Speaker 1: That's nearly a trillion dollar.
Speaker 2: Wow, that is incredible.
Speaker 1: It gets worse. Biden's HHS secretary, one Hobby or Bicero,
Speaker 1: who's now waiting to be anointed governor of California. When
Speaker 1: he came in, he cut that number to just eight. Well, Oz's.
Speaker 2: Just gotta go. We gotta spend a little time on this.
Speaker 2: There were eight people overseeing the spending of how much
Speaker 2: money to make sure there was no fraud out.
Speaker 1: Not overseeing investigating fraud. Eight fraud investigators.
Speaker 3: That's amazing eighty but now.
Speaker 1: That's being amped up to about twelve hundred, and they're
Speaker 1: currently estimating that for every dollar that they're spending on
Speaker 1: fraud detection, they're producing about twenty two dollars in savings.
Speaker 1: And by the way, guess who's heading up that effort
Speaker 1: at CMS doje's former acting director, Amy Gleason, So Dodge
Speaker 1: is leading off is living on through these agencies.
Speaker 2: It's amazing. And conservatives know this and also know that
Speaker 2: the only way to keep government from wasting money is
Speaker 2: to not give it to them in the first place.
Speaker 2: It's really your only hope. But it's amazing how freely
Speaker 2: governments at all levels are willing to waste taxpayers money.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, that's bureaucratic behavior. It's in the system itself.
Speaker 1: And as you said that the founders had it right.
Speaker 1: The best way to deal with it is to provide
Speaker 1: for limited government and to a trust of the people
Speaker 1: with the judgment over how to run their own lives,
Speaker 1: rather than having the government try to run their lives
Speaker 1: for them. I mean, you know, I've been in this
Speaker 1: business a long time. And you know, these these leftists
Speaker 1: who think they're so good at running their own lives
Speaker 1: that they're also entitled to run everybody else's. You get
Speaker 1: to know them, you realize they're not very good at
Speaker 1: running their own lives either.
Speaker 2: Is often the case. Yeah, and you know, when the
Speaker 2: story exploded in Minnesota with the waste, a lot of
Speaker 2: people knew and it turned out to be true. California
Speaker 2: was saying, you know, hold my EBT card. It turned
Speaker 2: out California is going to be once we uncover all this,
Speaker 2: and federal taxpayers should be angry all across the country
Speaker 2: about this spending.
Speaker 1: Oh sure, because if there it's their money, and it's
Speaker 1: it's disappearing into this gigantic kleptocracy. And and for no,
Speaker 1: there's no excuse for it. You know, California's state auditor
Speaker 1: looked at all of these fraudulent hospice programs. They actually
Speaker 1: produced a map of this huge concentration of hospice agencies
Speaker 1: in the Los Angeles. Took that to Governor Newsom and
Speaker 1: nothing happened. Same story with the whistleblowers in Minnesota. I
Speaker 1: took it to Tim Walks. He did absolutely nothing. Now
Speaker 1: I will say in defensive the hospice providers in Los
Speaker 1: Angeles not a single hospice patient died, So they're that good.
Speaker 2: Fantastic switching topics because I know you have a limited time.
Speaker 2: Twenty first Century Road to Housing Act, Affordability is the
Speaker 2: word that's on everybody's lips. It seems to be in
Speaker 2: both parties. What is the twenty first Century Road to
Speaker 2: Housing Act and how could that help people?
Speaker 1: Well, I don't think it's going to help people. In
Speaker 1: fact that Wall Street Journals had done several editorials against it,
Speaker 1: pointing out that all of the additional of BUAUGA. You
Speaker 1: see that they're creating all the additional regulations that actually
Speaker 1: uning to cost drive up the cost of housing. The
Speaker 1: most popular feature of it is that it prohibits corporations
Speaker 1: from buying homes and then renting them out. Well, that's
Speaker 1: about one percent of the market. And it will slightly
Speaker 1: reduce the price of housing. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: it will slightly increase the price of rentals because you're
Speaker 1: reading reducing the supply of rentals, increasing supply of housing,
Speaker 1: decreasing supply of rentals. That doesn't accomplish anything. Look, if
Speaker 1: you want to know everything there is about what's wrong
Speaker 1: with housing prices and how Reagan was right. Government's not
Speaker 1: the solution of these problems. Government is the problem. But
Speaker 1: one statistic tells you a lot. There were more housing
Speaker 1: permits granted in Dallas and Houston last year and were
Speaker 1: granted in the entire state of California combined. The median
Speaker 1: price of a home in Texas is three hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty thousand dollars. In California it's nine hundred and ten
Speaker 1: thousand dollars. We've done it to ourselves by imposing expensive
Speaker 1: mandates on construction, limiting the permits to be issued, charging
Speaker 1: exorbitant fees when they do issue permits, restricting the land
Speaker 1: that's available for housing, flooding the market with subsidies. And
Speaker 1: by the way, the demand pressure of adding ten million
Speaker 1: illegal aliens to the market during the Biden years didn't
Speaker 1: help either.
Speaker 2: Since you brought up illegal aliens and illegal immigration, where
Speaker 2: are we on sanctuary cities, because I know you're on
Speaker 2: the Immigration subcommitte or the chair, Actually, where's the whole
Speaker 2: sanctuary city story.
Speaker 1: Well, we've got a bill that will preempt sanctuary jurisdictions
Speaker 1: and allow the local sheriffs who desperately want many of
Speaker 1: them desperately want to cooperate with ICE, but are forbidden
Speaker 1: by state law. We preempt those state laws allow them
Speaker 1: to enter into direct agreements with ICE for enforcement. And
Speaker 1: it also allows the Angel families to sue ICE jurisdictions
Speaker 1: who recklessly released criminal aliens rather than turning them over
Speaker 1: to ICE for deportation. I mean, people have to understand,
Speaker 1: these sanctuary laws do not This is not general immigration enforcement.
Speaker 1: They're specifically aimed at protecting criminal illegal aliens from being deported.
Speaker 1: So instead of turning over prisoners in their custody to
Speaker 1: ICE for deportation, these sanctuary jurisdictions instead release them back
Speaker 1: into our communities. And you know, you've heard of the
Speaker 1: countless tragedies that resulted last year sanctuary jurisdictions in the
Speaker 1: United States refused to honor seventeen thousand, eight hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty four ICE detainer requests. Wow, and a quarter of
Speaker 1: the releases. By the way, we're in California now, these
Speaker 1: were criminals in custody from federal law requires me deported. Instead,
Speaker 1: the sanctuaries released them back into our community.
Speaker 2: That's unconscionable. I don't know how you sleep at night.
Speaker 2: That's the weird thing about ideology that I don't quite
Speaker 2: get that you can like trump your common sense where
Speaker 2: you think you know what. I believe in diversity, so
Speaker 2: I'm gonna let criminals back on the street. I just
Speaker 2: I don't get it.
Speaker 1: Well, we just had a peer before our committee of
Speaker 1: the mother of Sheridan Gormer. She's the eighteen year old
Speaker 1: college student in Chicago. She went out for a night
Speaker 1: to look at the northern lights with her friends. She
Speaker 1: was a shot in the back of the head by
Speaker 1: an illegal alien who had been arrested in Chicago. Should
Speaker 1: have been turned over to Ice, instead was released back
Speaker 1: in the community. That's the reason she's dead. Her mother
Speaker 1: came to testify. It was heartbreaking testimony, but the ranking
Speaker 1: Democrat on our committee told her to her face, and
Speaker 1: by the way, there are probably a dozen other angel
Speaker 1: families in the audience, told her to her face that
Speaker 1: we had better things to do than another hearing on
Speaker 1: the sanctuary policies that killed her daughter.
Speaker 4: Can you believe that?
Speaker 2: It's just It's like I said, I don't know how
Speaker 2: some of these people sleep at night. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't know how they justify this to themselves.
Speaker 1: Well, we had another hearing. The mother, Stephanie Mencher was there.
Speaker 1: She was a young lady stabbed to death by an
Speaker 1: ill legal alien that Fairfax County had in custody for
Speaker 1: other crimes. Had an ICE detainer a request to turn
Speaker 1: over the Ice instead released this murderer back into the
Speaker 1: community where he murdered Stephanie Minterer. The woke sheriff who
Speaker 1: had released her said that, well, they just didn't have
Speaker 1: money in their budget to cooperate with ICE. And I said,
Speaker 1: all you had to do was make a phone call
Speaker 1: tell Ice you had this guy in your custody, so
Speaker 1: they come pick him up. They've got an eighty two
Speaker 1: million dollar budget, but she couldn't spare a dime to
Speaker 1: call ICE to pick up this dangerous criminal. She released
Speaker 1: him back onto the streets, and Stephanie Minner is dead
Speaker 1: as a result. I mean, these stories keep piling up,
Speaker 1: and they're going to pile up until we deal with
Speaker 1: these sanctuary jurisdictions.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Making the transition to final topic here, I'm starting
Speaker 2: to believe that there is something like to this idea
Speaker 2: of a woke mind virus that fits in with Marxism
Speaker 2: or something where it just it's like a mental disease.
Speaker 2: Speaking of which, I was following the national debate over
Speaker 2: the last weekend two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Independence Day,
Speaker 2: all the great stuff that I was coming across with
Speaker 2: our history and our founding and why America is an
Speaker 2: exceptional country. Then you had the pushback from some people
Speaker 2: in the crowd, whether it's may Or Mamdani in New
Speaker 2: York or others floating around on Twitter or whatever, on
Speaker 2: how the world would be better without the United States
Speaker 2: and we're a force for evil inness and that, And
Speaker 2: you're one of my favorite amateur historians when it comes
Speaker 2: to the founding and what's good about America. Hit us
Speaker 2: with a little spiel of why America is an exceptional
Speaker 2: country and good for the world.
Speaker 1: Well, what we're facing is is a fundamental question between
Speaker 1: two anathetical principles. It simply can't exist freedom and socialism.
Speaker 1: We had that problem before more than one hundred years ago,
Speaker 1: when the question freedom or slavery, And if you think
Speaker 1: about it, slavery and socialism spring from exactly the same
Speaker 1: rotten principle that Lincoln described as the same spirit that
Speaker 1: says you work and toil and make bread and I
Speaker 1: will eat it. So you hear from people like Tim Walsh, well,
Speaker 1: one man's socialism is another man's neighborliness. And you hear
Speaker 1: well capitalism that's just dog eat dogs, selfishness, looking out
Speaker 1: for yourself. Socialism is sharing and caring. They have that
Speaker 1: completely backwards. The only possible way to succeed in a
Speaker 1: free capitalist society is that you have to figure out
Speaker 1: what somebody else needs and how to get it for
Speaker 1: them better than they can get it for themselves. It
Speaker 1: might be mowing their lawn, it might be doing brain
Speaker 1: surgery on their child, but you have to help somebody else.
Speaker 1: Socialism is taking what one person has earned by helping
Speaker 1: another and giving it to somebody who has it. It's true,
Speaker 1: if I take a dollar from Peter and give it
Speaker 1: to Paul, Paul's got an extra dollar. It's been Paul's
Speaker 1: better off. We've now hurt Peter to the same degree
Speaker 1: what Milton Friedman wore. You can't say government's going to
Speaker 1: help one person without the same bread saying is going
Speaker 1: to hurt somebody else. But what you've really done is
Speaker 1: you rob both Peter and Paul of a dollar's worth
Speaker 1: of incentive to help each other. Paul no longer needs
Speaker 1: to help Peter. He already has his dollar. Peter no
Speaker 1: longer has to help Paul because he doesn't profit from
Speaker 1: it anymore. And the glue that holds the civilization together
Speaker 1: breaks apart. And the other thing is you need tons
Speaker 1: of course in a social assystem, because you have to
Speaker 1: compel people to act against their own interest. In judgment,
Speaker 1: capitalism requires no force because people make their own decisions.
Speaker 1: So that's the great question that we're facing, and that's
Speaker 1: the question. It's going to be resolved, I think over
Speaker 1: the next several elections.
Speaker 2: I've heard that story before and I love it from you.
Speaker 2: The Peter pay and Paul thing. I wish you could
Speaker 2: get into every school, and you have everybody here that
Speaker 2: at least once before they graduate high school. He's from
Speaker 2: the fifth District of California. He's their youngers spend Tom McLintock,
Speaker 2: thanks for your time today.
Speaker 1: Tom My Pleasure, Jack, thanks.
Speaker 2: For having me well. And that stuff about the force
Speaker 2: required to make socialism work, that's where you end up
Speaker 2: with the millions dead. But anyway, we'll be plenty of
Speaker 2: talking about that plenty over the next you know, days, weeks, years,
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Speaker 2: makes any dog food better. A new Tom would be
Speaker 2: good on the whole. What's good with America versus socialism?
Speaker 2: Et cetera? Again, you can graduate high school and never
Speaker 2: hear a spiel at all about why socialism is bad
Speaker 2: and capitalism is good, even though that's the system we have.
Speaker 2: Stunning Okay, a lot more on the way, stay here.
Speaker 2: In my mind, Tim Sandifer is America's foremost proponent proponent. Uh,
Speaker 2: somebody in favor of let me say that because I
Speaker 2: can't get out more than two syllable words his book
Speaker 2: Proclaiming Liberty about the Declaration of Independence, and Tim Sandffer
Speaker 2: got to give a speech about it the other day,
Speaker 2: standing next to the actual declaration of Independence, which he
Speaker 2: said was one of the favorite things he's ever done
Speaker 2: in his life. We'll talk to him about that, among
Speaker 2: other things coming up in a little bit, A few things,
Speaker 2: kind of a breaking news thing. Trump just redeclared that
Speaker 2: the ceasefire with Iran is officially over. He also said
Speaker 2: that Iran has asked to continue talks and has agreed
Speaker 2: to the talks. How those two things square. I have
Speaker 2: no idea whatsoever, but this news breaking fits in with
Speaker 2: that a little bit. The Secret Service has up to
Speaker 2: the protection around jd. Vance and his home, which I
Speaker 2: assume fits in with the Wall Street Journal story today
Speaker 2: of new threats from Iran on Trump's life, some sort
Speaker 2: of specific plot to kill Trump from the Ranians, and
Speaker 2: they're up in the protection on JD. Vance. I have
Speaker 2: no idea what the Iranians are up to. It makes
Speaker 2: no sense to me. They had such a good deal going.
Speaker 2: The money spicket got turned back on they were dragging
Speaker 2: their feet on the nuclear talks and nobody was complaining
Speaker 2: about it. Why did they fire on those ships? I'll
Speaker 2: tell you why. I think. I think because Trump was
Speaker 2: right when he said they're crazy efforts. They're crazy efforts,
Speaker 2: like why would you want? Do you think you're going
Speaker 2: to get what you want by assassinating Trump? That would
Speaker 2: be insane. But they're insane people, and it's tough to
Speaker 2: deal with crazy people. Wow. Oh, Katie, Katie the Newslady
Speaker 2: with her new baby, tried to join a mom's group
Speaker 2: on Facebook. What happened will shock you. We'll get to
Speaker 2: that in the next half hour. Also stick around if
Speaker 2: you miss a segment at the podcast Armstrong and Getty
Speaker 2: on demand Armstrong and Getty. So I mentioned earlier that
Speaker 2: I feel like it's an advantage. I've reached the age
Speaker 2: now that if I have a problem, people help me
Speaker 2: willingly because they think, look, that poor old man is
Speaker 2: confused or lost or something, and they helped me. One
Speaker 2: of the downsides of getting older. I now have to
Speaker 2: deal with my eyebrows on a near daily basis. I
Speaker 2: had never thought about my eyebrows and my entire life.
Speaker 2: They needed no care or attention my entire life, and
Speaker 2: now it's a near daily struggle to keep them under control.
Speaker 2: Aging who knew. So I think if you're going to
Speaker 2: read one book ever about the Declaration of Independence, it
Speaker 2: ought to be Proclaiming Liberty by our friend Tim Sanderfer
Speaker 2: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence. And
Speaker 2: Tim joins the show. I'm about to say something, Tim, welcome,
Speaker 2: thanks for coming on again.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: I saw your tweet about what you said of all
Speaker 2: the cool things you've got to do in your life,
Speaker 2: you did maybe the coolest thing ever the other day.
Speaker 2: What was it?
Speaker 4: I got to speak about my book at an event
Speaker 4: at the National Archives in Washington, d C. Which, of
Speaker 4: course is the same building where the Declaration of Independence
Speaker 4: itself is on display. We had there's an event there
Speaker 4: for school teachers that the Cato Institute organizes where it
Speaker 4: helps teach them some of the things that they might
Speaker 4: go on to teach their students.
Speaker 3: And so we did a presentation about the book and
Speaker 3: then went.
Speaker 4: Upstairs and had dinner right there in front of the
Speaker 4: Declaration of Independence itself.
Speaker 3: It was really great.
Speaker 2: That is cool. I rewatched, so I got on a
Speaker 2: big founding kick, like lots of people did, especially people
Speaker 2: who love the country did, over the last weeks and months,
Speaker 2: and it continues. But I watched the first seven episodes
Speaker 2: of the John Adams series where they get into the
Speaker 2: debating the declaration and then the voting for it. Man,
Speaker 2: I've seen that two or three times, and it's powerful
Speaker 2: each time. I really feel like it gets high school
Speaker 2: teachers often do such a bad job of telling this
Speaker 2: story and taking all the fun out of it. These
Speaker 2: guys who had rich, most of them were rich and comfortable,
Speaker 2: and they signed onto something where they were gonna be
Speaker 2: hung if they lost. They were gonna be hung, no question.
Speaker 4: They're and they're facing down the most powerful empire on
Speaker 4: the planet at the time, the largest imperial government since
Speaker 4: the days of ancient Rome. And here they go and
Speaker 4: they they say, we are no longer part of you,
Speaker 4: and we're willing to fight to the death for our freedom.
Speaker 4: It's a dramatic story, and it ought to be told dramatically.
Speaker 4: And you're right, that HBO series is easily the best
Speaker 4: movie ever made about the American Revolution.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the you know, I guess we already got
Speaker 2: to the sixteen nineteen project. I didn't mean to get
Speaker 2: there that fast. But the idea that these founders, you know,
Speaker 2: it was all about coming up with a way to
Speaker 2: keep the black man down and perpetually enslaved. Was why
Speaker 2: I risked. The fact that I'm a rich farmer with
Speaker 2: a great life and I'm going to get hung if
Speaker 2: i don't pull one of the maybe the greatest upset
Speaker 2: in history by defeating the Brits, I'm going to be hung.
Speaker 2: But it's you know, it's worth it to make sure
Speaker 2: black people are slaves.
Speaker 4: Now, it's absurd. This idea that the Revolution was fought
Speaker 4: to somehow preserve slavery is insane. The founding fathers are
Speaker 4: amazingly candid about the fact that they knew that slavery
Speaker 4: was inconsistent with their principles and that they would have
Speaker 4: to do something about it. And I don't know that
Speaker 4: there's any precedent for that in world history where you
Speaker 4: have this revolutionary revolutionary cadre that says we're going to
Speaker 4: break with the mother country on the principles of liberty
Speaker 4: and equality, and we know that we are currently violating
Speaker 4: those principles in a practice that is the foundation stone
Speaker 4: of our very economy, and it goes further, Jefferson says,
Speaker 4: just a few years later, he wrote, I tremble for
Speaker 4: my country when I reflect that God is just and
Speaker 4: his justice cannot sleep forever. There is no attribute of
Speaker 4: a just God who could side with whites in a
Speaker 4: race war. And so here he's saying, we deserve to
Speaker 4: be slaughtered in a race war because of the crime
Speaker 4: of slavery. Who else has been so candid about the
Speaker 4: basis of their entire economy. Now what they knew that
Speaker 4: they couldn't abolish slavery overnight. That would take a great
Speaker 4: deal of work in order to avoid, you know, indiscriminate
Speaker 4: mask slaughter. And so of course they didn't abolish slavery immediately,
Speaker 4: but they did something that was incredibly important by proclaiming
Speaker 4: equality and liberty at the centerpiece of the new nation,
Speaker 4: and thus, as Abraham Lincoln later said, putting slavery on
Speaker 4: the course of ultimate extinction.
Speaker 2: So I got sucked into the whole America is an
Speaker 2: exceptional nation or not thing there for about forty eight hours,
Speaker 2: and it was really making me angry with the Mayor
Speaker 2: of New York City pushing back on the idea that
Speaker 2: we're exceptional, and a number of other jackasses who are
Speaker 2: offended by the idea that this is an exceptional notion
Speaker 2: our country. Can you give a little pro exceptional?
Speaker 3: Oh, of course America is exceptional.
Speaker 4: America is exceptional insofar as it pledges itself to realizing
Speaker 4: the principles of the Declaration of Independence. And of course
Speaker 4: those principles, of course, those are just words on paper.
Speaker 4: It's up to you and me to put them into
Speaker 4: actual practice and make them part of our nation's life.
Speaker 4: And of course we have done terrible things that in
Speaker 4: the past that have violated those principles, obviously, as has
Speaker 4: every other nation in the world. What sets us apart
Speaker 4: is our recognition that those things are unjust and ought
Speaker 4: to be cured, and the amazing, amazing progress we have
Speaker 4: made to abolishing those things and curing ourselves of those things.
Speaker 4: You know, there's a line Martin Luther King once said,
Speaker 4: we ain't what we ought to be. We ain't what
Speaker 4: we want to be, we ain't what we gonna be,
Speaker 4: but thank god, we ain't what we was.
Speaker 2: That's pretty good. You're a lawyer and a founding expert,
Speaker 2: and all the things that people have been listening to
Speaker 2: you over the years. No, you are, You're not a psychologist.
Speaker 2: But I'm starting to think that there's some sort of
Speaker 2: mental illness that hasn't been named yet that needs to
Speaker 2: be in the DSM around this need to exaggerate the
Speaker 2: flaws and downplay the good stuff about America. It's weird.
Speaker 2: I've been using the analogy of on your fiftieth winning anniversary,
Speaker 2: when everybody gets together and you're having cake with the friends,
Speaker 2: you just keep talking about the four bad things your
Speaker 2: husband of fifty years did over the years. Yeah, rather
Speaker 2: than look at the totality of the marriage that you've
Speaker 2: stayed in because it's good. There's gotta be some sort
Speaker 2: of mental illness there.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think it's a form of resentment. It's a form
Speaker 4: of soul destroying. Resentment goes much deeper than envy, and
Speaker 4: it's a hatred of the good for being good. It's
Speaker 4: a hatred of good things just for the fact that
Speaker 4: they even try to aspire to look upward. I'm often
Speaker 4: reminded there's a play called Chantaclair. It's a one hundred years
Speaker 4: old and it's a cute little play about a rooster
Speaker 4: who thinks that his crowing causes the sun to rise,
Speaker 4: which is amusing, but it's also in a deeper level,
Speaker 4: it's about idealism because what happens in the play is
Speaker 4: the other barnyard animals conspire to deprive him of his
Speaker 4: belief by dropping a flower pot over him so that
Speaker 4: when the sun rises, he's unable to crow, and then
Speaker 4: and that'll prove that his ideals are nonsense. And in
Speaker 4: the end, when he's confronted by this, he has this
Speaker 4: wonderful line where he says, I knew that my crowing
Speaker 4: caused the sun to rise because the forces of darkness
Speaker 4: rejoiced at my silence.
Speaker 3: And that's what people like that are.
Speaker 4: They ridicule and condemn the forces of light because they
Speaker 4: can't really come to believe that there's something in them
Speaker 4: that resents that goodness and.
Speaker 3: Thinks it's a virtue.
Speaker 4: They think they're being virtuous by hating the accomplishments of
Speaker 4: the past.
Speaker 2: That's what's so annoying about it.
Speaker 4: And and it's and I think it has to do
Speaker 4: with a sort of dis a need for discontent that
Speaker 4: I think is generated by resentment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like I said, I think there's some sort of
Speaker 2: mental illness there that's going to be in the DSM
Speaker 2: at some point because it's.
Speaker 3: It's also very liberating.
Speaker 4: It's also liberating if you think that all of the
Speaker 4: injustices in the world are created are social constructs. If
Speaker 4: everything is social constructs, there's no real truth to things
Speaker 4: like equality and liberty.
Speaker 3: Everything's just a social construct.
Speaker 4: That feels really liberating because that means you can remake
Speaker 4: the world tomorrow and you know, everything can be men,
Speaker 4: men can be women, and the poor can be rich,
Speaker 4: and everything can if we just believe strong them.
Speaker 3: That feels really liberating.
Speaker 4: But what you're doing is you're liberating yourself from the world,
Speaker 4: from the reality, and then you have only the freedom
Speaker 4: of the man who has suffered a shipwreck and finds
Speaker 4: himself alone in a lifeboat at sea.
Speaker 3: That's the kind of freedom you've accomplished.
Speaker 2: That way back to the Declaration of Independence on which
Speaker 2: you are an expert in your book Proclaiming Liberty could
Speaker 2: not be better. Thinking about the John Adams series and
Speaker 2: the scene where John Adams is reading what Jefferson wrote
Speaker 2: for the first time and he is like, wow, so
Speaker 2: you're not just writing a piece here on why we
Speaker 2: need to get away from England and declare independence. You're
Speaker 2: claiming a whole new thing here, that we have rights
Speaker 2: given to us by God or nature or how we
Speaker 2: want to put it, that exist. This is a new thing, Tom.
Speaker 2: So that was a pretty revolutionary idea, right.
Speaker 4: Yes, And that's my favorite scene in the whole movie.
Speaker 4: It's just marvelous and it's so beautifully acted and everything,
Speaker 4: and I love how Jefferson responds by just saying, Wow,
Speaker 4: that's what I believe. Yeah, right, but yeah, and then
Speaker 4: it really is a radical dog And that's why we
Speaker 4: care some much, because you know, every society has had
Speaker 4: revolutions and over and over again, and most of them
Speaker 4: are forgotten in obscure books of history about some revolution
Speaker 4: on some Greek island a thousand years ago, or the
Speaker 4: revolution they had last week in South America and the
Speaker 4: week before that, and the week before that and the
Speaker 4: week before that.
Speaker 3: And they get nowhere and they accomplish nothing.
Speaker 4: What makes the American revolutions so fascinating two hundred and
Speaker 4: fifty years later is because these principles of life, liberty,
Speaker 4: and the pursuit of happiness really are true, and really
Speaker 4: are self evident, and really do matter.
Speaker 3: And of course because it's up to us to make
Speaker 3: them a reality.
Speaker 2: There are some anomalies of history that I know you're
Speaker 2: an atheist, so you can't credit it to God. I
Speaker 2: don't know. It's just amazing that these things happen. Like
Speaker 2: I was reading on a sideline about art, I was
Speaker 2: reading this last night. At the same time in Florence,
Speaker 2: in fifteen oh four town of fifty thousand people, you
Speaker 2: had Leonardo working on the Mona Lisa, you had Michelangelo
Speaker 2: working on the David, you had Machiavelli writing things. You
Speaker 2: had Rafael painting in a town of fifty thousand people.
Speaker 2: I mean it just how does that possibly happen? Same
Speaker 2: sort of situation with the founding in these quite small towns.
Speaker 2: How did you end up with the talent of Jefferson Adams,
Speaker 2: George Washington Madison, and a whole bunch of other lesson
Speaker 2: names that should be better known at the same time.
Speaker 2: It's just stunning.
Speaker 4: It is, and part of it is the Enlightenment era.
Speaker 4: That's the term that historians use for this period in
Speaker 4: the mid seventeenth to late eighteenth century time when reason
Speaker 4: and science and rational philosophy became prioritized to such a
Speaker 4: point that philosophers and statesmen were willing to overthrow even
Speaker 4: a practice like slavery in order to accomplish justice and
Speaker 4: to defend their positions. So rationally, it's really really remarkable.
Speaker 4: I'd like to think that Phoenix twenty twenty six is
Speaker 4: the same.
Speaker 2: There you go. I was surprised to hear I don't
Speaker 2: remember what podcast. I was listening to a book or
Speaker 2: something like that. Just when we had you on last time,
Speaker 2: you were giving me a reality check about you know,
Speaker 2: we've had a lot of periods in our country going
Speaker 2: back to the very founding, where there was a tremendous
Speaker 2: amount of polarization and people thought that the other side
Speaker 2: was out to destroy the country. So this isn't no,
Speaker 2: but man, some of the dealing, like in George Washington's
Speaker 2: first term, where people were hiding this information or lying
Speaker 2: about this or that. I mean, it happened very quickly,
Speaker 2: So that's just part of the deal, I guess.
Speaker 4: You know, there's this tendency of every movement to go
Speaker 4: from a point where everybody volunteers because they believe in
Speaker 4: the cause and they're willing to go the extra mile
Speaker 4: for it and everything because it's an emergency and it's
Speaker 4: kind of temporary, and so everybody's all yoking together, and
Speaker 4: then it transitions into a more stable position where people
Speaker 4: have to make a living for themselves and provide for
Speaker 4: their families and have a regular job and things, and
Speaker 4: they've become a little less interested in the cause and
Speaker 4: a little more self interested. And that transition is often
Speaker 4: the point where revolutions fail and people end up having
Speaker 4: their heads chopped off. And America was very, very fortunate
Speaker 4: that it was at that position that we created the
Speaker 4: Constitution and implemented the rule of law, which is really
Speaker 4: the most important principle at the declaration, I mean, at
Speaker 4: the revolutionary stage, is the idea that the Americans don't
Speaker 4: owe their allegiance to any individual. We owe our allegiance
Speaker 4: to the law, and all our liberty is liberty under
Speaker 4: the law as a disembodied abstraction. That's what's really unique
Speaker 4: and why we were spared a lot of what things
Speaker 4: like the French Revolution devolved into.
Speaker 2: I know, Jefferson's your famous founding father, and that would
Speaker 2: be for his ideas, but again, reading and listening to podcasts,
Speaker 2: it's hard to imagine that this would have worked without
Speaker 2: George Washington just because everybody respected him so much. If
Speaker 2: you didn't have one singular person that everybody was willing
Speaker 2: to listen to, yeah, we'd have been doomed.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And and who was willing to step back from which
Speaker 4: is just amazing.
Speaker 3: It's it is incredible.
Speaker 4: And by the way, have you seen the new Young
Speaker 4: Washington movie?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 3: Oh, yeah, it just came out.
Speaker 4: It's about his early career when he's a soldier in
Speaker 4: this during the French and Indian War, and.
Speaker 3: It's it's really I thought it was pretty good. It
Speaker 3: you know, it's rough moments.
Speaker 4: Oh, it's a cool show because what they show is
Speaker 4: they show one of the biggest mistakes of his life.
Speaker 4: And was impressed by how dramatically they demonstrate how how
Speaker 4: badly he screwed up, and then it shows how he
Speaker 4: learned from that and became a better leader as a result.
Speaker 4: And it's that kind of personality, you know, in some sense,
Speaker 4: the self made man made America and that's why that's why.
Speaker 3: We are a different society than these other places.
Speaker 2: Good stuff, as always, Tim The lawyer Sanda for vice
Speaker 2: president for Legal Affairs of Gold Institute, in his book
Speaker 2: is proclaiming liberty and it is worth owning and reading.
Speaker 2: Thanks for your time again, Tim, Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: You bet Yeah, that John Adams series. If you don't
Speaker 2: want to watch the whole thing and you're just interested
Speaker 2: in the declaration stuff, episode two, just just watch episode
Speaker 2: two on HBO Max. It's fantastic. Okay, we got more
Speaker 2: to come staring.
Speaker 5: Hey, we could send a humanoid into that same situation
Speaker 5: and accomplish the same things. Hastas negotiation, reach the door,
Speaker 5: go inside of the house, do all the talking and recording.
Speaker 5: I can program it to do whatever I want to do.
Speaker 5: Hit buttons. As you saw, I started fighting and started dancing.
Speaker 5: It talks any emotion that I wanted to do. I
Speaker 5: can program it to do.
Speaker 2: Sheriff Unveil's humanoid robot for hostaging negotiation purposes, I can
Speaker 2: program it to do anything I want to do, start dancing.
Speaker 2: Is that going to help in the hostage negotiation? At
Speaker 2: some point? Do the running man see if that makes
Speaker 2: him give up the hostages? Yeah? I can definitely believe
Speaker 2: that that's a future. Though I don't know about the
Speaker 2: robot actually doing the negotiating, but certainly going in there
Speaker 2: and maybe you talk to it through a microphone.
Speaker 5: Or so.
Speaker 2: Anyway, So we're just talking about the founding of this
Speaker 2: great country, and I was talking about the John Adams
Speaker 2: series on HBO Max based on the book by David McCullough.
Speaker 2: And one of the things McCullough did a good job
Speaker 2: of is making Abigail Adams, john adams wife, front and
Speaker 2: center in the whole story. She is definitely she should
Speaker 2: be considered one of the founding fathers, if you're okay
Speaker 2: with that term. She played such a role in John
Speaker 2: adams decision making and support so that he could do
Speaker 2: what he did. And it's really really interesting. A political
Speaker 2: marriage not as good as John Adams and Abigail Adams.
Speaker 2: Christine Nome and her husband Brian, and this sad news.
Speaker 2: Christine Nome, the ex director of DHS, is divorcing her
Speaker 2: husband Brian after the cross dressing bombshell. Some people are
Speaker 2: seeing this as a tit for tat move. That was
Speaker 2: Michael's joke, which I thought was very very funny. You
Speaker 2: know what's funny about the term tit for tat, because
Speaker 2: obviously the joke is, you know, her husband those giant bazoombas,
Speaker 2: he's some sort of weird cross dresser online thingy. You
Speaker 2: can say tit for tat as long as you got
Speaker 2: the for tat at the end of it. You can't
Speaker 2: say the first part of it without the for tat,
Speaker 2: or I get in all kinds of trouble, like I
Speaker 2: could get sued or lose my job. I can say
Speaker 2: tit for tat, but I as long as I say
Speaker 2: for tat, even though he had enormous tit for tats
Speaker 2: right there on display with one of them pointing that
Speaker 2: way and one of them pointing that way. We're gonna
Speaker 2: talk to Katie Green, our newsperson who is a new
Speaker 2: mom coming up an hour four. She tried to get
Speaker 2: on Facebook on a mom's group and what the mom's
Speaker 2: group thing said is hilarious around the whole woke issue,
Speaker 2: just ridiculous. Also got clips of the week. If you
Speaker 2: miss anything from hour four, get the podcast Armstrong and
Speaker 2: Getty on demand. Subscribing you'll get lots of it. Armstrong
Speaker 2: and Getty on Demand Armstrong and Getty