Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 01-21-25_TUESDAY_6AM

Episode Date: January 22, 2025

Morning news and opinion calls for Pebble in your shoe Tuesday. Historian, Poet, Publisher Richard C. Lyons is on, author of Passages Through the Shadows, the third volume in his Democracy Series. Thought-provoking take on our history and gov.

The Bill Myers Show podcast is sponsored by Clouser Drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at clouserdrilling.com. Here's Bill Myers. It's Pebble in Your Shoe Tuesday. Do you actually have any problems? Is there any problems? I know, I was just mentioning the promo yesterday.

It actually kind of feels better already. And it honestly does. It does feel like a pall has been lifted from the country. The inauguration of President Trump. Trump 47, Trump version 2.0. And he got pretty darn busy yesterday. And overall, like I said, it was a lot of pomp, a lot of circumstance, and a lot of executive orders being signed.

In fact, the sound of the big fat tip Sharpie going across the executive orders, that was a big part of yesterday. In fact, I think it was almost my favorite part of the entire inauguration day in which he was there for about 40 minutes or so and just shooting the breeze with the reporters and they're going through it and kicking stuff in. We'll be talking about this quite a bit. Also worth, though, catching up on the final big middle finger given to America with the Biden administration, Joe Biden pardoning his family,

and, of course, a bunch of the J6 committee people, Liz Cheney, all these, you know, all the various miscreants, as far as I'm concerned, going in there. And it's worth listening back, though, to when people suspected that President Trump was going to do this same thing, when he was on his way out. In fact, this was in 2020, December of 2020, when it was known that President Trump was going to be leaving office in January of 2021. And it was funny how the system was all primed to what he was going to do. And he didn't do that. You know, he didn't do that. But this is what Senator Chuck Schumer, as an example, said back at the time is worth remembering. The president's reportedly asking his staff about whether he can preemptive part,

whether he can issue presidents reportedly asking his staff whether he can issue preemptive pardons for himself, his family members, Rudy Giuliani. There's a simple answer. No, no, Mr. President, that would be a gross abuse of the presidential pardon authority. And of course, that is what the outgoing Democratic president did yesterday, a preemptive pardon for his family. And he did that. He did it and he did it loud and proud. Actually, he did it pretty softly, actually. He was doing it. He issued the pardons while President Trump was doing his inauguration speech. All right? You've got to love that.

You've got to love that. You've got to love the cojones, huh? And there was another bit. There was an interview on MSNBC also back at that time with, oh, my favorite. My favorite. At that time, he was in the in Congress, but now he was upgraded by the people of California, which I still shaking my head over. Now, Senator Adam Schiff, back when he was a congressman. And he's obviously concerned about himself from the press reporting that he would even go so far as to consider trying to pardon himself somehow. But look, this is the nature of those the president has surrounded himself with, including his family.

And that is, it's been essentially a den of thieves environment. And so I think the president views this as his way of trying to protect those that have protected him. It's so funny because Adam could have said the same thing yesterday, but he didn't naturally. There was more from that little clip that I found. Have you ever heard of somebody getting a preemptive pardon who was innocent of all crime, who's just an innocent person? Have you ever heard of that? Just somebody getting a blanket pardon and they're an innocent person? But no, you know, I think that in the cases, the very few cases where there have been prospective pardons,

such as, you know, Ford pardoning Nixon for whatever he may have done during the presidency, there was some idea of the potential criminal liability facing Richard Nixon. You know, here it's an effort not only to prospectively pardon people for things they have not yet been charged with and may never be charged with, but also it's the president's own family. Yep, yep, the president's own family. So that was what was being done back at that time, what was being said four years ago. But my, how the times have changed. It's a Democratic president. Jerry the Bull, listener Jerry the Bull

sent me an email overnight. I want to give him credit for this. He says, Bill, as far as the preemptive pardons go, there was an interesting quote, and this is in a United States Supreme Court case, and this was from 1915, verdict v. United States. This is something to keep in mind. A pardon carries an imputation of guilt, acceptance, a confession of it. Now, you can actually choose to reject and not accept the pardon. You can do that. I'll be curious to see how many of the Biden family members or J6 committee people will choose not to accept it. Because if they accept it, that's essentially saying that, yeah, yeah, they did it. Now, when it comes to pardons on the good side, my favorite part of the day, besides listening to the give and take with the with the reporters yesterday with Trump and the squeegee sound of the of the of the big Sharpie pen going on the executive orders.

I actually, sometimes my hardened talk radio cynical heart at times when it comes to government action, I actually softened a little bit yesterday. You know, kind of like, kind of like the Grinch who stole Christmas, that sort of thing. And on that day the Grinch's heart grew three sizes that day. Well, my heart when it came to Washington D.C. was kind of a little

shriveled raisin. You know, that's kind of where it was. A little shriveled raisin with a little metropole going through it. And when he where it was, a little shriveled raisin with a little metropole going through it. Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. And when he signed and just did it right out there in front of the reporters and signed the pardon for the 1,500 or so J6ers, I actually teared up a little bit. I'm dead serious because it's not that I didn't think that there were some people

who behaved badly there. But it was just that for 99.999% of it, it was one of the greatest injustices ever committed against we the people. Just out there to try to get a fair deal on what they thought of a stolen election that they thought was filled with hinky and that's exactly what this petition for a redress of grievance is all about and then the barricades come down and the police officers open up the doors and everyone starts wandering in and you wander in and you take pictures and then you were grabbed by the fbi later in a big setup as far as i'm concerned, and having your lives destroyed. So practically everybody that was involved in January 6th got a full pardon. And there were 16, from what I understand, that ended up getting commutations.

So they have, you know, they're still convicted. And I would imagine those are the ones that probably beat up on the cops and did things like that. I don't have all the specifics. But Trump pardoned roughly 1,500 charged in connection while commuting the sentences of 14 others. Those include – those who were pardoned, by the way, included former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio. And Trump promised you're going to see a lot of action on the J6 hostages. And that was also my favorite part. He referred to them as hostages, political prisoners in essence. And that was a massive, a massive injustice that was remedied yesterday with President Trump.

And even if nothing else, and I know there's going to be a lot more coming, but that one spoke to me more than just about every other executive action yesterday. Although I'm going to be quite happy to see what happens in the future with a lot of these things. But that was such a dark blotch on our nation. And it's fascinating to watch the swamp respond to that i'm looking here in defense news and defense news is um defense news.com is like an aggregator of uh what the swamp military industrial complex is all about and of course their headlines this morning, Trump grants sweeping pardon of January 6th defendants, including rioters who violently attacked police.

That's the way they referred to it. The next headline in defense news, Biden pardons Milley in move to guard against possible Trump revenge. Not that Milley was, as far as I'm concerned, a treasonous bastard. It's not that. Remember, Milley's the one that actually called up the Chinese military guy and talked about the nuclear weapons sort of thing and said, well, if we were going to attack, we'd let you know. Words to that effect. What the hell? You start asking yourself right and then also in defense

news trump's promises to radically change the military in other words the getting rid of dei and going to meritocracy oh they are not they are not liking this we're talking about in the defense in the um you, the war college types in Washington, D.C., the ones that are all plugged into the the Fount of Oakism. They're not happy about this. In this particular case, President Trump has the right enemies, that is for sure. But, oh, they are not happy about this whatsoever. And as far as I'm concerned, Hegseth needs to get in and clean out as many of them as possible. So it was a great day yesterday. All I would remind you is that as great a day as it was, now is when the hard work begins.

This is the only concern that I've had about incoming President Trump, now that we have President Trump version 2.0, is that a lot of Americans and a lot of people right of center will kind of go back to sleep a little bit and retreat to football and watching Fox News and gut-filled and thinking that, you know, the problems are solved. No, this is just the beginning of it. This is just the beginning of it. This is just the beginning. And as much as the swamp is kind of playing dead for the moment,

don't be fooled by it, in my opinion. I don't know if you have any thoughts on that, too, but vigilance is going to be really important. President Trump is going to need as much of our help and support and phone calls and being in touch with Congress critters and all the rest of it just to get half of it done. Just to get half of it done. A lot of big promises made and a lot of work to do is what I would say. And we need to be a part of that.

Just saying, okay? It's 21 after 6. Happy to take your calls, by the way, on Pebble in Your Shoe Tuesday. But I know there are absolutely no problems in this world, right? Nothing at all. Nothing in the state of Oregon. Yeah, that's the other thing that, you know, Oregon is all about resisting Trump. We have to remember that.

And the system here. We have to fight our own system here in oregon because they're going to resist absolutely anything decent good and beautiful that the trump administration might want to actually accomplish here in the state of oregon all right 22 after 6 7 7 0 5 6 3 3 7 7 0 kmed this is the bill me Show. Just look at it. Yeah, it looks great in the moonlight. Hi, I'm Matt Stone with Stone Heating and Air, and I'm on KMED. 23 minutes after 6, Pebble in Your Shoe Tuesday.

So in spite of the inaugurations yesterday, there may be a pebble here and there. And we'll go to Francine first. Hey, Francine, you got a pebble that is maybe jabbing you in the heel a little bit? It might be like, you know, a grain of sand at this point. It hasn't quite grown into a pebble yet. I don't really know what's going to happen, but he did mention, you know, he's going to deal with the dreamers, you know, and I from here on out, it needs to be handled. And maybe there needs to be a process where they go and everybody who is a dreamer, whose parents are living here, obviously they're not citizens yet. They have the opportunity to become citizens. And if somebody's a young, you know, lives here all their life, they should also have that opportunity to, or their

families should, or something. I don't really know. You know, I'm not a policymaker, but something needs to be done that's fair, because if you've lived here all your entire life, what, you know, how do you get sent to another country? You may not even speak the language, you know? Yeah, and that's true. So you're thinking about that from a humanitarian point of view, and that's a good thing to do. From a realistic point of view.

Well, yeah, it is realistic, but it's also a humanitarian look. All right. And say what you will. The story is what I've been reading and what I've been hearing about this, Francine, is that there is likely and, you know, President Trump is pretty good at, it's about cutting deals, right? Everything's transactional. Right. And I would imagine that this is the bone for real immigration reform legislation that I think will be probably brought through. Because the Republicans don't have a lot of votes to spare, as you well know, only two, three, depending on what day it is and the phase of the moon. It's like they don't have a lot. What will most likely happen is that in exchange for truly good, some good immigration reform, maybe actually encoding birthright citizenship. I know he did an executive order yesterday, but even he acknowledged there will most likely

be court challenges. Well, if we can get Congress to actually address this aspect of it, maybe say, OK, we address birthright citizenship, but then we cut a deal for the DREAMers. And I could see that sort of thing happening, couldn't you? I would hope so. I mean, it's not a cut and dry issue. No. It just isn't. the dreamers and i could see that sort of thing happening couldn't you i i would hope so i mean it's not it's not a cut and dry issue no it just isn't it's not the same as you know the hordes of people who crossed the border and disappeared into our country and formed little you know

sleeper cells to come in a texas or sleep one of these nights you know what i mean it's different yeah yeah no i agree but i i don't think that that has been forgotten about i would look for a deal in the coming months, okay? That's what I would think. Okay? All right. Appreciate the call. Thanks for that.

Tom's here. Hello, Tom. How are you doing this morning? Welcome. Doing fine, Bill. You know, I just wanted to point out that we have a different Trump than we did 2017, 2016, and so forth. Very much. Yeah, you know, I knew when he was elected that he had no real experience, 2017, 16, and so forth. Very much. Yeah.

You know, I knew when he was elected that he had no real experience, and I expected to make mistakes and so forth. And of course, his hugest, biggest mistake was basically hiring the swamp. He had no idea. He was kind of clueless. But I must say, he's hit the ground here, this time around, totally running. I mean, he's picked out his cabinet before he was, you know, installed in office. I would dare say that he is a politician now. And I say that in a good way, because you have to be able to know how to play that game. And, you know, just going to the Federalist Society to pick all of your judges, et cetera, et cetera,

it didn't necessarily work out all that well, you know, for the most part. And going to the same swamp that has brought us to where we are is an example. Exactly. So, you know, just the fact that he signed all those orders, you know, he didn't do that as much the first time. He did a few things. But this time, I mean, he just sat down and signed document after document. He knows how the game's played now.

And I think he's much more aware how dangerous the neocons are, you know, the Republicans, the name only, and Ormond Green and so forth. So we have a, it's a different Trump. I'm sure that mistakes would be made, and there's a lot of systemic problems with the United States government, which is the way it's set up right now and so forth. But I think overall I'm pretty hopeful and optimistic. Guardedly optimistic.

Guardedly optimistic is the way. And like I said, my little grinchy heart towards a D.C., the little raisin that I was talking about, that was my love for the D.C. swamp. Well, it kind of grew a little bit yesterday and started beating a little more happily. Yeah, and I think we really need to really focus on Oregon and Salem and so forth because the Democrats up there have no idea. You know, I would call them fascist communists. They have no idea how destructive their government and their whole view of, quote, reality. And the other aspect of this, Tom, toward your point, though, is that they are insanely angry about Trump version 2.0 even existing. It's like the worldview has been so shaken. They can't believe that everything that was done,

everything that was thrown at them didn't work. And so Democrats in Oregon in the state legislature want to take it out on us good and hard. Really, let's be honest here in Southern Oregon. I think I think it's really what we should be expecting. Yeah, it just helps so much to be aware of their, and so forth, and the DEI and so forth, which is so racist, so destructive to Oregon. And their plans are just financially insane and so forth. And we just really have to be aware of who and what we're dealing with. Yeah, the fight is here. The fight is very much here, Tom. I appreciate your call so much on that. Thank you

very much. Okay, we're going to hold the calls here for a little bit here. Coming up, I'm going to have a historian on to talk about the Biden pardons and maybe what we look at forward here because Richard C. Lyons is, he wrote actually a

series, a series in the democracy. He actually had a – what he called a democracy series. And his latest version of it, which I ordered a copy of yesterday and might end up getting the first two. But his latest one is called Passages Through the Shadows and having to do about the rise of totalitarian thought processes in most modern democracies. Yes, I know we're a representative republic, but I know the shorthand, everybody says democracy, democracy. It's all you ever hear now. Sad, but that's kind of where it is. We'll talk with him about that here in the next few minutes.

To Tom's point, though, about, you know, the Democrats still running things in. There was another listener who ended up I am going to leave her name anonymous. OK, and it was because I you know, when you're down in Ashland, you just have to be very careful about how this works. But this person had talked about that had gone to many, many Martin Luther King Jr. celebrations in Ashland. But the one that was the latest one was memorable. And this person says, the event took place in the historic Ashland Armory, Ashland being a haven for woke progressives.

A sullen cloud rained on their parade. The keynote speaker, this listener said, could not help but express anger over Donald Trump's election, also making a series of false statements about January 6th. And this person who was attending the MLK event said, I had to bite my tongue to keep from calling out on this one. In the opinion of this South County resident, OSF is doomed as the keynote address was delivered by their new artistic director. The last woke AD nearly bankrupted Oregon Shakespeare Festival. They just don't really learn from their mistakes, Bill. And what puzzles me is seemingly educated people behaving like, well, like dummies claiming that President Trump will do what Joe Biden has actually done,

weaponizing the DOJ and free speech and ruining the economy. Yeah, that is what is existing. That is what we're dealing with with this is also what's in charge of our state legislature and we need to understand and remember this and be prepped i guess maybe girding our loins for it might be a better way of putting it but thank you listener and i will keep your name anonymous for obvious reasons i get it okay uh this is the bill myers show i'll give the anonymous person though an email of the day email of the day is sponsored by dr Anonymous for obvious reasons. I get it, okay? This is the Bill Myers Show. I'll give the anonymous person, though, an email of the day.

Email of the day is sponsored by Dr. Steve Nelson, Central Point Family Dentistry. Get your appointment today. Good people there at centralpointfamilydentistry.com. It's on Freeman Way next to the Mazatlan Mexican Restaurant. Oregon Truck and Auto is happy. This is News Talk 1063 KMED. And you're waking up with the Bill Myers Show. We're going to talk about our democracy, our representative republic here for a little bit, the strengths,

and what, of course, has been coming up lately, a lot of weaknesses, what to do about that. And I go to Richard C. Lyons, L-Y-O-N-S is how you spell his last name. And I ordered a copy of his latest book. I haven't received it yet, but it is Passage Through the Shadows. It's the third volume in Lyons' Democracy book series. Richard, you are a poet by trade, or at least you started out as a poet. Give us a little bit of your background. Good Midwestern boy, apparently, I guess. Oh, yes.

You know, born and raised in the Chicago area, and to a family that was in printing and publishing, and educational publishing, religious publishing. And so I was raised as a third-generation printer and always loved the printed word. And my father was a publisher of many different authors. And so as a kid, I was on the printing presses, or I was in the shipping department, shipping out their books, and always admired, you know, what a writer does. And so when our family company was, I'm one of nine siblings. And so when different people in the company, like my brother, decided to go into the printing industry, I decided, well, why don't I, you know, try my

hand at writing? And so I did begin as a poet, historian type. But then, you know, during the Obama administration, like a lot of us, Bill, I noticed that the way we were being governed wasn't the way the country was founded. And I noticed that the Tea Party movement, the conservative movement, was being attacked by agencies such as the IRS. And I had to discover for myself, how do I describe what has happened to America, to an average American, in an educational manner that's friendly to the reader? And so I had to start with how our country was literally formed. And I had to go all the way back to the Ten Commandments, which were in fact the first common law. One of the great ingredients of a country ruled by its people is that you have a common law that both the king and priest have to follow, unlike the Biden family.

Yeah, that was an interesting middle finger on the way out, wouldn't you say? Unbelievable. Unbelievable. So I had to start there, and I had to go through the democracies of Greece, the representative republic of Rome, the founding of common law with the Magna Carta in England, and how the judiciary became independent in England and became the spine of the modern day's common law countries. And so in doing so, that's volume one. So it's the how and why behind how our country was created. Yeah, that first volume is the DNA of democracy. Correct. And then you ended up taking

it a bit further into volume two. Now we're going to focus on volume three here, because that's the latest one which just came out a few months ago. But in volume two, how the system started changing, that was Shadows of the Acropolis. Maybe you could break that down just a touch. Yeah, that is the chronicle of the last hundred years since the presidency of Woodrow Wilson and how Woodrow Wilson, he was a proponent of Frederick Hegel's ideal state theory. That was all the rage in Europe in the late 1800s and in fact was the founding ideas of socialism, communism and fascism, ideal state meaning an ideal person is going to come along and he and his friends who know better than the average man or woman how to govern will govern everybody.

So that was the basis for Mussolini's fascism, Hitler's Nazism. And everything within the state nothing without nothing outside the state really everything was you have to sacrifice individual rights which is what our country is based on and i would argue that to the state and i would argue that the united states has been going more in that direction for a while would you you agree? For a hundred years. Yeah. Okay. Incrementally, slowly. So it was Woodrow Wilson, then FDR, who invaded the free market economy and began the buildup of agencies. And then with LBJ, his great society literally took over the African-American family, literally took over the education system, took over the cities of America and made them

pawns to the Democrat Party. And that's where you see all the problems today. So with the Obama administration, what you see is socialism's tentacles reaching through a central government and affecting people like the Tea Party movement or affecting people like Christians who just want their children brought up in the values that they were brought up in. And by the way, to not be encouraged by the state to cut the genitals off of their children, like they seem to do that in Oregon. Like they know better.

Yeah. You know, so we became, you know, so the third volume, so if volume one, if that's the how and why our government was made, volume two is how and why our government changed over the past hundred years and why we're seeing its effects today in such a bizarre manner. all been on between the leftist socialist media and government and the conservative movement that just elected Donald Trump. Where do you see the major points of inflection here over these last 18 months? Because I feel like we're kind of starting to wake up from a bad dream. Yeah. But even as I listen to the news this morning, I was talking with you about this on air. Yeah.

As happy as I was to see this flurry of executive orders, in my mind, the executive orders are all the problems that have helped destroy the nation in the first place because it's not legislation it's not real it's been uh almost like the anointment of kings rather than having uh you know congressman uh congress rather and the executives enforcing the law you know that kind of thing you're exactly right and that Shadows of the Acropolis chronicles the movement of power from being largely local or state to being the control stick of the USS Plane because, you know, it's being flown into the ground. And whoever has the stick, you know, half the country feels unrepresented. Right. Right? Now, we're in, it's a constitutional republic.

It's a species of democracy, which means that everybody feels good about how they're governed because they're represented equally. But if you have a presidency that is all-powerful, half the views of the country are not represented. So governance in America was based on, when it was created, people living the way they want to in their state. So that the state of California can govern the way the state of California wants to. And New York can do the same, and Vermont can do the same. But do you think, though, Richard, I'm sorry to interject here, Richard, but do you think, though, that the founders ever assumed that, as an example, that we would let California's pollution controls dictate the entire country's pollution

controls, for an example. That's exactly right. We are set up for that not to happen. That's what you would think, but it's happened anyway. It's happened anyway because of the administrative state agencies that they act as a legislature, they act like a judge, They act like a judge. They act like law enforcement, all in one. So if you're subject to the EPA and you're a rancher in Wyoming,

an EPA representative can come out and tell you what to do and what you can't do on your ranch. And if you don't do what they tell you, they can adjudicate the matter and fine you accordingly. And on top of that... That is un-American. Basically un-American. And gone help you trying to get your court or your case actually transferred and heard in a true constitutional Article III court. Everything's about the administrative court. Now here in the state of Oregon, we're battling this right now with what is called the Wildfire Risk Map Bill, Senate Bill bill 762 in which the

administrative agencies are the judge jury and executioner right and they'll say well yeah you can you can appeal your wildfire rating for your property this you know this is about control but uh you know we don't really have to uh to pay attention to your appeal it's like well what the heck is this and wait it's not America. Everything about the administrative state is not America. It is not America. It goes back to Magna Carta, actually, and that's why that is such a big part of the first volume of my series. You're supposed to be judged before your peers, and everybody's supposed to know about your case, and you're supposed to be represented. That is not the case in front of agencies.

So if you have the EPA coming after you or the IRS and they have all the resources of federal government and all that money behind them and you have yourself and your lawyer, you're going to go broke. There's just, it's not an American mode of doing business. And so in spite of the election and installation, the inauguration of President Trump, though, the multi-headed hydra is still there. It's still there. And he's going to be doing – now, he claims he's going to be doing his best to rein as much of that in. I don't know – and by the way, if you're wondering who I'm speaking to, Richard C. Lyons, he's the author of Passages Through the Shadows, the third volume in his

Democracy series. OK, and we'll put all your information up, of course, too. Can the administrative state, in your opinion, Richard, like I said, you've been studying your history here, you've been working this for years now. Can that be reformed within the form? I think it can by fracturing it among the 50 states. The thing about every agency that's in, and there's 435 of them, Bill, in Washington, D.C. Okay, I want people to listen to that again. How many federal agencies that are in? Four hundred and thirty-five. Four hundred thirty-five. Okay, I want people to listen to that again. How many federal agencies that are—

435. 435. And beyond that, there are the dependency industry agencies, which are another 193 agencies, which give people food stamps or create these inner-city programs that are actually slush funds. That's another 193 agencies, and they all have power that goes across the country. But the way to stop this, I think, is to fracture the dependency industries into the 50 states so that if you're in Oregon, Oregon takes care of its own dependence. The money doesn't go from Oregon into Washington, D.C. and back to Oregon, depending on whether you follow the rules from Washington, D.C. You just have to fracture it. And the agencies, too, there needs to be a defense system in every state guarding against any federal overreach.

From what I understand, a good third to 40 percent of Oregon's budget is passed through funding from the federal government right now. That's how they control the country. But, of course, for the most part, this progressive state is okay with that because the administrative state has been in harmony with the communism that Oregon has been trying to export to the rest of the country, in my opinion. At least that's what's been going on. And now they're talking about doing everything they can to resist President Trump. And this is going to be a really interesting next three, four years. So you're saying fracture the administrative state. Have you seen any evidence that the Trump administration might be working to do that, to fracture it and decentralize it and send powers of some of these administrative agencies directly to the states instead?

I was very happy to hear that when he was hiring the woman, I think her name is Ms. Miller, to be the secretary of the Department of Education, that her whole job was to put herself out of a job. In other words, to dissolve the Department of Education. That's a start. And that's where you see the ultimate tentacles, Bill, of the administrative state and socialism. They were coming after kids through CRT and through DEI and putting that in the education system and all the agencies. And then their other tentacles were ESG. It was the Environment, Social, and Governance, which is another way of dictating in what companies investors could invest.

So you're controlling the money supply in investment. These are all different tentacles of the same monster, the hydra, as you called it, Bill. And so we're knocking it back. I mean, I don't I think the Trump administration in the next four years is going to be knocking this back. What I'm hopeful of is that they're going to start showing people what it means to have this concentration of power in America. And as taxpayers are saving money through DOGE, I'd like everybody to know, okay, the American public, the average taxpayer, saved this year $1,200 because of the savings won by battling back against the agencies. I hope you're right about this. Richard Lyons is the author of Passages Through the Shadows here.

My question will be, I'm hoping that the goalposts aren't being moved even right now. And I'm talking about not what's in the heart of the Trump administration, but what is actually within the purview of the Trump administration, because in spite of all the talk out of Congress and even the Trump administration, there is no constituency for spending less money. That's exactly the problem. It's always easy to spend other people's money. So when you think of money in Washington, D.C., it's all about, oh, what are we getting from Washington, D.C.? Because from all about, oh, what are we getting from Washington, D.C.? Because from that money... How much we're spending. Yeah, because from that money flows

political power. And everyone who's there right now, their number one goal is to make sure that they stay in their seat next election cycle, bottom line, right? Yeah, there has never been. There was the faint of Ronald Reagan's presidency where everybody thought he was reducing the size and scope of government. What he did was just hold down the growth. So this is really unexampled in America that you're trying to reduce the size of the administrative state. I'll be curious to see how successful he is because my suspicions is, you know, many other people have tried or said they were going to try to go after this. But I'm hoping that the goalposts don't get moved and all of a sudden we're accepting a big reduction in the growth of it. But we don't know. I think you used just the right metaphor, the hydra.

You can cut off one head and two more grow. So we'll see because we have to, you know, it's a matter of the tides. So hopefully there's a tide against government and that we reduce the size and scope so it's not so dangerous. What are you hoping that the reader will take? Like I said, I ordered my copy yesterday of Passages Through the Shadows, and I'm eagerly looking forward to it because I'm reading so many good things about it. What are you hoping we'll take from this, Richard? Well, just a really good education in how our country was formed and why. And why it's, you call it, it's power of the people over government. The key question is who rules who, right?

Do the people rule the government or does the government rule the people? That flipped in the last hundred years to where government became a dictatorial sort of government. And so everybody needs to be educated in what happened, why we were formed the way we were, why our government changed. And now the next four years is, well, what can we do about it? So we'll be watching the Trump administration in real time do what it can, but we're going to discover there's more to do. Yeah, I agree. Is there going to be a Volume 4 of your Democracy series?

Just curious. Yeah, in two years' time. There will be Volume 4, and that will be about the human dynamics vis-a-vis government. So when you were saying, Bill, everybody finds it easy to take money from the government. Well, why is that? Well, the reason that our form of government is so unique is because it's very – it's so rare because it goes against human nature. Humans love to have power over one another, and humans love to be given things more than they can say, well, geez, why am I paying this amount of money to the federal government? What could I do with that money? Money is freedom. When you don't give money to the government, you're free to spend that money as you choose, right? But people administrative state could have grown to the gargantuan size that it is had there not been the so-called elastic currency brought in in 1913 in which— You're exactly right. Again, that forms a big part of Shadows of the Acropolis.

That was a major event where the government decided what the value of gold was or what the value of currency was. It was FDR was famous. And I put it also in Shadows of the Acropolis. He would wake up every morning and he would have breakfast with Henry Morgenthau. And he would say, well, Henry, what do you think the value of gold ought to be today? Because he famously confiscated the whole gold supply and then determined the value throughout his presidency. And it's all to cover liberal ills.

Whenever the government is spending too much money, you have to print it, and it ends up in inflation. So you famously had, in 1971, Richard Nixon going off the gold standard, and it created the enormous inflation during the Carter administration, because we were having to spend so much money on the Great Society. It freed the government to spend money to print it. And that's just what happened with the Biden administration. They spent so much money, they had to print it. And so you had the inflation of the last four years amounting to 20%. And we also have to be fair that uh with the first trump administration because there were the uh the covet checks that were created out

of nothing and brought exactly everybody has been involved in this it has been uh you know the the one financial fib i think that both parties have agreed upon and can can you really do you think you can really re rein in the administrative state as long as there's still the money found? Well, that's the thing. It's always easy. Hey, you're going to give me money. That's great. I mean, everybody feels that way, but they don't know that all that money comes from someplace. And what happened in the last four years was it came in as a sort of hidden tax. Everybody was taxed 20% of their overall wealth. Everybody's overall wealth. If you're a retiree and you've got a half a million dollars in the bank, if you had that

four years ago, you now have what the value of $400,000 in the bank. But nobody sees that. And especially when you're looking at the prices of assets and various other things that you could purchase with that same amount of money, right? Right. Same sort of thing. Yeah. Right. But at the same time, isn't it interesting how the federal government and the economists, well, when they see the price of assets rising, whether it's stocks in our houses, that's a societal good, right?

Well, yeah, if it keeps up with inflation. But a lot of people, if you have a savings account, it didn't. Well, if you're a savings account, you're a chump, I think is what they've been trying to tell you. Yeah, it's all about the time value of money. All right. There you go. Well, I'll tell you what, Richard,

I'm really looking forward to getting my copy of this, okay? And just so you know, Richard Lyons is author of Passages Through the Shadows. And after I read it, I'm probably going to have you come back on, if you don't mind, and we'll have a little conversation about this. As a historian and someone who has looked deep back into the history, back to the Roman Empire and beyond, would you say that Biden was the worst or in the top five worst? And I don't know. We've had some bad presidents in the past, but, you know, this one has been utterly corrupt. And, you know, when

you're accepting pardons, you are essentially admitting that you're guilty. OK, let's be right on this. Oh, my gosh. It's the absolute. well, I would say this, that my worst presidents are those who concentrated power most in Washington, D.C. So that list is Woodrow Wilson, FDR, and LBJ. But then you have Obama-Biden, which these two have shown with the concentration of power why it matters and why we can't allow it. Because you start attacking your political opponents, having no fear, because nobody can touch you. Yeah. Wouldn't you have to... Pardoning his family, that is just saying, I can be as corrupt as I want to be.

I can sell out America to its enemies. And I can go away scot-free, and I keep my mansions, and I keep my money. My brother's going to be fine. My son's going to be fine. This is the outcome of an over-concentration of power and a judiciary that's biased. Richard, wouldn't we have to put George W. Bush on this list, too, as far as concentration of power, because 9-11, the biggest in my lifetime, a concentration of government power into the security agencies now. Yeah, exactly right. And it's why Obama was able to work through the CIA, the FBI,

DOJ, and all these things. It was a big new toy, the, you know, the Homeland Security. So you really have to, that's another outward expression of the absolute concentration of power in one place. And it shouldn't be like that. I'm all for, there was one of the, one of the persons that was at the Constitutional Convention, and I can't remember the name, said we should, our House of Representatives should be on a cart, and we should wheel it around the country. The Capitol should not exist in one place. It should be constantly moving, because otherwise there will be this concentration of power, and he proved prophetic. Absolutely. I would agree with that wholeheartedly, and I've often thought that maybe we'd be better off if all the Congress critters had to just stay in their districts, and then everything, Congress is just a big Zoom call.

What did you think about that? I think that's a great idea. A great idea. Or you could use the capital of every state. So every two years, Congress moves, say, to Missouri. Okay. And they use the statehouse in Missouri as being the capital. But where is K Street?

For those two years. But where are the K Street lobbyists going to move to, Richard C. Lyons? Well, I think there ought to be a tank division dedicated to blowing up K Street. Richard. Just level it. Richard, I'm going to enjoy reading your book, I have a feeling. We'll have you back here. Oh, great.

But it's Passages Through the Shadows, third volume in the Democracy series. By the way, do you have a main website people can find out more about you? Yeah, I do. It's just my name, richardclions.com. Pleasure meeting you, Richard. Great talk. Good to meet you, Bill.