Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 04-14-25_MONDAY_6AM

Episode Date: April 15, 2025

Into the news of the morning and Auron MacIntyre joins me. The Blaze contributor has a new book we discuss TOTAL STATE - How Liberal Democracies become Tyrannies

The Bill Myer 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 Clouser Drilling.com. There we go. Good morning and delighted that you are here this Monday, April 14th. Yeah, I was just thinking about this. It was 30 was it 32? No, yeah, 32 years ago. 32 years ago this morning was over at the Rogue Valley Medical Center.

I think at that point it was just called RVMC, is what it was called then, not just Asante RRMC or you know that kind of stuff. And eagerly awaiting the birth of my first child, Sarah, Sarah today, born at 1207 PM. 1207 PM, I can still remember that. I'm going to give her a call. She's living over in the free state of Florida right now, which is kind of ironic when you think about it because my daughter leans progressive politically, moved from Portland to Florida with her guy. And I find it interesting that we have a couple of progressives in Florida. And I'm hoping they're not going to mess it up. You always wonder about that, right? Progressives, you know, I'm really tired of all of this homelessness and crap and stuff like that.

And I would tell Sarah off and on, kind of through the back door, well you know you kind of voted for this kind of stuff, right? You voted for this, right? And the first day that she was living in Florida, she got her first paycheck because she's still working for the Oregon company but they're paying her in Florida, does biology work, you know, she has got her degree and everything else. She's doing really well. And she says, oh my gosh, I have so much more money in my paycheck. I'm living here in Florida instead of like in Oregon.

I said, yeah, welcome to a free state, sweet pea. Don't mess it up. Because generally what will happen, progressives will move to these red states and like even Oregon, southern Oregon used to be very, very red. Now it's been rather purpley. And so you have progressives that move in from failed states and then bring the same diseases or the same conceits, I guess, that got them in trouble. And of course, I even wonder, maybe even conservatives, maybe even conservatives leave Oregon and still bring enough Oregon liberalism with them that has just been inculcated in us over the years. I don't know, but I was just thinking about that.

But anyway, it was a wonderful day. Sarah Bourne, and she's a great little kid, not such a great teenager, but we stay in touch and I'm looking forward to wishing her a happy birthday. Anyway, I just can't believe I'm old enough to have a 32-year-old daughter. That's the way that goes. Well, enough about me. How are you doing this morning? You can join the conversation at 770-5633-770-MED. My email is bill at BillMeyerShow.com. We're going to share some of the reactions a little bit later this morning. People writing about the baseball

stadium deal in Medford, the one that they're talking about. $90 million for the Eugene Emeralds. This is going to be the capstone for our climate friendly, equitable community in downtown Medford. Maybe next year's pear blossoms stay, maybe it'll take a year or two, but they won't be able to do a pear blossom parade anymore because that capstone will be boom, plopped right then. Maybe they'll just drop it right on the Carnegie Library area. I know that's not where they're talking about doing it but i'm just having a little fun

elicitor last night that uh... that said hey you know share a lack of sin or on channel ten you know the the play that show on the weekends had a show in which they were talking about how people how communities get ripped off by ball stadium deals i didn't have a chance to watch it yet, but thank you very much, Lister, for having said that. But you see, that's the sort of stuff that

I've been bringing up for a long, long time. It's sports team socialism, sports team socialism, and people would never ever... Now, let's say as an example, what would you think would be said if in order to attract conservative talk radio like KMED to Southern Oregon, we would say, hey, you know, we really want the town fathers because we know that we can generate a lot of economic activity in here and have lots of people listening and doing trade here in Southern Oregon with commercials and things like that. But we would like you to borrow $ million dollars from the taxpayer so that we

could build transmitter sites in studios and hire people and do all that sort of stuff. And by the way, it'll be 23 years before the revenue coming into KMED would be greater rather than the expenses. And the Medford City Council would probably sit there and just laugh us out of the council, and rightly so. But you have a sports team come in, and it's not even a major league sports team. It's high A, that sort of thing, but it's not that big of a deal.

And it wasn't that heavily attended in Eugene either I would say I got this from Grumpyville London he made me know you know all about it you know he says you you'd see the same two to three thousand people a week going to the games it wasn't one of those things like like it was all of a sudden people were flying into Eugene and driving hundreds of miles into Eugene to see the show. Yeah. But we even consider dropping our drawers for something like that, hanging things on the taxpayers.

And when you hear that talk about creative financing, that's what it means, you know, grabbing some tax money already coming in, maybe increasing your park's utility fee because they're short or good of the community, you know, those sort of things. They wouldn't do that for any other business, but they'll do it for stupid sports teams. And I say stupid sport teams only because we're stupid if we give them money. There's nothing wrong with the sports teams. If stuff like that, if Major League Baseball wants its farm team so badly, it can pay for it. That's just it. You know, Major League Baseball expects small cities like Medford, Grants Pass, Ashland, whatever it is, to fund the bill and build their farm team. The heck with that? Have them build their own

business like we expect every other business to construct itself and find investors willing to put up the money, not the taxpayers. That's the way I look at it. I'll share some of that about it, but I'll have to watch that Cheryl Atkinson story. It does a good job on that. We can talk about that if you wish. that. We can talk about that if you wish. 7705633, 770KMED. Fox on the run over in Josephine County. Rabies and recent fox attacks in Josephine County. Yeah, boy, watch that. That is for sure. Do they still have to inject in the... they don't have to inject in the stomach anymore for rabies treatments, do they? I remember when I was a kid we were always told, hey man, if you ever had to be treated with rabies, they had to inject into your stomach and I would just recoil.

Just like when I hear about that eyes survey commercial, eyes survey, taking GA a little slower, the lowrider thing, and they're talking about, it's an eye injection. I'm just thinking, what? Someone's sticking a needle in your eye? Ah! I can't even imagine that, but I guess if you have GA, that's fine. Eyes are vague. Boy, it's stuck in my head, right? Ah, 19 minutes after 6. Hope you're doing well this morning. Let me go to first call of the day. I have no idea who's there. Good morning. Hello? Bill, it's, are you there, Bill? It's Dave. Good morning. Hello. Are you there Bill? It's Dave. Good morning. Dave, good morning. How are you today? What's on your mind?

It's a beautiful day in the valley. So I have a couple things. The first thing makes the money from, if this whole baseball team thing goes through, who makes the money? That's the first question. The second question is, if it's such a great deal, then why does it take 20-something years to pay it off. Okay? Now you see, you see something, you are thinking very clearly about this and you should be on the Medford City Council because the fact that it would take 23, 25 years to pay off or start making money is irrelevant because it's a baseball team. That's all that you need to know.

It's a baseball team! Well, and God forbid I should be on the City Council. That's all that you need to know. It's a baseball team. Well, and God forbid I should be on the city council. That might not work out. So those are my questions. The second thing is you were just, you were talking about, you know, the progressives and how they're creating, you know, you know, it's been, it's been going on this way for a long time. But I, you know, and I've said this before, I think even on your show, I said the problem with Oregon is not that these people are coming in and and not that we have to fight it It's just that the bottom line is that the Republican Party in this state Just is it's just feckless and and we we've done such a poor job

Resisting these people again. Well, that's just that there hasn't been resistance to them. The fact that the Republicans are actually giving quorum in Salem is revolting to me right now. Oh yeah. Look at this guy from, I don't know where he was from, I heard it on Lars' show, this guy they wanted to put in charge of the party. Okay, you know, he was 28, he married, he was having sex with a girl when she was 16. His businesses have been failures, and yet they want to put this guy, you know, and you want, they want to put him in charge of the party.

And then you wonder why we can't, you know, we keep getting people like KK Brown. Well, yeah, well, the guy, the guy that they were trying to get running the Republican party should have been running the Democrat party, cause he's, the guy that they were trying to get running the Republican Party should have been running the Democrat Party because he's right in with that agenda, you know, right in there. I would have welcomed him with open arms anyway.

Have a good morning and happy birthday to your daughter. Yeah, indeed. Thank you very much. Appreciate that, Dave. 22 minutes after 6. Yeah, you know, I didn't really look much into that Republican Party thing. It's not a feckless party. The thing is, and I try to be fair about this, you have a few fighters.

You have a few fighters within the party, like junkyard dog Dwayne Younger. Definitely a fighter. And you've had some other ones in there that have been fighters over the years. You know, Lenthecims have been somewhat fighters. Noah Robinson's, of course, have always been good battlers. I can't exactly say that they are rough and tumble. Junkyard dog, Dwayne Younger is probably the best of the Honey Badger things. You know, he's kind of like that Honey Badger YouTube

video, Honey Badger don't give a crap, you know, that one. Maybe Honey Badger might be a better name than even Junkyard Dog. I don't know. Junkyard Dog can be put down. No one's going to mess with a Honey Badger, but it's kind of funny. Speaking of which, Dwayne Younger had shared, and I ended up sharing it on Facebook over the weekend, the Oregon Governor Starter Kit. It's like a toy, a toy you would give to kids. It had a great facsimile or take like a toy doll of Tina Koteck. It comes complete with a homeless camp, a homeless policy, homeless camp, trash not included, all sorts of other things. And it was just really, really good. You can find it on my Facebook page there too. But yeah, to be fair to the Republicans, I imagine a part of them feel so beaten down at this point,

maybe like the Democrats do over in Washington, D.C says, okay, you know, what can we do to just kind of keep some progress going? All right, so they end up staying in there, they reach across the aisle, you have people like Emily McIntyre that want to be friends with every Democrat they meet, and you know, God bless her, very nice woman, but it's just like, it doesn't matter how friendly you are with the Democrats, they still hate you and they would just as soon knife you in the back if at all possible. But you know, I guess these are the lessons that haven't yet been learned over in the Oregon Republican Party.

Hopefully we can keep it together in the meantime. It's 24 after 6, 7705 633. This is the Bill Meyers Show, KMED 99.3 KBXG. I'm going to be talking to a number of people this morning. I'm really looking forward to talking with Aron McIntyre because he's the author of The Total State, How Liberal Democracies Become Tyrannies. I think he may have something going on here.

We're going to talk with Aron about it, especially as we get this latest story saying that Doge is saying millions in taxpayers' dollars wasted on unemployment claims for fake people is kind of par for the course, all those kind of things. We'll keep you up on that. Keep you up on the markets, too. The futures is supposed to be a little bit better.

Gold's over 3,200. Wow, that just soared on Friday. Just amazing. Andy Pollack lives over in the Lake Creek area here in southern Oregon. Big gun guy. He's written a lot and been a real activist here. Remember his daughter ended up dying in the Florida school attack a number of years ago. Remember the Nicholas Cruz thing?

And we'll talk to him about this because he was involved with this painting that replaced the Obama painting over in the White House. So we'll talk more about that. Julie Thomas and Jeremy Ford also checking in. We're going to be talking about the latest homelessness proposal in the Grants Pass area. We'll kind of get to the bottom of that. And also where Pass meets Present with Dr. Dennis Powers. Lots to do this morning along with your calls.

This is the Bill Meyers show. Ready to upgrade your roof to a durable? Stricts and Supply, call for details. Internet and cell phone service not provided by Dish. Hi, I'm Lamont from Orleys and I'm on 106.7 KMED. 27 after 67705633. By the way, I had a fundraiser at my house on Saturday at both the Patriot Conference in Josephine County and the Lincoln Day Dinner.

We opened up our home then and auctioned off for some money. It goes to the local Republican Party. And we get the house cleaned up and I'm sitting around there and I have weeds in my hair with the blower on the front lawn and trying to make things look presentable as a bunch of folks come over. We have Strada and Mimosas. It was a great time. It was the Jackson County folks on Saturday and it's going to be the Josephine County folks coming into our house a couple of weeks from now. We're looking forward to both of them. Great talk and just good conversation as we kind of talk about a lot of the stuff that we talk about here, you know, too, for that matter.

And also the frustration of the lack of fightability was brought up quite a bit in that conversation. But on the positive side, Pat Krakorian and Greg ended up popping by too. They were two of the people there. They're coupled together a long, long time. And Pat ended up bringing a little housewarming gift, like a hostess gift or something like that. You know, Linda was slaving over the strata and doing all that kind of good stuff. And Pat brought these cookies that were so good. They were Armenian cookies. Pat Krakawian's Armenian cookies.

And if you were ever looking for an incredible, you know, Pat, you should market those things. You should sell those in the supermarkets around here. I'd buy them. They were so good. You know, it was like there was no off button. It was like a biscuity, softy version of a biscuit scone But it was very soft and and luscious unlike scones which are kind of like, you know

You can use to pound nails in you know, sometimes it wasn't those kind of things. Oh, they were just delicious I don't know what those things are called Pat, but man, that's money. Thank you so much I don't know if we have any left. I'll have to. That's how good they were. You know, having a cup of coffee Sunday morning, we couldn't stop shoving them into our face, both of us. We were just loving that. But good good stuff for sure. Mr. X writes me this morning, you know, you're talking about the ball game thing and people were asking, well, whatever happened to the, you know to the stadium where the Southern Oregon A's, the Timberjacks went? Remember when we lost the Timberjacks a number of years ago? They ended up going up to Vancouver. He says, Bill, Mr. X is trying to get me to understand

You know, the difference in the population levels between here and in Vancouver. In Vancouver, the population in 2021 was 2.6 million people. That's more than half the population of Oregon, period. Oregon's only like 4.2, 4.3 million. And Southern Oregon, Jackson County, is what, 220,000, maybe 300,000 if you end up adding in Josephine County, maybe 305,000. It is in Josephine County about 85,000, I think, at this point according to the latest census. This is the indicator that we keep talking about now and then. I'm going to keep bringing this up here. We're a small market, and there's nothing wrong with being a small market. I love living in our area. It's a small market.

But the city and county fathers are always, I think, to a certain extent, looking to, well, what can we throw at the wall to make it stick? And I still insist that Medford, and this is my home, I live in southern Oregon, right? I love our counties, but Medford especially, it's too big to be cute and charming. It's not going to be like, you know, a Jacksonville or anything like that. It's too big to be cute and charming, and it's too small to have that kind of huge sports team gravitas too. But that's not going to stop people from finding people who would support hanging a 90 million dollar ball stadium around the taxpayers' necks. That's not going to stop at least the inquiry though. But I do think those are some of the issues that we face around here.

And that's not a criticism of Southern Oregon. It's just the reality. It's not going to be a cute little touristy kind of downtown. It's not that kind of field. It's a little too big for that. We're not going to have the Gold Rush town like in Jacksonville and do that kind of... That's just not our thing. A little bigger, a little more of a county seat, that sort of thing, the business of government, yada, yada, yada, all that sort of stuff. Too big to be cute, too small to have that sense of gravity that's going to attract those kind of things. Because essentially a ball team is going to be

vacuuming money out of the local folks to watch a ball game. And that's good, nothing wrong with that, it's good entertainment. And I'd rather have them buying ball tickets here than sending money to Disney Plus, just personally looking at things or to the Major League Baseball teams. I guess it is the Major League Baseball teams, just their

farm teams. But still, they're going to try to fit the square peg in the round hole here in southern Oregon. So just keep an eye on what the city council is up to. And they could actually cut a deal and just put it on your parks and utility fee just like they did with Rogue X. They could do something like this, but there's probably going to be a lot of push to try to convince you, oh, it'll be good for the community. It'll be good for the community, the size,

and the prestige that we would have. And you're going to hear all that kind of stuff. And like I said, God bless baseball players. I love the game. I love the game. I do. But I'm happy to have the game pay for itself and the people who actually go to watch the games pay to support it. Taxpayers should have nothing to do with this.

In a proper world. Now will Southern Oregon behave like a proper world, in a proper city, in a proper county? I don't know. We will soon find out, won't we? 634 KMED 993 KBXG. Check news and Aaron McIntyre joins me about the total state. Gravely's Mo the Distance Sales event is back with special savings on their entire line of commercial lawn mowers.

That's right. March 17th through April 19th, you'll save up to $1,000 on Gravely's Mo. Accelerator ever to help you get back into shape fast. Absolutely free. Text ALL to 321-321. That's all to 321-321. That's all to 321-321. The Bill Myers Show is on. News Talk 1063 KMED. Aaron McIntyre joins me. And he's written a very thought-provoking book, and I'm good with

thought-provoking. It's author of The Total State, How Liberal Democracies Become Tyrannies, and he's the host of the Aaron McIntyre show, columnist for Blaze News 2. How you doing this morning, Aaron? Welcome to the show. Good to have you on. Doing well. Thanks for having me. All right. So the total state, how liberal democracies become tyrannies. So I'm thinking about this as we hear about climate friendly equitable communities being brought to Southern Oregon. In other words, our 15 minute prison cities or 15 minute, maybe that's a freedom city depending on who you talk to, those sort of things.

And I'm looking here in the local paper here, Rogue Valley Times, wait times explode as real ID deadline looms for Oregonians who plan to fly. And I'm thinking to myself, oh okay so right to travel meaning that you must have the Department of Homeland, Fatherland security, you know, Freedom ID. See they're calling it the wrong thing. Wouldn't you agree though, Oren? It's the wrong stuff. They should be calling them Freedom IDs. Freedom IDs everywhere we go. Yeah, I get some stronger branding on there. Yeah. It's amazing

to me the real ID thing because the test on this should be pretty obvious, right? If real ID is there to protect my security to increase the security of the United States, then anyone who is an illegal immigrant who attempts to obtain one is obviously going to get immediately deported, right? Exactly. And anyone who tries to fly without one who's an illegal immigrant will also be immediately deported because that's the purpose of the ID is to protect the security in my homeland. That's what I've been told.

So those have to be the applications, right? Indeed. And there's something else that, of course, the fact that they called real ID, is it affront to me also, assuming that what I've been carrying all these years has been fake. And also, are you trying to tell me, Aron, now you can give me your opinion on this and I know you will, do you honestly think that the government would create an ID that is so strong, so real, real ID, so secure, that none of our spies, none of our government agents would be able to fake it up and run around this world doing empire building.

What do you think? No, of course. Again, the joke here is the level of ID that we don't enforce right now in the United States. We have the ability, theoretically, to go ahead and test every employer and make sure that they're not employing illegal aliens, and yet we do not. And this is just like gun laws and everything else that we have. Theoretically, we have the laws in the books that could solve these problems, that could present a certain level of security, but we don't enforce those now.

So why will additional necessity for ID or for gun laws or anything else increase our safety? The answer is, of course, they won't. They won't be enforced on people who are already breaking the laws and getting away with it and not going to jail. These are laws for citizens who are already complying. And that's what we need to recognize is when a law is only actually for people who are abiding by the law and has nothing to do with safeguarding against people who are continuously breaking our laws and yet somehow face

no enforcement of that law that's already on the books. Yeah I was thinking about last time I was flying on a plane which was September of last year and I was flying on my current ID which is not real ID compliant. I didn't realize that I was a threat to the system so much at that point. That the country was at risk because of just having my standard Oregon driver's license, you know, those kind of things. But I guess I can go get my freedom passport and so I don't have to get my real ID here. But yeah, that's the whole big thing. The thing is they're making a big deal about, oh, the deadline's here, the deadline's coming, the deadline's coming here, but they don't really want us thinking on what does it really do, right? What's the real purpose

of this? And it must be a compliance people database of some sort, wouldn't you think? I'd imagine, you know, Sam Francis called this process anarcho-tyranny, which is the idea that a government would allow a certain level of lawlessness from a kind of subservient class that they're expecting to use to win elections or manipulate social situations, i.e. riot during the 2020 elections, but will highly enforce the law on law-abiding citizens. So the law is for the people who are actually going to follow it. It's for the citizens.

It's for the people who are already doing the right thing. The law is not for the underclass that is going to subvert it anyway, and they know this, and they put this out on purpose for this reason. So the idea is that the law is for a certain subset of people, those that have the dispensation of the government to break it without any penalty are going to continue to do so, and any additional laws are not going to really affect them. And so the whole purpose of the Real ID system, in theory, would be to safeguard us, to allow us, like you said, to travel safely without more problems. But again, it's not going to

touch any of the people who are already violating the law, who are already ignoring the law, to whom the law already does not apply. And that is not a mistake. That is something that our government has done over and over and over again. Yeah, this is not a bug, but a feature, according to the government then. And I noticed that a lot of people over this weekend were decrying a lot of what was going on here. We have the latest news coming out. You have Josh Shapiro's mansion being set on fire, and so everyone's getting all hot and bothered about that, rightly so. There's the kid, Wisconsin, that allegedly killed his parents so he could get the money to assassinate President Trump. All these kinds of weird stories.

And yet at the same time here, Aron, they always decried political violence and everybody says, oh, political violence doesn't work. And I would disagree with that. Have you ever given much thought to this? Because the only reason people ever use political violence is because they get what they want. And I'm not advocating for this, you understand. But isn't that the reality where we find ourselves when you are in kind of an anarcho-tyranny, which the United States arguably is right now? Well, of course. Yes, political violence is deployed specifically because it works. And again, it's not that, like specifically very much the Democratic Party knows that political violence works. They use it to rig an election.

They understand very well that political violence works. And the real dichotomy between the two sides is which side expects to get away with political violence. You know, the left continuously and relentlessly deploys political violence, especially when it comes to something like race riots. We of course saw those in the 60s, in the 70s, in the 90s, in the 2000s, obviously in 2020. But also when you think about terrorist movements, the left had the weather underground. And of course, the summer of rage and what happens, those people end up becoming college

professors on the left. The right sees this and says, one time, maybe we should get a little out of control during a protest at the Capitol. And all of a sudden, this becomes a threat to democracy. Everyone is locked down, people who never even entered the building end up in prison for years, you know, this becomes the most serious national security issue in history. We can obviously see the difference here. You know, when one side continuously

deploys political violence, they expect to do so, they expect it to work, and they expect to not get in trouble. And then the other side says, well, maybe I'll try that one time, and obviously they get blowed out of the water. Well, the one thing is if you're going to try it though you bring guns and lots of violence. Right. Yeah you don't bring grandmas they're being invited into the Capitol Rotunda. Right. It's just not the way you do it. And frankly just a raw protest I don't think really changes much of anything these days.

And you're right if the left had been doing that, had been burning down the Capitol, people would have been hiding under their desk and actually had, okay we'll give you what you want. Now out of curiosity, do you think that the right will ever, you know, get its brains and decide that, okay well if they're gonna go around and break things, we need to break some things too here, so we'll have competing breaking mobs out there? I mean what I would hope is that the right would actually either completely get control of the FBI or completely dismantle and reform it into something that will actually prosecute criminals. Because what we have right now is a two-tier justice

system. You see guys like Dan Bonds, you know, and I'm sorry, I can't remember the FBI director's name suddenly vacated my brain. But when you see a cash Patel, cash Patel, thank you, thank you. Thank you. When you see these guys talking about the necessity of stripping out bad agents, replacing them, those are great steps. It's good to see that they're taking it seriously. Obviously, a guy like cash Patel is very familiar with a level of corruption inside these agencies. He's been a victim of the corruption inside these agencies.

And so it's incredibly important that Trump selected people like that. You can notice that how many of the picks for cabinet agencies or for important executive agencies this time are actually hated by those agencies. And they're hated by the right people. They're hated by the right people. Right're hated by the right people, right? Exactly. Guys like RFK, guys like Tulsi Gabbard. And so that's the great news, because that

means that they are going to probably push for the types of things that the people in power hate. But ultimately, there has to be a radical reform, if not complete dismantling and rebuilding, of the federal law enforcement system. Because as it stands now, it's very clear that Republicans are those that will be immediately punished for any form of political violence and the left will get away with it scot-free. I don't think there should be

any political violence across the board. The thing that happened to Governor Shapiro's mansion is just as terrible as any political action that's been taken by the left, burning Teslas or lighting them on fire, everything, attacking. These are all terrible things, left sitting and violating the law on the lawns of Supreme Court justices, intimidating and threatening, and even an attempted assassination. These are all things that are out of control and should be banned across the board. But obviously, right now, it is tilted in favor of the left. Arron, I'm going to ask you about this book,

and we wanted to delve into this here in just a minute. What do you think about, you know, the left has always called Republicans, the left has always looked at Donald Trump, oh, he's going to be a dictator, he's going to be a dictator, this and that and the dictator. And is there a possibility that under the guise of getting reform and getting control of a rapidly out of control deep state that you

almost have to become one to a certain extent? I'm not saying that happily. I'm just kind of curious because you talk about in this book how the system of liberal democracy may have led us to our present state. What do you think about that? Well, I think that what we see as an executive branch today is a wild mangling of what the founding fathers intended for the executive branch to be. The executive branch is supposed to be under the auspices of the chief executive. That is the entire purpose of its creation. And yet, at this point now, we see that it is far more run by entrenched bureaucracies,

you know, overseen in many ways by the legislative branch. But we do not have a real chief executive, or at least we didn't. And if you had any doubt about that, just look at the man who occupied that office previously. Joe Biden very obviously was not the president of the United States in any real sense. And now we supposedly have the executive branch that can do things only if the judiciary gives an okay to it, which is a little, I don't remember that being part of the constitutional order.

Not actually in those checks and balances. And so it turns out that what you need is a real executive. Now to some people, a real constitutional executive will look like a dictator because they haven't seen a real executive since at least Reagan, probably, you know, LBJ or FDR. You know, these are people who actually commanded to some extent the power of the executive branch. But it has been many, many decades since we've seen that. Most people are used to seeing this rule by bureaucratic consensus through these non-elected agencies. And so when you see someone like Donald Trump starting to take the power back that is constitutionally his, they're going to scream dictator, of course, because we haven't had a real president

in a long time. But that doesn't mean he's violating the Constitution. It means he's just governing in the style of real executives we've had previously in the United States. So our real battle right now is between the entrenched bureaucrats, the bureaucracy, the fifth column, if you want to call it that, and the judiciary to a greater or lesser extent. Isn't that really what is being fought? And I would say this on both sides of the aisle because Congress has given up a lot of its power or just said, hey, we don't want to deal with this one, and they would turn it over. They turn their power over to the

administrative state, did they not? Really? Over the last few years? Absolutely, and this is something that I talk about in the book is how, over time, all of these powers that have been placed inside the Constitution that were supposed to be restricted have been moved slowly but surely into the administrative state under the idea that we need to get politics out of our politics. How many times have you heard this, right? We need less politics in our public health decision-making or less politics. Well, what they mean is we need more unelected bureaucrats without any restriction or culpability to be able to do whatever they want. And that's

really what we're saying. More and more, we have moved the majority of our government decision-making to the experts. And it turns out the experts are the people who are not elected, have no constitutional limitations on what they can do, and end up making a lot of decisions that should be made by elected officials, which is why a lot of people looked at what was happening during the pandemic and they thought they had elected Donald Trump the president. But it turns out it felt like Anthony Fauci might actually be running the country. Yeah, I think he figured out Donald Trump, that is, figured out his lesson from that experience for sure. R.N. McIntyre is author of The Total State, How Liberal Democracies Become Tyrannies. Part of this would also be Congress

clawing back its power, because I'm now hearing them squeaking about Donald Trump's terrifying, right? And terrifying, usually, since it is raising of revenue, is something which is supposed to come from the House. And the House is not saying, hey, wait a minute, you're in the Senate, we're supposed to be doing that. They're probably right, wouldn't you say? Ultimately, that these kind of decisions should be coming. And I know Donald Trump is claiming an executive emergency power to be able to do the tariffing,

for example. But maybe people will learn and get into their lanes again. What do you think? That would be nice. I'm doubtful. I mean, ultimately, again, the ruling in the state of exception is a really important phenomenon that we've seen arise, especially in the last hundred years. And it's something that I address in the book in detail.

And you know that Congress has abdicated a mass of amount of its power because it doesn't even bother to declare war anymore. It's one of its most important powers. Like we literally just get completely destroyed. Yeah, God bless Ron Paul for having brought that up for decades now, right? Yeah, one of the most important restrictions on the power of the executive and no one in Congress cares about it. They never even bother to bring it up at this point. So when you tell me, oh, I'm worried about a dictator, okay, well, how about you have to take back the power to declare war that you gave up almost 100 years ago at this point? Yeah, if you really cared about it in the slightest, you would take that action. But they don't, which leads me to believe that they don't care about it at all, that that is in no way the plan.

They recognize ultimately that they don't want to be held accountable for that power. And so they're more than willing to pass it off. The total state, how liberal democracies become tyrannies. Oren, do you draw any conclusions from this? Because you're really pulling back the veil on the new American authoritarianism, really. And I would dare say it's a bipartisan push really. Would you agree? And then, you know, any conclusions you draw from this, where we could be heading? Or is it just going to be a wild ride and buckle up? Well, you know, I think that first, obviously, we know that the way that government works is just not the way that it's been described to us. We've observed that. And so we needed a very radical step in order to return things back

to something approaching constitutional governance or to find a new way forward that people can understand that it actually works for the American people. When I wrote the book, I suggested that a radical need to return to federalism would be critical because the central government was probably going to continue to decay at the rate it is going now. And, you know, during COVID, we learned that regional government is incredibly important. I live in Florida under Governor DeSantis. My experience during COVID was radically different

from everybody else. So many people are now moving down here because they recognize the importance of having a governor like that, having like-minded people around you, building up the ability to resist the federal government when it's violating your laws if necessary, or your rights rather, if necessary. The good news is that Donald Trump won the election, and he does seem to recognize the dangers of the administrative state directly from the mouth of guys like JD Vance, Elon Musk, and Vivek Ramaswamy, we have heard

the announcements of the managerial state of the administrative state. They are aware of the problem, and they are actively looking to dismantle things like USAID, things like the Department of Education. So we are seeing radical steps that have just not been taken by a president previously. At the end, I do not know if they will be sufficient. I don't know if Donald Trump will win all of the victories he needs to win to defang the administrative state, but this is far more from the president than I was expecting. So that is encouraging, but I still say that people should be focusing on getting into

like-minded communities, taking back local and state power, and making sure that they are ready when the left tries to do this again. Because honestly, I don't think that we are beyond the idea of another round of lockdowns for the next thing. Do you think there's any danger? Because this is what's been concerning to me, especially when you see Larry Ellison and all the tech bros, including Elon too, I have to say, all gathering together around our central government right now.

I'm just hoping that a flawed constitutional representative republic is not replaced by an authoritarian social credit, essentially tech bro technocracy. Do you have any thoughts on that? No, it's definitely a danger, right? And this is the problem that we find ourselves. And whether we like it or not, we're in the age of oligarchs. I mean, look who's running the country right now, right? It's a billionaire advised by a bigger billionaire. Right. And these are the and these are the better versions. Because obviously, we know that George Soros, and others on the left

are more than happy to throw all of their money at what's going on here. So whether we like it or not, we are going to see the clash of the economic titans. And in that moment, having the tech guys that you're talking about being in positions of power, it is very worrying. We already saw that guys like Vivek and Elon tried to push for an opening up of the H1B program to increase the number of immigrants coming in that way. And then my response was, what the hell? Exactly.

So we know there are factions inside this coalition, right? But ultimately we do need the tech right guys. It's very obvious that Elon, especially opening up Twitter and making big donations to Donald Trump was a critical reason why he won the last election. So you cannot go without these guys. You need some of these guys on your side, but ultimately you need to make sure that you have a seated table, that you are driving the bus as much as possible. And that's going to be the real battle going forward. You're going to need Elon. So the thing to figure out is how do you turn a guy like Elon to your purposes?

Aaron McIntyre, author of The Total State, How Liberal Democracies Become Tyrannies. Do you have a website for the book or just go to the Usual Suspects to get a copy of this today? What do you say? Yep, no, all the Usuals, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books of Million. There's an audio version out also if people would rather listen than read. All right, I'll put all your information up. I really appreciate getting a chance to meet you, Aaron, and thanks so much for having me on the show.

You be well, okay? Take care. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. Yeah, he's over in the Free State of Florida, assuming that my daughter and her guy that moved from Portland there are not gonna mess it up. Okay, it's a minute after 7. This is KMED, KMED HD1, Eagle Point, Medford, KBXD, Grants Pass. Coming up, got town hall news. We'll catch you up on things. And then we're going to be talking with Andy Pollack. Andy Pollack here, of course, has been involved, a big Second Amendment activist. And you know his story here.

And he's involved with the painting that has been installed in the White House recently. You may have heard that story last week. Yeah, we have a Southern Oregon connection for this. and I'll tell you all about that coming up. Great to see you. Come on in. Hi, thanks for letting me stay in your guest room.