Judging Freedom - COL. Karen Kwiatkowski : Divorcing the Empire.

Episode Date: December 9, 2025

COL. Karen Kwiatkowski : Divorcing the Empire.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, December 9th, 2000, 25. Colonel Karen Quackowski joins us now. Colonel Karen, always a pleasure, my dear friend. Again, I'm deeply moved by your most recent column at Judge Knapp and Lou Rockwell in a variety of other places called divorcing the empire. Is the United States of America a terrorist state? It meets that qualification in a lot of things that it does and a lot of things that it has done. But I think certainly right now, if we want to pick an example, it would be what we're doing

in the Caribbean. That qualifies. You know, we make up a charge and we take a military and we take pot shots at basically civilians. And by pot shots, I mean, we murder them using the power of the state. So that kind of, I mean, if another organization behaved the way that we do, we would 100% label them as terrorists. So by that definition, yeah, I mean, I have to admit it. I don't like to admit it.

I don't like to think about my country being that way. But it meets the thing. And the purpose of this, I gather, from the president's own words, is to change the internal domestic policy of Venezuela, another country. Yeah. Where is that in the Constitution? Yeah, it's not in the Constitution. You know, we know that it's also something that we share with a terrorist group because usually terrorist groups have a political objective.

Very often it is to weaken or to change out a leader of a political system. So we share that with the terrorist groups as well. The Constitution requires that when our country goes to war, this is what it says, you know, the president, you know, may want to do something. But he has to convince the Congress to make that declaration of war. And we have not done that in so long. I don't think we know how to. It was what? 1941 was the last time. So for 80 years, we have not, we've not gone through that process of, as a republic, with democratic features, you know, have we asked the people and the people's representatives is war the thing that we as a nation are going to do? Because

we don't even ask them. We tell them later we killed people and that they were bad and evil. And then we go kill some other people. And nobody ever gets a straight answer. And the Congress does not do its duty. Peace has an incendiary and fascinating opening line, and I ask Chris to make a full screen of it. I'm going to read it now. This is Colonel Kodkowski in her piece, Divorcing the Empire. The American contract, a combination of constitution and myth, is unraveling like the marriage of an unimaginative yet loyal wife who wakes up to find the money gone, eviction imminent, and he loves another.

Further, in the battle for the kids or any remaining resources, our lying spendthrift plays cards with the judge and drinks with the sheriff. Wow, we are friendless. Karen, this is fabulous, fabulous literary, high literary wording. But there's so much to unpack there. Who's the drunk? Who's the drunk and faithless husband? That would be the government of the United States of America. and the wife would be the American people.

That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And I don't know how literary it is, but for women in particular, and, you know, one of the things they say is that women in this country tend to be politically supportive of the state, of the husbanding of the state, you know, the modern state, you know, our social welfare state that we have. But women also who have gone through divorce and have seen their friends go through divorce, maybe not today, but some time in their lifetime. This is not literary for them. This is exactly what it feels like. So I don't mean I'm trying to get people to think about this is real. Because a divorce in a family is real.

It causes real pain. It is a tragedy. And yet we think that our government is somehow a good husband to this country, that somehow has our best interests at heart. It leads with love. It cares only about us. And we clearly know that our government could care less about us except as, you know, resources. We are resources to the state. And that's the extent of the relationship from the government side.

And we the people believe we have this great government. And again, the Constitution has outlined a pretty decent government. And we have this American mythology that we, the people, rule our own destinies. And we have liberty in this country, which we don't. But we have a mythology, and it melds together. And we're very happy. And then we're waking up right now to the fact that what we thought was not there. It is gone.

And it cannot be sustained. So we can divorce the empire. we can divorce the government. Both will have to happen. I would like, I mean, giving up the empire ought to be pretty easy. Apparently it's not. It's part and parcel to our modern state. So, yeah, we got big problems. We got to deal with them. So I asked Colonel McGregor a question that I knew he would appreciate because he's fascinated with the economic implications of an over-extended military, can a country be an empire and a debtor at the same time? Now, the short answer is, history tells us, no, the short answer tells us you will collapse.

The purpose of empire was to feed the mother load, but our 850 military installations around the world drain the mother load. We're an empire under debt or how much longer can we last? Yeah, I mean, I've been saying and feeling for a long time that we wouldn't last much longer, but the systems seems to, you know, persist. But the debt that we have and the wealth that we supposedly accumulate by virtue of being a global empire, the dominant superpower, at least I think we were in the past, I don't think we are today, but we still think we are, we behave as if we are, We call the shots.

We tell people how to live, what to do. We set the prices. One of the things that when empires do this is they do create enemies, but that's okay because the empire is wealthy. The empire is powerful. The empire is a net increase of resources to the empire rather than a drain. Our empire is deeply, deeply in debt. A lot of people say, well, it owes it to the American people.

It owes some of it to the American people. And there's your next revolution when it defaults on the American people. But the first people who, and we're already seeing this, who the other countries and foreign investors and actually funds, international investment funds that buy American dollars that invest in America. That pay off our debt and allow us to accumulate more debt. Those guys are slowing down their purchases. They're liquidating what they've owned, what they've bought in the past. Already we're seeing signs that it's one thing to be told what to do by an empire, but not when the empire owes you money.

You don't take orders from the debtor. And if we're a debtor nation, we cannot be ordering the world around, which we think we're in the habit of doing that. So it doesn't work. It does not work. And the other thing is the whole world knows it doesn't work. It's not like, oh, we've discovered some secret, but let's not tell anybody. You know, we're a debtor, you know, we're a massive debtor.

We're massively in debt. But we're still number one and we'll still tell her, what to do. But keep that secret. You can't keep that secret. The whole world knows. The last to know are the American people who are not paying close attention to it. So right now, the government collects between four and a half and six trillion a year in revenue from mainly income taxes, but other sources. It owes 38 trillion. The debt on the 38 trillion is $1 trillion a year. So right off the top, one-fifth of everything the government collects is going right out the door to the various persons and entities and governments that have bought our bonds,

a fancy phrase for loaned money to us. You know this story. We are still paying off the debt on World War I, where Woodrow Wilson borrowed, it's a small amount by today's standards, $30 billion. We've paid $15 billion in interest and we haven't reduced the principle. Only the federal government pays 50% in interest and still hasn't reduced the principle. They've rolled the principle over, but they haven't reduced it. That's just one of many examples of the profligacy that's going to undo us. I don't see it ever being repaid. I see it collapsing by its own weight and going out of existence. Well, you know, they've clearly inflated the dollar, the currency, the U.S. currency.

They've inflated it. The purchasing power since the Fed, since 1913, I think is less than 1% of what it was 100 years ago. So inflating the money, decreasing the purchasing power of the dollar, that's one way that they kind of cope with, you know, they need money. Nobody, they can't afford to borrow more, so we just print more and act like it's real money and eventually it flushes the system and we have inflation. So that's been a habit. But it only works if you control, it's global. Everything's global. So if you can control the globe,

if you can, if you can ensure that the dollar is the really only choice for people to, you know, buy bonds and get a return. And as long as you can control that, it's fine. But we don't control it any longer. And it's really reputational. You know, trust in a fiat currency, any, any country's currency, trust in the dollar. You know, it's based on faith. And empires can be very positive in developing confidence. You know, I think the British were extremely proud at the peak of their empire. I think probably all empires, very proud and very wealthy. And people said, you know, the empire can do it. You know, we love the empire. We may not like everything, but at least its money's reliable. But if that faith goes away, and it's going away

for the dollar for sure, it's been doing this for some time, then you have nothing left. It's almost like the little boy that, you know, in the parade, and he said, but the emperor is wearing no clothes. And all the people said, oh, no, don't say that. Don't say that. Of course, he's got the most beautiful clothes. But in fact, the little boy told the truth. And once the voice of truth, the true assessment of what the dollar gets you in this world. Once that is clarified, and for many it already is clarified, it goes away fast. It's not like a gradual thing. It is, you know, like going bankrupt. Hemingway wrote, you know, what was it like to go bankrupt? Gradually at first and then suddenly. We're getting very close to the suddenly part. People should, it's one thing to talk

about international relations, and I think countries and individual investors are taking care of themselves, so they're not stupid. But American people themselves really should be thinking about what it's going to be like when the purchasing power is 10% of what it is today. Do they have resources? Do they have a second passport? I mean, these are the things people should be thinking about because we aren't seen by our government as citizens. We are seen as serfs and prey. You know, we're seen as something that feeds the government. Does the government work for us or do we work for the government? I mean, the answer to that is rather obvious. Before I jump to another topic, is one of your dogs with you? I thought I saw the dog trying to jump up. Yeah, he was. He was.

Is he still there? I'd love to see him. Where is he? Nope, he left. All right. He was here. I don't know what he wanted. Every once in a while when I'm home, I'm not home now, even though I have the home background. Chris, my dog, not Chris, my producer. Chris, my dog will jump right up on my lap. Usually wants the nibble on one of my fingers.

It's adorable to see them do that. Without getting into the issue of immigration, I don't know how you feel about it. I am repulsed by what ICE is doing. Here's ice approaching the front porch of a lady's house and watch what they do so their behavior won't be filmed. They wreck her front security phone, damaging her property before they knock on her door. Now, I don't know who she is, the woman in the house. I don't know what became of her, but you have two ICE agents armed in bulletproof vests

and wearing masks so you can't identify them in court damaging the security camera in a person's home. I thought ICE was here to protect us, not to prevent us from protecting ourselves. Yeah, that's actually very disturbing, because if that was a property owned by someone, presumably the resident, but possibly a landlord, there's no warrant, there's no justification, property is just damaged. And, you know, if your neighbor or your neighbor's kid comes and does that to your property, you know, like, takes your camera off. Exactly what the ice guy did, the lady.

That is, that's something you can, that's probably going to be a misdemeanor or something else. Oh, sure. If a crook did that and you caught the crook, that would be a charge against him, damage the private property. So we have crooks. We have criminals who have a uniform.

We have criminals wearing federal uniforms with federal guns and federal badges and masks on their faces. That's right. Yeah, that is, that's very disturbing and increasingly when we see the things that our military and our police do, the way that they behave towards the citizens, it's always guilty until proven innocent. It's that they have all the rights and we have none of the rights. I'm telling you, we are adopting the IDF attitude. We are adopting the Israeli police forces attitude towards the other. In Israel's case, obviously it's Arabs or Christians or anybody in the occupied territories,

and that's their issue. But we're seeing that kind of contempt for people, that idea that we're super well-armed, and also we hide our faces, and we do whatever we want to whomever we want. This is, you know, our military is definitely adopting this. I mean, we see this idea of shooting the survivors in the Caribbean. Absolutely. That is not American doctrine. It shouldn't be. It's illegal. It's under any way of looking at it. But it is Israeli doctrine. We know that. And also in our policing, which I don't know, ICE is federal police, I guess, in a way. But our domestic policing, a lot of their training, a lot of their contract training, their contract packages, and some of their surveillance software is it comes from Israel. So that's not, I'm not saying Israel is trying to make us more like that. them, but when you adopt the behaviors, when you lay down with dogs, you get fleas. And we are adopting, whether consciously or unconsciously, a really bad, powerful state,

autocratic type of, you know, the state has all power, and you better ask permission before you do anything. And that is very un-American, extremely un-American. I think if you ask the average guy on the street, should you ask permission? And should you condescend, should you bend the knee to the state, whether it's a police officer or a military person in uniform, the answer would be no. Why would I do that? I'm an American.

I don't do that. But in fact, we are being forced into it. So very, very disturbing. I want to show you a clip from President Trump. It's a little embarrassing because he doesn't remember what he said a few hours earlier. but he was interrogated on December 3rd and on December 8th about whether or not the video of the attacks on the two survivors of that boat attack on September 2nd would be viewed. Well, here's what he said. Cut number 11.

Mr. Hedman, you release video of that first boat strike on September 2nd, but not the same. second video. Will you release video of that strike so that the American people can see for themselves? I don't know what they have, but whatever they have, we'd certainly release, no problem. Mr. President, you said you would have no problem with releasing the full video of that strike on September 2nd off the coast of Venezuela. Secretary Hegsett now says, you know, you said that, I didn't say that. This is ABC fake news. You said that you would have no problem releasing the full bit. Okay, well, Secretary Hexed. Whatever HECSeth wants to do is okay with me. He now says it's under review. Are you ordering the secretary?

to release that full video. Whatever he decides is okay with me. Before you're in the full video? Didn't I just tell you that? You said that it was up to the secretary. Not the most obnoxious reporter in the whole place. Let me just tell you, you are an obnoxious, a terrible, actually a terrible reporter. It's funny.

Yeah. No, is he going to release the tape or not? He doesn't remember if he said, I said, five. hours it was five days my apology there but he obviously didn't remember what he had said uh five days earlier and i don't think uh secretary heggseth will release that tape unless congress subpoenas it and then he'll probably try and claim some kind of uh privilege i don't know what he could claim because he's already shown it to several members of congress who of course have come away with different views um congressman hym's democrat

of Connecticut was visibly shaken and said it was the worst thing he had seen in his years in public service. Senator Cotton said it was righteous. Yeah, Cotton wouldn't say that. He's an idiot. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, this is very, very ugly. And, you know, none of the president's staff will show him the video where he said he would release it. Right. I mean, it's whatever the president says, that's the new truth of the moment. It's a shame. At least there are lots of reporters that still have access to him so they can create content. They can create the evidence that's going to be needed. But yeah, Congress really does have to step up and do its job. If congressmen have seen it, then members of Congress should demand that it be published. And again, you know, these guys in Congress, they don't, when I say the government, it's not just the deep state bureaucracy of the executive branch. It is, it's Congress. too because they don't care about people. Most of them, very few of them give any, you know, don't give any thought to the people in

their districts. General Kane, who was the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, talks about combat power in our neighborhood. Now, it's not clear if by our neighborhood he means Latin America or Chicago. Harry, we shouldn't laugh, but you try and figure this out. Cut number eight, Chris. We have not. If you look back over the arc of our deployment history over the last few years, we haven't had a lot of American combat power in our own neighborhood. I think that's,

I suspect that's probably going to change. We'll see what we're ordered to do. And of course, we follow that guidance. But we're definitely spending some time there now. Yeah, he's talking about the hemisphere. He's talking about the national security strategy that they came out with, which, you know, the so-called Trump corollary, or I think it's a Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, you know, they're building this, well, they've got to sell something, right? I mean, the empire is not able, I guess, are willing to self-assess. And I don't think, again, that it's kind of like a bad husband, you know, are you really going to wait until they reform themselves. our government is not going to reform itself by itself. It's going to have to be kicked out, kicked out of the house, you know, maybe thrown in jail. And I'm not picking on Trump.

I'm not picking on Trump. This is the deep state. It persists and it dominates, you know. Correct. Well, he inherited the deep state. I think he's making it worse, but he inherited it. It took 1947, so it took nearly 80 years. That's the creation of the security state.

to get here. I commend everybody to Colonel Koukowski's piece, Dvorcing the Empire, Judge Knapp.com, Lou Rockwell.com, and elsewhere. You'll laugh and you'll cry. It's a great piece. Karen, as always, brilliant writer, brilliant commentator, dear long-time friend. Thank you for spending time with us today. We'll look forward to seeing you next week. Absolutely. Thank you, Judge. Ring blue the next time. I will.

Okay. All the best. tomorrow Wednesday at 8 in the morning, Professor Gilbert Doctoro at 1 in the afternoon, Professor Glenn Deeson, at 3 in the afternoon, Phil Giraldi, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.