Judging Freedom - Col. Karen Kwiatkowski : Unravelling and Secession

Episode Date: June 4, 2024

Col. Karen Kwiatkowski : Unravelling and SecessionSee 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, June 4th, 2024. Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski joins us now. Colonel, you have two fascinating articles out since last we spoke on a variety of issues, all of which have to do with the growth of the state and the ease with which it kills people in order to keep growing and staying in power. I know that sounds harsh, but that's the essence of what you wrote. But before we get there, I think the audience would appreciate hearing your views on what happened to our friend and colleague, Scott Ritter, at the hands of the State Department yesterday, where he was not

permitted to board a plane and where three armed guards stole, there was no warrant, stole his passport from him. You were in the government, in the military for a number of years. Have you ever heard of anything like this? No. It was shocking to hear what happened. And, you know, I watched his interview with you earlier today, and he, you know, he was taken. He was shocked by this. And he has traveled frequently and, you know, seen this kind of thing. So it's just totally unexpected. he kind of communicated that as well, was to try to, we all, people need to be prepared for unlawful behavior by the United States government, even to the extent of seizing passports in violation of the Fourth Amendment without warrants, without even a verbal explanation of what they're

doing, you know, and no guidance. I mean, you know, I've been, I was detained once coming back years ago from Germany, and I didn't like it. It took like an hour and a half. They searched through everything. I was on military orders at the time, so I was a little bit surprised. But these Germans, the security there, at least explained to me what, you know, what was happening. And it sounds like the American security that seized his passport and prevented him from traveling, they didn't explain anything. No, they didn't give him their names. They didn't show him their ID. They didn't give him a receipt. All of this is a profound violation of law enforcement. Even when the government breaks down your door pursuant to a warrant and seizes something, believe it or not, they give you a receipt. how unprepared in a sense psychologically he was for this kind of behavior of our own government. And he knows how our government operates. He has been a personal recipient of many bad acts by our

government against him personally. And plus he has lots of friends who have been, you know, acted against by our government. But even then, you know, in that moment, you know, you're powerless. And that's the impression that I got from his telling of the story. I mean, and I think lesser travelers among us would be even more powerless in the face of this government. So we've got to do something about this. This cannot stand. Well, hopefully a federal judge will be reviewing this in short order. It's going to take some skullduggery to figure out where the passport is. But I've told him he can make an emergency application before a federal judge in Brooklyn, New York, ordering the Department of State to surrender the passport to the judge, and then they'll litigate it, and the judge would probably give it back to them during

the litigation. That's generally the way it works. Not all judges do that. Some are hard to believe, intimidated by the federal government. Most are not, particularly in that federal courthouse, which covers Brooklyn and all the way out the end of Long Island, if you know the geography, which is where JFK is located. You recently wrote a fascinating piece called, this is a Karen Kwiatkowski title, Unraveling and Secession. So explain how, because you wrote this, the United States and Israel both need war to prevent from unraveling. I think many of our viewers understand how Israel, or at least Prime Minister Netanyahu, needs war to prevent his government from unraveling. but how does the Israeli state

and how does the United States of America need war to prevent an unraveling? Yeah, well, actually, you know, I got the idea from one of your guests, Alistair Crook, in an article that he had written talking about how linked the policy and the situation globally and the approach that both of those nations, the United States and Israel, both take to dealing with challenges, dealing with neighbors, dealing with their position in the world. And what Crook said had to do with basically a very militaristic response, a force, option one and only option is force in dealing with neighbors and dealing with issues around the world and trying to maintain their position,

the status quo. So, you know, it's easy to see for Israel, small country, very feisty, very willing to go to war, very much a society that justifies war clearly as part of the definition of what it means to be Israel. It means to be at war. That is what they've defined. But for the United States, of course, we're much larger. Many people don't think about this all the time. We're not worried about being invaded. But our government, our government depends on, you know, on war and the money that it spends, the tax justification that it gains from maintaining this huge military that we have, one that really can't do very much. So if you really want to do something in terms of war, they'll have to increase taxes. They'll have to double

or triple the size of what they have. What they have doesn't really work. But that's kind of where we are. This idea that I think it's the end of World War II. I think it's that leftover idea. You know, we were the last country left standing economically and militarily after World War II. And we got to set the rules. And I guess maybe we thought that that was the end of history. It was long before the guy wrote the end of history in the late 80s, but it was, you know, I think the way we thought of our country was that was it. And how do we maintain that? Well, we didn't do it via trade. We didn't do it via innovation. And we didn't do it as a city on a hill, sharing our value system, our true fundamental value system, what made America great, which is liberty.

We didn't do any of that. No, we just said, well, we're strong. We're going to make you obey. And so we only know war. Our politicians have no diplomatic skills whatsoever. And I think that's very clear. I mean, a lot of people look at Blinken. And they're like, well, what does Blinken do? Well, he goes around, he threatens people.

Has he ever talked with anyone, you know, productively? Because clearly he doesn't know how to. He's not a diplomat. And anybody who is a diplomat in our government is shamed by the political class. So we don't do that. We don't do that. We have narrowed our decisions, our choices down to one choice, and that is war. And that's how our government survives. Why do presidents like to kill? I mean, every post-World War II president has killed unlawfully, and none has suffered any consequence. You might argue that George H.W. suffered the consequence of not getting re-elected, but I mean, none has suffered any law enforcement consequence, none condemnation or ignominy by history. You could argue that Harry Truman is the greatest mass murderer in history if you are measuring that by the number of people killed in the shortest period of time. And he's still

praised by Republicans and Democrats. Trump is praised by Republicans and Democrats for murdering General Soleimani. Obama is praised by Republicans and Democrats for triggering the murder of Muammar Gaddafi by destroying his government and sending him running through the streets to save his life until a crowd caught him and killed him horrifically. Why do they like to kill? It's academic to these politicians. Murder, it's not murder unless they physically put their hands around a neck and strangle him in that four or

five minutes that it takes. And so since they don't do that personally, it is purely an intellectual and an academic exercise. And not to quote Hillary Clinton, but when she said, what does it matter? That's exactly, she was being very honest. To her, that was a mark on a ledger that she's on the next page. She has gone on to other activities. Those academic exercises have been completed. or described the State Department and the political class in the Congress as really playing too many computer games, that they are out of touch with any type of, not just reality, but they're out of touch with how relationships work, the give and take, the listening aspect. I mean, we could ask one question. Do American politicians listen to anyone? And they don't. Let me push back. They listen to their donors. They listen to the donor class. We know that. Yeah. They listen to the donor class, but

they're really owned by the donor class. So they are part of that. Yes, that's even better than listening. Go ahead, please, Karen. But I think this is one of the appeals that Trump has had ever since the very beginning of his campaigning, even the first time, is he comes across to the average person who sees him or watches him by what he says, by how he behaves. He makes them feel like he is listening to what they have been saying, whether it's to them or to their spouse or to their neighbors or to the guy in the store. He reflects what people are thinking and that makes them think he's listening. And I do think that he does listen. In fact, sometimes he listens and reflects back to what that person wants to hear.

I don't want to get into too deep a conversation about him, but one of the attractive points of his candidacy when he ran against Hillary Clinton was that he wouldn't take donations and he wouldn't be bought or sold by anybody. Now, of course, he's the king of donations. One of our colleagues who's on the air all the time reported to me this morning, the belief, his belief that Trump is negotiating with Mrs. Sheldon Adelman. She's offering a hundred million dollars to the campaign in return for what? Trump helping Israel capture the West Bank. Well, that would be reprehensible if that were to happen, but that shows how people change. And it also shows, Karen, to your point,

how even somebody as wealthy as Trump can be bought, sold, and owned by a donor. Yeah, no, that's true. That's true. We don't have a lot of good choices here. And it seems like presidents and even Trump when he was president and certainly Biden and those before and all those you mentioned, these presidents use the power of the state, not just our military, but the intelligence community, just the power of being president to murder around the world and not just to murder around the world in terms of wars that we create and that we assist in, that we fuel and fund, but there's plenty of things that are murdered here at home as well, all of which, and I'm talking about constitutional freedoms and, you know, things that we have, we at some point in time in the history took for granted. Our presidents are destroying those as well, very much in an academic exercise. So how can this happen? Well, our system, we have an empire. We don't have a republic. I don't have a republic. When a republic becomes an empire

and calls itself a democracy, isn't it dangerous to personal liberty? Don't we fear the tyranny of the majority? I mean, look at this piece of legislation the House passed. It hasn't made its way through the Senate yet. The Anti-Semitism Awareness Act of 2024 passed at the height of the political demonstrations at Columbia University, all of which were peaceful until the police arrived. I'm not a critic of the police. I'm a critic of their management that sent them there with instructions to get rid of these kids who were committing no crime. Nevertheless, my point is the majority in a democracy, the government in an empire, will not hesitate to crush civil liberty to please its benefactors. That's right.

That's right. And, you know, I saw the language in that piece of legislation that you're talking about, and it requires teachers at all levels, so I assume elementary school as well, to actually shape the, to actually support a government narrative in terms of Israel specifically. So this kind of control, honestly, it's very much, we say we're not communist. We don't live in a communist country. We're not the old Soviet Union. But actually, there are a great many parallels to how our government is evolving and its relationship to the people that it governs.

It's totalitarian. It's communistic. It's similar to other totalitarian-style empires. The Soviet Union comes to mind because they actually aren't the Soviet Union anymore. And there's actually a lot of freedom in Russia, hard earned, I'm sure, for the Russians. But, you know, we don't have that. We take all we have for granted and we're in big trouble. And I think to get back to the articles, both those articles that I wrote in the past couple of weeks that you mentioned, both of them kind of conclude with what's the risk of nuclear annihilation? What is the risk of war? Because everybody that I watch and listen to is concerned about that. Why? Because it's actually a real risk. And I was

listening to Pepe Escobar just earlier today, and this is something I've written about too, and I believe that our government is so unstable in terms of its maintenance of power domestically that a thermonuclear war might be a good thing for our government. It might be a good thing for Biden. We don't have to have elections. It might be a good thing for the debt. Maybe we can just repudiate that, you know, click reset. So we're in a bit of trouble in this country. The two articles are called It's Not You, It's Me and An Unraveling Secession or World War III. They're both available at judsnap.com. Is the U.S. in danger of unraveling? And if it is, do you mean secession, literally states breaking off and becoming independent republics or states breaking off in groups like the North

Atlantic or the Southwest or the Southeast and becoming independent republics. I mean, if the federal government didn't exist, much as at some point the Soviet Union no longer existed, because if people wouldn't honor its cash, wouldn't believe it would pay its debts, nobody wanted to work for it anymore. That might be a great thing. It might unleash the states to become petty tyrants. Yeah. No, I think it will die due to lack of interest. And I think, you know, as the government gets worse and behaves more and more badly, I think people will do what they always do and what they did in the Soviet Union, particularly in those final years, is they acted on the surface as if they were participating, but in fact were separating themselves from the state. They were taking advantage of what they

could do, but they were not serving the state. They wouldn't, you know, obey. They would be disobedient in a million different ways that we can be disobedient. And we're already, I think, seeing that to a great extent in this country. People want the government, if they're on any type of aid or, you know, whether it's a big business or a welfare recipient, same difference. They want that handout, of course. They want the advantage. The cartels want the advantage that the state can provide. But in fact, the average people see it. We're not stupid. You know, the average guy knows when he's being taken advantage of. And so we don't want to play that game. So I think it'll be a sloughing off of the state. Is that going to be new republics in some places? It might be a secession that is visible and recognized by everybody on the planet except for Washington.

Don't be the last to know. So at one point, a country like North Korea was a global pariah, disconnected from reality, paranoid, unable to see and hear clearly. hear the cries of the innocents being slaughtered by Israeli hands with equipment furnished by the American taxpayer in Gaza. Yeah, I think they have. And 10 years ago, I would not have thought that because that's pretty, to call us basically the peer, the near peer of North Korea is shocking. But that's where we are. That's where we are. We are isolated. Our country is paranoid. We're led by leaders who demand a narrative be provided, but we don't really believe it. But we're a little bit scared. We're a little

bit scared to stand up against it right now. Our government does not see reality, doesn't listen to anyone except the psychofants around it. And Israel, and this is part of the problem with that relationship with Israel and the United States, we echo each other. We become each other's enabler for very bad things that the people of the world and certainly the people in the United States don't appreciate, don't understand. And so, you know, I think we're kind of, I think we're at the point in our recognition of what our government has become. We're in the point of shock. How could this have happened? But we're going to get over that shock pretty quick because we know it's happened and we have to be ready for the next step. And I think coming back to Scott, you know, I think

people asked him if he had a video or a photograph or information on the ID of the individuals that stole his passport and prevented him from traveling without a warrant. And he didn't. And he said, well, I should have. Well, that is a lesson for all of us, not just the Scott Ritters who are up leading the charge and very public figures, but for all of us, we need to recognize our government is, it's a criminal. Okay. What do we do for criminals? Well, we put cameras in our house for that. Okay. So we can identify who they are so that we can hold them accountable and prevent crime. Our government is a criminal, and it is also an enemy. You know, we might not think it's an enemy, but it looks at us as if we are the enemies, the people who live, the people who speak out perhaps, any person in this country who criticizes

the current regime. We're enemies. We have to recognize that that is how the government looks at us and it's going to treat us that way. And then in that regard, how do we protect ourselves? How do we respond to that? How do we get ready for the next bad thing that our government does to us? And certainly it's a big leap. We have to do that here. How do we control our foreign policy? That is another big problem. You know, this is why students and protesters around the world and around the United States are standing up saying, stop this. They have no other means. We elect congressmen. What are the congressmen doing? They're murdering also.

They're all murderers. Okay. All the ones that are supporting our Israeli policy and any of the other wars. And that's most of them. It's a handful that have consistently, you know, we don't have Ron Paul. We have Thomas Massey, maybe a few others. The rest of them are also, they have blood on their hands. So once we elected them, they're to be our voice. And then they're murderers. Well, wake up, people. We owe them no loyalty. Really have to get beyond the shock and start thinking about how we, all of us, are going to not just live our lives, but how are we going to maintain our freedom individually?

And that means holding our government accountable. And we can't just do it like, oh, every two years we'll have a vote or every six years or every four years we'll vote. And that holds government accountable. Well, it isn't working that way. So we need a plan. Everybody needs their own plan. And they need to think about what has actually happened. We also need a reality check because a lot of us think it's a republic and we have more freedom than any other country in the world. Well, this is not true. OK, so we got to wake up. Karen, you're a model of intellectual honesty and personal courage.

Maybe Ritter is the female Karen Kwiatkowski. Thank you very much. Thanks for your time. And again, thanks for your courage and for your cutting right through all this. We'll see you again next week. All the best. Okay. Thanks, Judge.

Appreciate it. Of course. Coming up at four o'clock, more on Scott Ritter with his longtime friend and our longtime colleague colleague as well as more on what is the intelligence community doing in ukraine what is the american intelligence committee doing in ukraine the inimitable ray mcgovern judge the politano for judging freedom I'm out.