Judging Freedom - Mass Shootings_ The Vicious Cycle Fueled By America’s Toxic Cult of Violence

Episode Date: May 27, 2022

Mass Shootings: The Vicious Cycle Fueled By America’s Toxic Cult of Violence John Whitehead #schoolshooting #secondamendment #violenceSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Friday, May 27, 2022. It's about 1245 in the afternoon here on the east coast of the United States. My friend John Whitehead, who runs a great entity called the Rutherford Institute, joins us today. John is really an expert on the over-militarization of the country, the over-militarization of the police. And his last weekly column, they always catch my attention. This one really caught my attention, particularly in light of the mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas, within the past couple of weeks. And the essence of the column is that we support a culture of death. John, it's a pleasure. Welcome back to Judging Freedom. Thank you for having me on the show, sir. So give me your thesis.

You and I are about the same age. When we were kids, we had toy soldiers. We had fake toy guns. We played cops and robbers. We played cowboys and Indians, a phrase you're not supposed to use today. Post-World War II culture in America has pretty much glorified the military and the violence. And now we're bearing the fruit of those awful seeds planted then.

Yes. Again, Eisenhower, President Eisenhower warned us that the military-industrial complex would inflict some real problems on us, but part of it, I think, in this state was not what we're seeing happening, and that's how our young people, especially today, as they're fed a steady diet of these video games, which a lot of them are actually put together and financed by the military as recruiting tools, I've been shocked by some that I've seen. They're just blowing people away. I mean, there's no consideration that you're killing human beings.

I mean, it's... And things are blowing up here and there. And I see some of the blockbuster movies, you know, that are also financed by the Pentagon, by the way. Bombs blowing up and people flying through there and sliding a thousand feet and getting up and walking away. Well, you don't do that.

I'm a former military officer. I know that does not happen. That's not reality. But we pose a kind of a fictional kind of strange world around kids today, and it's really affecting young people, by the way. Most people don't realize that, but the youth suicides have just shot up in the last decade from 580,000 to 1.2 million now.

1.2 million suicides in the United States of what? People under the age of 18? Yeah, these are kids. They're killing themselves. A lot of them are teenagers as young as five years old. So we're creating a culture that makes no sense anymore. It's a culture that has no empathy for people, no concern for people. We've lost that idea that people are special and all that in our culture.

You can just blow them away. It's just like this Ramos kid down in the class when he looked a teacher in the eye. One of the students said he looked at her and went, goodbye. Now, what's that out of? A video game, probably. You have pointed out in your column that the Pentagon's budget is bigger than the budgets of the next 10 largest industrial nations, their military budgets combined, that includes Russia and China. And now you're telling

us, and I didn't know this, that some of the money from those budgets is being spent on blockbuster violent movies and on violent video games as what? As a recruitment tool for young men and I guess young women or to acculturate us so that the military's violent mission is somehow considered a normal part of Western liberal democracy. Yeah, exactly. They're normalizing it. Yeah, they're making it so that it's the way of life. And these are training videos because I've talked to some former people coming back from Iraq and some of the things they've told me about how they just bang, bang, bang, shoot and people are falling and all the stuff they're doing. And they're talking to me and they come back and they're troubled, by the way. They have issues. They're

seeing, they're all of a sudden, they realize I'm killing people. And, you know, with what we're seeing is the violence in our own culture, by the way. Since 2015, by the way, if you look at the statistics, some 400 people have been killed in mass shootings in this country. At the same time, over 6,000 people have been killed by police in America. Think about that. 6,000 people in America, about 1,300 to 1,500 a year. And does that get the news we're seeing and all that stuff we know no of course I mean unless it's a unless it's a George Floyd God rest his soul uh

it's not going to make uh it's not going to make the news you know I live I live in Northwest New Jersey and out here we get a television and radio stations from New York City. It seems like the NYPD is killing somebody almost every day and it's barely a blip on the radar screen. Now you're telling me these numbers again are much larger than I imagined, that I guess they're all throughout the country and they're not just in inner cities. I mean, are they in places like Texas? They're all over the place, but, you know, a lot of it I think is more concentrated in the bigger cities, yes. And with all the military equipment, you know,

I talked to former policemen who have come and met me. They've read my book, Battlefield America, War on the American People, and one of them said it's worse than you think, John. If you're in those police academies, he said, we're training soldiers today. We're not training police anymore. And why is that dangerous? He said, because the American people are seen as enemy combatants and everybody around us is now seen as the enemy combatant. So I have been arguing all week for local control of police. Now, Joe Biden and crew want to federalize the police.

Thank God the Senate didn't go. FBI has already invaded police. So localizing police is the way to go, yeah. Well, I mean, his executive order, which basically can only regulate the federal police, but there's intimations in there of the Democratic wishes should they get enough votes in the Congress. So if police are controlled locally, shouldn't we be able to stop them locally from training people as soldiers, buying and using surplus military equipment and treating the civilians for whom they work as if their bodies were expendable.

That's the key to America. I keep telling people the Constitution, local government governs best. That's why we have a 10th Amendment, which says that local governments can nullify acts of the federal government. And I'm telling people that they get in your community, and some have actually done that. They've returned the military equipment. Why would a town of 5,000 people want grenade launchers, MRAPs, all this armored equipment? What for? And a lot of it's given away by the Department of Homeland Security, by the way. It wasn't purchased. I came to find

out, I did my research, about 50% of it was gifted. There's a reason they want that. The federal government's very paranoid. They're getting ready for something. You saw that 2030 video, and I've written about that, where they're predicting by 2030, the government's going to have to lock down everything. It's a training video. Now they're out with a new PSYOP video basically saying the same thing so the federal government is extremely paranoid and i've written on this and they don't want one thing they don't want the american people to legally on guns by the way and they don't want any resistance whatsoever and they want to be able to come in and stamp your face 80 000 SWAT team raids annually in America? That's insane, America.

And the government wants to know who owns the guns. Now, I live in, again, in New Jersey, one of the most gun-restrictive places in the world. You have to register everything that you own, unlike Texas, where you don't. Why the registration? Well, the feds love registration. If a dictator took over the federal government, the first thing his crew would do would look up who owns guns and take their guns away or kill them and take their guns because the government fears un armed citizenry. But Madison and Jefferson intentionally set about to have an armed citizenry so that our rights would be preserved and our freedom could be defended.

And if we needed to secede from the federal government, as we seceded from Great Britain, we would have the military wherewithal with which to do it. Yep. And the key is, like I say, they don't want you having that right because they want, and I'm afraid, and this is one thing I'm really concerned about. Every president I'm seeing now, maybe after Biden, is going to look more like a dictator. I think we're moving in that, definitely in that direction with what we're seeing. And when they start taking away the firearms, that's obvious. And I would be careful, folks.

What did the fellow who wrote the Bill of Rights say, James Madison? We ought to mistrust all those in power. They're not going, we love you, American people. We want to take care of you and all that. No, they want your money. They want control and they want you doing, I'll do whatever you say, government with a capital G. And I keep saying, I don't look at this government with a capital G. We, the people are the government. They are our representatives. They should be serving us. They shouldn't be shooting us in the back as we walk down the street.

All right. Last topic to be discussed, and obviously I agree with everything you're saying, and I can see from the emails and because I know my audience that they agree with everything you're saying. I mean, how can we change the culture? I mean, you can't change culture overnight. No. It's got to be bottom-up people rejecting the government's glorifications of violence. It can't be top-down because government loves violence. Presidents love wars. We all know that war is the health of the state. I mean,

it's a famous one-liner, but it's absolutely true. So bottom up, changing the culture, what two or three things would you recommend? First of all, your children are being totally indoctrinated into a culture that's maniacal, and you're going to see more craziness. Take care of your children and get them away from so many video games and all that stuff. Spend some time not watching screen devices all the time and watching mainstream media. I don't watch any of that stuff. I got away from that. The other thing, and this is the key, local government governs best. Take over your city council. I call them civil liberties oversight committees.

Get together with your friends and start taking over those city council meetings, even though the FBI is going to label you an extremist for speaking at it. Stand up to your government. I think take the pressure and the pain that the people who really built this country took. We need to take the pressure and the pain too. Even we're going to get our head kicked. Anybody that's ever spoken out has gotten their head kicked. I'm getting my head kicked.

Judge, you get your head kicked. But we're going to stand up for freedom. Don't back down. Don't be a chicken. And make this country a better place for freedom. John Whitehead, you're a great human being. Thank you very much for joining us. Give my best to your lovely wife

Nisha Teller to keep the emails coming And my friends Thank you for watching Justin Paul Tenno for Judging Freedom Thank you, sir