Judging Freedom - Prof. Michael Rectenwald: The Dangers of Unrestrained Government

Episode Date: October 26, 2023

Judge Napolitano endorses Professor Rectenwald as the Libertarian Party candidate for President.About:Michael Rectenwald is a distinguished fellow at Hillsdale College. He was a Professor of Liberal Studies and Global Liberal Studies at NYU from 2008 to 2019. He also taught at Duke University, North Carolina Central University, Carnegie Mellon University, and Case Western Reserve University. His scholarly and academic essays have appeared in The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, Academic Questions, Endeavour, The British Journal for the History of Science, College Composition and Communication, International Philosophical Quarterly, the De Gruyter anthologies Organized Secularism in the United States and Global Secularisms in a Post-Secular Age, and the Cambridge University Press anthology George Eliot in Context, among others. He holds a Ph.D. in Literary and Cultural Studies from Carnegie Mellon University, a Master's in English Literature from Case Western Reserve University, and a B.A. in English Literature from the University of Pittsburgh. 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 Thursday, October 26th, 2023. Professor Michael Rechtenwald, formerly of NYU, now of Hillsdale College, joins us now. Professor Rechtenwald is also seeking the Libertarian nomination for President of the United States, is also an intellectual colleague and a friend of mine. Professor Rechtenwald, welcome back to the show. Thanks for having me, Judge. Great to be here. Of course. I am happy to endorse your candidacy and encourage my libertarian friends and colleagues and those who know me and know my work to look seriously at it and to support it. You are a serious, prudent, well-established person who understands and explains the dangers of government and the

primacy of the individual. And I think you are more than prepared to make that argument across the country. Thank you so much, Judge. I really appreciate that endorsement and I will live up to it and to the best of my ability and let's go for it. Good. I want to talk to you about Israel and Hamas in a few minutes, but I first want to talk about big picture. I mean, how do you restrain government? You have a Congress now, now that the Republicans have finally agreed on a Speaker of the House, which is just going to continue to borrow and spend us into oblivion, which will no doubt pass President Biden's $100 billion deal to give money to Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan,

and to build a wall at the border between Mexico and Texas. They'll borrow that money from the Chinese, and then they'll get the Fed to come up with the fake money to to pay interest or they'll borrow the money that they'll use to pay the interest. How can you, if you win, stop that cycle? You're still going to have a Congress of Chuck Schumer's and Kevin McCarthy's. You're not going to have a Congress of Thomas Massey's and Rand Paul's. Exactly. That's the case. And so what we have the power to do is to wrest power from the central government and vest it at the local level with the people. And so we need to resist the federal government. In the meanwhile, of course, we need to end the Fed,

and that's the ultimate objective, because the Fed is, of course, funding all these wars, and the endless supply of money makes all of this possible. In the meanwhile, what we need to do is build a movement that weakens the Fed from the ground up by encouraging the use of parallel currencies. And parallel currencies would allow the end of the monopoly over money by the Fed eroding at their power base. Of course, none of this can be done overnight, and I'm not making false promises.

If I were to get into office, I would try to float a bill to end the Fed, of course. But in the meanwhile, we need to be building a movement that erodes its power from the ground up. But one of your great assets is the ability to explain all this so that folks who do not have your education can understand it. As I see it, the problem, of course, is the Fed, but the problem is also the mindset of big government. What do you do when they send you a $7 trillion budget, veto it, and they override your veto? What can you do? And under the Supreme Court cases, you can't even not spend it. You must spend what they give you. Stated differently, I hate to ask you this, but I have to. Is the cause hopeless? Well, as long as we're alive and we are still kicking and can take actions on our own

part, I don't ever give up hope. But let's be realistic here. What is possible is not toppling the state from the top down. It is not possible to, you know, I'm not riding into Washington, D.C. as a white knight who will topple the state and begin to dismantle its various organs, which has to be done. But in the meanwhile, we have power to take action at the local level. And we have the power to try to wrest power from the Fed and the federal government by putting power in the people at the local level and wresting away from the central government. And this is not an overnight process. This is going to be a large movement.

And that's why I say my campaign is more than a campaign. It's a movement to undermine the federal government. We can't expect to have the kinds of people in office, in Congress and the Senate that we would like. They're not liberty-minded people. There are a few, as you pointed out, but we can't expect that. So we have to take action ourselves. We need to do something ourselves to take, to wrest this power away from the state. Do you think the American public,

sick and tired of Democrats and Republicans, big government both. There are some progressives in the Democratic Party that respect civil liberties, and there are some libertarians in the Republican Party, I'm talking about in Congress, that respect the Constitution. But 95% of those people don't. They think the Congress can write any law and regulate any behavior and tax any event. You're going to go over their heads. My question, do you think the American public is ready for this argument? Well, they need to, you know, that's why I think the Libertarian Party needs an educator in the, as the leader for the party right now. And that's my specialty. I've been an educator for 30 years. I know how to reach people where they are and to bring them around to the kind of thinking that's necessary to really make the case for liberty and to make it strongly and to make people understand what liberty is and how to attain it.

And that's going to take time. And that's what this campaign is partially about, which is educating the public about liberty itself and what the federal government stands in the way of. It stands in the way of our liberty, and we need to make it clear that liberty is the object, not something that's a byproduct of the state. It's actually something that we have intrinsic to ourselves and that we need to exercise. How dangerous is it for the President of the United States to send 20 ships, including two aircraft carriers and 2,000 Marines, into the Red Sea,

one aircraft carrier and 10 ships, and into the eastern Mediterranean? There's no declaration of war from the Congress. There may be general consent under the Congress because of a feeling of affinity for Israel and that somehow this will help Israel. I think it's going to cause a bigger war, which will end up hurting Israel. But how dangerous is this, Professor Recktenwald? It's extremely pernicious. We're looking at something that's quite perilous. So what is happening here is that the U.S. at Israel's behest is effectively baiting Iran and Hezbollah and even Hamas to attack American soldiers, which would draw the United States

into an official war with these parties. This would be then the possibility of leading to a worldwide conflagration that involves even the prospects of Russia and even China as an outside chance of getting involved. So they're trying to establish a new kind of world war axis and ally powers, and this would be the perfect setup for doing it it's it's just outlandish so i mean i'm calling on the united states and uh specifically mike johnson not to pass any bills that funds uh any further israel uh with arms or money military uh aid so that we can talk uh bring down the ratchet down the rhetoric and the escalation here. We should not be escalating

this conflict. I assume that when you say no more money for Israel, you're talking about Ukraine as well. Absolutely. They're sandwiching these two in together along with, as you mentioned, Taiwan, which is a provocation to China. I mean, is there some war going on in Taiwan that you and I don't know about? Where did they come up with Taiwan? Who else do they want to provoke next? It's ridiculous. So they're saber-rattling at China for a long time here. It seems that they want to draw China into a war, which is just an outrage. It's unbelievable. So they're looking at wars on three fronts if they have their way. That's what these neocons in both parties seem to be dead set in bringing about,

which is just unbelievable. We need to nix this bill. We need to put pressure on these representatives not to pass it. We need to stand up and make sure that people's voices are heard. But first we got to get a lot of people who were previously on this very ephemeral anti-right kick for a while against the war in Ukraine and post-hoc against the war in Iraq. We need to bring these people over to have them see the light here because they're cheerleading this on, and that is in direct opposition. The powers that be cannot rule without our consent, and we need to revoke that consent entirely. I don't think you have to worry about losing Lindsey Graham's vote because you never had it in the first place. But what would you say to him? yelling and screaming at one of my colleagues from Newsmax because she asked a perfectly legitimate question about progressives in the House of Representatives refusing to support Israel. And he asked that the report to be thrown out of the room. And then he said, oh, and by the way, I told the president he should be bombing Tehran, bombing Tehran. Bombing Tehran. What do you say to a person like that who goes abroad as an official

of the United States government on the government's taxpayer's dime and says the most provocative, warmongering things imaginable? I tell him that we're going to look into his financial statements and to figure out exactly what he has at stake here. Who is he getting kickbacks from in the military industrial complex? And also, I'd say, suit up yourself and go over if you think we should be fighting these countries and these parties. Enough of the sidelined chicken hawk rhetoric here that we're hearing from these neocon Republicans and Democrats. This has to stop. of spending in one bill, so much so that nobody can read it. The continuing resolution under which the government is operating now for 45 days, nearing the end of the 45 days, by the way, already, was 1,200 pages long, and they had about 15 minutes to read it. One member of Congress was

so upset, as you know, it appears he pulled a fire alarm in order to get everybody to run out of the building so they couldn't hold the vote so they'd have time to read it. That's extreme and dangerous and criminal. He's been charged for it, but you can understand the motivation. What is a president to do when the same piece of legislation, without a line item veto, when the same piece of legislation that funds the courts and funds the Defense Department also gives away hundreds of billions in ways that are not even arguably constitutional. He sends it back and let them overwrite the veto, if they will, just to show what they are, who they are, and what they're up to. You have to nix it. You can't pass such a bill, even if the courts shut down. I would hope that the Congress does not pass this

next spending bill that is aimed at Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan. And then again, that they shut down the government by getting rid of the speaker if necessary, because we're better off without a speaker. Oh, God, man, I could not agree with you more. Those four weeks without the House of Representatives meeting, you could sleep at night. You didn't have to worry about any more regulations or any more taxes. The government was stopped in its own tracks by its own rules and its own lethargy, and it couldn't move. It's better off to shut it down than to let it do what it's doing, that's for sure. And everything in my campaign is about dismantling the state and all of its apparatuses. What would you do about the tendency, I think I know the answer, but I'll ask you anyway, of every modern president from Harry Truman to Joe Biden, including JFK, to use military violence without authorization from the Congress.

Now, Congress has only declared war, not in your lifetime or mine. Last time they declared war was December 8th, 1941. We all know what that was about. But Congress has given limited authority here, authorization to use military force. It has looked the other way there. Barack Obama destroyed the government of Libya and Libyan society, used the CIA to do it so he didn't have to report it under the War Powers Resolution. Give us your thoughts on all of that. Why do presidents kill?

You know, that's a great question. Why do presidents kill? You know, they're trying to extend the power of the state as much as they can, and they're using force to do it. And also, they're probably involved in the military industrial complex themselves. And they want to see the state exercise its powers of coercion and murder across the globe. This is just unbelievable. So these authorizations for the use of military force, AUMFs, should be revoked. This is a ridiculous notion that we can go to war over such authorizations. It should be a vote in Congress and force these people's hands to show where they stand in terms of real declarations of war, rather than these so-called limited authorizations, which are never limited at all. Well, you're right, they're never limited at all. When President Trump used a drone to kill an Iranian general on his way to have lunch with an Iraqi general friend and an ally of ours at a restaurant in Baghdad. He used the authorization for use of military force

as a justification for that killing. So, you know, presidents and their legal advisors will come up with all kinds of creative nonsense in order to justify all kinds of killing. When Barack Obama, President Obama used a drone to kill Anwar al-Awlaki and his son. Mr. Awlaki was born in New Mexico. The son was born in Virginia. The two of them were seated at an outdoor cafe in Yemen having a cup of tea. And he sent a drone to vaporize both of them, and they were literally vaporized. He felt he had the authority to do it under the authorization for use of military force. It's simply horrific what presidents have done and what Congresses have let them get away with. Unbelievably so.

So, you know, this is all based on a failed imperialist policy of building empire around the world, intervening in every conflict, which brings up more interventions and more interventions, which adds to the power of the state, and we become a warfare state. And we get ourselves entangled in all these various regions, and then have to solve the problem that we started. This is the whole neocon project, and even further back, an imperialist project that has completely failed the American people, has robbed them of money while killing other people across the globe. It is a complete

crime against us and humanity at large. This has to stop. We need a policy that is non-interventionist. That doesn't mean so-called isolationism. And that's the term they try to use to say, oh, well, what are you going to do? Just not trade with people? No, we're not saying that. In fact, I'm saying the opposite. Build relations through trade, through commerce, and not through warfare. A couple of specific questions. The FBI, what would you do with it? I would abolish it. And what would the feds use to investigate federal crimes? There are 5,500. The Constitution authorizes two. There are 5,500 federal criminal statutes. How would the DOJ operate without an FBI? The whole thing would need to be rebuilt from the ground up. Right now, we're not talking about an agency that actually protects Americans.

It's actually an oppressive agency that is being used against Americans, whether innocent or not. So this apparatus of the state must be dismantled. And then we'll see what we have and what we need. But it's not going to work by trying to reform this utterly corrupt, politicized, and oppressive state apparatus. How about the CIA, which Harry Truman created in 1947 and condemned and renounced in 1963? Yeah, I mean, it has to be abolished. The CIA has done the most pernicious things imaginable, and some are unimaginable. The things they have done to people are just unbelievable. Not only have they toppled regimes across the world, all kinds of regimes, whether they be communist or otherwise, they've toppled all kinds of leaders everywhere, coups around the world, including facilitating

the one in Ukraine, which has led to this particular conflict. They've also done experiments on human subjects in the United States, like MKUltra and others. I mean, these people are monsters. This agency needs to go entirely. Professor Recton, well, when do you hit the road? When do we start seeing ads for you? And when do you start addressing thousands of people about the primacy of the individual over the state? I'm on the road now. I'm speaking at various functions right now. It's within the Libertarian Party. But when I hit the general election, I'll be speaking to broader audiences all over the country. We have an events coordinator that's setting up events. And there's a very distinct possibility that I'll be

debating in the near future, Vivek Ramaswamy. And that will be a very interesting debate because he's a statist at base, even though he has some positions that seem libertarian per se. Professor Michael Rechtenwald, I'm with you. I salute you. I encourage libertarians to support you. Wish you well, and I hope you'll come back here. Thank you so much, Judge. Great to be here. Of course. All the best. Coming up later this afternoon, Professor Jeffrey Sachs at three o'clock and at 4.30, Scott Ritter, Eastern Times. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. judging freedom. Thank you.