Judging Freedom - Prof. Michael RectenwaldL What’s wrong with government?

Episode Date: October 19, 2023

Prof. Michael RectenwaldL What’s wrong with government?https://rectenwald2024.com/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 19th, 2023. By popular demand, and even by personal demand, because I've been such a fan of our next guest for so many years, Professor Michael Rechtenwald, formerly of New York University and now of Hillsdale College, joins us now. Professor Rechtenwald, it's a pleasure. I know you're busy. You have a lot on your plate, but thank you for sharing this time with us. It's my pleasure. Thanks so much for having me, Of course. You are a world-renowned historian, political philosopher. You are a serious libertarian.

You understand government. You understand the evils of government. You understand our unfortunate, not yours and mine and the people watching us, but most Americans' attachment to government. What's wrong with government today? Well, we have an overreaching central government, to say the least. I mean, we saw this with COVID and how all these dictates got pushed down into the states and local level, a complete arbitrary imposition of lockdowns and so forth, masking of children, just unbelievable stuff. And, you know, so we're

looking at a federal hegemon that has to be undone. We must get the power away from the federal government and vested in the people. Is it reasonable to expect when we have a federal government that thinks it can right any wrong and regulate any behavior and tax any event and insinuate itself into any process and fight any war that we could restrain the government or, as Jefferson once said, chain it down to the Constitution? Yes, I think we can starve it. We're going to have to starve it somehow. And I think, as I'll talk about later, I think this has to do with taking over our governments locally, taking over the township city halls, taking over the school boards, taking over the sheriffs and police. We need to get control at the local level. They have to drive their imperatives down into the fabric of society at the local level. And this is our only opportunity right now for resisting this regime.

Is government inherently, as Mises said, the negation of liberty, and it claims a monopoly over violence and the right to do to people what no other people can do to each other. That is, basically take their property at the point of a gun and wrest it from them and put it to whatever ends they want to put it to. So we're looking at the state as illegitimate, unethical, and completely really despotic entity. Is the Jeffersonian notion that the state exists by the consent of the governed. Just a myth. Has anybody consented to this overarching, monolithic, do what it wants, take what it wants monstrosity? And not really. I think that the idea of the social contract with reference to the state is entirely a myth. I mean, look, it's the only institution or entity, rather, that you have no power to revoke the relationship of.

That is, you're born into a family, you know, those circumstances of birth you can't change. But you can change relationships with any other person or entity on earth, but try to get out of the state. It won't let you out. I mean, it'll capture you from birth and it then proceeds to tax you throughout your life and rob you incessantly. Remember the Murray Rothbard analogy, you're sitting at home at night and there's a knock at the door and a guy with a

gun says, give me your money. I want to give it away in your name. And you say, I'm going to call the police. And they say, well, no, we work for the government. That's a very apt description and portrait of what the state does. Is there a realistic probability? I know anything's possible, but is there a realistic probability that in your lifetime and mine or of the generation or two behind us, of all the young people watching us now, that the government would be chained down, the federal government would be chained down to the Constitution? Or will it take something like the breakup of the Soviet Union, where maybe the southwestern part of the United States becomes another country and the crazies in the northeast become another

country? Well, it's only going to happen through localization, decentralization, and the resting of power away from the federal government, investing it in the people at the local level. This is not going to happen from a top-down standpoint. We're not going to usher in some white knight as president who will then completely dismantle the state and the federal government. This is not going to happen. Even the Heritage Foundation has this project called Project 2025, in which they're talking about dismantling the deep state. All it does is says that certain bureaucrats who have policy power

should be under the president's purview, but nothing really about dismantling the actual bureaucracy of the deep state, as it were. I might be talking to that white knight right now. I mean, you have made no secret about your wish to seek the libertarian nomination for president of the United States. If you get that wish, you probably will. You're a compelling thinker and candidate who has millions of fans. And if you are center stage in the fall of 2024, and if you're asked, what will you do to shrink the government down to the size mandated and theoretically restrained, theoretically, by the Constitution. How would you answer that question, Professor Recktenwald?

I would not go in by saying I'll eliminate this many jobs like Vivek Ramaswamy has said. I will not go in that way. I'll be targeting particular agencies right off the top, disappearing, dismantling and getting rid of the CIA, which has been a real oppressive apparatus used on citizens rather than in their protection. If we were in a theater, I'd be standing up and applauding you right now. And as I can tell from the comments, many people are. Hear, hear. Okay.

I had to say that. I don't mean to interrupt you. What else would you get rid of? Well, the FBI. I mean, it is an absolutely political sham right now, but it's always been an oppressive state apparatus used against citizens and not in their protection. Of course, I would audit and abolish the Fed, the Federal Reserve, which is a counterfeiting organization that has a monopoly on money that lends the U.S. government money on interest that's made up out of thin air. It's a

complete fraud. It has to be dismissed and gotten away with. It's got to be completely abolished. Would you maintain a standing army, or would you go back to the Jeffersonian model of only standing officers, but the regular army, like the Israelis, are citizen soldiers. Well, in an ideal world, we'd have nothing but private property, and then you'd have private property protection by private agencies, etc. But we don't live in that world. I would pull all the troops out of all, however many bases. 903 at last count. Yeah, 903 bases. They would all be pulled home.

Then you'd have to look at what we need for self-defense, and that's all that would remain. We should have nothing but a defensive military. This empire regime that we've attempted to foist on the world for all these years has failed. And it's bound to fail. It has no hope. And we've got to resume pulling back and getting our troops completely out of these bases and across the world in especially theaters of conflict. We're going to take a break with Professor Erektin Wood. When we come back, we'll talk about Israel and Ukraine. And we'll talk about this. Without him in the White House, starting tomorrow, is there a way to put the

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Let's send AARP a strong message that they don't represent conservative American seniors. Join AMAC today at amac.us forward slash judge. That's amac.us forward slash j-u-d-g-e. How can we avoid, evade, or even disable the Federal Reserve as private citizens? Well, it's very important that we build parallel economic networks using parallel currencies as a means to weaken the Fed. That is, we need to end the Federal Reserve, of course. But in the meanwhile, we can weaken its monopoly over money by using parallel currencies now. Give me an example. Well, obviously, Bitcoin is a good example. Bitcoin is a means for preserving and using your own wealth without having it constantly deflated by virtue of the endless printing of money by the Fed.

So in terms of Bitcoin, we must get rid of capital gains on it, of course. And we need to get it approved by the SEC as an EFT. We can't have the Bitcoin chained down like it is by the SEC. All right. Suppose we all began using a Bitcoin or banana peels or whatever we want to use as means of a currency. What would become of the central bank and its ability to touch deeply into our bank accounts? Right. This would be an implosion if we had this movement go very long, wide and across the country, we would see an implosion of the Federal Reserve by virtue of the fact that their de facto monopoly over money would be over. This is very, very much a project that is possible, you know, and I'm not adjudicating exactly which currencies people use. This would be up to the

networks that they're in. It could be gold-based. It could be gold leafs. It could be, as you said, banana peels. Whatever people will approve of and stake their word on, that's what can count in a network of producers and consumers. Later tonight, Professor Recton, while the President of the United States will address the country for only the second time from the Oval Office in prime time, and he's going to tell everyone that he's asking the Congress for $100 billion, with a B, to fund the war in Ukraine, to fund the Israelis as they fight off the monsters from Hamas, to fund whoever is running Taiwan, and to build a border wall. Why is that a bad idea? This is a total outrage. I mean, the U.S. has no money. First of all, we don't have any money. It's all fictitious.

And we must stop sending money and military aid and arms to these and other nations. This is an outrage. We are destroying the country internally. It's falling into pieces while we fund all these wars in Ukraine, in Israel, and now the idea of funding Taiwan in advance of any kind of Chinese incursion on them. So he's trying to float this omnibus bill that would fund all three theaters with military aid. And this is, you know, what he's hoping for is what he called jamming the far right by inserting Israeli aid into the package that includes Ukraine aid. And really, this is also jamming the left, if you will, too, because there are leftists that want to support Ukraine, but not Israel. I mean, they're both hypocrites, by the way.

And I think it's outrageous how the right-wing's part of it has been folded back into the neo-content by virtue of this Israeli conflict. I mean, these people have no principles, apparently. What is the American attraction to war? You know, that's a great question. And I think, look, the idea of killing people and so forth, I mean, has deep roots in the amygdala of the brain. And so war propaganda taps into part of the brain that overwrites the cognitive faculties of the individual. We need to manage our brains and be very wary of when they're trying to

manipulate you through this kind of rhetoric. This has to be taken care of. People need to have a conscience and cognitive faculties to overcome this propaganda that's being pummeled at us 24-7. So there's also, I think, an urge on the part of some Americans to have this global empire, this global world order, which is a nightmare and it's never worked. Everything that's been done to try to attain it has backfired. There's nothing but blowback. And Israel is going to see blowback as well as they already have. How can Joe Biden, your putative opponent in 2024, possibly justify the $100 billion, not that he's asking for tonight, but that he's already spent

and wasted in Ukraine? I mean, the Russians are within weeks of triumphing there. It is an unmitigated disaster diplomatically, militarily, and politically and financially for the president. And he has no off-ramp, Professor Recktenwald, unless he can divert our attention to Israel or Taiwan. Yeah, I think that's the actual play that they're making here is to try to smuggle this $90 billion to Ukraine, along with this $10 billion to Israel, which of course supplements the rockets, small diameter bombs, and now troops and fleets outside of Israel on the coast and in the water. So this is just really a real jam on the right and left, on the hard left, that is. And it's a very sinister and cynical move that's being attempted, and it needs to be called out. We need people to understand that they don't need to cheer on and support these wars to be patriotic.

In fact, it's quite the opposite. It would be patriotic to conserve wealth and allow people to spend the money however they want. I mean, I heard maybe two examples of people that disagree with you and me on just about everything. Lindsey Graham and trying to forget his name, tall, thin Harvard Law graduate from Arkansas, U.S. senator, who, of course, want to give a lot of money to Ukraine and a lot of money to Israel. Let them give their own money. People want to give money to the government of Israel to fight off Hamas, a legitimate expenditure of money money to the government of Israel to fight off Hamas, a legitimate expenditure of money, or the government of Ukraine to resist the Russian incursion. Let them give their own money. Why should the government take it from the rest of us and force

it out of us? There's nobody saying that you can't use your own money, you know, charity, if you will, to fund whatever you'd like. And you can also go over there and fight if you'd like. And I would encourage these politicians like Graham and others that are beating the war drums. You get on. You get the uniform on and go over. Let's see you do it. And quit calling for the United States to intervene in every theater that we can conjure up. Senator whose name I was struggling to remember, Senator Tom Cotton, he and Lindsey Graham, conservative Republican neocons really never met a war that they didn't like. Professor Rechtenwald, here's another Murray Rothbardism for you.

Yes. Is taxation theft? Absolutely. Without question, taxation is basically robbery at the point of a gun. If you don't pay your taxes, the federal government will come down on you like a ton of bricks. And this is obviously theft. You don't make, there's no contract. The state is the only organization that we don't have a contract with that can extort money out of us against our will. There's no other entity on earth, no corporation, nothing. So really, yes, it's absolute theft. If folks want to know more about your presidential campaign or support you or reach

your team, how would they do that, Professor Recktenwald? Yes, they can go to wrecktheregime.com. That's R-E-C-the-regime.com. And also they can follow me on Twitter at Wreck the Regime. We're out to wreck the regime from the bottom up. We're going to make it implode. This is what we need to do. Professor Michael Recktenwald, it's a pleasure to have you on, my dear friend. I hope you'll come back and be a regular with us. Thank you so much, Judge.

I'd love to. Of course. All the best. More as we get it, my dear friends, at 2.30 this afternoon, which is just a few, Eastern time, which is just a few minutes from now, Colonel Douglas McGregor, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.