Judging Freedom - Vaccine Mandates & the Law with Brian Wilson

Episode Date: October 22, 2021

Judge Napolitano talks to Brian Wilson about vaccine mandates. How can governors and the president just write their own laws?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hello there, everybody, and welcome to Judging Freedom. Judge Andrew Napolitano here. Thank you for listening and watching my new podcast where I get to think what I want and say what I think and speak to all kinds of people, people that I like and agree with, such as our guest today, people that I like and disagree with, people that I dislike and disagree with for another show at another time. Today is my dear friend and colleague, Brian Wilson. Brian has been in radio in the United States for a long time. One of his partners along that radio career path of his was a young unknown guy named Rush Limbaugh. Brian had me on as a regular guest for many years,

and Brian is responsible for the name of this podcast because Brian named the segment he and I did with him once or twice a week, Judging Freedom. And once I left Fox, it seemed like a good way to draw attention to myself. Brian, welcome. Welcome to the show that you baptized and named. Well, I'm glad it's in such good hands, Judge. It's good to see you.

You're very kind. You're very kind. The vaccine mandates don't seem to want to go away. I want to get your thoughts on it. My article this week, which is not yet out, but will be out at LewRockwell.com and Townhall.com and a variety of other places comes out on Thursday, argues that Governor Abbott's edicts are as unconstitutional as President Biden's edict. Well, Biden has a signed his edict. Yeah, but the one he's threatened to sign, the one that Governor Abbott of Texas has signed,

prohibits private businesses from asking or compelling their employees to show proof of vaccination. So this is on private property. The one Biden has threatened to sign requires private businesses to be assured of the vaccine, both on private property. My argument is this is interference with private property, one for a noble purpose to support conscience, the other for an ignoble purpose to support conformity. What do you think? Well, I have to say that I've given it a lot of thought to the whole business of the mandates and so on.

I haven't focused down, as they say, drilled down into the governor's specifics. I understand how it works right about this morning. I know it's front of SCOTUS and blah, blah, blah. But in the bigger picture, something that you've touched on in previous podcasts with Jacob and with Nick and so on, this whole business of the mandates, as you just mentioned, the mandate doesn't even exist. And you have businesses and people and schools and mayors and governors and all of this other running around as if it did,

which kind of is a puzzle in and of itself. Just the application of the term mandate from a president in a constitutionally limited republic where power originates with the people. What the hell is that all about? I mean, the whole thing is just upside down. So I said, well, why are they doing that? I think the short answer is contained in the punchline from a somewhat

obscene joke. Why does a dog do some of the things that dogs are noted for doing? Because it can. Exactly. Exactly. By the way, that might have been obscene at one point. It's rather commonplace today. Yeah. One liner. I used a one liner about dogs in my article that's coming out in two days.

If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have? And everybody says five. No, the answer is four. Because calling a tail a leg doesn't make a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have? And everybody says five. No, the answer is four, because calling a tail a leg doesn't make a tail a leg. So calling an edict or a mandate the law doesn't make it the law. I mean, this is not something legislated by Congress or, in Governor Abbott's case, the legislature of Texas. This is something that two people in the executive branch, President Biden, Governor Abbott, wrote on their own. And the last time I checked under the separation of powers, the people's representatives, the legislative branch writes the law, not the executive branch. Exactly. And that's thanks to, you know, your articles,

our conversations, your books that you're over here in my bookcase. I mean, that's a lesson Julie learned that was not inculcated in my government classes at school or anything like history lessons. And it's always been, I think we may have had this discussion a couple of years ago over dinner or whatever. I've gotten fired a number of times, which is, it's just par for the course in radio because I asked why, right? Why, why do you want me to do this? You say I'm going to get better ratings if I stand on my head and whistle

Dixie with a mouthful of graham crackers. How do you know that? So I got to looking into this and I think the, the, we know that, that, that elected people the most part, are sociopaths, power hungry and all the rest. We know about Lord Acton's famous power corrupts and so on, but what is the why? And I came across the author of an expression I had known for a while that goes, in the end, we will love only what we know, and we will know only what we are taught. That was a guy named Baba Dayam,

if I'm pronouncing it correctly, who his history is rather interesting, he had nothing to do with philosophy, I think he was actually a forester in Spain, well, wherever he was from, you know, it doesn't really matter. But to come to the point, because the thing that's even more puzzling to me is not just the mandates being issued by people who have no authority to do that, as you said, and outside the realm of the legislative, executive, judicial branches that we understand. But more importantly, why are people obeying them?

Yes, that is the $64,000 question. Why are people complying? My answer is they're complying. It has nothing to do with government or the separation of powers. They're complying out of fear. You know, the government uses fear as a motivator and the government likes to give the impression it's doing something. We will even kill people out of fear. We will surveil people out of fear. We will monitor your every keystroke on your mobile device and your laptop out of fear to keep you safe. So people like Abbott, and I say this as somebody who generally agrees with him more than I disagree, and Joe Biden, somebody with whom I'm more likely to disagree than agree,

are trying to feed their bases and are using fear. If you don't do this, you're going to get sick and die. And if you don't believe me, there's Tony Fauci here. And if you do do this, you're going to destroy your freedom. And Texas is the land of the free and the home of the brave. And nobody's going to destroy our freedom, even if we have to tell you what to do on private property. What do you think? Fear the motivator? The motivator for obedience, for compliance, not the motivator for the diktat.

The motivation for the diktat is people in government suffer from libido dominandi. They have the lust to tell others how to live. They have the lust to dominate. Well, like I said, as we've discovered most of the time, you know, our response to each other is, well, I agree with that. I don't agree with that. Of course we agree. We're on the same page. Whatever. But I was trying to, in that expression that this fellow, Diane, came up with, you know, we only love what we know

and know what we're taught. And then factoring in the why. Why are people caving? Why are, you know, so on. I thought, well, if we only love, if we only know what we're taught, well, then who's our teacher? Who's the teacher? Who's the, who is with us every day're taught, well, then who's our teacher? Who's the teacher? Who is with us every day, everywhere, anywhere, all the time, 24-7, 365?

Who teaches us what's good, what's bad, what's moral, what's immoral, what the cool kids are doing? And the only thing I come up with is the media. It's the media. It's always the politicians know that. So they feed the lesson plan to the ap the ap puts it on the proper form sends it out to abc nbc cbs npr fox cnn sometimes and so on and so we're all taught the same lesson the same day let me let me add a little nuance to that okay we are

also taught the same basics which thanks to Woodrow Wilson, comes through the public school system. And that is not that the government is bad, not that the government is essentially the negation of liberty, but that the government is your friend and you should embrace and respect authority. So with those basics in the 98% of us that are graduates of the public school system in the United States, we now have a media leapfrogging on the back of that. What do you think about that? Yeah, that was the next stage of my own trying to noodle this whole thing out. You have the media, then you've got the basis with the help from the public school system. Of course, now you have to factor in social media and all the nonsense, sometimes good, sometimes bad,

sometimes accurate, sometimes not, that comes out of that. And then getting back to something you said earlier that I think is also the fear factor that they motivate of that. And then getting back to something you said earlier that I think is also by the fear factor that they motivate us with. That is all based on this great big hairball of through the is ignorance. Yeah. We're ignorant. You know, the massive amount of ignorance out there based on all of this that goes in the great sausage grinder, you know, the media, the government, all that produces what comes out,

which is the popular narrative that everybody is buying into. Of course, once it's on TV or once on the Internet. Well, now it's now it's validated. So I saw it on the Internet. I saw it on TV. There are people who say it or Fauci or whomever. So therefore, it must be true. And therefore, so based on my ignorance and their misinformation and sometimes outright lies, now you've got the crap scared out of me.

And I'm going to do anything you tell me to do. So let's look at an example of this. Chicago, the most lawless, most murderous of the major cities in the United States of America. The governor, the mayor, Lori Lightfoot, has issued an edict effective today. If you're not, and you're a police officer and you're not vaccinated, don't expect a paycheck. One third of the cops in Chicago are not vaccinated. So is she crazy? First of all, it's unlawful for them to work without a paycheck. It's unlawful. And she knows that she's a former federal prosecutor. It's a federal statute. It is unlawful for her to expect them to work without a paycheck. But if she doesn't pay that one third and that one third of the cops in Chicago does not come to work, then the most law statute, but because they exercise their conscience to defy a mayoral edict. That is going to have horrific consequences, everyday consequences, mainly for the poor.

Well, once again, no argument. I keep coming back to whether it's Lightfoot or whether it was Whitmer or Cuomo or Newsom or whatever. How do these people, not only how do they do it, not only why do they do it, but how do they continue to do it? You know, where are the courts? Where are the Republicans? Where are people? Now, we're seeing it a little bit, think which is uh makes my heart go pity pat when i see these school board meetings and loudon county and things like that where parents are

actually standing up and getting dragged off to jail and things like that for speaking the democrats believe one in particular former chair of the democratic national committee former governor of virginia now running for re-election you know, Virginia politics better than I do, that parents should not have any say in what their kids are taught. None whatsoever. And so you kind of wonder, well, now that parents are starting to speak up, you know, what took so long? And that expands to the bigger question. How much longer is the American public, even the ones that are on the ignorant side, even the ones that are, you know, that maybe like the guy that's in the White House. How much longer are they going to put up with this?

I mean, when you can't go to work, can't go to school, can't go to birthday parties, can't go to funerals, can't go to weddings, can't go to football games. I mean, you can't do a damn thing. I think it was Illinois or Michigan, Michigan, where for a while there, there was a man that said, you couldn't go, I couldn't come over to your farm and hang out and make maple syrup. I mean, things like that. It was, not only how do they do it, not only why do they do it,

not only why do people continue to be intimidated and follow that, but then you get to the end of the road and you say, well, how much longer is this going to go on? I have argued that and I've had conversations here in Northwest New Jersey where we don't have local police departments. We have the state police. So the state police are effectively the local police. So you sort of get to know them.

I have had conversations with them. Don't you guys remember that it is unlawful to obey an unlawful order? Answer. Yes, we do. But who's going to be the first to break the mold? Answer. Do you really think we enjoy going into a gym at three in the morning to see if people are using it when the governor says it should be closed. Well, does it occur to you that the governor doesn't have the authority to do this and that you're using your badge and your gun to enforce something that's not a law? Again, who's going to be the first one to break the mold? I mean, this is what I'm going to say now. The Soviet Union fell when the police got sick

and tired of obeying their masters. Well, and you can take it even one step further. Not just the people waiting for that moment, if that were ever to happen. But you take Lightfoot, your example there is that she knows

it's wrong. She's going to do it anyway. Whitmer knew it was wrong, did it there is that she knows it's wrong. She's going to do it anyway. Whitmer knew it was wrong, did it anyway. Cuomo knew it was wrong, did it anyway. What was the current SCOTUS decision about the stay in Mexico, the Trump policy about Jersey, who told my then colleague, Tucker Carlson, who said to him, what about the Bill of Rights? Because Murphy was dispersing peaceful assemblies that had more than 25 cars. They wouldn't let you out of your car. So if you wanted to protest, Murphy, you had to protest from in your car. But they had the police counting the car.

Carlson says, what about the Bill of Rights, Governor Murphy? The Bill of Rights? That's above my pay grade. Wait a minute. You took an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, which includes the Bill of Rights. Well, maybe that means it's also above his IQ. Those are the things that really, they've got me, you know, puzzling and, you know, and chewing on all this to try and come up with answers, which, of course, I count on you for in this podcast, you know, when we get into this. And it also concerns me that we're asking an awful lot of questions. We're not getting an awful lot of pragmatic answers. You know, you can spot, for example, you pick up any one of your books, you know, and see, well, the Constitution says

this, the Constitution doesn't say this, doesn't say that, this is right, this is wrong, this is wrong, this is right. Okay, now what? And then there's, and it's like you said, and I guess, you know, the large part of the answer is in the question that you gave to the state trooper, the Jersey state trooper. Who's going to take the first shot? Right. Who's going to make the first move? Who's going to break the mold? Who's going to say no?

You know, who's going to, you know, I like to see some cops at those Loudoun County Board of Education meetings. Some guy's going off on them and you just let them just stand there. Of course, now you've got FBI agents that are supposed to be going in on that too and you say how again how long oh lord are we going to put up with this how long will why is the fbi at a board of education meeting unless they're there to protect freedom of speech but the local police can do that is the fbi there to intimidate parents you know there's a Supreme Court case involving FBI literally sticking their cameras in their noses in the face of anti-war press protesters. So this goes back to the Nixon era. That's called chilling when the government makes

its presence so obvious it's trying to deter people from exercising their freedom of speech. Well, do you get the sense, based on all of this, based on your conversation with the state trooper, based on the ignoring of the Remain in Mexico doctrine, on the basis of sending the FBI into local school boards and so on, it's almost, remember that Office Depot commercial where at the end it said, I hit the button, it said, that was easy. So they've installed one of those in Washington. It's only they call it the ignore button. The Supreme Court says this. So the Constitution says that.

And they just go ahead and do it anyway. There's the story this morning, the New York Post of the Biden administration, secretly, at least to the point, they're not telling anybody made any mention of it are flying these kids adolescents out of Texas, these illegal immigrants, flying them all over the country flying into New Jersey, Westchester Airport two o'clock in the morning, and then to be picked up by people in street close and being driven off anywhere from to Dover to

Newton to maybe down to Tallahassee, but all over the place. And yet at the same token, kids in school having to wear face masks while the president goes to the restaurant without a face mask. I'm sure you've seen all these stories and these inconsistencies, these double standards, these contradictions, this hypocrisy.

It just seems to be ratcheting up the thermostat of human- Ryan, I am shocked that you get the New York Post in southern Georgia. We sometimes can't even get it here in northern New Jersey. I've got a guy, he pedals all the way down here from Manhattan. Actually, I did see this morning, and in the Post, those photographs are stunning. Photographs taken at like 3 in the morning at the Westchester County Airport,

which is basically an airport for the wealthy because of all their private jets, sort of like Teterboro here in northern New Jersey, parading these kids off these planes. Now, how the Post knew when the planes were going to land and how they knew when to take the pictures, only the Post knows. But it's in there. It's in there. Full black and color to see yeah i think it was in the i think it was kind of buried in the story that uh there were some residents there

there were these planes going overhead at two o'clock in the morning driving them crazy and they called them so what the hell's going on it was ordinarily the airport was closed at night so when you mentioned something earlier and later, I want to tie them together before we leave. What can we do? And one of your questions, which I haven't really heard asked before, was where are the Republicans? Yeah. Where are they? Where are the small government people? I don't mean libertarians like you and me and Nick Gillespie and Ron Paul and our friends at Mises and Jacob Hornberger, because we preach this stuff every day. But where are Republican officeholders challenging this stuff?

I would imagine Republican officeholders in Texas agree with the governor, even though he is invading property rights. Republicans in Congress, where are they challenging the president's mandates? He didn't ask the Congress for legislation. He's stepping on their branch of the government, and nobody's saying anything. Well, that raises another question within something else I was mentioning earlier, and that is in the media as our teacher for all we know, you know, Republicans in federal law, in government, congressmen, senators, in every state in the union could be yelling their lungs out.

But like the tree that falls in a forest, if there's no one there to hear it, does it make a noise if there isn't a microphone on the camera in front of Rand Paul or any of the rest of these people, you know, to, you know, to catch it, you know, are you going to hear about it? And invariably, if it does make a headline somewhere, it's going to get twisted into something derogatory. Or like NBC the other night, they just, you know, do a little snip on the tape and eliminate, you know,

the vital parts of the story and present it as something that it's not. And Joe and Jane Sixpack are sitting out there. Right, Lester. Got you, Lester. Got you, Lester. Okay, we're done. Brian, it's a joy to be with you. I almost forgot how much fun it is. I hope we can do it on a regular basis.

Thanks very much for joining us today. Give me a call. Always fun talking to you, Judge. I love your library. Thank you. And thank you, my dear friends, for listening to what Brian Wilson named judging freedom. All the best.