Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 12/12/23 Jim Bovard on the Death of American Liberty

Episode Date: December 15, 2023

Scott is joined by Jim Bovard to discuss his new book Last Rights: The Death of American Liberty. They talk about Bovard’s approach to writing, the Covid hysteria, how easily the government can seize property, gun control, Waco and the time Bovard got kicked out of a Supreme Court hearing. Discussed on the show: Last Rights: The Death of American Liberty by Jim Bovard Attention Deficit Democracy by Jim Bovard “Government tyranny comes to Main Street, with the feds more powerful than ever” (New York Post) “The Crazy Covid Copulation Exemption” (Brownstone Institute) Jim Bovard is a columnist for USA Today and the author of Last Rights: The Death of American Liberty. Find all of his books and read his work on his website and follow him on Twitter @JimBovard. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Moon Does Artisan Coffee; Roberts and Robers Brokerage Incorporated; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, you guys, Scott Horton here to remind you that it's fun drive time at the Institute right now. We only do this twice a year, but it's got to be done. And I'm proud to do it, too. We've got an incredible crew of the best writers, authors, and podcasters in the Libertarian Movement. From Jim Bovard, Lori Calhoun, Tom Woods, and Ted Carpenter, to Keith Knight, Kyle Anzalone, Hunter Durenc, Connor Freeman, and all the rest of the guys. It's the best team around. We've published three books this year. Keith Knight's Voluntaryist Handbook, Lori Calhoun's questioning the COVID company line,

and Joseph Solis Mullins, the fake China threat. And here any day now, we will be publishing Thomas E. Woods' Diary of a Psychosis, Jim Bovard's Last Rights, and Keith Knight's latest, domestic imperialism. That makes 13 books so far, with more coming in the new year, including my new one, provoked how Washington started the new Cold War with Russia and the catastrophe in Ukraine, which I know is already overlong and overdue, but I'm working on it, I promise. And which brings me to the point, we don't have a big glass office building in downtown Washington. The money we raise goes straight to payroll and book production costs, and that's about it.

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author of the book, Pools Aaron, time to end the war in Afghanistan, and the brand new enough already time to end the war on terrorism and i've recorded more the 5,500 interviews since 2003 almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton.4 you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton show hey you guys check it out brand new from the institute this is not an ad this is the interview Last Rights, the death of American Liberty by our senior fellow, the great James Bovard, author of A Lost Rights, The Destruction of American Liberty.

This is the update, nearly 30 years later, 29. Welcome back to the show, Jim. How are you doing? Hey, doing good, Scott. Thanks for having me on. Really happy to have you here. Boy, you sure do write books a lot. Really good ones. Well, it's the part of the terms of my parole. Yeah, well, good. Keep you out and at Liberty here with us. So also, I am the executive producer of this book. I don't really get the credit other than helping manage all the great guys who helped produce it. But the Libertarian Institute published this thing. And we are so proud of it. And I'm holding it in my hands. And I'll tell you a story, too, Jim, is my buddy Mike from the real world was hanging out over at the house. And man, he loves him. some Bovard. So I says to him, I says, hey, Mike, check it out right there on the shelf. You know, I have them all facing out for when I'm on videos and things like that.

And he goes, oh, man, new Bovard. And I go, yeah, dude, that one's for you. And he goes, oh, because I had already explained to him about last rights and lost rights and this and that and the update and all that. And so he was like, oh, this is it. And he was so stoked. And took that book right with him and I'm sure got cracking on it as soon as he got home. That's great. That's great. You have quite a reputation, sir. Yeah, the term I used a while back, you and I were talking about this, and I said that Scott Horton is a libertarian dictator who makes the book train run on time.

There you go. That's right. You had done a great job of helping, spurring things along. That's a nice term. Spurring things along. And it was great to work with Ben Parker and Mike Dewarski and Grant Smith and you. and I'm really glad that we could overcome all the curses of MS Word and all the other challenges on the road to publication.

Yeah, man, we did. And we should all be very proud, especially you, because you wrote the thing. But, yeah, great editors in Ben and Mike, and of course, Harley, with all his help in the production, and Grant Smith, as always. Harley was really good. I should have mentioned him.

Yep. And you did mention Grant, but, you know, Grant has prepared every book we've ever published for its final publication action Jackson there stages and, of course, is a great friend of the show over there from the Institute for Research, Middle Eastern Policy. So, yeah, man, so tell me, last rights, the death of American Liberty. What's it about? Well, I was just, you know, I had the impression there are some people out there who still try to use positive thinking about politicians. And I was just trying to cure that habit because, you know, positive thinking about your

own life, about your own capacity, about your friends, you can do that. You start thinking positive about government. Pretty soon you're going to be wearing, you know, fetters and chains and 98% tax rate and some rascal coming by and seizing your bank account. and it's much wiser to be cynical about people with power over you than to be blindly trusting them. You got that right. And man, this thing is such a red pill.

All your books are, you know, feeling your pain. You know it's going to be brutal. It's got evil Bill Clinton on the front. And, you know, all of them are like that. You read the thing and you're just like, oh, man, I've always sung the highest praise. my very favorite up until now has been attention deficit democracy you really make sure that when you write these things that they're masterpieces they're not just full of horrible government atrocities but it's such good writing it's such compelling writing you make people into bovardians when they read your book and i'm speaking for myself too um so thanks you know it's such great stuff very kind yeah absolutely that's very kind that's very kind You know, there are so many details out there, so many incriminating details, and what I try to do is put them and make them kind of entertaining, making them a story that's going to hold people's attention and, if possible, try to work into comic relief. Yeah, you do.

You do a great job of that. And I really try to emulate your style, at least in terms of the absolute pummeling of facts, although I don't really work in the humor as well. But you do that on the air. Well, yeah, but that's different, I guess. I don't know. And even then, not that much. But anyway, you are funny as hell. But I do try to copy your...

Because the way that you win is, you know, the real touch of your writing is the humor, right? The comic relief and the fun. And it is great prose. But the real convincing part is the truth that you bring in here. happened you can't make this stuff go away this is who these people are and how they treat us look at this uh that's what i try to do and often there is a smoking gun if you just dig a little bit and you'll you'll find it something which drives me nuts about some some of their writing

on um you know uh pro freedom writing is that they will is it is it authors will simply use what what they call a thought experiment well let's have a thought experiment like this. And so many times I've been reading something like that. And I'm thinking, yeah, well, this is nice, but there was actually a Supreme Court case on the same principle that had some great dicta and some wonderful briefs from the back and forth. And you got to the Justice Department lawyers make the most outrageous claims. But instead we're going to read your thought experiment. And it's like, oh, for the love of goodness. Yeah. No. So you definitely take the approach where you go, Hey, so these cops did this to this guy next, and then, you know, by the end thing,

everybody's scraping and then draw off the floor. So, wait, let's talk about some of the topics here because, you know, your chapter two here. Well, first of all, I want to say, you tell them, what's the title of the piece running at the New York Post where they have this great? Oh, here it is. I have it. It's at the New York Post. Government tyranny comes to Main Street. And that's so great.

oldest newspaper in America, founded by Alexander Hamilton, like the Public Enemy Song says. And they've got this great excerpt from the books of people want to taste of what kind of writing they're going to get here. That's at the New York Post, James Beauvard. Thanks.

But, oh, go ahead. Yeah, and it's the New York Post, one great thing about it, it does not have a paywall. So folks can just kind of, you know, put my name in there, put the book title, whatever, New York Post, and that'll pull the article. It's also possible to see the entire first chapter on the on the Kindle page

because the entire first chapter is part of the free sample for the book. So, but I'm, you know, I'm having fun getting some articles plucking out there. I had a piece that come out a couple hours ago at the Brownstone Institute. And it's called the crazy COVID copulation exemption. Great. Yeah, the COVID chapter in here is fantastic. So two things. First of all, please send that link to Hunter if it's okay for us to reprint or at least we'll blog about it or something at the institute and then secondly you want to talk about that chapter a little bit uh yeah i mean i was um i was amazed to see how the how the country went to hell with the covid lockdowns i still have memories of there were some good libertarian folks

here in maryland and i was and there was there was one who worked and who's um had a close relative working for the state government in Annapolis high up and you know I was I was hearing the heads up and the rumors about well yeah Governor Hogan is going to do the lockdown

I'm thinking I can't freaking believe this I mean this is what are you going to blow up the entire state I mean it was just it was it was like being a change to the front row of a really bad horror movie yeah and and and you're waiting

okay so when's the movie over and this is some horrible bizarre you know bad dream right but no it wasn't and it dragged on a long time it's it's interesting I mean the it's almost like an ink blot test as far as how people reacted to some of the COVID mandates for instance I mean the mask mandates I mean the whole idea that wearing a cloth mask mask was going to keep you safe was the was one of the biggest loads of BS but it's interesting

I can look out my window and here in the DC suburbs Maryland suburbs I see young folks out walking by themselves wearing face masks now oh it's like that they've been so deeply traumatized oh yeah that they're just and it's folks like that I would never count to stand up for freedom for almost anything. Yeah, I mean, I see people in Austin, Texas, in their cars alone wearing masks even now, including at the airport. Those are the kind of people who wear condoms when they masturbate. Of course they do. All right. Seizure fever. One of the first things that made me an anti-government new world or a conspiracy cook was what in the world is going on where the government can take your property without even charging you with a crime. That sounds like a

premeditated plot to destroy our liberty. How are we tolerating this? And then I look up and everybody's tolerating this. You get cops, seizing cash from little old ladies and seasoned cars and homes from innocent people. And if you didn't know it and I told it to you, you would think I must be lying. I must be making up what the government does to the people this country in the name of

the war on drugs, just in terms of the property that they see. Tell them, Jim. Well, it's not just the war on drugs. I mean, the government has used these BS legal claims to seize more than $50 billion in private property since 2000. And government officials entitled themselves to seize now and prove later or never have to prove anything because they took the property. And it's very difficult and very expensive for owners to try to get their property back. This is a policy. I've been dogging for 25 years. No, I've been dogging for 30 years.

And there are a number of court cases which have come out that really highlight, you know, what's this all about? In 1996, Supreme Court case, Supreme Court ruled on the case of John Venice, who was a steel worker who picked up a prostitute and parked on a Detroit street while he was driving home from work. police swooped in on the two of them and just said she was, quote, performing a sex act on him, as the newspapers would say back in the 1990s. And this is a big policy for the Detroit police. They confiscated nearly 3,000 cars a year this way. It turned out there was a problem because the co-owner of the 1977 Fonniac was John's wife, Tina Venice. And she was outraged. the government seized her property due to her spouse messing around.

So this is the case when all the way to the Supreme Court, Chief Justice Rehnquist reeled in a Spanish pirate ship that had attacked U.S. ships in 1822 to justify confiscating the Pontiac because the chief justice said, well, the Pontiac, like the Pirateship, it was involved in a criminal offense. so there was no violation of due process and seizing it. Red Quist never explained the legal equivalence of piracy in the 1820s and oral sex in the 1990s. Yeah. Why should he have to explain?

It's a non-sequitur. That's why they call it that. Well, yeah. I mean, but there was, you know, part of what was interesting here was that the, this is one of the Supreme Court rulings, which really undermined public safety. because Justice Paul, John Paul Stevens, dissented, and he was pointing out that by giving the police the power to confiscate any property that had been used in violation, it was very bad precedent. He also pointed out that the decision encouraged reckless driving, and that was because if Venice had kept on driving while the hooker earned her fee, the police. could not have taken the car. And this is not the kind of behavior

the Supreme Court should be encouraging. That's so funny. And this keeps coming up with you, right? These absolute absurdities. Tell them about the time you got thrown out of the Supreme Court. Oh, yeah, that was fun. So I was, so that was a year before this. And I was running about the,

about no knock raids. I'm pulling that case out there. The, yeah, so it was a no-knock raid case, and there was, it was, it was, it was a woman whose, whose house had been raided by the police, and she was, she was, she was accused of selling a small amount of drugs. So, but, and, and, and, and what the police did was, was justify the search, justified the search because they were very worried. worried that if they knocked and announced that the person would flush away the drugs. So simply because, and this is something that the Clinton administration lashed on to. But so the defense lawyer for this woman at the Supreme Court, I was sitting in their front row of the press box. And so he was scoffing at this argument on no knock raid.

So he says, so what you're saying is. is that if someone has a lot more drugs that the police don't need to worry about being flushed, that person is entitled to a knock and announce and has more constitutional rights. You know, I thought that was hilarious, but I was the only one who laughed loudly in the courtroom. And a couple of minutes later, I had a tap of my shoulder from a bailiff. And I got thrown out of their press box for laughing. I want to make the movie of Bovard, the journalist. That'd be so much fun.

Excuse me, sir. It was made a good story, and it was funny because the Washington Post actually wrote that up. And there was a guy who did a federal reporter, something like that. His name was Al Cayman, and a Washington Post reporter had seen me get thrown out. And I was chatting with her afterwards and mentioned that I was doing the story for Playboy, which I did and came out. And so I had a call from this guy from the other post report. He says, well, why did they throw you out?

I said, well, you know, I was laughing at the wrong time. He said, well, what were you wearing? And I said, oh, yeah. So part of the pretext of throwing me out was I wasn't wearing a coat and tie. But that was a rule that was never enforced until me. So all of a sudden, you know, my ass is out the door. And so the post guy says, well, what were you wearing? wearing. I said I was, I was, I was wearing, you know, a business shirt. He said, what kind of shirt? I said, hey, it was from

Lord and Taylor. And he had a great line. He said, next time, Beauvoir should wear Brooks Brothers. There you go. That's funny. And, and I like the argument, too. And of course, the court, I'm spoiling it, but I'm also just guessing because I don't really remember. But the court ruled that, yeah, this makes total sense. That if you have kilos of heroin, then, you couldn't flush that. It makes more sense to give a no-knock warrant to someone who has a smaller amount. Yeah, and this is something which the courts codified afterwards. And the Clinton administration, I mean, it's one of the things that drives me nuts is this notion

that Bill Clinton was good on civil liberties because Clinton's Justice Department argued the Supreme Court that there was, okay, so going back 400 years, there was a knock- announce rule from the early 1600s in Britain in England. But the Clinton folks were saying, well, that's kind of nullified because of flush toilets. Because they didn't have flush toilets back in 1603. But now we've got flush toilets so we can't have the knock and announce rule. So it was a hell of a thing that folks had fewer civil liberties as the plumbing advanced. Yeah, seriously. And we've got to go back to these medieval knaves that were just barely getting over on their lords at Sword Point for the first time.

And we're going to see if we're going to have as much rights as them, please. And, of course, the answer's no. But part of what's fascinating is you go and you sit and you watch all these folks. Okay, so the folks in the Supreme Court aren't wearing the goofy wigs and black robes like they do. Well, except for the justices, the stuff like they do in British courts. but you see all these people, and it's almost like they've all got tunnel vision on these very, very narrow legal questions, and they aren't able to recognize that the government is trashing most of the Bill of Rights right now. Hey, y'all, I got a new coffee sponsor, Moondose Artisan Coffee at Moondoseartisan Coffee.com.

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Yeah, they have total contempt for it. It's all just about winning. Just like a prosecutor just wants to win, needs that rate. I don't care what's the truth. None of them do. Some do. All right, well, maybe in history or something. Hey, tell me, is it really true that the government seizes through civil forfeiture,

civil asset forfeiture, that is where they do not have to win a criminal victory in court whatsoever? That they steal more than actual private sector criminals do in the country? including like, you know, scamming old people on the phone, not just muggings and quickie-mart robberies, but all robberies and burglaries? I don't know about all robberies. I know that burglaries, that the government has seized more, confiscated more property without a criminal conviction

through asset forfeiture than the total amount stolen by burglars. Wow. But if you're looking at all types of property crime, that's probably quite a bit higher. So, but it's just some amazing numbers, and you sit and you look at some of these cases. And it's just, you know, government officials pulling stuff out of their butt. But that's all it takes. I wrote a memo, therefore, there it is.

Yeah, and just to see how this stuff has permeated and percolated, and they just have the, there are so many shameless, legal pretext that they use, like the dog alerts. Okay, cops stops you, you know, he says you've got to see your wallet and, you know, so you pull out your wallet and if some dog wags his tail is like, well, that proves you're a drug dealer and we can take the money. This is literally how the crap goes. And for 30 years, it's been known that there was trace contamination amounts on most

the U.S. currency. Does it matter the cops can still steal your money? Yep. And, of course, the dog doesn't even have to do anything for the cop to say he did. And the dog could make any signal for any reasons, such as he gets the impression that his master would like him to give a signal right now. Give me a break. The whole thing is so stupid. Yeah. Yeah, there was a story that Radley Balco did and mentioned that there was one police department that simply named as drug dog guilty. yeah no surprise this saves paperwork well it's got the IQ of a two-year-old

and it can't speak but other than that its testimony is perfectly valid all right Jim well listen I don't want to spoil the whole book for everybody but I figure I give them a little bit more one goddamn one more taste here chapter three the war on gun owners

I guess what we all really want to know is are they going to take everybody's rifle away they don't think they can do that do they You know, if they've got any brains, they don't think they can do it. But there's a lot of zealots out there who are just obsessively fearful of other people's firearms. And these are people who think everybody should be forced to rely on the government to keep them safe. I mean, this is not a popular review in areas that are very high crime because people there know that the government's not coming. I mean, you know, really bad neighborhoods, you call 911, you know, you'd probably get faster, faster service from Domino's.

Yeah, seriously, I'll call a cab because the cap will come quicker. Uber's even faster, yeah. But I don't know if Uber goes in those neighborhoods, but whatever. Yeah. No, you're right. And I guess it's people who mostly are sure that, I mean, when we're talking about just civilian opinions, here. It's people who can be very confident that the local sheriff's department actually cares and for their own reasons even to keep people in their neighborhood safe and who don't

really have to worry about or don't feel like they have to worry about it. Who sort of project that onto everybody else, even though some people live out in the country with bears or some people live in a really dangerous, poor neighborhood of whatever color where there's lots of crime, you know? Yeah, there's a parallel here to the support for the COVID lockdowns from the laptop class because these are folks who stayed at home. They had full salary. They could watch TV or do their Jeffrey Tubin routine half the day. And they didn't have to worry about losing their jobs who were being uncomfortable.

And you had all the people in the underclass waiting to bring them their Amazon treats or to bring them their door-dash meals or whatever. And it's a little bit the same with the gun owners. A lot of support for banning guns comes from people that live in very safe neighborhoods who are accosted by the police, as you said. Yeah. So, but now the thing is, I mean, the whole thing just sounds completely stupid and crazy. I almost feel like a conspiracy nut for talking about because it's just so, it sounds so silly.

First time ever for you. something you've ever sounded like that. This time I'm going to go ahead and go for it, Jim. I think that if I remember right, they actually passed an assault weapons ban in 1993 that applied to semi-automatic rifles. This wasn't an assault rifle ban. That would make sense if words meant things and stuff, but machine guns are already legal and highly regulated, but that assault weapons ban didn't change that, I don't think,

or not in any substantive way. it outlawed what is now the most popular rifle in America. Maybe already was the AR-15. It didn't outlaw the AR-15 per se. It was written in a way that you weren't afterwards, you weren't allowed to have, I guess, semi-automatic with bayonet lugs, or you couldn't have a semi-automatic that had a grenade launcher.

And there were some other things. But most of the gun manufacturers were able to work around the 1994 ban. It did not have much effect as far as prohibiting sales, which is part of the reason that President Biden and a lot of the Democrats are now talking about banning ownership of all semi-automatic firearms, which would be, what, 40, 50 million guns that have to round up. That could be kind of difficult. Yeah, that's crazy. I guess, I mean, I overstated even what I misunderstood there.

I guess what I thought was that they had banned all new sales of them and ownership of any new ones or like any civilian weren't allowed to own one that they bought after a certain date or something like that, grandfather clause. But you're saying it really was more cosmetic than that, and they found the way around anyway. It was more than cosmetic, but on the federal level, there was a grandfather clause. and most states that had assault weapon bans also grandfathered in the stuff.

But part of the reason it was grandfathered in was because these had been quite minor as far as their effect on homicide numbers. But it's part of what was fascinating and how that played out because I was writing a lot about it at the time. I actually, there was a gun rights rallies, Lincoln Memorial, that I spoke at in August 1994. It's still on C-SPAN. And it was some, and I think, I think I was the token moderate there that day. Because some of the other speakers

were just, they were very, very angry. And I was kind of like, well, you know, there was this Ruby Ridge case, and this is what they did. And the next lady is there from Georgia like, like, okay, you know, I guess it's too late for her to go with decaf. Gordon Liddy was a speaker there, and he was by far the best speaker today. Oh, he was great on guns, man. Oh, my goodness.

He was so good. But part of what was fascinating about this, assault weapons ban of 1994 was a Washington Post editorial admitted assault weapons play a part and only a small percentage of crime. The assault

weapons ban is mainly symbolic. It's a virtue will be as if it turns out as hope, a stepping stone to broader gun control. Now, there was a post columnist Charles Crowell Hammer, who's beloved by the neoconservists, puts out an article headline, Disarmed the Citizenry, but not yet. And he says that the real logic of the assault weapons ban, its only justification is to desensitize the public to the regulation of weapons in preparation for their ultimate confiscation.

Right. It's amazing because if you read that sentence without the headline, you say, oh, he sounds like he's on our side. He's warning us. But no, no, he's Charles Crowdhammer, man. He's one of them. And he was beloved by the Washington establishment. He was pro-war is an understatement. But this is, so these folks, Washington Post, they were explicit in their goals.

At the same time that a lot of the media is saying, well, people. or paranoid if they think that the politicians are going to seize their guns. And, you know, nowadays you've got nitwit wits like Congressman Eric Swalwell out there and saying, well, you know, the government can use nuclear weapons, you know, in case people don't give up their guns. And I'm thinking about it too. We have F-15s. You can't beat us.

F-15s. Welcome to the history of the 21st century, where America loses to indigenous people with rifles over and over and over again. yeah homemade explosives yeah um you know i'm starting to doubt whether a biden is going to learn from history there was even a meme going around where he was saying oh we got f15 pilots and then the meme was like yeah but they're from here they're going to bomb their own country and then go home at night or how's that supposed to work well this is something which uh you know as far as a question of gun confiscation. I mean, I was raised in the mountains, Virginia, and I've gone

back to the mountains, various places in the east number of times, and shooting their shit with people there. It's just like, you know, the government, you know, Washington politicians can say, this is prohibited, and that's prohibited, this is prohibited, they can't enforce it. And there's, I mean, especially now with things like the Barrett, you know, sniper rifle, 50 caliber, two-mile range, armor piercing, you know, the government stock of you'll come in there and just dominate like I used to because it would need to bring in Eric Swalwell and his nuclear bombs. And that wouldn't work very well either. Yeah. Well, we saw it there at the Bundy Ranch where armed civilians said no, and the cops back down. They even had a sniper up on the bridge and everything.

And the cops said, you know what? Sorry. No, there's a section in the FBI chapter in the book that talks about the Bundy Ranch case and how the Justice Department of the FBI lied for three years to keep one or two of the Bundy's in jail, claiming that the FBI had not surrounded their house with snipers. And then it turned out that they finally admitted it in the discovery. process for the criminal trial and the federal judge put her boot way up their backside and threw the case out of court. Yep. And, um, but on the last day there, I mean, there was almost a

shootout. There's a heavily armed federal SWAT team there of, I'm not sure, made up of which all joint task force types. And I get, I, the way I remember it with MP5s and AR-15s, and then the militia guys were standing there in one big huddle. and they had a sniper up on the bridge on the overpass as well. And the cops literally, just like Homer Simpson and the hedge, just start walking backwards. Actually, we're going to not do this today. And that was how that ended, was they backed down to armed civilians, just exactly how it's supposed to work. Because as you say, as the judge later admitted when she threw out, angrily threw out the whole damn case, the cops were absolutely the aggressors there.

way and what they were doing to this guy and his family was illegal. And folks forget that one of the big fears the FBI had at Ruby Ridge was as the siege dragged out there, and that's after the feds had killed Vicki Weaver and after the marshals had shot Sammy Weaver in the back, that the feds were paranoid because there were more and more gun owners coming to that area. And the feds were worried about being surrounded. And Janet Reno, Expo facto changed her justification for the final assault at Waco two years afterwards, she said that the biggest concern was that people would be coming to surround, gun activists and, you know, supporters of the branch of idiots would be coming to Waco and putting the feds in danger.

So that's why she had to send in the tanks and gas to children. Right. And which, of course, was a lie that somehow the Texas Rangers of the local McClellan County Sheriff's Department couldn't handle that themselves. absolutely it was a it was a scam from the get-go and it's a very chilling site to go there and see that simple little sign this is a vault where the women and children were gas yeah i know you just went there recently and wrote a peace force at the institute about that i was shocked i was shocked and sad and it is something for ways i never would have found it yeah you know the contrast between like ah here i am on a nice day out on the prairie and geez this

is where you guys did all of that, huh? You know, it's kind of incongruent. Yeah, there was a vibe. I was with a friend, and she said that she sensed that there were ghosts there, but she's Celtic, so she's always seeing ghost. Yeah. Well, anyway, yeah, Waco. Look, isn't that the thing, Jim,

is that this is the government that'll do Waco to you? I mean, that's what Bill Hicks said in his bit. You know, he goes on about the IRS, and he goes on about Waco and some a few other things in Rantney Minor. And he goes, look, the lesson is the state always wins and they'll bust your house down. They'll kill you. They'll burn you. And they will always win.

You lose. You're not free. And yeah, that's basically the deal. Well, at one level, yes. On the other level, if the feds play their cards too hard, then there's going to be a backlash. I think of Congressman Jack Brooks. He was chairman of the House of Judiciary Committee. In 1994, he was quoted as saying that the burning of death was too good for the Branch

Dividians. And he ended up being defeated when he ran for re-election to Congress that fall. Well, that was good. I didn't know that part of it that was what led to his defeat, you think? I think it was part of it. I mean, there was just such arrogance. And there were a lot of gun rights groups and Republicans, who were able to convince Americans

that they would be put a leash on the federal government. Yeah, well, you see how that worked out. It's a hell of an empire to try to wrestle with, even for the committed. Well, that's true, but it's always fun to make jokes about it. Well, you got that right,

and this book is full of them. And, you know, that's a great selling point, I think, always has been of your writing, is it's um pummeling of facts and information and read it and weep true history of our time and yet at the same time you let us off the hook with a good laugh every few pages too and you do you you succeed it's always great and um i can't tell you jim how proud i am that the institute got to publish this book that you let us do it that you gave us a privilege the opportunity to put this book out.

And for whatever stupid technical snafu reasons, the printers aren't giving us the hard back yet, although maybe by the time people hear this, it'll be out. But they can definitely get it in paperback and Kindle on Amazon.com right now. And then it should be, if we clicked all the right boxes, I haven't checked, but it should be up on Barnes & Noble and Target

and a few others by now, too. So that's great. That's great. Amazon haters out there. Yeah. Excellent. Well, I thanks so much for polishing the book. It's been great working with you.

And Ben Parker and Mike Dwarski and Grant Smith and Harley and is this great, you know, it's good that we made it work. And that there was a lot of bumps along the road. But what the hell? At least, you know, at least you all were not horrified by the ideas. Yeah. Oh, hell no. We're all Bovartians here, man, for sure. And I'm very proud to be a part of this work.

So go and get it, everybody. God dang it. Shameless. There's no shame involved plug for this. Last Rights, the death of American Liberty by the great James Beauvard. Thank you, ma'am. Hey, thanks so much, Scott. The Scott Horton Show, Anti-War Radio, can be heard on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. APSRadio.com, antiwar.com, Scotthorton.org, and Libertarian Institute.org.