The Eric Metaxas Show - Nicholas Giordano

Episode Date: May 20, 2022

Nicholas Giordano, host of the P.A.S. Report and political science professor in New York, dives deep into what's gone off the rails politically in this country, including how both Republicans and Democrats used the Patriot Act to take away our freedoms.  

Folks, welcome to the Eric Mattaxas show, sponsored by Legacy Precious Metals. There's never been a better time to invest in precious metals. Visit legacy p.m.investments.com. That's legacy p.m. Investments.com. The Texas show with your host, Eric Mettaxas. Hey there, folks. I've got to tell you, Albin, is it Thursday already? I know. It's Thursday. It's unbelievable. Okay, that means today I have to get on a plane today and fly. I'm flying to Colorado Springs, actually flying to Denver. I'm going to meet Sean Foyt at the airport and we're going to Colorado Springs.

We're doing an event tomorrow. We're doing an event on Saturday. If you want to know more about this, folks, go to my website. We're doing an event in Boulder and an event in Colorado Springs. and then on Sunday, I am speaking at the Road Church in Colorado Springs. My schedule is so packed that I have friends in that area. I won't have a moment to be with them. The schedule is just totally packed, but it's great stuff. I'm so excited. The road church is fantastic.

I'm going to be actually the last time I was at the Road Church in Colorado Springs, I spoke on the subject of my book, is atheism dead. This time I'm giving my testimony, story of my life in my book, Fish Out of Water. I haven't spoken about that much recently because I've been talking about

as atheism dead, but Fish Out of Water, of course, it's my literary memoir. If you want to know the story of my life, it's in that book. You don't have to look very far. In fact, that's the book. Fish Out of Water,

a search for the meaning of life. Yeah, it's fun. It is a funny book and it reads like fiction. So if you want to know Eric Metaxus, true or false, you got to read that book. Well, honestly, there's not a syllable that's an exaggeration, unless I might have misremembered something, but I try very, very hard. The same with my biographies to get nothing wrong, like just to at least know that every little thing is exactly correct. Because I find that important. And in writing a lot of my biographies, I discover stuff in other biographies that's just flat out wrong or slightly wrong.

And I feel like you've got to correct this for history. Like I don't know, you know, why except that you just don't want the future. You don't want people to be confused about little things or dates or anything. I want everything to be exactly right. So my book, Fish Out of Water, even though some of it sounds like fiction, every single thing is true. When I write your biography, I'm going to correct what you wrote in Fish Out of Water. That was funny. That was...

Albin, you know what? You're a clever guy. I'd like to hire you to work for me, but I can't afford you. Okay. By the way, just real quick, American greatness tomorrow, AM greatness tomorrow. They're publishing a new article of mine. Of yours? Yeah, of get ready tomorrow, Friday.

Yeah, AM greatness.com. Okay. And maybe we can talk about that. Yeah, next week we've got to talk about that. I want to... Okay, a couple things to announce. First of all, today, I'm talking to a political science professor, a new friend, Nicholas Giordano, a New Yorker,

who teaches political science out at Suffolk Community College on Long Island. And you're going to want to hear what he has to say. He's got a podcast. There's certain people you just say, man, I'm glad this guy exists. He's the real deal. He gets it. So when we're done with this segment, we're going to talk with him. I also have to say the movie 2000 Mules is coming out in theaters again tomorrow.

So if you want to see it in a theater, I have been really clear about this. What is in that film is it's game changing. It's history, ladies and gentlemen, it's history. and I had the privilege of being in the film. Obviously, my role is minuscule. And actually, you know what? I'm supposed to disclose this legally. Because I have a miniscule role in the film,

if you've seen the film, you know, I hardly say anything. I said a lot in the taping, but they edited it out. I'm not bitter. I'm angry. There's a difference. No, but I have this, this, because I have a role in it, they gave they give you like you know points or a point or a fraction of a point or something on the on the back end if the movie makes money so maybe I'll be able to pay my dry cleaner or whatever but I'm supposed to legally tell you that uh you know if the film does well and makes profits I get part of that but let me just tell you it's such a small percentage that I don't think I should have to mention it legally but of course I have to mention it legally so I'm telling you uh, if you want to make me rich, see the film a billion times.

And then I will have some. And I get a back end to a percentage. We'll all have a party. We'll take the check and we'll have a party. Yeah. So I'm the back end of Mule number 32, so I get a back end. That's right. That's right.

And honestly, I feel like, you know, some people are downright stealing the film. There's like you can go on bit shoot or something. You can see it for free. That's called stealing. But I tell you, I wish everybody in America could see it for free. I wish everybody in America could see it because we have to deal with what happened in the 2020 election. We can't just say, oh, well, let's let bygones be bygones.

You can't do that. It's like there was a murder. You've got to find out, is there somebody running around who may murder again? We can't just say, oh, well, you know, we can't bring them back. We can't bring Charlie back. So we'll let it go. we have to deal with this. And so when you see the film 2000 mules,

it'll be opening in films again in theater, sorry, tomorrow Friday. Bring somebody with you who doesn't believe the election was stolen, who maybe has an open mind or whatever. Because people need to know what is out there. I just want to tell you. And most people trying to deal with this,

if they hate Trump or they hate Dinesh or whatever, they're going to say, oh, you know, they're going to, they're going to mock it. But there's no substantive way to deal with what Dinesh says. It seems to me they've covered all the bases. And this is just people who are angry and they have to demonize, you know, the messenger. Real quick, New York Times is one of those angry people that Doug Mastriano won, you know, the primary on Tuesday. New York Times called Doug Maastiano in a headline, 2020 election denier.

Now, that's not even right. He didn't deny there's an election in 2020, but what they meant was he says the election was stolen. Of course it was, and the New York Times doesn't know. Well, the New York Times I'm holding in front of me. If you're watching this on Rumble, by the way, you can watch this on video anytime you want, subscribe. You can watch us on Rumble every day.

We're on Frank Speech. Mike Lindell TV.com. It's a TV show. But I'm holding a Doug Mastriano hat in front of me. Doug Mastriano fighting for freedom. If he gets elected governor of Pennsylvania, Katie Bar the Door, because he is going to do some great things. We need people like him. Is that a Bible verse on his hat? Katie Bar The Door? No. That's a, yeah, second opinion. Well, all right. So we've got, tomorrow we have John Zmirak coming up. I want to say that. I also want to remind people, if you know anybody in New York and want to send them to this very, very special Socrates in the city event, I just, I just have to say, folks, it's going to be a big deal. I really, obviously, Albin will be there. I will be there. We'd love to meet you.

bringing our wives. So if you want to be bringing our wives even. And I have to tell you, I am, I'm just in awe that I'm going to get to have this conversation with Apollo 16 astronaut Charlie Duke. I'm so excited. So you want to go to Socrates in the city.com. If you want to find out about that, if you want to find out about 2000 mules, you can go to 2000 mules. If you want to find out about my schedule, you can go to. Eric metaxis.com.

And CSI, CSI, Christian Solidarity International. Don't forget to donate, folks. We're asking, a few more days. We're asking everybody who can to do something. Go to metaxis talk.com. It's our radio website. You click on the banner, but there are people really suffering. You know this.

Ukraine, Ukrainian people are suffering terribly. They didn't ask for this invasion. They need our help. Please go to metaxis talk.com where the phone number is 888-253-3522. 888-253-3522. Albin, is that right? That's correct. All right, we'll be right back.

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history. They didn't think we would catch them, but we did. Find out what they did and how they did it in the new documentary film called 2000 Mules, directed and narrated by renowned filmmaker Dinesh DeSuzza and executive produced by Salem Media Group. With research from tru thevote.org, 2000 Mules tell us a story of the ones who tried to hijack a presidential election. You'll see the actual video surveillance tapes. You'll see how we track their cell phones to box after box as they got paid to carry out this illegal scheme. Watch the movie and decide for yourself. Attend a limited release premiere of 2000 Mules in advance on May 2,000 or May 4th. To see the movie in the theater, you must buy tickets in advance at 2000mules.com.

Tickets are not available at local theaters. You can also attend a virtual premiere on May 7th, including a Q&A with Dinesh D'Souza. Buy tickets for the virtual premiere at 2000mules.com. That's the number 2000mules.com. Hey there, folks. As promised, Nick Gjordano, professor, Nicholas Jordano, is my guest. He's a professor of political science at Suffolk Community College, a native New Yorker. I love it. I'm also a native New Yorker, but I had a sojourn in Connecticut where I lost the accent, so I apologize.

You're a professor of political science who has been talking about, a lot of the stuff that I talk about on this program, which is to say the growth of government bureaucracy and the growth of government at the expense of freedom. So how did you get to that place? Were you raised in such a way that this was on your radar? Did this come to you as you did your studies? Well, I'm a student of history, and the founding fathers made it clear that we want a limited government. We want a small government because governments continually grow, expand, abuse their power, and so we have to hold government accountable. And then what I saw with the Patriot Act beginning to unfold, that's what concerned me because I was in Homeland Security. When you say the Patriot Act,

talk about what year was the Patriot Act? It was shortly after 9-11. So normally it takes about two years to get pieces of legislation through. Most pieces of legislation never see the light of day. But the Patriot Act passed within two weeks. And it was an encompassing bill that really changed the dynamics of the national security framework of the United States, and people said, well, if you don't support it, then you must be doing something wrong. Or you're with the terrorists. Correct. Now, here's the problem.

We recently had Naomi Wolf on the program. She and I were in the same class at Yale. She is politically liberal. She's a feminist. And so I became a conservative. and so when she wrote her book in 2008, talking about what a lot of liberals are talking about, which was the overreach of the Bush administration,

I was stupidly in the camp of those who thought, well, it's George Bush. He's a good guy. I don't see him doing anything wrong. We've got to be firm against the terrorists. In other words, I was part of what I now see the problem. In other words, I was not sensitive at the time, and this is exactly what you're talking about, to how either Republicans or Democrats can be guilty of exactly the same thing.

And when our guys do it, we say, well, it's okay, and it's never okay. But oftentimes, many of us get it wrong. And so you're quite right. The drumbeat against terrorism, it was so vague, and it was such a, it was, was thought such a crime to be against it. How could you be against it? And we gave up under George W. Bush's administration, which I now know was not such a great administration, we gave up a lot of our freedoms, which led to where we are today. Well, there's a few things that I have. So I always look at long term. And I've been a conservative my whole life. And it's not necessarily that,

okay, it's under the George W. Bush administration, what's he going to do with it? It's always, we don't know who's going to be in power the next administration. Well, that's the point. And what I'm saying is that I was stupid because I didn't think of that. At the moment, you know, you kind of get sucked into it. But that's natural. Right. Because most people tend to look at the here and now, and they don't look at that,

okay, how could it be abused? How could it grow and expand? And remember, we were told, we were promised that the Patriot Act would never be used against Americans. We're not going to spy on Americans. And yet all we have to do is look at what's happened since then, where we had the NSA prison program that was literally monitoring every single American's electronic data. You had the Central Intelligence Agency spying on sitting members of the United States Senate Intelligence Committee in 2015.

They were spying on members of the Intelligence Committee, and there was no real outrage to it. Nobody was held accountable. If you look at what the FBI did with former President Trump launching an investigation, trying to take down a duly elected president. There were so many signs along the way. You had the IRS scandal with Lois Lerner in 2011, 2011, 2012, targeting conservative groups. So you had all these signs along the way that, hey, the bureaucracy has been weaponized politically to target political opponents. But not only has it been weaponized to target political opponents, you have these people, these unelected, nameless and faceless bureaucrats and senior leadership positions,

that think they're the guardians of democracy and that they get to decide what freedoms we get to enjoy. enjoy and what we could say and where we could go and what we could do. And then you look at things like the coronavirus and how the power of government metastasized because people were afraid and they gave government more power. And it's a recurring theme. But this is all the things the founding fathers warned about that it's easy to give government power when you're afraid. But the problem is when the crisis passes, that power is not restored to the people. Well, I mean, what's fascinating to me is how those of us who would describe ourselves as conservatives typically don't hold our leaders accountable to conservative principles. In other words, George Bush, in many ways,

was not much of a conservative. And we let him get away with that at the time. And so that's shame on us. Because honestly, the more time passes, the older you get, the more clear it is that you can never let this go. You can never let this go. You have to, we have to make the case for these conservative principles. And I don't even want the word conservative. These are foundational American principles. This is the founder's vision of small government, of genuine liberty. I talk a lot about this, about how we have ceased to really teach what that is. And as you cease to teach what that is, it's much easier to drift, which is why we've been drifting. And I'm glad you're said that it's not conservative principles, that these are American principles. It shouldn't matter,

regardless of political party. Everyone should be frightened by what's going on. And as far as George W. Bush and the Republican establishment in Congress, Republicans have controlled Congress for many of the years over the course of the last 20 years. And government has expanded just as rapidly under Republican leadership as well as Democrat leadership. So it tells us that you have this big bureaucratic overreach going on. And then the people that that are supposed to be holding the bureaucracy accountable, supposed to be conducting oversight, well, they're not doing it. They're actually letting it happen. Is there anybody in the Congress today or in the Senate who gets this and who is working to restore America?

There are some, but there's few. So you have people like Congressman Jim Jordan, you have people like Senator Ron Johnson, Senator Ram Paul. They're the ones that are leading this march. They are yelling and screaming about this power. However, take what happened under President Trump. You had Devin Nunes, who led an investigation, found that the bureaucracy abused its power, that they shouldn't have even launched the Russian collusion hoax that it was. And yet Republicans still in lockstep voted to reauthorize the FISA Act without any type of reforms to prevent that from ever happening again.

So you do have good people in Congress that are fighting against it. However, it's very difficult because they're a minority of people. You know, you've got the conservative caucus, the freedom caucus that will fight back against these things. But the establishment too often goes along with what's happening. Just to, you know, just the Cliff Notes version from my audience, most Republicans are bums and we should throw them out. They're bums. They are worse than principal Democrats who actually believe in what they're pushing. It's amazing to me that we have this handful.

of heroes. You mentioned Jim Jordan. Just a few of these folks, Rand Paul, that get this, but that there are so many who they campaign ostensibly as being in favor of these things,

but when they get in, they do nothing. I think let's talk about who, let's mention some of the other heroes out there, because I want to get these names out there. Who gets this? Who is fighting? Who else? Sadly, there's not many. You have Senator Ted Cruz is another one that's fighting back.

Senator Hawley will fight back. Senator Tom Cotton, to a certain degree, will fight back. But there's not a lot that are fighting back. And there's a reason they're not fighting back. It's because they've forgotten who they serve. They've forgotten that they serve the American people. Instead, they look down on the American people. And just to give you a few examples, the Democrat messaging over the course of the last several years has been, Freedom's under attack, that the threat to democracy, which were a constitutional republic, but the threat to democracy is because of things like free speech, because of things like a free press, and guns and the Second Amendment, that's the real threat to democracy, they say.

My argument is, no, the threat to democracy is this all-encompassing bureaucracy that will target its political opponents or people it disagrees with. And not only can they target people they disagree with, they can destroy your life. destroy your reputation. That by far in a way is a much bigger threat to democracy. If you look, the FBI has expanded dramatically, and yet, what have they been able to stop? So we saw the shooting that just occurred a few days ago in Buffalo, New York. There was red flags all over the place, and they weren't able to stop that, but we're threat-tagging parents that shout at school board members because their kids were masked up for two years, because they were socially isolated,

and because they're being indoctrinated with critical race theory and diversity, equity, and inclusion. So where are the priorities? And you would think that every Republican would be screaming this from the rooftops, but they're not. They're silent on it, most of them. Yes, because they're bums. What's the Aramaic for bums? Jugheads. I can't, I can never really come up with the right term. Forgive me, folks. I was an English major. I'm a writer. I should have the terms. We'll be right back. We're talking to Professor Nicholas Giordano. We'll be right back. In case you haven't been paying attention, the Biden administration has caused a financial crisis, and they have no clue how to fix it. Oil prices have skyrocketed, and when oil prices go up,

the cost of transportation and shipping spikes, leading the prices of goods to rise. And when we're already seeing record inflation, that's the last thing we need. Our economy is in trouble, and you need to take steps to protect your safety. If all your money is tied up in stocks, bonds, and traditional markets, you are vulnerable. Gold is one of the best ways to protect your retirement. No matter what happens, you own your gold. It is real. It is physical.

It's always been valuable since the dawn of time. Legacy precious metals is the company I trust for investing in gold. They can help you roll your retirement account into a gold-backed IRA where you still own the physical gold. They can also ship gold and precious metals safely and secure. securely to your house. Call Legacy at 866-528-1903 or visit them online at LegacyPMinvestments.com. Hey there, folks. I'm talking to Professor Nicholas Giordano, who is a professor of political science at Suffolk Community College, host of the PAS Report podcast. What is the PAS report podcast? What does PAS stand for? Politics, analysis, and strategies. Politics Analysis and Strategies report, the PAS

Report podcast. We're talking about important things. We're talking about America and what makes it work and how we have a lot of leaders who claim to be Republicans who I affectionately think of them as bums who should be thrown out because it is because of them that we are where we are. And we're in a really bad place. I mean, I know when you talk about people being canceled, people try to that. Obviously, I mean, that's happened to me. This entire program was thrown off of YouTube because we dared to talk about a handful of things. My goodness, it's astonishing. How scared are they of the truth that they would have to do things like that? Well, they're very afraid, and that's why they want to silence their political opponents. The national strategy of countering

domestic terrorism was issued by the Biden administration in June of 2021. Again, Republicans didn't really speak about that document. In that document, it explains how anyone that expresses anti-government or anti-authority sentiment can be labeled as a domestic terrorist. Remember the Alien and Sedition Act? Correct. Okay. That's 220 years ago. Yes.

And we now have it reinstituted. But the difference is the Alien and Sedition Act was focused mostly on the press. This is focused on the people. So, I mean, this is amazing to me because we're talking about something that goes back to our founding. I mean, you have John Adams arguing with Thomas Jefferson. and it's kind of interesting to me that we always have to remind ourselves of who we are and what we believe, because the drift is always going to be.

I mean, you know, it's embarrassing when somebody like John Adams is guilty of it. But here we are 220 years later, and we would let something like this happen. It's kind of crazy to me that we don't have people in Congress and in the Senate saying, no, we won't do this. We can't do this. And not only that, I mean, it's our civic obligation to ask questions and to question government, always question the policies, even if we agree with the policies, question the motives behind those policies. And yet this document says that anyone that expresses anti-government anti-authority sentiment could lead to a domestic terrorism investigation. You might be guilty of incitement. And then it talks about ways to combat domestic terrorism.

But let's look at what's happened since then. We've seen the School Board memo, the Department of Justice School Board memo targeting parents. We've seen the threat taking of parents. In January of 2022, the Department of Justice created a specialized division on domestic terrorism that we still don't know anything of what it does. Then a few weeks ago, you had Secretary Mayorkas come out and announce this disinformation governance board, essentially a Ministry of Truth, where government will deem what's the misinformation, what's disinformation? And then you have President Biden come out and call literally almost 50% of the country extremists

and part of an extremist organization if they believe in MAGA. Now, there are people that will mock President Biden for that. But the problem is that he did it intentionally. This was not like a Biden gaffe or anything. This was inserted into his speech because in the document, the national strategy, it lists the word extremist and extremism 27 times. So it's not an accident that he's using that terminology to describe his political opposition. And once again, we don't hear a lot of pushback against the rhetoric that's coming from the White House, but the policies as well.

If we do the math, we see how this strategy is being built out, the capabilities that are being built out within this strategy. And yet Republicans are treating it as if these are all different issues. They're not. They all stem from this document that they have not said a word about. and they're not on record on taking any positions on this national strategy. It's astonishing stuff. I wrote a book about Dietrich Bonhofer and the rise of the Nazis and how they pulled it off.

And unfortunately, it's dramatically similar. You demonize your opponents. When you use the term extremists, you're basically demonizing them, and you're saying we have permission to crush our opponents because they're extremists. You get people to buy in or just to say, well, I don't want to speak against it because I don't want somebody to call me an extremist. So it is very chilling. It's a very chilling thing that this is happening in our country. You obviously talk about this on your podcast.

And I guess my question, everybody has a question. What can we do? What do you see us doing right now? I bang the drum whenever I get the opportunity, because this is horrifying. It's the end of America if we don't stand up. It is, and part of our problem is the reason it's gotten to this point is because our education system has completely collapsed. People don't know the Constitution. They don't understand it.

They never read it. In fact, I give a constitutional test the first day of every semester where I give them the Russian Constitution and replace Russian Federation with United States everywhere. And 99% of students can identify that they're not reading the United States Constitution. Kill me now. Listen, the only good news, and let's focus on the good news, is that you, Dr. Nick Giordano, you are giving them this test the first day of class. There are folks like you out there who do get this and who are saying we need to wake up. But I'm not surprised that most kids who graduate American public high school these days don't get this stuff.

This stuff has just evaporated from our system. If you don't get it, if you don't understand our government, the intent behind it, why it was created the way it was, and who's responsible for what in government, then it becomes very easy to change the government and everything that goes along with it. So if you don't understand what freedom of speech is, it's very easy to say that we need to change freedom of speech because it leads to violence. I was going to lead to excitement. This is, well, we're going to be right back.

We're talking to Professor Nick Giordi. No, don't go away. Hey, there folks, Eric Mattaxas here. I know you know how much I love Mike Lindell and my pillow. Well, Mike Lindell and my pillow right now are offering a bogo extravaganza. Bogo, buy one, get one. Bogo extravaganza on multiple MyPillow products. Now is the time to join the millions of Americans who've changed the quality of their sleep with My Pillo.

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You won't believe it. It's amazing. 800-9783057 or MyPillow.com. Use the code, Eric. Folks, welcome back. We're talking to Nick Giordano, teaches political science at Suffolk Community College. You know, Nick, we don't typically have people in the academy who are coming from where you're coming from. So to me, it's kind of wonderful news that you are teaching political science and that you see these things.

You get these things. Do you get a lot of pushback? When you're in academia and you express conservative philosophies, it's not something where you're going to not get pushback. I mean, of course, pushback's going to come. I have to say. At my college, it's actually great. Nobody bothers me, and the reason that they don't is because we're more in touch with the student body, which is a bunch of people that live life.

I mean, some of them are have children, some of them are taking care of elderly parents, some of them are working and going to school. We're not in that four-year university bubble where everyone comes from the same background and engages in the group think mentality. Interesting. So it's easier that way. However, there are more conservatives in academia than people realize. And I constantly get emails saying, you know, keep speaking out, keep speaking up.

And then I email them back, well, why aren't you speaking up? I mean, the reality is that if more of us spoke up, maybe the situation wouldn't be as bad as it is today. Unfortunately, conservatives and Republicans, they've kind of ignored the problems and allowed these problems to metastasize. You know, some of them went into business to make money, and they didn't pay attention to the school boards or the, or the, State education departments, others just thought that problem wasn't as bad as it really was. But we're finding out, particularly with COVID, how bad the problem really is, within not just education, not just certain aspects of bureaucracy, but the entire bureaucracy. I mean, when you look at someone like a Dr. Fauci that used government resources to target scientists that disagreed with him,

that's a problem there. And he's still there in government. It really is astonishing. And when you see people so willing to give up their rights so quick because of a crisis, I don't recall ever reading our founding father saying the Constitution gets suspended in a crisis. And the funny thing is, let's be honest, what was the big crisis? It was more, in retrospect, more of a manufactured crisis than an actual crisis. I mean, the more you know, the more you think it wasn't the bubonic plague.

There were not bodies in the streets. What was the crisis? It's just like going back to, you know, a real crisis is one of the one of the moment. The planes go into the Twin Towers. And even then, as you see, when you have a real crisis, we don't know what's going to happen next. We gave things up very, very easily. But the COVID crisis to me was it was more ginned up than it was real. I'm not saying COVID wasn't real, but I'm saying that the hysteria was not really appropriate given the situation.

It was almost like people were very eager to take advantage. of the difficulty and to make it seem worse than it was. And that was probably the most frustrating part for me. So I have the government and politics background where I've been teaching it for quite a long time. I understand how government works. But prior to teaching full time, I was actually in emergency management,

and I wrote pandemic plans. I've worked with epidemiologists. I've worked with virologists. We wrote the Suffolk County, New York pandemic plan. And one of our first principles of emergency management is that you do the least disruption possible within society. We did the exact opposite when it came to this pandemic. We did the maximum disruption. And I could guarantee everyone that the effects of what the government did,

of what the authoritarian did, will be here far longer than the coronavirus will. Oh, look, there is no question. When I saw this unfolding early in 2020, I couldn't believe the level of hysteria. We're shutting down. down businesses. I thought, what are you talking about? Like, why? Why? If you're scared. Remember, liquor stores were essential, but churches were non-essential. And this is why, I mean, listen, the way I see it, I feel like the tumult of the last few

years has been a blessing because it has woken many, many, many people up who had been sleeping. When you saw what your kids were learning, when you were forced to see this authoritarian, you know, behavior, you suddenly realize, wait a minute, something's wrong. We need to do something about this. When you saw the government shutting down businesses and saying you can't go to church, that level of overreach was a wake-up call for a lot of people. So the hope, of course, is that by having these kinds of conversations and by helping people to see what has been happening, we're waking up in a way that is long overdue. I mean, it's... It's better now than never, right?

It is. And the government overreach that we witnessed, I mean, we could look at the constitutional amendments, and I could point to seven out of their first ten amendments being violated throughout the coronavirus. And the government didn't bat an eye. They did it, and state legislative bodies allowed their state governors to do whatever they wanted. And listen, we have elections for a reason, and the crisis doesn't just sit there and negate that we have a Constitution and that there are rules that have to be followed. Emergency powers were never meant to be given for an unlimited period of time and just to be renewed every 60 or 90 days,

depending on where you are. Unfortunately, you have too many people in positions of power that think they could do whatever they want, and we have decimated an entire younger generation of Americans. You had these adults that had their life experiences tell these children, they can't live their life experience. They're going to have to forego those because people were afraid. Meanwhile, if you were to focus all the resources on the most vulnerable populations from the coronavirus, I could guarantee you we would have saved more lives. There's no question about it. I mean, anybody who has the guts to look at this, you realize that something unprecedentedly horrible happened in America.

I mean, I still can hardly believe that we so quickly were willing to seed our rights and our freedoms. and it's an amazing and a chilling thing. It's a chilling thing when I'm walking on the street today, and I today see people walking down the street wearing masks. I thought, what world are we living in? And it's chilling that New York City is now having the conversations of whether they need to reinstitute mandates again because there's a rising cases.

That's chilling the fact, now I'm hoping that people say, no, we're done. We're just not complying because we have a right to civil disobedience. You know, people say, oh, well, we have to follow the rules. No, we don't. We have a right as Americans to engage in civil disobedience and say, no, we're not wearing the mask. We're not going to listen to you anymore.

Well, that's exactly the point, and that's why we need voices like yours, and I try to do my part, because I think this is, everything is at stake, folks. Everything is at stake. So if people want to find you, they can go to PASReport.com. PAS report.com. We'll be right back.

Folks, welcome back. You've been out riding fences for so long now. Oh, you're a hard one. But I know that you've got your reason. Folks, welcome back. I'm talking to fellow New Yorker, Nick Giordano, professor of Polly Sci at Suffolk Community College, host of the PAS Report, podcast. Nick, I think a lot of people don't realize how many New Yorkers think the way you do and I do. They would have this idea that New Yorkers are monolithically, big government liberals.

That's not so much the case. I know that there are pockets that are pretty dramatically conservative. It's interesting. I mean, we just had Rudy Giuliani here a couple of weeks ago. We really do forget that not everybody in New York thinks like Chuck Schumer, thank the Lord. Thank the Lord. But it's true, isn't it? It is true. Unfortunately, what's happened, though, is Republicans tend to surrender too much. And what I mean by that is if you look at the inner cities, Republicans surrendered these cities to the Democrats

and allowed Democrats to push this message that Republicans are racist, that they're evil and they're not going to help you. Meanwhile, the people's lives in these inner cities has gotten dramatically. worse over 50 years. If you look at the states, so New York's a blue state, it's not going to go red. And so Republicans should move to a red state, as if it's that simple and people could just pick up and move. And then you look at the schools. Well, if the public schools are failing, pull your kids out and send them to private schools. Like, why are we always talking about surrendering to the left and just giving them the cities, giving them the states, giving them the public schools? I mean, you know, we need a robust public education system because guess what? You could send your kids to private school, and that's great.

You could homeschool your kids, and that's great. But the majority of people aren't going to be doing that. And if the school system, which it has collapsed, all these people sooner or later are going to get into positions of power. And if the country collapses, you could have the best education from a private school in the world. What does it matter if the country collapses? I mean, right now we're looking more like Venezuela with empty store shelves than we are, the United States of America.

Well, I was saying it earlier. I think the way I process the current, you know, drama and crisis is that it's God's mercy to show people how bad things can get if you follow a certain tack. I mean, you know, if you want to know how bad things can get fairly quickly, you see it happening. And then you say, oh, oh, I didn't realize that everything would be great if Trump was out of office and we'd get somebody who's kind of moderate. in fact, I really would rather have Trump in office, even with the mean tweets, because he seemed to get the basics, whereas the Democrats seem to live in some kind of ideological bubble where they really don't, I don't know how they live with themselves destroying the lives of minorities and inner cities from Chicago to Philadelphia, whatever. It is a fascinating thing that we, that we're living in this narrative, that somehow they pretend. that they care about these people, and the reality is literally the opposite. And it's strategic. So when we look at Democrats and a lot of what they're pushing and the pain,

so when President Trump was in office, we had segment after segment about President Trump and gossip, and he likes to eat fast food, and he called this person a name. Well, President Biden, it's a crisis of actual policies that are making our lives more difficult. But as our lives become more difficult, what usually happens? Well, people look to the government empower the government even more to try and ease those burdens. And so one could say it's very calculated. Oh, it is calculated. I'm sorry, but it is calculated. But people like you and I aren't willing to surrender our state, our city, our schools to the left. Not even close. All right. In our two, folks, we're going to have first segment we always do on Thursday's

Ask Metaxus. That's me. Then we're going to get back to Nick Giordano. After that, We have the Talbets, the Talbot group. But there's plenty more. Don't go away.