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Lew
Rockwell Attacked By a Parasite
ROCKWELL: The other day I had the honor of being on Ron Smith's show on WBAL in Baltimore. Ron has long been the radio voice of liberty in the Washington, D.C. area, and if Baltimore will excuse me for including them in that. If you think of the one place that needs Ron Smith, it's that area. So, on Ron's show, I had a federal employee get very upset with me, and I thought you'd enjoy hearing our exchange. MOSSBURG: Welcome back to the Ron Smith Show with Marta Mossburg and Ron Smith. Coming up, we're going to speak with Lew Rockwell. He's editor of LewRockwell.com. He's a columnist and author, and he has a great piece on the real 1% that you can find on the Ron Smith page on WBAL.com. SMITH: The evil 1%. Good morning, Lew. ROCKWELL: Good morning, Ron Good morning, Marta. MOSSBURG: Good morning. You know, it's so funny hearing about, you know, the 1% is always seen as the rich bankers, but you have quite a different take on that, Lew. ROCKWELL: Well, I think that there is an evil 1% in the country, but it's not rich business people, who, for the vast majority of them, are huge benefits to the human race, not people who don't subtract from human flourishing, but rather add to it. But there is an evil 1% and it's the government. I mean, it's the – and I'm not talking about the average public school teacher when I come up with this 1%. But I'm talking about the top people in the military, the welfare state, the federal government, the state governments, the local governments. The governing class in that sense is about 1% of the population. The actual size of the government, of course, is far bigger. But the people, the decision makers are about 1%. Those are the people who are pressing the rest of us in the 99%. They're the ones who are – (Crosstalk) SMITH: And a fine job they're doing, Lew. (Laughter) ROCKWELL: Yes. They are doing fine. They're living it up as one – MOSSBURG: Yes, nothing has changed for them. ROCKWELL: No, and if one were to venture from wonderful Baltimore down to the District of Predators, there south of you – (Laughter) – you see they're all living very well. This is, of course, the richest area in the country, one of the richest areas in the world. They've all got their limos and their mansions and their restaurants and fancy stores, and they're all doing very well. But, of course, they're all parasites. So it's important to keep in mind that the 1% is a parasite on the 99%. And they are doing huge damage to us, whether it's economically or in terms of our civil liberties, thinking that they can feel us up at the airport and listen, you know, read our e-mails, listen to our phone calls, listen to radio shows, like yours, Ron, which are subversive in the best sense by telling the truth. They don't like this sort of thing so they'd like to spray pepper spray in our faces if they could get away with it. So that's the 1%. And I think that's the people we need to keep an eye on. They're not public servants as they like to term themselves. ROCKWELL: They make us their servants. SMITH: Let's turn to Bastiat, about the enemy being the state, that the state is the enemy. Tell us what the basic thread is of that analysis. ROCKWELL: Well, you know, Frederic Bastiat, one of the great economists, not an Austrian economist, but sort of pre-Austrian, and has to be one of the greatest writers. I urge everybody, go to Mises.org, you can buy all his writings or you can just look online for B-A-S-T-I-A-T. One of the great economic arguers ever. SMITH: Oh, yes. ROCKWELL: I mean, his stuff is still, from the 1840s, still so fresh, in part, because the issues are still the same. (Laughing) He talked about the – he called the state "that great fiction by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else." SMITH: Everyone else, that's right. ROCKWELL: But Albert Jay Nock, who also wrote a book called Our Enemy, the State, had a different view, and Murray Rothbard had a different view that when we think of what sets the state apart from the rest of us, they have the legal authority to initiate violence against the innocent. Now, we're all for you think you can arrest a murderer or whatever, but they feel they can initiate violence. They can use violence or the threat of violence against the innocent to achieve their goals, whether it's grab some of your money in taxes or grab your kid to go fight in a war or run your business. MOSSBURG: Or attack Gibson Guitar for – ROCKWELL: Yes. MOSSBURG: – you know, making or finishing their wood in India or something. (Laughing) It's crazy. ROCKWELL: No. And the great John T. Flynn, writing in the '40s about Roosevelt, defined a totalitarian state as one in which the state sees no limit on its powers. It's not necessarily doing everything, but it believes it has the authority to do everything. SMITH: And we've seen that. We've seen that, Lew Rockwell, sharpen during the Bush and now the Obama years, with White House lawyers making these lawyerly arguments that they can basically do anything, that they can torture, that they can assassinate even American citizens anywhere just on the say so of the president of the United States. MOSSBURG: And they can lie about the fact, when you do a Freedom of Information request, that they don't even know what you're talking about. ROCKWELL: They claim the right to come onto your driveway, put a GPS unit under your car so they could keep track of you. They say they don't need a warrant. They certainly don't – (Laughing) – they don't want your permission because they don't want you to know. SMITH: Yes. MOSSBURG: We were trying to talk about that last week and never did, but I think that's huge. SMITH: Well, one of my favorite things is that, take the Martha Stewart case, which I thought was an incredible example of a miscarriage of justice, regardless of what you think of Martha Stewart. It's not a lie for the government – I mean, it's not a crime for the government to lie to you, but it's a crime to lie to the government even if it's about something that didn't happen. ROCKWELL: That's right. SMITH: I always thought that was mindboggling. ROCKWELL: No, no. And the police and the FBI are both taught to lie to the victim, their victim, in order to get the statement that they can then call a lie so they – yes, Martha Stewart – I like Martha Stewart, but Martha Stewart, accused of insider trading. Well, they never actually brought charges. I happen to think that's a non-crime anyway. But they never brought charges against her. They just claimed that she lied to the FBI. And this is, I think, a lesson to all of us, don't ever talk to the cops, never. SMITH: Yes. ROCKWELL: You can be polite and so forth, but never talk to them. You want to see a lawyer. She made the mistake of letting – and these guys are experts in getting you to talk, of course. Like New York Times reporters and other evil people, they're experts in getting you to say stuff you shouldn't be saying or maybe stuff you don't even mean. If the FBI comes to call on you about something, you say, gosh, I've got to talk to my lawyer. Or if the cops want you to talk, don't talk. Don't say anything. Even harmless things can be used against you. Don't talk to them. SMITH: When they say "anything that you say can be used against you," they mean it. (Laughing) ROCKWELL: Oh, boy. That's right. MOSSBURG: Lew, if you don't mind, I'd like to go back to something you said. You just said that insider trading is not a crime in your mind. So, you know, the recent piece on members of Congress and how they're trading on, you know – SMITH: It's not a crime for Congress members. MOSSBURG: Yes, exactly. Is that because of it or – (Laughing) ROCKWELL: Well, I'm all for making it a crime for the Congress, by the way. MOSSBURG: OK. (Laughter) ROCKWELL: Because, of course, they're using their insider knowledge to gain politically in order to unjustly profit, so there's no question that is wrong. But I'm talking about people in the private sector. By the way, there is no definition of insider trading. The thing is – MOSSBURG: It's very vague. ROCKWELL: It's whatever the government says it is. It's very, very vague. But if you're sitting in a restaurant and you overhear people at the next table saying, hey, such and such is really going to go up tomorrow because of thus and so, so you call your broker and say, hey, buy me 100 shares of thus and so stock, you are a federal criminal. Now, how can that be a crime for you to act on information you hear other people talking about? I mean, it's such a totalitarian – like everything else they do these days, it's a totalitarian thing and entirely illegitimate. MOSSBURG: Well, the whole political knowledge business that has sprung up that "60 Minutes" mentioned as well, they said it's a $100 million industry of just kind of trading – you know, people trolling the halls of Congress trying to come up with new info that they can sell to Wall Street. Somehow that's legal? I don't understand how that meshes with the law either. ROCKWELL: Sure, or Gingrich getting $37 million from Big Pharma to bring about the Bush administration's bill – MOSSBURG: Or $2 million from Freddie. ROCKWELL: – that brought them many billions of dollars. Apparently, it's not illegal. Because, of course, again, one of the things about the state and us, they use the law against us, but the law doesn't apply to them. SMITH: Yes. ROCKWELL: I mean, that's just generally – that's why people – SMITH: Yes. They exempt themselves from most things. ROCKWELL: No. I mean, the cop can speed. You can't or – you know, nothing can be done about the speeding cop, but he can, of course, arrest you for going one mile an hour over the speed limit. So they're above the law. That's why they keep – SMITH: You know, earlier, Lew, we were speaking about Ron Paul and his appearance with Bob Schieffer this week. ROCKWELL: Ah. SMITH: And I know you're familiar with this. We were talking to your friend, Tom DeLorenzo, about it. And I want to get your take on Ron Paul, the threat he represents, why the establishment is so agitated about him as epitomized by this interview. He promised him 20 minutes, Lew, gave him 10 minutes. ROCKWELL: (Laughing) Yes. They did. And also, there was an extremely annoying loud buzz in his earpiece – SMITH: Yes. ROCKWELL: – that he tried to get them to fix 15 minutes before air time. And, you know, it doesn't mean it was intentional, but we know they want to do anything to stop Ron Paul. SMITH: Don't you like the – oh, and by the way, LewRockwell.com should be a must-stop for people daily. It should be on their favorites because it's loaded with very, very good articles, opinion pieces, glimpses of what's going on in this wacky world of ours. And it's just really a great site. I've been visiting it for years and years. And you do a great job, Lew. ROCKWELL: Oh, well, thank you, Ron. SMITH: But let me ask you, here's the thing about Ron Paul. And we were talking with DeLorenzo about this. I view Ron Paul not so much as a presidential candidate, but as John the Baptist. You know what I mean? ROCKWELL: It's a great insight. And he's been John the Baptist for decades. SMITH: He's preparing the way. ROCKWELL: He has. I mean, I – SMITH: He's preparing the way for someone. ROCKWELL: You know, I noticed, four years ago, when he first ran, there was a huge increase among young people in American and, in fact, all over the world, because he has a world-wide following, interest in Austrian economics and Libertarianism, and the sorts of ideas that he has always stood for. And that's happening again this time. And the establishment media, which, of course, might as well be an arm of the government, first tried to blackball him, black him out and not allow him to be heard. I think that backfired on them. Of course, it stimulates his own followers. And anybody who is fair minded, just looks at what's going on, says, well, wait a minute – (Laughing) – what is that? MOSSBURG: Well, there are so many other options now to listen to what candidates have to say and what other people have to say, so it's not as if the media controls all the outlets out there. ROCKWELL: No. But, of course, to them, it's – (Crosstalk) SMITH: Oh, thank goodness for the Internet and for talk radio, because, oh, it's just been delightful in the way it has breeched the wall that protects the establishment. Combined with circumstances, there are big things going on. ROCKWELL: Well, as you remember, Hillary Clinton, a number of years ago, said the trouble with the Internet was there were no gatekeepers. SMITH: Yes. ROCKWELL: And we needed gatekeepers, just as there are in the traditional media. Well – MOSSBURG: Well, that's the Fairness Doctrine, which is very scary. (Laughing) ROCKWELL: You know, it's awful. But I think if you watch that YouTube – I know you've pointed this out, Ron – Ron Paul was so eloquent. And he actually gets energized when he's attacked. He's always – MOSSBURG: He doesn't get angry. That's one of the things I like about him. He's constantly treated with such disdain and he responds as if he couldn't hear – it's like he's tone deaf to the interviewers because he just keeps on message and keeps going. ROCKWELL: He's amazing. I mean, how does he keep getting better? I mean, he was tremendous four years ago. He's much better today. I mean, he's really something. And they can't handle him so this is why they cut him off halfway through. And Schieffer, of course, is a member of the power elite. I mean, his younger brother is a close friend of George W. Bush and was ambassador to Japan, ambassador to Australia under Bush. And the big media and the big government are all tied in right as brothers against somebody like Ron Paul, who speaks the truth. SMITH: What gets me, Lew, and Marta, is the sheer incomprehension that Bob Schieffer has for things that are – (Laughter) – I think, pretty stark – ROCKWELL: (Laughing) Yes. SMITH: – you know, pretty easy to understand, even if you don't agree with him. MOSSBURG: Well, I think that's human nature, isn't it? I mean, Michael Lewis talked about that in his Vanity Fair piece in the December issue, just about how people completely isolate facts and look at things, look at the things that they want to see and that's all they see. So it's – SMITH: Yes. And a great example of that in recent history was the run up to the invasion of Iraq, where they stove-piped intelligence. They gave the president what he wanted to hear to advance his – what he wanted to hear to advance his case. You know, the WMDs and the fact that Saddam Hussein actually had drones that could attack America – (Laughter) – which, of course, was preposterous. ROCKWELL: (Laughing) Yes. SMITH: But so many of these things were preposterous. I guess my favorite one was Wolfowitz – I think it was Wolfowitz, wasn't it, Lew, who said it would be a war that would pay for itself? (Laughter) ROCKWELL: That's right. SMITH: That doesn't seem like an accurate observation. ROCKWELL: Because we'd get the oil and so forth, yes. So that's right, yes. SMITH: Yes. Yes. That didn't happen, did it? No, no, no. ROCKWELL: Wolfowitz got huge contracts, by the way, after he left office from the Defense Department and so forth. SMITH: Yes. ROCKWELL: It's paid for the war for him. MOSSBURG: Lucrative for him? ROCKWELL: Yes. MOSSBURG: Well – SMITH: War is about profit. Let's face it. That's what it's about. It's about loot, it's about profit, and it always has been, and it still is. And now, you have generals – I was reading today in the news – generals who are threatening to obstruct the withdrawal of our troops from Afghanistan. Isn't that, shall we say, insubordination? MOSSBURG: Lew and Ron, we have a caller who would like to speak about, in defense of the parasites, as he says. (Laughter) SMITH: OK. MOSSBURG: Let's go to Bill. How are you doing, Bill? CALLER: OK. First of all, I'd like to wish Ron Smith the very best in this terrible battle against the illness that he has. SMITH: I appreciate it. CALLER: I disagree with Mr. Smith on most things, but I do wish him the very best, OK? SMITH: Thank you. CALLER: OK. Number two, I really take issue with Mr. Rockwell calling our government workers parasites. Now, in the first place, a lot of those government workers that are civilians, not even military, that work in our intelligence agencies, are one of the reasons that we got bin Laden. Some of those parasites that Mr. Rockwell has been labeling as people who do not contribute to our society, and that includes the TSA, are people who are quite arguably helping to protect his butt so he can get on your show and shoot his big mouth off. And I find his words disgraceful. SMITH: Well, Lew, would you like to respond? ROCKWELL: Well, we can know they're parasites because they earn their money by force. It's not like a voluntary market transaction where we can know that somebody is valuable. These guys put a gun to your head and say, pay up or you're going to jail; resist and we will kill you. That is the nature of the government. So the government is the one institution in society which claims and exercises the right to initiate violence against the innocent. And, of course, we're supposed to be thankful for this. By the way, government employees, on average, at all levels, make double what the victim taxpayer makes. Double. These are our overlords. They live it up. They do relatively little work. And as to our intelligence agencies, they're part of the whole Military-Industrial Complex that brought on 9/11 because we've been meddling in other people's countries for all these years, establishing dictators, overthrowing their governments, doing all kinds of horrendous torturing, killing, and, as I say, installing dictators, Mubarak, the Shah, all the bunch of them. It caused backlash. And so the rest of us in this country, who weren't part of the so-called intelligence agencies, suffered from what these people did to us. As to the TSA, the idea that they should be able to feel you up, feel up your sexual organs to get on a plane, and even to take off your shoes – no civilized country in the world, by the way, makes you take off your shoes. This is an old CIA tactic to make you humiliated and to make you easy to control. It has nothing to do with security. This is all security theater. One of the things about people who go into the government and rise to the top – and this is not everybody in the government. But the people who rise to the top like crushing others. They like putting their boot on your throat. They get a charge out of it. Some of them like killing people. They like bombing other countries. They get a kick out of it. So do we want more of this kind of conduct in society or do we want less? Already, we have the biggest, most powerful, richest government in the history of the world by many magnitudes, the U.S. government. And, of course, now they're telling us, with their ridiculous super committee stuff, that, of course, we have to pay more taxes to them, let them be even richer and make us poorer. The U.S. government is making every single American taxpayer poorer. And we should keep that in mind when they now are telling us they want more money, more power. They want you to be entirely naked before them, in every sense, to control you, to run your life, run your family, run your business, run your school, run your community. And you are just supposed to salute and say, yes, sir, here's my wallet, here's my child, here's my life. Uh-uh. A lot of us are now saying, no, we're not going to do it. CALLER: May I just respond with just a couple of sentences? SMITH: Sure. MOSSBURG: Go ahead. CALLER: So somehow, according to the great Mr. Rockwell – (Laughter) – we have a Gestapo totalitarian society with a jackboot on our throats, telling us that if we do not conform to the laws and the principles of the United States, we will be executed or maybe thrown into a 21st century-style Auschwitz. And the reason that 3,000 people got blown to pieces on 9/11 is because of the CIA and our other intelligence agencies. I'm going to hang up. I've seen some raving lunatics on your show, Ron Smith – (Laughter) – but this guy takes the cake. SMITH: Well, you actually haven't seen them. You've heard them. (Laughter) MOSSBURG: Maybe on YouTube. ROCKWELL: You know, the U.S. government, by the way, just take the case of Iraq – killed a million people in this whole adventure in Iraq, a country that had never done anything to us. And overthrow a secular regime, which, of course, they're now doing it in Syria, too, so they can bring the Islamist fundamentalists to power to make more trouble, because empires love power. It gives them the reason to expand. The U.S. has got 900 military bases in other people's countries. We feel perfectly free to send in the predator drones and kill people. And we're supposed to think that doesn't cause a problem for us? That doesn't cause people to hate our guts? Why don't we mind our own business? We've got plenty of problems in this country we need to worry about. We're in a depression. We need to worry about that. We cannot afford this empire. It's immoral. And it's only good for the Wolfowitzs and the Lockheeds and the Boeings. SMITH: And it's failing. And it's failing. ROCKWELL: Yes, that's right. SMITH: And it's failing. MOSSBURG: I think that's why, as we were talking about earlier, that Ron Paul's message is resonating so much now and that it will get the light of day because it's just imminent, and people feel it. ROCKWELL: Well, we're supposed to be like this, take this gentleman's advice and just trust the government, give them everything, let them run us, because they've got our best interest at heart. You know what? No, they don't. This is a great myth. The government's got the government's interest at heart. They don't have the people's interest at heart. Their interest is to take all our money – (Laughing) – run our lives and make sure that we obey or otherwise put us in a cage. It's not Auschwitz, you know, but it's one of these massive numbers of government cages that exist in this country. They like to put you in a cage and it's horrendous. And they want to spray the pepper spray in your face and all the rest of it. So are we supposed to think we need more of that conduct, or maybe do we need a slash – and that doesn't even begin to describe what needs to be done – to the government, especially the federal government, which, of course, also has the ambition to be the world government. MOSSBURG: Well, you look at – I mean, you look throughout history and just at when movements take shape or take off, and it often takes decades and decades. I mean, earlier this year, I read Amazing Grace, about William Wilberforce ending the slave trade over in Britain and, I mean, this was this man's life-long quest. And, you know, it took 20 years on the first half to end the slave trade, and then many more to end slavery. So that's just one of those situations that shows that, politically, any issue can, even if it resonates with a lot of people, you need near collapse before it actually is taken seriously. ROCKWELL: And let's not forget that slavery was a government institution. MOSSBURG: Yes. ROCKWELL: Made possible only by government. Because, of course, the slave runs away, the government catches them and sends them back. MOSSBURG: Well, a huge tax interest as a result of the landowners who were making tons of money. ROCKWELL: Yes. So, I mean, this is – and Auschwitz was a government institution, too. Remember when the gentleman was mentioning that? So I would argue the great enemy of mankind on earth, the state. And I think people are waking up. It has taken decades. But Ron Paul has been talking about this sort of thing since the middle 1970s, the early 1970s in public life, and he really has changed millions of minds. I mean, it's amazing. You know, when you wonder what one person can do, you just have to look at the life of Ron Paul, or I might add the life of Ron Smith, too. People can change huge numbers of minds, can change hearts, and can enlighten people so they're not going to put up with this anymore. SMITH: Do you see that happening? Do you see that happening? ROCKWELL: I do see it happening. I see it among the young. SMITH: I thought that 2010 election was a watershed. Now, it may be reversed in 2012. We don't know. Isn't it in Spain, Lew, where they – and in other nations, too, but Spain leaps to mind – they got rid of their conservative government and they've put in a liberal government. Now, they've gotten rid of their liberal government; they put in a conservative government. There is just widespread dissatisfaction with the rulers, no matter what party they identify with, no matter what ideology they profess. ROCKWELL: Gary North quoted a Spanish voter the other day who said, well, we get to decide – in this election, we get to decide what sauce they're going to cook us in – SMITH: Yes. ROCKWELL: – but we don't get to decide whether we're going to be cooked. (Laughter) SMITH: Yes. He said we're going to get cooked anyway. (Laughter) ROCKWELL: Yes. So I don't think – MOSSBURG: That's a great line. ROCKWELL: I don't think we have to look to government to our salvation. People like you, Ron; people like Ron Paul; and all the good professors, and there are many of them; the good businessmen, and there are vast numbers of them; the good homemakers; workers all across this country, there's a huge surge of people beginning to think for themselves, not just accept Obama or Romney. Well, there are other things in life besides that spectrum, and I think especially among the young. So I have great hope for the future, even though I think the immediate future, we're going to have a lot of trouble. MOSSBURG: Well, Lew, thank you very much for your time. It was great talking with you. ROCKWELL: Well, thanks so much for listening to the Lew Rockwell Show today. Take a look at all the podcasts. There have been hundreds of them. There's a link on the upper right-hand corner of the LRC front page. Thank you. Podcast date, December 2, 2011 December 10, 2012 Ron Smith [send him mail] can be heard weekdays, 3 p.m. to 6 p.m., on Baltimore's 1090 WBAL-AM and WBAL.com. His column appears Wednesdays in The Baltimore Sun.
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