Art Bell - 19940520_Art-Bell-SIT-David-Aikman-Waco-The-Coming-Civil-War
Aired: 1994-05-20
Duration: 02:46:28


=== One Hour Changes Everything (05:38) ===

[00:00:25]  Welcome to Art Bell Somewhere in Time.
[00:00:28]  Tonight, featuring Coast to Coast AM from May 20th, 1994.
[00:00:33]  From the high desert and the great American Southwest, I bid you all a gracious good evening, good morning, wherever you may be.
[00:00:42]  Still evening here on the West or Left Coast.
[00:00:46]  I'm Art Bell.
[00:00:47]  This is Coast to Coast A.M. for a Friday night, Saturday morning.
[00:00:52]  And I've got a guest, as promised, this evening, this morning.
[00:00:56]  Kind of hate this.
[00:00:57]  Just one hour and it all changes.
[00:00:59]  My guest is David Aikman.
[00:01:02]  He is a senior foreign correspondent for Time magazine.
[00:01:06]  And he has written a book that I'm right in the middle of at the moment.
[00:01:10]  Fabulous book.
[00:01:12]  The name of the book is When the Almond Tree Blossoms.
[00:01:18]  It is a chilling novel.
[00:01:19]  It's build of America's next civil war.
[00:01:24]  And in view of some things that are going on right now, I thought this was a particularly timely thing to be discussing.
[00:01:32]  I've got a bit of a bullet for you this morning, those of you who follow these things.
[00:01:37]  This came by facts.
[00:01:38]  Reliable sources indicate that Red Beckman, one of the founders of FIGA, was jumped this morning by local sheriff SWAT teams, removed from his 15-acre ranch, personal effects taken from the dwelling to ostensibly be stored at Red's expense.
[00:01:55]  As a matter of fact, I talked to one of the people earlier who's going to be guarding some of his belongings, and the house was bulldozed.
[00:02:05]  No shots fired.
[00:02:06]  Red and his wife apparently taken by the sheriff, then released.
[00:02:10]  They're at a motel at the moment and not incarcerated.
[00:02:15]  So there you have it.
[00:02:19]  They've made their move on Red Beckman in Montana.
[00:02:25]  And also, of course, with Linda Thompson's recent call for call to arms, I guess it is.
[00:02:38]  And it may be that David Aikman is or is not familiar with what she's doing.
[00:02:42]  Linda Thompson, who produced the videotape, Waco the Big Lie, has incredibly, in fact, on this program, called for men, women, everybody, I suppose, with guns to form up September 19th to go to Washington.
[00:03:02]  She's issued the second Declaration of Independence.
[00:03:07]  She has made demands.
[00:03:09]  There's an ultimatum she's issued to our lawmakers.
[00:03:13]  And she has said that she will go to Washington and arrest the Congress people who have not conformed to this ultimatum.
[00:03:24]  And those found guilty will be hung.
[00:03:28]  And so in view of that, the IRS moves the Red Beckman News this morning.
[00:03:34]  I think that a discussion of this fictional account of America's next Civil War might have just a little bit more basis in reality than it otherwise would.
[00:03:49]  And here is David Aikman.
[00:03:51]  Let's talk with him.
[00:03:52]  David Aikman, do you hear me?
[00:03:55]  Well, that's not a good beginning.
[00:03:56]  Let's try this again.
[00:03:59]  David Aikman, now, do you hear me?
[00:04:02]  Hello, David.
[00:04:05]  Hello, David.
[00:04:06]  Not a good beginning.
[00:04:07]  David, are you there?
[00:04:12]  Well, I wonder what happened.
[00:04:14]  David, where have you gone?
[00:04:16]  David Aikman was supposed to be right there.
[00:04:19]  Of course, supposed to be is not always the way that it works out.
[00:04:24]  So I'll tell you what we'll do.
[00:04:26]  We'll hang this up and re-dial.
[00:04:30]  If you'd like to make a call, yes, dear, yes, dear, yes, dear.
[00:04:34]  We will recall David Aikman and see what happened.
[00:04:37]  We'll be right back.
[00:04:57]  Let's try this again.
[00:04:58]  Now, I hope that David Aikman was able to hear quite a bit of that.
[00:05:02]  David, are you there?
[00:05:03]  I'm here right now.
[00:05:04]  Oh, good.
[00:05:05]  Where are you, by the way?
[00:05:06]  Well, I'm in Burke, Virginia, which is about 20 miles out of Washington.
[00:05:10]  20 miles out of Washington.
[00:05:12]  Scene of the crime.
[00:05:13]  Well, that's right.
[00:05:15]  Okay, David.
[00:05:16]  Were you able to hear any of what I said in the set-up piece?
[00:05:18]  Yes, I did.
[00:05:19]  I heard it all, and I was fascinated.
[00:05:21]  I hadn't heard that story before.
[00:05:22]  Are you familiar with Linda Thompson, who's got that videotape called Waco the Big Lie?
[00:05:27]  I'm afraid I'm not familiar with her at all.
[00:05:29]  I see.
[00:05:31]  Well, she's become something of a kind of a patriot personality, and she's actually called for exactly what I just told you.
[00:05:40]  Right.
[00:05:40]  And I consider it to be incredibly dangerous, incredibly dangerous.
[00:05:46]  But first, let's find out a little bit about you.

=== Remarkable Events Ahead (13:43) ===

[00:05:49]  You work for Time magazine.
[00:05:50]  That's correct.
[00:05:52]  How long have you been with Time, and what have you done?
[00:05:54]  Well, I've been with Time 23 years.
[00:05:56]  I've been most of that time a foreign correspondent in Middle East, the Far East, Russia, and about 50 other countries.
[00:06:04]  Seen some fairly remarkable events of our day, I guess.
[00:06:08]  Well, I guess.
[00:06:10]  What would you consider to be the high point of your career or the high points of your career, your favorite assignments?
[00:06:16]  Well, I think one of the most interesting assignments was being based in Jerusalem in the early 1980s and seeing the war in Lebanon close up, seeing a number of different countries in that region.
[00:06:29]  But I also covered the tail end of the Vietnam War.
[00:06:32]  I was in China during the Tiananmen Massacre, and I was in Eastern Europe.
[00:06:39]  Oh, you were in China at the Tiananmen Massacre.
[00:06:42]  That's right.
[00:06:44]  While we're on the subject of China, there's sort of an interesting thing developing, as you know, with China.
[00:06:49]  And next, our president has squarely said that he will not, unless there is improvement in the human rights in China, will not renew MFN.
[00:07:00]  And as a matter of fact, next month, early next month, he's going to have to make a decision about whether to renew or not.
[00:07:08]  We've got a lot of trade going on with China and a lot of reasons to think about wanting to renew MFN, and he's kind of between a rock and a hard place.
[00:07:16]  What do you think he's going to do?
[00:07:18]  Well, most people here are fairly certain that he is going to renew it, but with qualifications, which is kind of a bit of a weasel way out, having started on the rhetorical high road.
[00:07:31]  Indeed.
[00:07:32]  But I don't think he has any alternative realistically, because once you fire that anti-MFN shot, you've got nothing left.
[00:07:41]  And China says, okay, that's it.
[00:07:44]  Goodbye.
[00:07:44]  We're not going to pay any attention to you anymore.
[00:07:47]  Mm-hmm.
[00:07:49]  Well, Perhaps some people would say it w it will be consistent with what the rest of his foreign policy has been to this point.
[00:07:58]  What do you hear about before we get your book?
[00:08:00]  I'm very curious.
[00:08:01]  What do you hear about North Korea?
[00:08:04]  What's the inside word?
[00:08:05]  Well, it's very, very worrying here in Washington within the administration.
[00:08:10]  I think if you listen to what Defense Secretary Perry says, actually this applies to a number of foreign policy issues, you get, through reading between the lines, a much more realistic notion of what's up and what's down than listening to other administration spokesmen, starting, of course, with the fellow at the top.
[00:08:32]  And he says, in effect, that it is extremely critical.
[00:08:38]  As you know, the United Nations has to decide whether or not it's going to call for sanctions.
[00:08:43]  Yes.
[00:08:44]  And if that happened, we just don't know what the North Koreans would do in response.
[00:08:48]  Well, they, of course, have said it would be they would regard it as an act of war.
[00:08:52]  That's right.
[00:08:53]  So that's hanging.
[00:08:55]  And then, of course, there's Haiti.
[00:08:57]  I believe at midnight tonight, the sanctions, which ABC yesterday called a big blunt instrument, will descend on Haiti, allowing only food, medicine, and that's it.
[00:09:06]  Right.
[00:09:07]  Yes.
[00:09:08]  Unfortunately, they're also, the insiders are saying that it's not going to do a damn bit of good.
[00:09:13]  Well, that's right.
[00:09:14]  I mean, I think, again, this is a case of rhetoric getting out ahead of common sense.
[00:09:20]  And the president has, I think, unwisely allowed himself to be kind of backed into a corner by people who are very emotional about Haiti for maybe justifiable reasons.
[00:09:33]  But he's put himself in a situation where if he doesn't do something, he's going to look, unfortunately, even more weasily than usual.
[00:09:44]  I've said on this program, David, and you may want to speculate with me or you may not, but with the way foreign policy is going with this president, I'm almost convinced at some point he's going to stumble and bumble his way into a war.
[00:10:00]  Whether it's Korea, whether it's just sort of a flashpoint in Haiti, whether it's Bosnia, I can't quite figure out where it's going to be, but I'm almost convinced, David, that it's going to be.
[00:10:12]  Well, that's a very sobering assessment, Art, and I'm afraid a number of us in Washington share the same view, largely because, of course, in time of war, the American people patriotically rallies around the president, whoever the person happens to be.
[00:10:31]  So there is that danger.
[00:10:33]  All right.
[00:10:34]  Why did you decide to write, David?
[00:10:37]  I'm really curious.
[00:10:38]  Why do you decide to write about the next civil war?
[00:10:41]  What motivated you to do that?
[00:10:43]  Well, that's a very good question, Art.
[00:10:45]  And the answer has to start with the fact that when I would be covering Eastern Europe, you know, before communism fell, I would come back and tell my friends over here the incredible stories of what it's like to live under a really dictatorial regime.
[00:11:02]  I mean, what it feels like to live with controls over almost every aspect of your life.
[00:11:09]  And nobody could even begin to grasp it.
[00:11:13]  So I conceived the idea of trying to write a book in which part of America would be under a sort of communist-type regime.
[00:11:22]  But first of all, I was beaten to the punch by that TV series called America with a Cave, you may recall.
[00:11:30]  I do.
[00:11:31]  And I thought, gee, I think they must have stolen my idea around.
[00:11:36]  But then the scenario changed and communism fell, and I had to come up with a different way of putting this.
[00:11:43]  And it wasn't until I began to see the dangers of ultra-nationalism in Russia.
[00:11:51]  And then I began to look more closely at the big conflicts in our own country, so far fortunately peaceful, in this sort of culture wars issue, that I began to realize there were fissures in American society that under certain extreme pressures, let's say military defeat overseas and perhaps a global economic collapse, could in fact break out into a real military civil war here.
[00:12:22]  Just as a matter of interest, how likely do you consider it to be that either for some domestic reason or some economic reason there would be a civil war in America?
[00:12:35]  How likely do you consider it?
[00:12:37]  Well, I think, in a sense, it is not terribly likely.
[00:12:44]  I mean, we live in an extraordinary country, Ark, where the political center of gravity is very, very low down.
[00:12:54]  It would take an enormous catastrophe to rock this country out of its democratic base.
[00:13:02]  And that's a wonderful fact to be aware of.
[00:13:06]  At the same time, I wrote my book before the Los Angeles riots, and in it, I predicted that one of the trigger events for the formation of a kind of alternative political base, which turns into one side in the Civil War called the People's Movement, would be precisely massive rioting in America's inner cities.
[00:13:30]  And I don't think it's inconceivable that you could have Los Angeles-type riots on a vastly increased scale.
[00:13:40]  I don't think it would necessarily be a race war, although it might seem that way to start with.
[00:13:45]  I don't think it would develop into that, fortunately.
[00:13:49]  By the way, David, have you heard some of the recent comments of Louis Farrakhan?
[00:13:54]  Did you happen to catch the interview with him on ABC a couple of weeks ago?
[00:13:58]  I'm sorry, I missed those particular words.
[00:14:00]  What did he say then?
[00:14:01]  Basically, Mr. Farrakhan rather calmly and rationally told Barbara Walters that he thinks that integration has not worked and will not work.
[00:14:13]  And from his point of view, there ought to be effectively a divorce between the black people and white people in America, and that the black people should receive, for all they've gone through, some territory, specific territory in the United States, and what would amount to alimony.
[00:14:32]  Well, that's quite extraordinary.
[00:14:34]  And, of course, we know what the consequences would be.
[00:14:36]  Yes.
[00:14:38]  And so there is that aspect.
[00:14:41]  Then there's the financial aspect.
[00:14:44]  I believe this country's headed towards some sort of a fall off the cliff somewhere down the line economically if we don't begin really doing something about the debt.
[00:14:55]  And we have reduced, of course, the percentage of growth of the deficit, but people don't really understand.
[00:15:01]  We're just reducing the growth of it and perhaps pushing the date back a little bit by which a collapse would occur.
[00:15:09]  But we have not yet solved the problem by a long shot.
[00:15:12]  Well, you're absolutely right, Art.
[00:15:13]  And of course, many quite sober people, not talking about novelists or screenplay writers here, have written books suggesting that the entire economic edifice is very, very vulnerable to something like a collapse in the Japanese banking system or the Japanese stock market, which would have a ripple effect across the entire globe.
[00:15:34]  Well, precisely.
[00:15:36]  All right.
[00:15:36]  And now your book, I'm curious.
[00:15:39]  You decided to begin your book, and we won't tell them really about your book, but you did decide to begin your book, in effect, after the first fighting or the actual civil war had occurred.
[00:15:52]  That's right.
[00:15:53]  Why did you decide to do that instead of covering the fact of the war itself?
[00:15:58]  Because every time I actually set out to write the events that led up to the war, I found myself writing a different book, and I realized I would never get to the main crux of the story, or at least what I wanted to be, without starting with the events already in place, so to speak.
[00:16:20]  Well, how would you, if you were trying to entice somebody to read your book, what would you tell them about it, or what particular review do you like?
[00:16:34]  There are several on your book.
[00:16:36]  Right.
[00:16:37]  I think what I'd like to do is to say this is not so much a prophecy as a warning.
[00:16:44]  These are events that could plausibly happen, I believe, at the chain of a certain series of circumstances which many people are saying will in fact happen, like Iran acquiring nuclear weapons.
[00:16:59]  In fact, one of the points in the book, Art, that I think you have noticed earlier was that this was the first work of fiction and maybe the first work of nonfiction that projects what Russia would be like if the ultra-nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky were in charge.
[00:17:17]  Yes.
[00:17:18]  And I had no idea when I wrote the book that he would do as well as he did in the elections, but I'm not surprised in a way.
[00:17:26]  The word is that his popularity to some degree has faded.
[00:17:30]  I don't know whether that's accurate or not.
[00:17:32]  Do you?
[00:17:34]  Yes, I think he probably has definitely gone down somewhat.
[00:17:40]  But the point of the matter is that the strength of the ultra-nationalists overall in opinion polls still remains very high.
[00:17:50]  And just as Hitler managed to move from an 18% position in 1930 to winning the elections or at least assuming power in 1933, I don't think we should pay too much attention to slight zigs and zags in an overall trend.
[00:18:09]  Well, that's kind of ominous.
[00:18:11]  How he will do, to some degree, depends on how Mr. Yeltsin does.
[00:18:15]  Right.
[00:18:16]  And how is he doing?
[00:18:17]  Well, Yeltsin is, as we both know, a very resilient fellow.
[00:18:22]  And just when he's being prepared for his political funeral, he somehow strides back into the scene and manages to pull a few things out of the fire, if you'll forgive me for mixing metaphors.
[00:18:37]  The general feeling is that the economy has bottomed out, that they are now beginning to see some genuine signs of improvement in people's living standards.
[00:18:49]  And if that can go on for another year, let's say, and if they can control, to some degree, the incredible crime wave and the corruption, then I think people will begin to realize that life really can become not just tolerable, but actually promising under their new situation.
[00:19:11]  One hears sort of below the surface very upsetting things about Russia's nuclear stockpile, about the mafia in Russia, and the possibility of some of these weapons beginning to get loose.

=== David Aikman's Insights (03:31) ===

[00:19:27]  What have you heard?
[00:19:28]  Well, that's, of course, a situation that would be catastrophic.
[00:19:33]  I have traveled to Russia several times, and I accompanied the group that was covering President Clinton in January.
[00:19:42]  And although there have been rumors, for example, that weapons or nuclear devices from the stockpile in Kazakhstan, which used to be part of the Soviet Union, have gotten into Iranian hands, nobody has been able to confirm that.
[00:20:00]  What I think is a very serious danger is if there were a war between Russia and Ukraine, which unfortunately becomes more and more plausible with the tensions between those two countries, that Ukraine might feel the only way to avoid being overwhelmed conventionally would be to fire off the last of its own remaining nukes.
[00:20:27]  And that would be terrible.
[00:20:28]  That would be terrible.
[00:20:29]  David Aikman, hold on.
[00:20:30]  We're going to take care of some business.
[00:20:32]  You can relax for a few moments, and we'll be back to you.
[00:20:35]  Thank you.
[00:20:35]  All right.
[00:20:36]  David Aikman is my guest.
[00:20:37]  He is a senior foreign correspondent for Time Magazine.
[00:20:42]  So we may tap his expertise in several areas of world concern right now and talk to him about his book, When the Almond Tree Blossoms, about America's next civil war.
[00:20:57]  So, back with David Aikman, senior foreign correspondent for Time Magazine, in just a moment.
[00:21:04]  This is Premier Networks.
[00:21:06]  That was Art Bell hosting Coast to Coast AM on this Somewhere in Time.
[00:21:37]  You're listening to Art Bell Somewhere in Time.
[00:21:41]  Tonight, featuring Coast to Coast AM from May 20th, 1994.
[00:21:45]  Hi, everybody.
[00:21:46]  I'm Art Bell.
[00:21:47]  This is Coast to Coast AM.
[00:21:48]  My guest is David Aikman.
[00:21:51]  He's a senior foreign correspondent for Time Magazine, has written a really chilling book.
[00:21:56]  And by the way, I want to tell you, an excellent book.
[00:21:59]  It's a good read.
[00:22:00]  I'm right in the middle of it, right now.
[00:22:21]  David Aikman, are you there?
[00:22:23]  I am indeed.
[00:22:23]  Good, good, good.
[00:22:25]  David, you mentioned America with a K. Right.
[00:22:28]  I watched that, and I was astounded that Americans would sort of play the part of downtrodden, repressed serfs dressed generally in brown with their eyes mostly on the ground, subservient, falling right into line.

=== North Korea And Nuclear Devices (15:45) ===

[00:22:46]  Is that what could happen?
[00:22:47]  Could that happen, David?
[00:22:48]  Well, I don't, of course, agree with the premise that started America, but I do think there are circumstances when people would, in some parts of the country, submit to very strong authoritarian rule if that rule promised them, A, security in the streets, and B, some kind of minimal standard of living.
[00:23:14]  And those kind of promises could be made by regimes dealing with the consequences of economic collapse and military defeat.
[00:23:24]  Something like Singapore, perhaps, some kind of benign or paternalistic dictatorship?
[00:23:31]  Very much so.
[00:23:32]  Yes, I don't know whether you've gotten to that part of when the almond tree blossoms, where people are sort of commenting on the effect of this regime in New York.
[00:23:43]  I mean, it's the kind of regime that you and I would find intolerable.
[00:23:47]  But what it does do is it cleans the place up.
[00:23:50]  It pushes the drug dealers off the streets.
[00:23:53]  Exactly.
[00:23:54]  Yes, I am to that part.
[00:23:56]  And there were some actual positive comments.
[00:23:58]  In other words, I remember one sentence where one of the characters said, but on balance, you know, I kind of like New York the way it is now as opposed to the way it was.
[00:24:06]  Right, right.
[00:24:07]  I think you'd have people like that.
[00:24:10]  So how many is the question, I suppose?
[00:24:13]  Well, that's right.
[00:24:14]  But I think my point is that the war that I envisage is more likely to be along urban versus rural than the sort of the geographical divide that we had in the original Civil War.
[00:24:29]  Well, David, what's going on in our cities right now is pretty much driving the gun control that's driving the people out west here up a tree.
[00:24:40]  I mean, you cannot imagine the angry sentiment there is out here about the gun control that's been that the East and the West, the cities and the rural areas are distinctly different.
[00:24:52]  Yes, that's absolutely true, and I certainly understand the sentiments.
[00:24:56]  Actually, I understand the sentiments on both sides, although each side may think the other is completely up the creek.
[00:25:04]  Well, I guess it depends on your perspective.
[00:25:06]  If you live in a city where there's a lot of trouble and you're close to one there, I can understand you'd feel that these guns have got to go or get under control or something.
[00:25:16]  Right.
[00:25:16]  But gee whiz, David, out here, it's second nature.
[00:25:20]  I'm in rural Nevada, rural, and we're covering all over the West, and you'll get to hear it this morning, believe me.
[00:25:28]  But these guns are second nature, and the only way it feels out here is that they're taking the guns for some ominous reason.
[00:25:37]  A lot of people feel the reason to bear arms ultimately is, if necessary, to correct your own government.
[00:25:45]  Right.
[00:25:46]  And so that's the way they feel out here.
[00:25:50]  And I'll tell you what, let's take some calls, David, and kind of intersperse some calls in here.
[00:25:55]  So lots of lines ringing.
[00:25:57]  Let's try one here.
[00:25:58]  On the wildcard line, you're on the air with David Aikman.
[00:26:01]  Good evening.
[00:26:02]  Good evening, Art Stan Art here in San Diego and Cogo.
[00:26:05]  Yes, sir.
[00:26:06]  I was wondering, the news of the day coming from Korea, if David would comment on it, I think that they said that the North Koreans would allow inspection.
[00:26:19]  I don't know if that was to the Americans or to the UN, or what was it exactly?
[00:26:24]  Does he know?
[00:26:25]  All right.
[00:26:26]  The IAEA inspectors are now there, but the fuel rods have been pulled.
[00:26:32]  And David, what are your comments?
[00:26:34]  Well, the inspection that the North Koreans are permitting would give the International Atomic Energy Agency a chance to look at the sort of nuclear history of the last few months, which is one of the things that has most concerned the UN, because if you can follow the nuclear history, you can find out whether plutonium has been removed or not.
[00:26:58]  And if plutonium has not been removed, at least that means that the North Koreans have not been doing anything that they shouldn't have been doing in the last let's say eight weeks.
[00:27:09]  And that's an important change.
[00:27:11]  It is, but the consensus seems to be that they may well already have one or two nuclear devices, perhaps crude.
[00:27:21]  And our President had said the North Koreans must not be allowed to have one.
[00:27:25]  Right.
[00:27:26]  So again, he kind of did the two-shovel there.
[00:27:30]  That's right.
[00:27:30]  That's true.
[00:27:31]  And of course, he has made about as unequivocal statements as you can make without looking, let's hope he doesn't, but without looking very, very uncertain if he backs down.
[00:27:45]  All right, to another call on our toll-free line, you're on the air with David Aikman.
[00:27:50]  Good evening.
[00:27:50]  From St. Louis, Missouri.
[00:27:51]  St. Louis, yes, sir.
[00:27:53]  Yes, Mr. Aikman.
[00:27:54]  Yes.
[00:27:55]  I've listened to you before on Pat Robertson's show and was really impressed.
[00:28:01]  Thank you.
[00:28:02]  What I want to talk about is that Art mentioned at the top of his program about Lynn Thompson and the Patriot movement.
[00:28:08]  Right.
[00:28:09]  I don't think Washington, D.C. really understands the sentiment and the anger and the frustration out here by people that align themselves with the Patriot movement.
[00:28:21]  It's nationwide.
[00:28:22]  It's not just a certain geographical area.
[00:28:25]  Basically, what it is, is that the Patriot movement, the Patriots, are highly upset that Washington, D.C. is moving us into this New World Order, one world government situation.
[00:28:37]  And at the same time, they're taking our rights away from us one slice at a time.
[00:28:42]  And the biggest outrage is they're working on our Second Amendment rights slice by slice.
[00:28:49]  And it's not going to work.
[00:28:51]  And Washington, D.C. had better take heed because when they start going for people's guns, that's when the Civil War is going to break out.
[00:29:00]  And I'm really nervous because Lynette Thompson has come up and said September 19th, we're going to march on Washington, D.C.
[00:29:08]  And other Patriot movements are preparing right now for war against the federal government.
[00:29:14]  And it's a scary situation.
[00:29:16]  And I think Washington is not taking this seriously, or either they feel like they have the force in place to put it down.
[00:29:24]  And that's where I see the Civil War coming from.
[00:29:27]  And I just wanted your comment.
[00:29:28]  All right.
[00:29:28]  Thank you, St. Louis.
[00:29:30]  See, there it is, David.
[00:29:31]  I told you that kind of thing was coming.
[00:29:32]  Well, I think that's a very accurate observation.
[00:29:35]  I don't think Washington has any idea of the sentiment in the hinterland, which is not an uncommon phenomenon, as you know.
[00:29:44]  I think also Washington is completely unaware.
[00:29:48]  First of all, as you correctly pointed out, Art, that if you live out in the West, and I've been out in the West several times, and I love the area, you have a different view of guns from if you live in upper midtown Manhattan, let's say.
[00:30:05]  Yes.
[00:30:06]  They are second nature, and you enjoy them, and the vast majority of people use them in a very proper and appropriate way.
[00:30:15]  The other thing, of course, is that I don't think people in America's cities, and of course this California Washington, are aware of the extent to which this sense of being drawn into a sort of international economic web, for many people, especially independent business types, has very sinister kind of overtones.
[00:30:39]  Well, it does.
[00:30:40]  What do you think George Bush meant when he talked about the New World Order?
[00:30:43]  And I note that we've not really heard those words from the lips of our new president.
[00:30:49]  Well, this is interesting because I've read books on this topic, and I'm aware, fully aware of the fact that the New World Order is a phrase that has some very unfortunate antecedents.
[00:31:03]  I mean, Hitler talked about a New World Order, and some of the conspiratorial groups a couple of centuries ago had a similar kind of phrase.
[00:31:14]  And George Bush, of course, came from a very elite portion of the United States with some connections to secret societies at Yale University when he was an undergraduate, all of which sounds a little bit unpleasant.
[00:31:31]  My own personal view is that the phrase which I know was specifically concocted at a session out at Kenny Bunkfoot with his advisor Brent Scowcroft was at the time a sort of plausible effort at describing a funny kind of period of balance and cooperation between the then Soviet Union and the then United States.
[00:31:57]  And that particular window of balance quickly disappeared, of course, and then everybody made fun of the phrase.
[00:32:05]  Well, there are those who don't exactly make fun of it, but rather fear it because they think that we're moving squarely.
[00:32:11]  Of course, we are already economically intertwined with the rest of the world.
[00:32:15]  Right.
[00:32:15]  And it follows, frankly, logically, I don't think in the short term, but in the long term, that we would move towards some political conglomeration and then ultimately some one world rule, and that's what everybody worries about.
[00:32:32]  Well, yes, and I certainly would share those concerns too, I think a lot more than some of my colleagues, because if you had a one-world rule, a lot of the principles by which this country was founded would be thrown out of the window.
[00:32:49]  You don't have to be a genius to look at the nearly 200 countries in the United Nations and see how they're run and say, thanks, I don't want to be part of that.
[00:32:59]  So I certainly understand people's concerns, and I think one does need to be vigilant.
[00:33:06]  What is this president all about, David?
[00:33:09]  Is he somebody who just really thought that he could do a great deal of domestic change?
[00:33:16]  And does he really not care about foreign policy?
[00:33:21]  We hear stories about his ignoring even one-hour meetings on the subject, luncheon meetings in Washington.
[00:33:29]  Is there anything to that?
[00:33:30]  Yes, there is.
[00:33:31]  I mean, he has publicly said it annoys him to have to spend time on foreign policy because that keeps him away from the domestic theme.
[00:33:41]  I think to answer your first question, Art, what makes Bill Clinton tick is he is essentially the 1960s in power.
[00:33:54]  This is a very touchy, feely view of the world.
[00:33:58]  I care.
[00:33:59]  I feel your pain.
[00:34:01]  All of which sounds fine and is sort of a therapeutic approach to problems sort of in the national agenda.
[00:34:11]  But the touchy-feely approach doesn't cut much ice with fellows like Kim Il-sung in North Korea or Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
[00:34:20]  Well, there's another thing I'd like you to comment on, David.
[00:34:23]  Our word as a nation has generally been, particularly with reference to foreign policy, our bond.
[00:34:30]  In other words, what we have said in the past, we have done, and frankly, even those countries that dislike us and they are legion know that we will do what we say we will do.
[00:34:41]  If we have drawn a line in the sand, by God, we'll stand by it.
[00:34:46]  Now, that was purchased with a lot of American blood, sweat, and tears, that good word, and now it seems to be going down the drain.
[00:34:57]  Well, I agree, and I think it's a tragedy that that kind of respect that the United States, not always, but a lot of the time, has had, is being kind of trivialized away with just more and more words that change one day and don't mean anything the next.
[00:35:16]  Having said all this, David, what are his prospects, if he faced them today, of re-election?
[00:35:23]  I don't think Bill Clinton, under the present circumstances, could be re-elected.
[00:35:28]  I say could, because remember, he only got 43% in the general election in 1992.
[00:35:35]  And unless you had a wildcard third candidate, I think he'd be fairly resoundingly defeated.
[00:35:42]  All right, back to the phones.
[00:35:43]  Lots of calls.
[00:35:44]  And on the toll-free line, you're on the air with David Aikman.
[00:35:48]  Good evening.
[00:35:48]  Hi, good evening.
[00:35:50]  Where are you, sir?
[00:35:51]  Oh, I'm out here in Douglas County, Oregon.
[00:35:56]  Douglas County, Oregon, all right?
[00:35:57]  Yeah, where they're destroying the forest with illegal aliens.
[00:36:01]  The Weber, this federal judge, is giving them the right to destroy the forest with illegal aliens.
[00:36:09]  I don't know, but I see you're talking about this foreign policy.
[00:36:13]  The problem here is that on the Korean border between North and South Korea, I've got information that they've accumulated one million armed soldiers.
[00:36:29]  The information as far as what they're doing in the nuclear plants has been sort of scattered as whether they're really developing a bomb.
[00:36:40]  We have enough plutonium in Texas as where they can't figure out how to dispose of it.
[00:36:49]  What is your question, sir?
[00:36:51]  Well, the question here is, in foreign policy, where these real severe things are taking place, the American people do not want the military you.
[00:37:06]  Now, at the same time that this happens, they are closing up military bases.
[00:37:13]  Now, this is with Time magazine.
[00:37:16]  And if they would print in Time magazine, right, the amount of people, foreign people, foreign people that we have now presently undocumented foreign people in the United States.
[00:37:37]  That's part of policy.
[00:37:39]  I would buy the magazine.
[00:37:40]  Secondly.
[00:37:42]  Well, actually, I appreciate that comment because actually we had a special issue on the entire spectrum of immigration, including very, very extensive coverage on illegal immigration or undocumented immigration, as it's sometimes called, a few months ago last year.
[00:38:02]  So I don't think we've shied away from this topic and the considerable threat that many Americans justifiably, I think, feel that it poses to their way of life.

=== Vicious Charges and Fairness (03:42) ===

[00:38:14]  But since you are the mainstream press, David, let me ask you this.
[00:38:19]  Mr. Clinton has received, it seems, almost a tender treatment from the American press.
[00:38:27]  How come?
[00:38:28]  I think that was true last year, Art.
[00:38:31]  I don't think it's true anymore.
[00:38:34]  The simple answer to how come is most of the mainstream press is politically liberal.
[00:38:42]  This is hardly a secret, and it's very obvious in every kind of poll that you take asking the views of mainstream senior journalists on a whole variety of issues.
[00:38:54]  And many of these people couldn't stand the Reagan and the Bush years and just couldn't wait until they had a Democrat in the White House.
[00:39:03]  So I think they at least wanted to give him a good chance.
[00:39:07]  But in fairness to the mainstream press, I don't think they've held back at all from a very thorough criticism of the Clintons.
[00:39:17]  And if you want any real certain evidence of this, you just have to listen to Hillary Clinton decrying this kind of press attacks on her.
[00:39:26]  Well, in fact, they have been pretty vicious, David, of late, very vicious, actually.
[00:39:32]  I have heard charges that Bill Clinton is a drug smuggler, that Bill Clinton is a murderer.
[00:39:39]  There are people like Larry G. What's his name, Larry something or another, going around on the right and making some quite very incredible charges against Bill Clinton.
[00:39:52]  And I worry about this because they are, by and large, unsubstantiated.
[00:39:58]  And it seems to me the charges are beginning to get to be so wild that there's a danger they will obscure something that's really wrong.
[00:40:07]  Yes, I think you're right.
[00:40:08]  And I think there's another danger, too, that if you go to extremism in attacking a political adversary within the kind of system we have, which basically assumes fairness in the end.
[00:40:22]  Okay, a rough fight, but in the end, we agree on who won and who's in and who's out.
[00:40:28]  Yes.
[00:40:28]  If you do that, you change the ground rules and the other side gets no less nasty.
[00:40:36]  And Larry Nichols is the name I was trying to think of.
[00:40:39]  Oh, yeah, I think I've heard the name before.
[00:40:41]  I mean, it cuts both ways.
[00:40:44]  I think Americans should have every privilege of expressing political opinions about President Clinton or any other president and then voting him or her out of office at the end of the term.
[00:40:56]  But then they vote in somebody they may like a little more.
[00:41:00]  But the other people, if they feel their own candidate was treated savagely, will respond in kind.
[00:41:07]  And then what you have is a serious weakening of the prestige of the presidency as a whole.
[00:41:12]  And I don't think most Americans would benefit from that at all.
[00:41:16]  All right.
[00:41:17]  On a related topic, I've got a Reuters news story in front of me this morning, which says, is headlined, a report says Clinton to seek immunity from sex lawsuit.
[00:41:28]  Paula Jones, of course.
[00:41:29]  Right.

=== Joining Us From San Diego (07:14) ===

[00:41:31]  Its effect on the presidency.
[00:41:34]  What do you think about his seeking immunity if he gets it?
[00:41:37]  How's that going to look?
[00:41:39]  Well, actually, immunity is virtually implicit in the constitutional definition of the presidency.
[00:41:46]  In fact, there was a very interesting case that came up in 1982 when President Bush was the vice president.
[00:41:57]  I think it was 82.
[00:41:58]  Maybe it was 92.
[00:41:59]  I'm sorry.
[00:41:59]  It would have been when Bush was president.
[00:42:01]  Whether or not a president could be sued in office for offenses committed when he was not in office.
[00:42:11]  And the verdict of a court judge in Washington was it was perfectly all right to apply charges for offenses before the president came in office when the president had stepped down, but it would be inappropriate when he was still in office.
[00:42:27]  All right.
[00:42:28]  David, again, I'm going to ask you to stand by.
[00:42:30]  You can relax for a few moments, and we'll be right back after the top of the hour.
[00:42:34]  Thank you.
[00:42:34]  Stand by, David.
[00:42:35]  And David Aikman is my guest.
[00:42:38]  He's a senior foreign correspondent for Time magazine, and as such, can answer and has been lots and lots of good questions.
[00:42:45]  The trip back in time continues with Art Bell hosting Coast to Coast A.M. More Somewhere in Time coming up.
[00:42:55]  Networks presents Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
[00:43:22]  Tonight, featuring Coast to Coast A.M. from the 20th of May, 1994.
[00:43:27]  Good morning.
[00:43:28]  Welcome into Coast to Coast A.M. If you're just joining us at this hour, I have a guest, and we're going to go back to him in just a moment.
[00:43:36]  His name is David Aikman.
[00:43:38]  He is a senior foreign correspondent for Time Magazine, author of When the Almond Tree Blossoms, About America's Next Civil War.
[00:43:49]  Right now to David Aikman.
[00:44:11]  All the way across the country we go.
[00:44:14]  Again, senior foreign correspondent for Time magazine.
[00:44:17]  David, are you there?
[00:44:18]  I am indeed.
[00:44:19]  Good.
[00:44:21]  Your book.
[00:44:23]  How do we get your book, David?
[00:44:24]  If the people in the audience want your book, and I know by now a lot of them do, how do they get it?
[00:44:28]  Well, thanks for asking, Art.
[00:44:30]  First of all, most Christian bookstores will stock the book.
[00:44:37]  It was in many of the regular stores for a while, but they didn't restock it once they ran out.
[00:44:47]  I think your book ought to be up at the top of the bestseller list, David.
[00:44:52]  Why do you think it is not yet?
[00:44:54]  I mean, it has every quality that would make it a mainstream big-time seller.
[00:44:59]  Well, you're very gracious to say that, Art.
[00:45:01]  I think there are various reasons.
[00:45:04]  First of all, a lot of books, no doubt, much better than mine, just don't make it to the bestseller list for a variety of completely whimsical reasons.
[00:45:16]  It doesn't get reviewed in the first 10 days by the right publication, or it's handed to a reviewer who is very hostile, and then kind of the avalanche of new materials comes in, and this particular title just somehow doesn't take off.
[00:45:33]  Or it's politically unpopular.
[00:45:35]  Well, I'm glad you raised that.
[00:45:38]  I know for a fact that in sort of some of the mainstream book review segments, my book was not popular because there is a chapter in it, I don't know what you've got there, where I really make fun of political correctness.
[00:45:56]  And that doesn't go down too well in some circles.
[00:46:01]  I know.
[00:46:03]  All right.
[00:46:04]  Let's go back to the telephones, David.
[00:46:05]  A lot of people want to speak with you, and I'll kind of fit my own questions in.
[00:46:10]  On the toll-free line, you're on the air with David Aikman.
[00:46:13]  Good evening.
[00:46:14]  Yes, I want to make one point about the anger and disgust and distrust that people out here in the West.
[00:46:21]  I'm in San Diego have about the federal government.
[00:46:24]  All right.
[00:46:26]  What you said earlier is absolutely true.
[00:46:28]  And I tuned in, and you guys mentioned the movie, the television movie, America.
[00:46:33]  Yes.
[00:46:35]  I've been trying to find that thing for over a year now.
[00:46:37]  I think a lot of people need to see that again.
[00:46:41]  Even though it is fiction, a lot of people seem to think that we may see that.
[00:46:45]  Well, exactly, David?
[00:46:47]  Well, first of all, I hope this nice gentleman takes the trouble to read my book, which deals very much with this theme.
[00:46:55]  But in fact, the movie was a made-for-TV miniseries.
[00:47:01]  And very often, you cannot get hold of those through the regular video channels.
[00:47:06]  You have to go directly to the network.
[00:47:09]  I think it was ABC.
[00:47:10]  I tried ABC.
[00:47:11]  Nobody knows.
[00:47:12]  Unless I want something off of 2020, they don't know about it.
[00:47:15]  Oh, really?
[00:47:15]  Yeah.
[00:47:16]  Well, that's very interesting.
[00:47:18]  I think the only other alternative is to go to some of these specialized video clubs, which do have the means to bring back stuff that even the networks themselves don't have.
[00:47:31]  So I think if you persist and you go through video club specialists, you'll find somebody who can tell you how to get it.
[00:47:38]  Well, thank you very much.
[00:47:39]  All right.
[00:47:39]  Thank you very much for the call.
[00:47:42]  David, when you're constructing a book like this on a subject like this, even though it is fiction, I suppose you begin to think more and more and more, don't you, about the topic itself and begin to examine the possibilities of it actually happening in this country.
[00:48:00]  Is that true?
[00:48:01]  Yes, it really is true.
[00:48:02]  And in fact, I was startled when I was on a call show very similar to yours, Art, very early on after the book came out last year.
[00:48:15]  And came on the show with some remarkable details of a certain suburb, I think it was in Boston, where the local citizenry was so incensed with the drug dealing and lawlessness that they wanted to impose a mandatory listing of names of known criminals to those criminals ever getting credit or housing or anything else in that particular neighborhood.

=== Conflicting Rights and Spiritual Revival (03:23) ===

[00:48:46]  Now, we might think that's a bit 1984-ish, but the point of the call was to show that there are people out there who would willingly, unfortunately, embrace a dictatorship if it stops some of their local problems.
[00:49:00]  What about Chicago, David, where the public housing people there, or at least I suppose a majority of them, are prepared to sign away their rights, their Fourth Amendment rights, and let the police come bursting through the door.
[00:49:13]  Well, that's right.
[00:49:14]  I think what's happened in many parts of the country, and particularly in our inner cities, is a confusion of conflicting rights.
[00:49:22]  One, the right of the individual as enshrined in the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, and the other, the right of society to be reasonably protected from criminality.
[00:49:34]  And those two rights, unfortunately, come more and more into conflict in the cities.
[00:49:38]  Do you think in the end it's possible the American people will do as those in Chicago have done, and it will be so out of control that they will literally scream for their own rights to be removed?
[00:49:50]  I think that could happen.
[00:49:52]  Of course, it's certainly the response to that will be totally hostile out in the countryside, particularly out in the West, and that's completely understandable.
[00:50:02]  I personally feel, and this may sound a little wacky, but a lot of more sensible people than me have come up with the idea.
[00:50:11]  I personally feel that there has to be a real spiritual revival in this country, similar to what preceded other great crises in American history before the War of Independence, before the Civil War.
[00:50:24]  Is that process underway?
[00:50:26]  I think it is.
[00:50:27]  I think it's going to happen.
[00:50:29]  And the evidence of this is that finally, some of the commentators on the liberal side of the spectrum who kept saying there is no such thing as ultimate value.
[00:50:41]  Society is to blame for every individual's aberrant behavior.
[00:50:45]  These people are now saying, crying out loud, people have to start taking responsibility for what they do.
[00:50:52]  The problem has to start with one by one, as well at least as other social efforts.
[00:50:59]  Well, there's a lot of rebellion going on.
[00:51:01]  In Colorado, they have passed their Tenth Amendment measure.
[00:51:05]  Several other states have now followed, and it's sweeping across the West, I believe including Hawaii, David.
[00:51:12]  And states are beginning to assert their sovereignty with regard to federal government mandates.
[00:51:18]  Now, where in the world is that one going?
[00:51:21]  At some point, it seems to me, there's going to be a showdown.
[00:51:25]  Well, I think you're right.
[00:51:26]  In fact, it's striking to me, one of the characters in my book who is more closely based on a real-life person than anyone else, the head of Russia in my book, who I call Zhelinovsky, of course.
[00:51:40]  That's very similar to the author National Zhirinovsky.
[00:51:43]  Sure.
[00:51:43]  Zhirnovsky himself, upon whom I model this character, predicted in his campaign autobiography that, in fact, America would start breaking up state by state.
[00:51:54]  You'd have, for example, Spanish-speaking states in the West and the Southwest moving one direction and so on.

=== Significant Resignations and Secession Speculations (09:29) ===

[00:52:04]  And that tendency could take place if we don't get a grip on some of these issues.
[00:52:10]  Well, again, there is a sovereignty movement in Hawaii driven by Hawaiian natives, I think.
[00:52:16]  There have been for years.
[00:52:18]  I once lived in Alaska, David, and every year in Alaska they circulate a secession petition.
[00:52:24]  And just speculatively for a moment, suppose a state actually decided to secede with our current president sitting, Bill Clinton.
[00:52:37]  Right.
[00:52:37]  What would he do?
[00:52:39]  Well, I think he'd probably establish a commission to talk about it.
[00:52:44]  Maybe he'd go on MTV.
[00:52:46]  I'm not sure.
[00:52:50]  I don't want to speculate too much because I may lose control of myself.
[00:52:54]  That's great.
[00:52:55]  He'd go on MTV.
[00:52:57]  You probably would.
[00:52:58]  You're right.
[00:52:59]  On our wildcard line, you're on the air with David Aikman.
[00:53:02]  Good evening.
[00:53:03]  Good evening.
[00:53:03]  This is Brian from KOPE Country here in Bedford, Oregon.
[00:53:07]  Yes.
[00:53:07]  I had to put a reward out to get a copy of that America with a K.
[00:53:12]  A really?
[00:53:12]  Because it's not in any of the video stores.
[00:53:14]  Chris Christoffens' name is not even listed as having done the movie.
[00:53:17]  Well, it wouldn't be because it's owned by the network.
[00:53:20]  So unless they release it to video, you're not going to get it.
[00:53:22]  Well, but even his name isn't listed in all movies he's done.
[00:53:25]  When you look up an index of the movies he's done, it's off not even on the list.
[00:53:30]  That's blacklisted.
[00:53:31]  That's because it's not a general release movie.
[00:53:35]  It's a TV miniseries.
[00:53:37]  Well, I know that.
[00:53:38]  Yes.
[00:53:38]  I'm aware of that.
[00:53:39]  So I had to offer a reward here locally to get a copy of it that someone had an extra copy.
[00:53:44]  That's the only way I could get it.
[00:53:45]  Well, maybe you should set up in business.
[00:53:48]  Any questions, Brian?
[00:53:50]  No, but I just wanted to let him know that that's a very, very poignant movie to what you're talking about tonight, and people should try by all means to get a copy of that and see it.
[00:53:58]  All right.
[00:53:58]  Thank you for the call.
[00:54:00]  And on the wildcard line, you're on the air with David Aikman.
[00:54:02]  Good evening.
[00:54:04]  Hello there.
[00:54:05]  No, you're not.
[00:54:06]  On the toll-free line, you're on the air with David Aikman.
[00:54:09]  Good evening.
[00:54:09]  Yes, this is Dirk from Washington.
[00:54:12]  Washington, all right?
[00:54:14]  The glowing parking lot of Hanford.
[00:54:16]  Hanford.
[00:54:18]  Yes, sir.
[00:54:18]  I just want to ask him if he had any idea about the whole Lynette Thompson thing, and if what he thinks about it.
[00:54:24]  Interestingly, and this is interesting, he's not heard of Linda Thompson.
[00:54:29]  Uh-oh.
[00:54:31]  But that in itself is sort of interesting since he works for Time magazine.
[00:54:37]  It would seem apparent then that Washington is not aware of what's going on out here, and it's serious stuff.
[00:54:42]  Well, you're absolutely right, and I confess to my shame that I had not heard of this movement, but that probably tells you more about the kind of reporting we get in our Inside the Beltway newspapers than it does about what's really going on.
[00:54:57]  I've been struck by your discussion of this on the program art, and of course by people calling in.
[00:55:04]  And I think, as usual, Washington is simply out of touch with the hinterland, and probably it should wake up earlier rather than later.
[00:55:13]  All right, Color?
[00:55:15]  Thank you.
[00:55:15]  You know, it's really strange, David.
[00:55:20]  I tell you, a call like that, an actual call to arms and a threat to hang representatives, would seem to me that it ought to get somebody's attention.
[00:55:29]  Yes.
[00:55:30]  I think it should.
[00:55:32]  So do I. First-time caller line, you're on the air with David Aikman.
[00:55:35]  Good evening.
[00:55:36]  Good evening.
[00:55:37]  Where are you, sir?
[00:55:38]  I'm from Sacramento.
[00:55:39]  Sacramento, all right?
[00:55:40]  KST.
[00:55:41]  Go ahead.
[00:55:44]  Go ahead, sir.
[00:55:45]  Oh, thank you.
[00:55:46]  Thank you.
[00:55:46]  I'm sorry.
[00:55:47]  I was listening to the radio.
[00:55:48]  No, don't do that.
[00:55:49]  Okay.
[00:55:50]  I've been trying to get it through for about two months now.
[00:55:54]  Kind of hard to get through.
[00:55:55]  Well, you're through.
[00:55:56]  Thank you.
[00:55:57]  I appreciate your show.
[00:55:58]  It's a very good show.
[00:55:59]  Thank you.
[00:56:00]  Okay, two questions.
[00:56:02]  One, can you repeat the name of the book?
[00:56:06]  We only get you a second hour out here.
[00:56:08]  Oh, I see.
[00:56:09]  Yes.
[00:56:09]  Sure.
[00:56:10]  When the almond tree blossoms, and let me quickly ask David, David, what does that title mean?
[00:56:18]  Well, actually, the title is a quotation from the book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible, which describes what happens when a person becomes old.
[00:56:29]  And in the Middle East, when the almond tree blossoms, the blossoms are suddenly very white.
[00:56:36]  And that's kind of an image of somebody becoming old.
[00:56:38]  And maybe that's the image of a country suddenly becoming old in the circumstances of the Civil War.
[00:56:44]  All right, that's the name of the book, Color.
[00:56:46]  Thank you, sir.
[00:56:46]  Appreciate your show.
[00:56:48]  Thanks a lot, Tom.
[00:56:49]  Keep up the good work.
[00:56:50]  All right, take care.
[00:56:55]  When you were writing this, what kind of emotions went through you, David, as you were writing this book?
[00:57:02]  Well, that's a good question, Art.
[00:57:03]  I mean, there were parts of the book where, unfortunately, it was just too easy to describe what a dictatorship is like and how badly, by and large, people behave under conditions of political duress.
[00:57:17]  They betray each other.
[00:57:19]  They act out of the meanest motive to a very large degree.
[00:57:23]  Yes.
[00:57:24]  But actually, when the novel moves west, the pace picks up, and many people have said the writing gets better, and somehow the air gets fresher.
[00:57:35]  And I felt much more at home writing about the environment on that side in the Civil War, which, of course, I obviously favor.
[00:57:45]  Well, I guess, again, we can tell them a little bit.
[00:57:50]  The people in the West in your book are the ones that are in revolt against this new people's sort of almost communist dictatorship that's trying to sweep across America.
[00:58:04]  The people in the West, the constitutionalists, are the ones generally opposing it, correct?
[00:58:08]  That's correct, yes.
[00:58:09]  That'd be exactly the way it would be, David.
[00:58:11]  I guarantee it.
[00:58:13]  So you hit that one on the head.
[00:58:14]  On the wildcard line, you're on the air with David Aikman.
[00:58:17]  Hello.
[00:58:17]  Good morning, Albuquerque.
[00:58:19]  Albuquerque, New Mexico.
[00:58:20]  Hi there.
[00:58:21]  I understand there have been two significant resignations at the State Department recently.
[00:58:28]  And I would be quite interested in hearing Mr. Aikman's opinion of the implications of what's going on now and what's going to happen in the future over there.
[00:58:38]  All right, David?
[00:58:39]  Well, the most significant resignations of the State Department have all been in parts of the Department dealing with former Yugoslavia, dealing with Bosnia or Serbia.
[00:58:51]  And these have been resignations of officers who deal with the day-to-day reporting from our embassy out there and who see what's going on on the ground and who have become appalled by the vacillation in American policy trying to deal with the Yugoslav issue and the sort of unwillingness to face the reality of what the Serbs were doing.
[00:59:15]  And this was very unusual.
[00:59:17]  You don't normally have State Department officers resigning on principle because they pay a very heavy price for it.
[00:59:24]  I see a real problem with current policy, for example, in Rwanda, where they just recently passed a UN resolution, and the UN, perhaps not surprisingly, refused to include the word genocide because of the political implications and the fact that it would force action, action that apparently they're not willing to take.
[00:59:52]  Two or three hundred thousand dead, hundred thousand in a short span, many more than in Bosnia in a short time.
[00:59:59]  Right.
[01:00:00]  And we're not going to do anything.
[01:00:02]  It feels and seems racist.
[01:00:05]  Well, the appalling thing is that this shows some of the most serious weaknesses of the United Nations, that it's composed of, you know, as I mentioned earlier, nearly 200 countries, the vast majority of which were not democratically elected, and which are very sensitive about the kind of powers their leaders have.
[01:00:29]  And they don't want anything resembling the application of democratic principles and normal principles of justice to be applied to their situation.
[01:00:42]  Do you think we will involve ourselves with Rwanda?
[01:00:45]  Are we going to keep it at arm's length?
[01:00:47]  I don't think the United States would be involved, and I think it probably should not be, partly because of the inflammatory dangers of American force being deployed in the very heart of Africa, which is almost an unwinnable situation militarily and politically, and partly because I don't think the United Nations can decide what it wants to do in the situation.

=== David Aikman On Waco (03:59) ===

[01:01:16]  All right.
[01:01:16]  On the wildcard line, you're on the air with David Aikman.
[01:01:19]  Good evening.
[01:01:19]  Yes, Radio Free America.
[01:01:20]  Yes, sir.
[01:01:22]  I'm calling to ask you a couple of questions, David.
[01:01:26]  The Waco story is so huge to me, and obviously a lot of people in this country, it is amazing to me that the press has still gotten away without any kind of correction with making the statement in the media about Koresh saying that he was saying he was God.
[01:01:45]  Yeah.
[01:01:46]  That's outrageous.
[01:01:48]  I cannot believe that someone is not.
[01:01:51]  We've still got the innocent people in jail here.
[01:01:53]  Right.
[01:01:54]  And no one is bringing this to light in the national media.
[01:01:58]  It's like in my opinion, there's no doubt there is a huge cover-up going on in this story.
[01:02:04]  And it's outrageous that our attorney general is a criminal, a huge criminal.
[01:02:10]  And I think that what's going to happen is if another instance like this happens again, in art you were telling about Beckman, that's a big story.
[01:02:20]  Yeah, I know.
[01:02:21]  And, you know, something like that can explode.
[01:02:24]  And we're on, you know, eggshells, so to speak, right now.
[01:02:28]  And I, God, I hope that, to God, that this doesn't happen, but it's definitely a possibility.
[01:02:33]  And also, I wanted to ask you about Richard Beeman or Behart's lawsuit, or the Terry Reid's lawsuit against Behart.
[01:02:42]  Do you know anything about that?
[01:02:44]  Right.
[01:02:44]  Well, in the case of the statement, I was saying that he had been incorrect.
[01:02:53]  Is that correct?
[01:02:54]  Yes, that is what he was saying.
[01:02:56]  We're going to have to hold the answer to that through the bottom of the hour here.
[01:03:00]  So stand by, David Aikman.
[01:03:02]  We'll come right back to you.
[01:03:03]  And David Aikman is my guest.
[01:03:06]  He indeed is a senior foreign correspondent for Time Magazine, has written a book that we're talking about.
[01:03:12]  But we're also talking about everything else.
[01:03:14]  So if you wanted to ask a question of somebody in the major media, here he is.
[01:03:21]  And now is the time.
[01:03:23]  You're listening to Coast to Coast A.M. from the high desert.
[01:03:26]  I'm Art Bell.
[01:03:27]  There's more to come.
[01:03:28]  It's a good time to connect with somebody in America's mass media.
[01:03:32]  David Aikman, he'll be right back.
[01:03:34]  This is Premier Networks.
[01:03:35]  That was Art Bell hosting Coast to Coast AM on this Somewhere in Time.
[01:04:19]  I suppose he could have called it When Push Comes to Shove, but it's a much more elegant title.
[01:04:25]  It's called When the Almond Tree Blossoms.
[01:04:27]  It's about America's Next Civil War.
[01:04:31]  And if you have questions, we're open for them.
[01:04:34]  The man's name is David Aikman.
[01:04:36]  He works for Time Magazine, and questions are not restricted necessarily to his book.
[01:04:42]  But I suppose the world situation, the domestic situation, the presidency, anything's fair game, and David seems open for about any of it.
[01:04:51]  So, first time callers, area code 702-727-1222.

=== Gays, Lesbians, and Sympathizers (04:05) ===

[01:04:59]  And the wildcard lines, area code 702-727-1295-1295.
[01:05:08]  Back down to David Aikman.
[01:05:09]  David, are you there?
[01:05:10]  I am indeed.
[01:05:11]  All right, good.
[01:05:11]  Are you ready for more input?
[01:05:13]  I look forward to it.
[01:05:15]  All right, on the first-time caller line, you're on the air with David Aikman.
[01:05:18]  Good evening.
[01:05:19]  Good evening, or good morning, rather.
[01:05:21]  This is Patrick Tawing from Albuquerque KQEO.
[01:05:24]  Yes, Patrick.
[01:05:24]  I wanted to ask both of you a question.
[01:05:26]  I just got finished reading a book last night by a gentleman named Text Bars.
[01:05:30]  It's called Big Sister is Watching You.
[01:05:32]  And it actually outlines some of the people that are actually in the Clinton administration, such as Donna Shalala and Janet Reno, and those sort of people.
[01:05:41]  Frankly, I was very shocked by this book, and I wanted to see what your guest had to say about the allegations of Janet Reno's lesbianism, some of her illegal activities, and that sort of thing.
[01:05:52]  Oh, well, there's a bombshell.
[01:05:54]  All right.
[01:05:54]  Fine.
[01:05:55]  You go ahead and handle that, David.
[01:05:56]  Let me see if I can get that into a bucket of water without being up on the way.
[01:06:02]  Well, first of all, I can't make any allegations of the sexual conduct of members of the administration, Clinton administration, without having any personal knowledge of it, and I don't.
[01:06:16]  It's no secret that the Clinton administration has been rather openly sympathetic, certainly Bill Clinton was himself during the campaign, to gay rights activists and the gay rights lobby.
[01:06:30]  And that's part of the free-for-all of American politics.
[01:06:35]  Whether you can make a case that members of the administration, that is cabinet officers, are as a group more sympathetic to gays and lesbians, I don't know.
[01:06:50]  Of course, we've all heard in Washington allegations about the leanings of some members of the administration.
[01:07:01]  But I wouldn't go so far as to say that we have a conspiracy afoot.
[01:07:05]  I think it's just that you have a liberal Democratic president who among whose supporters are people who are either gays and lesbians or are sympathetic to this.
[01:07:17]  How liberal is he?
[01:07:18]  He calls himself a New Democrat, which would seem to want to imply that he's not quite so liberal, but rather moderate.
[01:07:25]  Is he, or what's at the core of Bill Clinton, or is there a core?
[01:07:30]  Well, those are two very different questions.
[01:07:33]  Yes.
[01:07:34]  In fact, it's rather interesting.
[01:07:36]  One of the Washington think tanks that calls itself the views of the New Democrats, the Progressive Policy Institute, which is what I would call a mainstream or even a sort of slightly right-of-center Democratic think tank, came out with a paper this week roundly repudiating the rhetoric on most favored nation status for China, saying, you know, you can't, on the one hand,
[01:08:02]  shout for human rights and on the other conduct a policy that is not going to lead to any results in that area.
[01:08:10]  I said earlier on, Art, that I felt the core of Bill Clinton was 1960s touchy feeling.
[01:08:17]  And I didn't say that entirely facetiously.
[01:08:21]  I think he is a man with convictions that he wants to help people.
[01:08:26]  And, you know, I give him credit for being genuinely sympathetic to the downtrodden.
[01:08:32]  I think some of his solutions don't make a lot of sense and, in fact, could produce unintended bad consequences.
[01:08:40]  Well, yes, we all know where good intentions pave the way to.
[01:08:43]  And I suppose nationally we may be on our way.

=== Preparations and Perceptions (13:26) ===

[01:08:46]  I don't know.
[01:08:47]  All right, to the phone again.
[01:08:49]  And on the toll-free line, you're on the air with David Aikman.
[01:08:52]  Hello.
[01:08:54]  Turn your radio off, sir.
[01:08:55]  Art.
[01:08:56]  Yes.
[01:08:56]  This is Gary KEX.
[01:08:58]  KEX in Portland.
[01:08:59]  Yes.
[01:09:02]  For your guest, if he'd listen, he seems at times, you know, he said that he doesn't aware of different things.
[01:09:10]  If he'd listened to WDCT there in Washington in the evening, he'd get some information.
[01:09:16]  And also I want to talk about the Federalist Papers.
[01:09:22]  28 and 29 of the Federalist papers go into the weapons and the carrying of weapons and the right of the people to the defense against the government, that they would be armed with equal arms with the Army.
[01:09:41]  And if people will read this, they'll begin to understand that those rights were written in there for a specific reason.
[01:09:51]  And it's the part that actually covers the militia and what makes the people prepare to defend their own rights and those of their fellow citizens.
[01:10:07]  Well, I absolutely understand that.
[01:10:09]  I think many Americans, particularly very strong gun control advocates, don't recall that the right to bear arms was intimately related to the mustering of the militia and the mustering of the militia was considered.
[01:10:26]  Bear in mind that the Constitution was written within less than two decades of the War Of Independence, a vital source of protection of the political rights very recently acquired of Americans.
[01:10:41]  And so what you have is, with gun control advocacy, you have people who are genuinely concerned at the, at the anarchy in in the streets of the big cities, with youngsters as young as nine years old being able to buy these things and use them indiscriminately.
[01:11:00]  And you have people out in the hinterland who have owned and used guns for years, in most cases entirely peacefully, but who are very concerned with the, the constitutional antecedents of the Second Amendment, being infringed upon them.
[01:11:20]  So so tell me David, how far do you think it's going to go?
[01:11:23]  I mean, we've.
[01:11:23]  We've got Brady, now we've got the assault ban I I heard there was a a survey released the other day about the increase in the percentage of handgun violence right.
[01:11:34]  To a lot of us who have been watching the handgun business, or the, the gun control business closely, this would seem to be a kind of a warning, if you will, that the next object is going to be handguns and they're going to go after handguns.
[01:11:49]  So how far is this going to go?
[01:11:51]  I don't think there's any sort of line in the sand beyond which gun control advocacy will not pass.
[01:12:01]  I mean, you have a very differing philosophy.
[01:12:04]  Well, there is going to be a line in the sand somewhere around Missouri, I suspect.
[01:12:08]  No, I didn't mean it from the point of view of bearing arms advocates.
[01:12:16]  I certainly understand that point of view, but I think, from the other point of view, getting back to what we were talking about earlier, you have many people who believe that, as long as they have a peaceful life, as they understand that, they don't care what kind of powers the government has.
[01:12:35]  And you know, if you're living in a, in a big city, you feel pretty helpless anyway.
[01:12:41]  So you tend to want big brother to come and keep the streets clean and you don't mind too much if, if he takes away your rights, because you don't really know what rights are.
[01:12:52]  I guess, when we get enough of those and a government willing to listen and we have one right now there is a this inevitable clash that's coming David, and I hate to say that your fictional book will come true, but a lot of us feel it's getting closer and closer and closer, and it saddens me because maybe we ought to talk a little bit about Civil War.
[01:13:16]  David, if you look around the world at all the civil wars that have occurred, it's a real crapshoot and the odds aren't very good that you will come out on the other side with anything that you recognize is what you once loved.
[01:13:28]  Right well, that's true.
[01:13:30]  I mean, I think the United States has been the most successful experiment ever historically of bringing people together from a huge variety of different cultural and ethnic backgrounds and persuading them that certain principles of coexistence work better for them and for everybody else and should be adhered to.
[01:13:53]  But what is often forgotten is that there was a cultural and spiritual underpinning to that consensus that that underlay the the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, which some people don't like to use the terms, but it's Judeo-Christian.
[01:14:09]  That's right.
[01:14:10]  And that has been the ethical and moral basis of our society.
[01:14:14]  And I'm sure if some of my colleagues were listening to me, they'd think I was a crazy right-winger.
[01:14:22]  But it seems to me that common sense would tell you that you have to have core values that the vast majority of people accept as underpinning everything else that they do individually, and they allow the government to do constitutionally.
[01:14:38]  If you don't have that, you have chaos.
[01:14:40]  Are you aware of a  ⁇ I don't know whether it's going to be a regulation or a law.
[01:14:45]  I suspect regulatory powers are at work here, but they're actually talking about treating religious solicitation in the workplace as they do sexual harassment, and they will call it religious harassment.
[01:15:01]  Have you heard anything about that?
[01:15:03]  I don't think I've heard about it directly, but it seems an entirely logical outgrowth of an effort to drive religious expression completely out of the public square, which I think is an extremely dangerous tendency.
[01:15:19]  And if it's not stopped, it would indeed drive religion underground, and then you'd certainly have a civil war.
[01:15:26]  That would definitely do it, huh?
[01:15:28]  I think so.
[01:15:29]  All right.
[01:15:29]  On the toll-free line, you're on the air with David Aikman.
[01:15:32]  Good evening.
[01:15:32]  Where are you calling from, please?
[01:15:34]  Lexington, Kentucky.
[01:15:35]  Lexington, Kentucky.
[01:15:36]  All right.
[01:15:36]  Speak up good and loud for us, sir.
[01:15:38]  Okay.
[01:15:39]  I was calling another talk show, and apparently I've got the wrong number.
[01:15:42]  Who am I talking to?
[01:15:43]  This is Art Bell.
[01:15:44]  Oh, yeah, Art Bell.
[01:15:46]  Is that the talk show you're trying to reach?
[01:15:48]  Yeah.
[01:15:48]  Bingo.
[01:15:49]  Okay.
[01:15:49]  All right, you're on the air.
[01:15:51]  Okay, good deal.
[01:15:52]  Sorry.
[01:15:52]  Marty Collins, Lexington, Kentucky, WLXG.
[01:15:55]  Right.
[01:15:55]  I'm on a different time zone out here, so it comes at me.
[01:15:57]  Here's the point.
[01:15:58]  I'd like to get some feedback from your guest.
[01:16:00]  Right.
[01:16:01]  A lot of people like myself have made some preparations in case something was to ever happen.
[01:16:06]  And I thought along with these other folks that, well, if it gets bad enough, I'll get real elaborate and I'll make specific preparations.
[01:16:13]  And now it seems like it's getting ready to hit the sand.
[01:16:16]  And a lot of people that I know, professionals, good people, preachers, doctors, et cetera, are now getting more and more ready for it.
[01:16:23]  They think it's going to come down.
[01:16:25]  And I have a friend tomorrow.
[01:16:27]  As a matter of fact, we're going to go out and back up AR-15s.
[01:16:30]  So it doesn't matter if it's really going to happen or not.
[01:16:33]  If the general or if the population perceives it as going to happen, then it might as well.
[01:16:39]  And people around here are scared, and I don't believe that the federal government has any clue as to how scared and how proactive a lot of these people are going to be.
[01:16:47]  All right, thank you.
[01:16:48]  There you have it from back East Kentucky, even in Kentucky, David.
[01:16:54]  You know, how would you advise people?
[01:16:55]  I mean, are you thinking something might come down?
[01:16:58]  Would you say people ought to get ready, stock up on food, begin to get independent?
[01:17:03]  What do you think?
[01:17:04]  Well, I don't think we are on the brink of any violent activity.
[01:17:11]  I mean, a real breakdown.
[01:17:13]  I mean, that could happen, as my novel predicts, under certain circumstances.
[01:17:18]  I think there's nothing wrong with getting ready as long as in so doing you don't cause a state of panic and alarm, which leads to the very situation you're preparing against.
[01:17:31]  I think people, the best way to stop it coming down, to use the phrase, is to be as politically expressive as the Constitution permits, you know, within grounds of civility, and send a message to Washington politically or write letters or just make them wake up if people don't feel that the federal government or the administration or even the party in opposition, the Republican Party,
[01:18:01]  is not seriously aware of concerns out in the rest of the country.
[01:18:08]  I'm telling you, David, I've got my ear pretty close all the time, and I realize that I'm probably hearing people, you know, more on the edge because they're very well informed, very involved.
[01:18:19]  But there's some pretty nasty vibrations out there right now, David.
[01:18:23]  And if we keep answering these phones, you'll feel it yourself, believe me.
[01:18:26]  Well, I'm glad to hear this kind of stuff because it's informative, and I'm learning a lot.
[01:18:32]  Well, it is.
[01:18:33]  On our first-time caller line, you're on the air with David Aikman.
[01:18:36]  Good evening.
[01:18:37]  Hi, good evening, sir.
[01:18:38]  Where are you?
[01:18:39]  Merced, California.
[01:18:41]  Merced, all right.
[01:18:42]  KYOS country.
[01:18:43]  Yes.
[01:18:45]  I was wanting to get the gentleman's opinion.
[01:18:48]  Do you think that the president is going to give Mr. Austin Kowski some type of a pardon or anything of that nature?
[01:19:03]  Oh, that's a good question.
[01:19:04]  Rostenkowski facing a probable indictment, I guess, and trying to cut a deal fast as he can.
[01:19:12]  What do you see happening?
[01:19:14]  I don't think he's going to be to get a presidential pardon.
[01:19:18]  I think there'll be strong effort to keep the penalties light enough to enable him to continue his job.
[01:19:26]  Even that's going to smell pretty bad.
[01:19:28]  Well, it will.
[01:19:30]  But the curious thing is, nobody wants Rostenkowski, however heinous his alleged activities may have been, nobody wants him out of commission because he's absolutely central to getting a whole bunch of business done in the Congress this year.
[01:19:46]  Like the health care program.
[01:19:47]  Exactly.
[01:19:48]  All right.
[01:19:48]  David Aikman, hold on.
[01:19:49]  We'll be right back to you.
[01:19:50]  This is the CBC Radio Network.
[01:19:53]  If you're just tuning in, this is David Aikman.
[01:19:56]  He's my guest, senior foreign correspondent for Time magazine, author of a fascinating book that I'm telling you is a great read.
[01:20:04]  We're going to tell you how to get hold of it again.
[01:20:05]  It's called When the Almond Tree Blossoms.
[01:20:09]  It's about America's next civil war.
[01:20:30]  David, are you there?
[01:20:31]  I am.
[01:20:32]  Yep.
[01:20:32]  All right.
[01:20:33]  Back to it we go.
[01:20:34]  Now, listen, we're close to the top of the hour.
[01:20:36]  If you can give me one more hour, I'll take it.
[01:20:38]  Okay, I'd be happy to.
[01:20:39]  Wonderful.
[01:20:40]  All right, great.
[01:20:41]  Let us continue then.
[01:20:43]  On the wildcard line, you're on the air with David Aikman.
[01:20:45]  Good evening.
[01:20:46]  Morning.
[01:20:47]  Hi, Arthur and David.
[01:20:48]  Just had a couple questions.
[01:20:50]  What sort of now, you had said earlier that you don't imagine Bill Clinton will be re-elected.
[01:20:57]  What sort of implications will that have on outgoers' political future?
[01:21:02]  And with all the foreign policy flops that we've had the past year or so, who stands to gain on the Republican side as a result of this?
[01:21:12]  All right.
[01:21:13]  Thank you.
[01:21:15]  Where are you, by the way?
[01:21:16]  Oh, I'm calling to you from Columbia, Missouri.
[01:21:18]  I listen to you on KFRU.
[01:21:20]  In Columbia.
[01:21:20]  All right, great.
[01:21:21]  Thank you.
[01:21:22]  All right, David.
[01:21:24]  Yeah, if he's not re-elected, what about Gore and what about the Republican side?
[01:21:29]  Who's up?
[01:21:30]  Who's down?
[01:21:31]  Well, Gore's chances, I think, diminish significantly for the foreseeable future if Bill Clinton is defeated in the next election.
[01:21:42]  And by the way, Clinton himself has made some almost dark allusions to the possibility that he may not complete his term or whether, heaven forbid, something really unpleasant should happen, or whether he should face some kind of legal difficulties midterm.

=== High-Risk Policy Talk (04:55) ===

[01:22:00]  What has he said?
[01:22:02]  Well, he has said this privately to people, and it's been reported.
[01:22:06]  I haven't been around when he's actually said it.
[01:22:08]  I've talked to him person to person.
[01:22:11]  But there's this kind of strange, almost self-destructive talk that Clinton has sometimes gotten into in sort of philosophical moments.
[01:22:22]  And you could argue that much of the way he approaches policy, the sort of high-risk approach, the rhetoric, and then the switch, is a form of kind of, let's see how close to the edge I can get without falling over.
[01:22:37]  Well, I don't think many of us are particularly enchanted by that style of leadership.
[01:22:44]  But getting back to the other question, who in the Republicans would benefit, I think clearly any Republican candidate, let's say Dick Cheney, who had impressive foreign policy credentials from a previous Republican administration, would, at the outset, stand to be in a good position.
[01:23:05]  Well, that is the weak point, isn't it?
[01:23:07]  Foreign policy.
[01:23:08]  Yep, it certainly is.
[01:23:09]  But let's face it, you know, an awful lot of water passes under a bridge between the first presentation of the candidates and who the party nominates and then who the American people actually want to choose.
[01:23:23]  So I think it's too far ahead to make any strong predictions on the Republican side.
[01:23:30]  All right.
[01:23:31]  But you might pick Dick Cheney as a leader.
[01:23:34]  I would say if foreign policy turns out to be the main issue, and it very seldom is, as we both know, in general elections, he would be a very strong Republican candidate, assuming he runs.
[01:23:49]  Another complete dark horse, of course, is Colin Powell, who has not declared himself to be belonging to any particular party.
[01:23:58]  What do you expect when he does and if he does declare, what will he declare?
[01:24:03]  I think he will declare Republican.
[01:24:05]  He has hinted at criticizing the current administration, and that suggests not so much Democratic dissent as opposition dissent.
[01:24:16]  And I think the Republicans would embrace him with open arms.
[01:24:21]  Oh, I'm sure.
[01:24:22]  If not as a presidential, certainly as a vice presidential candidate.
[01:24:26]  All right, David, again, we're at the top of the hour, so I'm going to put you on pause, and we'll do the news and come back.
[01:24:34]  How's that?
[01:24:35]  That sounds fun.
[01:24:36]  All right, David Aikman is my guest, senior foreign correspondent for Time magazine.
[01:24:40]  It is an unusual opportunity for you to ask a question of such a person.
[01:24:45]  We'll be back with more from the high desert.
[01:24:47]  The trip back in time continues with Art Bell hosting Coast to Coast A.M. More Somewhere in Time coming up.
[01:24:57]  Listening to
[01:25:27]  Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
[01:25:30]  Tonight, featuring Coast to Coast A.M. from May 20th, 1994.
[01:25:34]  Top of the morning, everybody.
[01:25:35]  Those of you who just join us at this hour, you're fortunate.
[01:25:39]  I've been able to hold David Aikman over.
[01:25:41]  He is a senior foreign correspondent for Time magazine.
[01:25:45]  We're interviewing him.
[01:25:46]  He's written a book called When the Almond Tree Blossoms, and he's been here now.
[01:25:50]  This will be the third hour, and I owe him, so I'm going to tell you how to get the book.
[01:25:54]  It's a great book.
[01:25:55]  It's a great read.
[01:25:56]  I'm reading it right now.
[01:25:57]  It is a political thriller about America's next civil war.
[01:26:04]  And I guarantee it will curl your hair.
[01:26:07]  So, by the way, if you have questions about the world situation or the domestic situation or domestic politics or whatever it is you want to ask, it is an unusual opportunity to ask.
[01:26:18]  David, are you there?
[01:26:19]  I am, yep.
[01:26:20]  All right, I just gave you a good plug.
[01:26:21]  Thank you.
[01:26:22]  I enjoyed it.
[01:26:23]  I'm sure we will move many of your books.
[01:26:25]  I'm telling you, this book, David, deserves to be on the bestseller list.
[01:26:29]  It deserves to be distributed all over the place.
[01:26:33]  And maybe if enough people read it, they'd get an idea that they should be careful what they wish for.

=== Carol Quigley And The New World Order (11:55) ===

[01:26:40]  That's right.
[01:26:41]  Somebody said, be careful what you pray for.
[01:26:43]  You might get it.
[01:26:44]  You might just get it.
[01:26:45]  That's right.
[01:26:46]  All right.
[01:26:46]  Back to the telephones on the toll-free line.
[01:26:49]  You're on with David Aikman.
[01:26:50]  Hello.
[01:26:51]  Hello.
[01:26:51]  Yes, sir.
[01:26:52]  Where are you, please?
[01:26:53]  I'm in Los Angeles.
[01:26:54]  Los Angeles, all right.
[01:26:56]  Yes, you talk a lot about the Third World, what we...
[01:27:03]  Do you mean the New World Order?
[01:27:05]  Yes.
[01:27:05]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:27:06]  I'm sorry.
[01:27:06]  Okay, a little nervous first time.
[01:27:08]  A New World Order.
[01:27:09]  Who really profits from this?
[01:27:11]  From the New World Order?
[01:27:12]  Isn't it the large corporations and the multinationals?
[01:27:15]  Well, it depends what kind of New World Order it is.
[01:27:19]  Yes, if it were a New World Order in which you had a sort of tightly controlled multinational economic system with some major corporations, transnationals, basically, with a monopoly, they would indeed gain by it.
[01:27:39]  I was never much of a fan of the original concept, which I think wasn't really thought through at all.
[01:27:45]  And of course, we all saw it collapse very quickly after the Soviet Union passed away.
[01:27:51]  So I don't think it's a very valid, very viable notion, whichever way you look at it.
[01:27:56]  Yeah.
[01:27:57]  Isn't it that these multinationals are the ones that got us in the $4 trillion debt in the first place?
[01:28:02]  All right, thank you.
[01:28:03]  Is that true, David?
[01:28:04]  Did the multinationals get us into debt, or did we do it all by ourselves?
[01:28:08]  No, I think we managed it without a great deal of help from the multinationals.
[01:28:12]  I mean, they're corporations like anybody else, and they're subject to the same kind of laws of debt and insolvency.
[01:28:21]  And if you pay out more than you earn, you go broke.
[01:28:26]  We got into trouble, I think.
[01:28:28]  There have been a lot of books written recently, Bankruptcy, 1995, for example.
[01:28:34]  How probable is that?
[01:28:35]  Well, I think there are certain facts in the economic system, particularly in global liquidity, which are very, very troubling.
[01:28:46]  When you add those basic areas of vulnerability of the global economy, and you add that to the particular vulnerability of the United States, with its huge national indebtedness, you have a situation which will only get better if we have a virtually uninterrupted process of economic expansion globally.
[01:29:11]  If there is any really serious recession, not to mention the depression, then the whole pack of cards could come tumbling down.
[01:29:20]  All right.
[01:29:20]  How tough are the American people, David?
[01:29:22]  I mean, if times got tough, really tough, if we had another depression, economic depression, and if you look back on the cycle of everything, it seems inevitable.
[01:29:34]  How well, I mean, will there be the stiff upper chin and all that, or will the American people basically break down?
[01:29:40]  No, I don't think they'll break down.
[01:29:41]  I think the American people are extraordinarily resilient and resourceful.
[01:29:46]  And I haven't the slightest doubt that if it came to that, they'd find a way of organizing their way out of it.
[01:29:54]  Well, if it did come to that, would you rather live in the city or the country?
[01:29:57]  In the country, without any question.
[01:30:00]  I think one of the problems is that much of the country has indeed become soft.
[01:30:05]  I mean, we all have read about or seen T V programs about the sort of victim mentality.
[01:30:11]  You know, whatever is wrong with your life, it's because you were a victim.
[01:30:14]  That's right.
[01:30:16]  Unfortunately, more and more people are saying, well, this is ridiculous.
[01:30:19]  People have to start taking responsibility for their own situations.
[01:30:24]  It's not that everybody is a bootstrapped Horatio Alga, but let's not just say everybody can sit and cry and expect the government to come and help them.
[01:30:33]  All right.
[01:30:34]  On the first-time caller line, you're on the air with David Aikman.
[01:30:37]  Where are you calling from, please?
[01:30:38]  Eugene Organ.
[01:30:39]  Eugene Oregon, KPNW.
[01:30:41]  Okay, good.
[01:30:41]  Go ahead.
[01:30:44]  Go ahead, sir.
[01:30:45]  Eugene Organ.
[01:30:46]  Yes, we got that.
[01:30:47]  Go ahead.
[01:30:49]  Oh, I wanted to ask about your guest.
[01:30:52]  How do you spell his last name?
[01:30:54]  It's A-I-K-M-A-N.
[01:30:56]  A-I-K-M-A-N.
[01:30:58]  M-A-N, yes.
[01:30:59]  M-A-E-N?
[01:31:00]  Yes.
[01:31:01]  Okay, cool.
[01:31:03]  I also wanted to ask you, what kind of scenario could you foresee if something like in your book happened?
[01:31:13]  All right, that's a good question.
[01:31:15]  Is that what you wrote the most likely scenario, David?
[01:31:18]  Or what is the most likely scenario, unlikely as it may be, for a civil war?
[01:31:23]  Well, I think there are many potential scenarios.
[01:31:26]  And I said earlier on in the program, Ark, that my book is not so much a prophecy as a warning.
[01:31:32]  And I still think that the United States has tremendous political resiliency and stability at the grassroots.
[01:31:40]  But I think one scenario, I think almost all scenarios of a genuine civil war would derive initially or at least mainly from an economic collapse, something like a stock market collapse followed by a Great Depression, which would totally unhinge the certainties of life that we generally rely upon.
[01:32:02]  Second, I think if we were involved in some military conflict and we lost, even if it weren't a world war, but as my novel suggests, if we tried something like Desert Storm, in fact, you know that the United States is not in a position now again to try something like Desert Storm because of the pull-down in our military forces.
[01:32:28]  Yeah, try this scenario out, David.
[01:32:30]  Suppose we became involved, let's say the Koreans came across the parallel, not a totally unlikely possibility.
[01:32:36]  Right.
[01:32:37]  And we became involved heavily in Korea.
[01:32:40]  I'll tell you, if I were Saddam Hussein, at about that moment, I'd go venturing right back into Kuwait again.
[01:32:48]  I think you're absolutely right.
[01:32:50]  I think it's a very, very perilous situation.
[01:32:53]  And, of course, that's the kind of situation which results from a calculation by foreigners of the resolve of the American leadership.
[01:33:01]  That's quite a very, very serious issue.
[01:33:06]  All right.
[01:33:06]  Let's just keep moving.
[01:33:08]  On the wildcard line, you're on the air with David Aikman.
[01:33:10]  Good evening.
[01:33:11]  Morning.
[01:33:11]  Good morning, Mr. Aikman.
[01:33:13]  Where are you, sir?
[01:33:14]  Oh, I'm sorry, this is Joan Albuquerque.
[01:33:16]  Okay.
[01:33:17]  I want to ask Mr. Aikman, what kind of threat do you consider Rastanjani of Iran?
[01:33:23]  Also, I've heard some stories about Saddam Hussein rebuilding the ancient city of Babylon for the last several years.
[01:33:30]  Do you know anything about this?
[01:33:31]  All right.
[01:33:32]  Okay.
[01:33:33]  First of all, Rafsanjani's Iran.
[01:33:36]  I don't think Iran at this juncture is a serious military threat to its neighbors, but I think it could become so.
[01:33:45]  For one thing, the Iranians are very eager to acquire nuclear weapons.
[01:33:50]  And my novel actually projects an American military expedition to try and deal with a situation in which Iran had just acquired nuclear weapons and was sort of threatening to use them.
[01:34:02]  So the acquisition of military of nuclear weapons by Iran would be a very destabilizing element.
[01:34:11]  As for what was the second question, the Babylonian.
[01:34:21]  Right.
[01:34:21]  Yes, that's certainly true.
[01:34:23]  Saddam Hussein has pictured himself literally as a sort of Nebuchadnezzar, as not quite a reincarnation, but somebody as a linear descendant of the great Babylonian kings who, as you remember, fought against the ancient Egyptians and indeed the Israelites.
[01:34:46]  So he has a historical sense that which I think we'd better describe as a megalomania that has extended to rebuilding Babylon not on a separate site like a Disney World, but actually on the original site, which, of course, archaeologists are not very happy with.
[01:35:04]  Absolutely incredible.
[01:35:06]  All right, on the toll-free line, you're on the air with David Aikman.
[01:35:09]  Good morning.
[01:35:09]  Good morning.
[01:35:10]  Where are you, sir?
[01:35:11]  I'm calling from Portland, Oregon.
[01:35:13]  All right.
[01:35:14]  And I love your bumper music.
[01:35:15]  Is there one person that you use, or is it several?
[01:35:19]  No, it's several.
[01:35:21]  But I use a group called Cusco, which is kind of a new age-y type German group.
[01:35:26]  Oh, really?
[01:35:27]  Yes.
[01:35:27]  How do you spell that?
[01:35:28]  K-O-O-S-S-S-S-O- No, C-U-S-C-O.
[01:35:30]  Okay, great.
[01:35:31]  Okay, I have a comment and then a quick question.
[01:35:33]  All right.
[01:35:34]  I'm struck and listening to the show how the gentleman had mentioned that he was getting an education by listening to some of the callers about calling in about the New World Order, et cetera.
[01:35:48]  Yes.
[01:35:48]  And I'm hoping he takes that information back and looks into it.
[01:35:53]  And then I excuse me, I had one quick question of him.
[01:35:58]  Yes.
[01:35:59]  Is he familiar with the book Tragedy and Hope written by Carol Quigley?
[01:36:04]  And was he also aware of Clinton had Quigley as professor in college?
[01:36:11]  All right, thank you.
[01:36:12]  Tragedy and Hope.
[01:36:14]  That's a very interesting question because I was aware of the name Carol Quigley as one of the people cited extensively by Pat Robertson in his book, The New World Order.
[01:36:29]  Quigley, for most listeners who I'm sure are not familiar with his background, was a professor at Georgetown University where Clinton studied before going to Yale Law School.
[01:36:43]  And Quigley's view was that, in fact, there had been a deliberate effort by establishment politicians and commercial leaders to set up a sort of supranational entity that could kind of coordinate global activity.
[01:37:02]  Now, Quigley, interestingly, was cited by Bill Clinton in at least one of his speeches as one of the major teaching influences on his life.
[01:37:15]  And yet, of course, Clinton's particular brand of liberal democracy, some people might say, is moving the United States much more in the direction of the kind of globalist society that Quigley himself wrote about, and in fact he tried.
[01:37:35]  A little while ago, you said something very intriguing about Bill Clinton and as sort of a darker meditative side of Bill Clinton as though he may not believe that he's going to finish his term.
[01:37:46]  Do you think he will finish his term?
[01:37:50]  Well, I certainly don't want to predict anything truly dark, but I think there are unexploded legal bombs, not just the so-called bimbo factor, which is relatively minor in a sense.
[01:38:08]  What about Whitewater?
[01:38:09]  Well, Whitewater is one of them.
[01:38:11]  I think there may be others that could surface and could cause devastating political and legal problems.

=== Rumors And Survival (03:19) ===

[01:38:19]  Well, you're back there bouncing around the beltway.
[01:38:22]  Are there rumors that you might not necessarily want to talk about right now, but that exist about some of that?
[01:38:29]  Yes, there are all kinds of rumors.
[01:38:32]  Some more bizarre than others.
[01:38:35]  But the curious thing is people have sort of learned to live with these rumors and almost to discount them, chiefly because Clinton has been an extraordinarily successful political survival.
[01:38:47]  I mean, I don't think we should underestimate his political skills.
[01:38:52]  When he's in a corner, he fights very, very effectively, as we saw in the NAFTA campaign.
[01:39:00]  Well, I surely don't discount the power of somebody who has the talent to tell people exactly what they want to hear.
[01:39:06]  That's a powerful force.
[01:39:09]  David, standby.
[01:39:10]  We'll be right back to you.
[01:39:11]  My guest is David Aikman.
[01:39:13]  He's a senior foreign correspondent for Time magazine, well-traveled reporter for best part of 20 years, I guess.
[01:39:20]  And we'll get back to him in just a moment.
[01:39:42]  David Aikman, are you there?
[01:39:43]  I am.
[01:39:44]  All right.
[01:39:44]  The remainder of the hour to the callers, I guess.
[01:39:48]  And on the toll-free, make that the wildcard line, you're on the air.
[01:39:51]  Hello.
[01:39:51]  Good morning, Art.
[01:39:52]  How are you doing?
[01:39:53]  Just fine.
[01:39:53]  Hey, I got a question for you.
[01:39:54]  I'm calling from the flagship station of the CBC, K-O-P-E.
[01:39:58]  I'm Bob.
[01:39:59]  Yes, Bob.
[01:40:00]  How are you doing?
[01:40:00]  They're articulating.
[01:40:01]  All right, Bob.
[01:40:02]  Good to listen to you again.
[01:40:03]  I really like to hear you every doubt out there.
[01:40:05]  Anyway, I got a question.
[01:40:06]  I thought that Colin Powell wasn't born in the United States, or I thought he could never run for president.
[01:40:12]  All right.
[01:40:12]  David?
[01:40:13]  That's a good question.
[01:40:15]  You've dumped me there.
[01:40:18]  I believe the issue is whether you are born an American citizen.
[01:40:25]  Now, you suggest he was born in Trinidad or somewhere?
[01:40:28]  Yes, I think that's what he's saying, yes.
[01:40:30]  No, I think his parents were born there, but I'm pretty certain he was actually born in the continental United States.
[01:40:36]  Uh-huh.
[01:40:36]  All right.
[01:40:37]  On the first time caller line, you're on the air with David Aikman.
[01:40:40]  Hi.
[01:40:41]  Hello there.
[01:40:42]  No, you're not.
[01:40:43]  We'll move on.
[01:40:44]  Wildcard line, you're on the air with David Aikman.
[01:40:46]  Good morning.
[01:40:47]  I'm calling from Van Duyes, California and KOGO.
[01:40:50]  Yes, sir.
[01:40:52]  Mr. Aikman, I didn't tune in until about an hour ago.
[01:40:57]  And I'm just curious, can you give, for those of us who didn't hear at Beginning, could you give us maybe a little bit o of an overview about the book, the basic premise of it?
[01:41:07]  Oh, yes, indeed, we could, sir.
[01:41:08]  Glad you asked, actually, it's a good time to do that.
[01:41:11]  David, tell them what When the Almond Tree Blossoms is about.
[01:41:16]  Well, thank you, Art and Cola.
[01:41:19]  When the Almond Tree Blossoms is about a civil war being fought in the United States in the year 1998, what has happened to lead up to that has been a global depression, the coming to power in Russia of ultra-nationalists,

=== Clancy's Trident Submarine (02:54) ===

[01:41:36]  the acquisition by Iran of nuclear weapons, and the collapse of constitutional rule in the United States because both of the economic collapse and the culture wars that have basically divided Americans on one side in favor of a sort of collectivist solution to social issues, and on the other side to a point of view that favors the traditional constitutional approach.
[01:42:04]  And in that setting, the thriller is about the efforts of the people's movement, which controls the cities in the east and west coast of the United States, to infiltrate the constitutionalists who are fighting out of the mountain states of Montana and Wyoming, and also to find out where three Trident nuclear submarines are,
[01:42:33]  which hold the balance in favor of the Constitutionalists in the Civil War.
[01:42:38]  So that's, in a nutshell, the story of the novel.
[01:42:41]  Well, it's not the story, it's the basic setting.
[01:42:45]  Kind of a Clancy-like novel.
[01:42:48]  Well, that's nice of you to put me in that category.
[01:42:50]  I've certainly tried to create not to certainly not to copy Clancy, but you can't copy a college.
[01:42:56]  Well, you know, the reason I say that is because I'm still toward the beginning of the book, David, but you do an awful lot of very, it seems, accurate reporting on the Trident submarine and the activities going on in that and so forth.
[01:43:10]  What did you rely on for that information?
[01:43:13]  Well, I actually went to the Pentagon quite openly through the front door, so to speak, and they very kindly set me up with a submarine officer who, without revealing any classified information, told me how a submarine worked.
[01:43:33]  And I got all of the command sequences and took them down.
[01:43:37]  And that, I think, makes for a more authentic sense of what's going on for the reader.
[01:43:43]  Oh, it certainly did a job on me, and that's why I mentioned Clancy.
[01:43:48]  It's fascinating stuff, and these folks ought to get a hold of your book as soon as they can.
[01:43:52]  Thank you.
[01:43:53]  On the toll-free line, without a lot of time, you're on the air with David Aikman.
[01:43:57]  Hello.
[01:43:57]  Yes, Mr. Aikman, do you read the Jerusalem Post?
[01:44:00]  I do.
[01:44:01]  As you know, there's a column called I Am the Media, which frequently reflects on what it perceives to be a palpable left-wing bias in American news magazines in the Middle East, including time.
[01:44:10]  What say you?
[01:44:11]  Well, as I said earlier in the program, Corla, there's definitely a strong liberal tendency in most mainstream American news organizations.

=== I Think He's A Wonderful Speaker And Writer (10:38) ===

[01:44:22]  This is hardly a secret, and it's been carefully documented by independent sociology organizations.
[01:44:32]  As far as the coverage of the Middle East, I don't think there's quite such a pronounced slant for one very important reason.
[01:44:42]  There is a very strong pro-Israeli sentiment in much of the media, particularly on the East Coast.
[01:44:52]  And so there is a limit to which the sort of standard liberal interpretation of global issues, which is, you know, the U.N. should take control and people who spout the right kind of slogans.
[01:45:08]  David, we've got to pause.
[01:45:09]  Yeah.
[01:45:10]  Hold on.
[01:45:10]  Hold it right there.
[01:45:11]  David Aikman, my guest.
[01:45:12]  More in a moment.
[01:45:13]  You're listening to Art Bell somewhere in Time.
[01:45:16]  Tonight featuring Coast to Coast AM from May 20th, 1994.
[01:45:53]  Art Bell Somewhere in Time.
[01:45:55]  Tonight featuring Coast to Coast A.M. from the 20th of May, 1994.
[01:46:00]  Good morning, everybody.
[01:46:01]  Welcome back to a fascinating program.
[01:46:03]  David Aikman, a senior foreign correspondent for Time magazine, is our guest, and he's got a lot of fascinating stuff to say.
[01:46:11]  There's going to be another 25 minutes of it coming now.
[01:46:16]  I would like to acknowledge something.
[01:46:21]  I guess this is some cause for celebration.
[01:46:23]  When this program is played back, which will be, let me see, I guess it'll be Sunday night, Monday morning, it will be our first introduction to our brand new affiliate in Phoenix.
[01:46:36]  As you know, we are switching affiliates in Phoenix.
[01:46:39]  And so all of you in Phoenix are hearing us now, or at least will be Monday morning on KFYI.
[01:46:47]  And I cannot tell you how pleased, how happy we are to be getting the entire program to Phoenix.
[01:46:55]  So in the way of sort of a premature celebration, hello there in Phoenix, everybody.
[01:47:01]  Good to be here.
[01:47:02]  Glad to be on KFYI.
[01:47:03]  It's a good reason to celebrate.
[01:47:05]  So now back to David Aikman.
[01:47:07]  David, are you there?
[01:47:08]  Yes, I am.
[01:47:09]  And I have a question for you, Art.
[01:47:10]  All right.
[01:47:11]  Music that you mentioned was by a group called Cluzco.
[01:47:15]  C-U-S-C-O, yes.
[01:47:16]  Well, now, what is the name of this kind of music?
[01:47:19]  It's a, well, it's a new age kind of Peruvian.
[01:47:28]  I don't know what to call it, David.
[01:47:30]  A lot of it is flute music, and it's just great stuff.
[01:47:33]  And I found it, and I fell in love with it, and I use it as bumper music.
[01:47:37]  I think it's wonderful.
[01:47:38]  It has that marvelous sort of Andean quality to it that I find very attractive.
[01:47:44]  Yes, yes, I do as well.
[01:47:46]  I've been in love with it now for a couple of years.
[01:47:48]  Thank you.
[01:47:49]  All right, to our toll-free line, you're on the air with David Aikman.
[01:47:54]  Good morning.
[01:47:54]  All right, how are you doing, James, up in Eugene, Oregon?
[01:47:57]  Hi, James.
[01:47:58]  Interesting.
[01:47:59]  I've been listening to your show driving home from work and at work, and when I got home, I wanted to pose a scenario to your guest.
[01:48:07]  Let's say that the freedoms that are being taken away from the United States people get a little bit tighter.
[01:48:13]  You know how a lot of people are upset about the ban on assault weapons and the Brady bill, and maybe they go one step further and start to take guns away.
[01:48:20]  Well, that's kind of drastic.
[01:48:22]  I don't even know what the step might be, but just start getting the constraints on freedoms a little bit more stringent.
[01:48:28]  And a state like Colorado, for example, goes a step further and attempts to either secede from the Union or to just exert a lot more independence, even more than just reaffirming the Tenth Amendment.
[01:48:42]  Do you think that there would be a flood of other people to join that state?
[01:48:46]  Oh, that's a good question.
[01:48:48]  Right.
[01:48:49]  Could it be like a snowball going downhill, David?
[01:48:52]  I think if you had a state that seceded, so to speak, on an issue that was extremely topical and popular in other states, you could have either people screaming into that state, or you could have a sort of snowball effect among neighboring states or states with a very similar point of view.
[01:49:13]  I don't question that under certain circumstances this could happen.
[01:49:18]  Well, there's so many ways it could fall apart.
[01:49:20]  Right.
[01:49:21]  On the first time caller line, you're on the air with David Aikman.
[01:49:24]  Whoops, would have been.
[01:49:25]  On the wild card line, you're on the air now with David Aikman.
[01:49:28]  Hello.
[01:49:29]  Hello, Art, Mr. Aikman.
[01:49:31]  I had a comment and a question.
[01:49:33]  I'd just like to tell you, Art, that Larry Nichols was on Downey, I think, Monday night, Monday afternoon.
[01:49:41]  Had a caller call up and grilled him about why he hadn't been on your show.
[01:49:44]  Yes.
[01:49:45]  Do you know about that?
[01:49:46]  No.
[01:49:47]  How did he respond?
[01:49:48]  Well, what he said was that he knew of you, but he didn't know you wanted him on the show.
[01:49:54]  He said his schedule is what I told him.
[01:49:56]  Yeah, right.
[01:49:57]  And he was going to.
[01:49:58]  Yeah, right.
[01:49:59]  Well, I've talked to his attorney.
[01:50:01]  I've talked to his producer people several times.
[01:50:06]  That's silly.
[01:50:07]  Yeah, he said he was going to tell his schedules to get a hold of you as well.
[01:50:11]  Yeah, right.
[01:50:11]  I'll really look forward to that.
[01:50:13]  And for Mr. Aikman, I'd like.
[01:50:14]  I missed most of the first hour, so I don't know if he discussed Mr. Nichols.
[01:50:20]  I was wondering if he had anything to say about him and whether he thought the guy was making money off this or whether he's for real or sure, sure.
[01:50:27]  It's a good question.
[01:50:29]  Larry is the person we're talking about here, Larry Nichols.
[01:50:33]  And I guess you know a little bit of his history, David, but he's one of the people making the most serious allegations against Bill Clinton.
[01:50:41]  Literally, it would seem of murder.
[01:50:43]  Right.
[01:50:44]  And so you want to comment on that?
[01:50:46]  Go ahead.
[01:50:47]  Well, yeah, I mean, the problem is that it's so difficult to separate sort of where fantasy begins and where reality ends, particularly with a president who, you know, comes from a small state where I don't want to insult people in Arkansas, but some of the ways of doing business are a little bit more informal, perhaps, than maybe that's a better thing.
[01:51:16]  I don't know.
[01:51:16]  But certainly where the connections and the relationships and the way business is conducted in a statehouse is much less tightly scrutinized or it's more liberally looked at than in other more popular states.
[01:51:36]  And under those circumstances, of course, people build up some kind of history of connections and relationships, and some of them are not very savory.
[01:51:46]  My question is...
[01:51:48]  Well, that's a good answer, but we're talking about murder charges here.
[01:51:50]  Well...
[01:51:51]  Well, I'm not familiar, Art, with the specifics of his charges.
[01:51:57]  And frankly, even if I were, I don't think I'd like to comment authoritatively one way or the other unless I were personally familiar as a reporter with it.
[01:52:06]  So I just don't know whether he's onto something or not.
[01:52:09]  All right.
[01:52:09]  Well, I don't blame you.
[01:52:11]  On the first time caller line, you're on the air with David Aikman.
[01:52:14]  Hello.
[01:52:15]  I've got a brilliant guest there, Art.
[01:52:16]  Thank you.
[01:52:17]  Where are you calling from, sir?
[01:52:18]  Los Angeles, son.
[01:52:20]  All right.
[01:52:20]  First of all, can we write to you in Carita Magazine, Mr. Aikman?
[01:52:23]  Sure, certainly can.
[01:52:25]  Okay, and are you familiar with any of the writings of Dennis Prager?
[01:52:28]  Yes, I am.
[01:52:29]  I think he's a wonderful speaker and writer.
[01:52:31]  Yes, he says that this country's main problems are spiritual and moral.
[01:52:35]  Right.
[01:52:36]  And we live in an age of where feelings and political correctness are more important than Judeo-Christian standards.
[01:52:45]  Right.
[01:52:45]  Now I was wondering if you could comment on the Judeo-Christian spiritual revival you mentioned.
[01:52:50]  I'll listen on the radio.
[01:52:51]  All right, thanks.
[01:52:52]  Well, that's a very good question.
[01:52:53]  Dennis Prager, I'm sure you know who he is, Arkansas has his program and he's a Jewish speaker.
[01:53:00]  And yet I think his defense of a biblical world view is one of the best things I've ever heard on tape from Jewish or Christian speaker or writer.
[01:53:14]  And he quite rightly takes the position, I think, that the roots of our morality are based in a view which says God is in charge and man is underneath, or man and women, I should say.
[01:53:29]  And if we stop being accountable to our Maker, we get into very serious trouble.
[01:53:34]  I mean, that's kind of grossly oversimplified.
[01:53:38]  But what Prager does is he examines case by case situations where you remove the Judeo-Christian moral ethic and replace it with a sort of convenience or sliding ethic, and you have disastrous results.
[01:53:55]  I mean, we've seen this, I think, in our family breakdown situation.
[01:54:01]  I think there's going to be a revival because I think people are going to reinvent the wheel, as in democracies they frequently do.
[01:54:08]  They're going to find that change has to start from within the individual in order for the roots of society to be cleansed of the kind of rubbish that has built up over the years.
[01:54:21]  David, you remember the phrase during one of the recent political campaigns, the fish rots from the head down?
[01:54:27]  Oh, right.
[01:54:28]  That's an old Chinese proverb, by the way.
[01:54:30]  Well, is that the way countries rot?
[01:54:33]  Well, in many ways it is.
[01:54:34]  I mean, there's a biblical principle, you know, righteousness exalts the nation.

=== Treaty Takes Control? (03:11) ===

[01:54:39]  I think if you have leadership which is ethically flawed in a major way, that flaw is going to begin to be is going to infect the system as a whole, and I think the country pays a heavy price for it.
[01:54:54]  A heavy price, yes.
[01:54:56]  On the toll-free line, you're on the air with David Aikman.
[01:54:59]  Where are you calling from, please?
[01:55:01]  Hello there.
[01:55:02]  No, missed another one.
[01:55:04]  On the wildcard line, you're on the air with David Aikman.
[01:55:06]  Good evening.
[01:55:07]  Good evening.
[01:55:08]  I read the book, and it's a marvelous book.
[01:55:12]  Oh, thank you.
[01:55:12]  And thank you so much for writing it.
[01:55:15]  The question I wanted to ask is, are you aware of the new treaty that just passed with the United Nations, which is the right to the child?
[01:55:26]  United Nations Right to the Child?
[01:55:29]  Right.
[01:55:30]  It is a treaty that has been rigged up by Hillary and her friends.
[01:55:37]  And what it really literally says is the education and the curriculum and the care of the child will be in the hands of the country.
[01:55:50]  In other words, parental rights are going to be taken away at any time.
[01:55:56]  And this will also be put into our schools, which at one time we did have local control.
[01:56:04]  And now it's all down the grain and it has become nationalized.
[01:56:08]  All our schools have become nationalized.
[01:56:11]  The curriculum and everything else that's involved comes from the top down.
[01:56:16]  Any opinion on this?
[01:56:18]  Well, I'm I'm not familiar with the particular treaty you refer to, but of course Hillary Clinton has been, or at least earlier earlier on in her legal career, was very active in a movement that put a great deal of stress on so-called rights of children.
[01:56:35]  Well, of course, it wasn't really rights of children.
[01:56:37]  It was the rights of people other than the parents.
[01:56:40]  And I think there are some disturbing signs of efforts within the educational community and at some federal and state levels to restrict the amount of influence that parents have over the content of their children's education and indeed their children's behavior.
[01:57:02]  I think the advocacy of condoms in schools indiscriminately is a catastrophe.
[01:57:10]  Wherever you have this program most developed, you actually have, and statistics show this, higher illegitimacy rates than where you have a program of education about sexual matters based upon restraint.
[01:57:26]  So I agree with you, Caller, that there are some disturbing trends, although I wasn't familiar with your specific incident.
[01:57:31]  I'm curious, David, now almost well into our third hour here, I can judge that you are politically quite conservative, and I'm curious how you fare with your colleagues, who I'm sure, for the most part, are not.

=== More Consensus in Foreign Affairs (08:30) ===

[01:57:48]  Well, that's a good question.
[01:57:51]  I think I sometimes wonder myself how I fare, but I think one of the things that has made it possible for me to function, so to speak, has been that I have generally focused on foreign affairs and foreign policy.
[01:58:06]  And when you get into those areas, the issues of political liberalism or conservatism are much less apparent.
[01:58:14]  In fact, there's probably more consensus.
[01:58:17]  It's when you get into domestic issues that your political views become much trickier to handle.
[01:58:25]  And, of course, that could be quite difficult.
[01:58:28]  Still, when you're kicking around the office and you're kind of interacting with your colleagues in view of the business you're in, there must be an awful lot of opportunity for clash.
[01:58:40]  Well, yes.
[01:58:40]  I mean, we work in a pretty collegial way.
[01:58:43]  I respect my colleagues very much.
[01:58:45]  I mean, even if I disagree with them, they argue intelligently and they don't take, most of them at any rate, don't take really crazy positions.
[01:58:57]  All right, David, hold on.
[01:58:58]  We'll be right back to you.
[01:58:59]  david aikman a senior correspondent foreign correspondent uh... for time magazine and we'll be right back with him Back to David Aikman.
[01:59:27]  David, are you there?
[01:59:28]  Yep.
[01:59:28]  Okay.
[01:59:29]  These lines have been jammed, jammed, jammed, so let's see if I can answer a couple more, if we can.
[01:59:35]  On the wildcard line, you're on the air with David Aikman.
[01:59:37]  Hello, Mark.
[01:59:38]  This is Tom in Spring Valley, California.
[01:59:40]  Hi, Tom.
[01:59:41]  I just have a quick question for David, and I'll listen on the air after I get done.
[01:59:45]  All right.
[01:59:46]  And that is, does the current administration, those people inside the beltway back there in Washington, really believe that the majority of Americans don't know what's best for them?
[01:59:56]  Thank you.
[01:59:57]  Thank you, sir.
[01:59:59]  Well, the caller's question implies they don't.
[02:00:02]  I think the current, I think all administrations, from time to time, get arrogant about knowing best what is good for the country.
[02:00:11]  And maybe we're going through one of those periods right now.
[02:00:14]  Is this administration particularly enamored of the view that really they can't do anything wrong?
[02:00:23]  I think this administration has a lot of people who take the view that wise government knows better than ordinary people.
[02:00:30]  I mean, this is, I'm afraid, a somewhat elitist perspective, but it has people within it who think that way.
[02:00:38]  All right.
[02:00:38]  On the toll-free line, you're on the air with David Aikman.
[02:00:41]  Hi, where are you, please?
[02:00:43]  Hello, I'm Colin from Salem, Oregon.
[02:00:46]  Salem, Oregon.
[02:00:46]  All right.
[02:00:47]  How are you tonight?
[02:00:48]  Fine.
[02:00:49]  I've been listening to the entire show, and I just Mr. Aikman was not aware of the Red Beckman fiasco.
[02:00:59]  Well, look, that broke in the last few hours, sir.
[02:01:02]  Yeah?
[02:01:02]  Yeah.
[02:01:04]  Okay.
[02:01:04]  So I was just curious, being part of the mainstream or with a large magazine like Time, if it was possible that that kind of a publication would look into something like this, because you don't seem to hear about these types of things on those lines.
[02:01:20]  All right.
[02:01:21]  It's a good question.
[02:01:22]  David, Red Beckman is a tax protester in Montana.
[02:01:27]  And then, of course, there's Randy Weaver in Idaho, and there's the Waco, Texas business.
[02:01:33]  What about the mainstream press and these kind of things?
[02:01:38]  Well, first of all, I want to reassure the caller that even though I've probably shown my ignorance in all kinds of areas, local correspondents undoubtedly know of this and have reported it or will report it to the editors.
[02:01:52]  I mean, whatever is wrong with the mainstream media, and a lot is wrong, it generally wants to report news.
[02:01:59]  And if something major is going on wherever it is in the United States, it will do a pretty good job of reporting it.
[02:02:06]  So sooner or later, this is going to come to light.
[02:02:09]  All right, good.
[02:02:10]  On the first-time caller line, you're on the air with David Aikman.
[02:02:14]  Good evening.
[02:02:15]  All right, how are you doing?
[02:02:16]  Okay, sir.
[02:02:17]  Where are you?
[02:02:18]  I am in Chugiak, Alaska.
[02:02:20]  Chugiak, Alaska, okay.
[02:02:22]  Yes, my name is Gary.
[02:02:23]  Listen, Mr. Aikman, have you read a book called Checkmate, The Game of Princes by Jeffrey A. Baker?
[02:02:30]  No, I haven't, but I've heard of it.
[02:02:32]  Oh, you have to read that because really what you have to do now with this book, you go, you're going to have to work backwards since you're at the destructive end, and now you're going to have to go backwards to start where we are now.
[02:02:46]  You follow me what I'm saying?
[02:02:47]  Yeah.
[02:02:48]  And if you read this book, it'll really open your eyes because it's really well written.
[02:02:53]  Checkmate, The Game of Princes.
[02:02:55]  Right.
[02:02:55]  And my question for you is this.
[02:02:57]  Why don't our elected officials listen to us when they're actually inundated with phone calls and faxes and everything?
[02:03:07]  And they don't listen to us.
[02:03:10]  Like this Ross McKelsky thing, I mean, they must think that we're all a bunch of yo-yo.
[02:03:14]  Right.
[02:03:15]  All right.
[02:03:16]  Why don't they listen?
[02:03:18]  David, there's a lot of frustration out there.
[02:03:20]  Right.
[02:03:21]  Well, I sense it, and I think I would probably feel the same thing, too.
[02:03:27]  First of all, I don't think the legislatures are always deaf.
[02:03:32]  I know a number of cases where particular members of Congress have been very specifically swayed in their votes on important issues by the volume of mail and telephone calls.
[02:03:43]  So, you know, don't get frustrated.
[02:03:46]  Keep it up.
[02:03:46]  It does work.
[02:03:47]  It doesn't work exactly as you want on all issues, but that's just the imperfection of democracy, I think.
[02:03:53]  Well, an example would be the pay raise.
[02:03:58]  The talk stations across the country talked it up.
[02:04:02]  They retreated quickly.
[02:04:04]  We thought we had won the battle, and then, you know, at midnight, they came back and did what they wanted to do anyway.
[02:04:11]  Well, bet you have, unfortunately, a situation there when the members of the Congress on both sides of the House are united in their own personal interests, which is deplorable, but unfortunately doesn't happen too often.
[02:04:26]  Well, I'll tell you, David, you're a great interview, and I think I would like to do it again sometime.
[02:04:32]  You're so well informed on every aspect that we've asked you that I would sure like to interview you again.
[02:04:39]  Well, thank you, Art.
[02:04:40]  I've really enjoyed your show.
[02:04:41]  It's been a great privilege.
[02:04:43]  Thank you.
[02:04:44]  Take care, David.
[02:04:45]  You too.
[02:04:45]  Bye-bye.
[02:04:46]  That's David Aikman, a senior correspondent for Time magazine.
[02:04:50]  It was a great pleasure to interview him.
[02:04:53]  If you did not get to hear the entire interview, you have two chances.
[02:04:59]  One.
[02:05:00]  We will, of course, some stations will, of course, repeat portions of this beginning at 4 o'clock in the morning, Pacific Coast Time.
[02:05:09]  All right.
[02:05:10]  We've got a couple of open hours of talk radio coming up next.
[02:05:14]  We'll be back right after the news.
[02:05:16]  Stay where you are.
[02:05:17]  Freeze.
[02:05:18]  This is Premier Networks.
[02:05:20]  That was Art Bell hosting Coast to Coast AM on this Somewhere in Time.

=== Murder Rates and Debates (12:26) ===

[02:05:51]  Somewhere in Time with Art Bell continues.
[02:05:55]  Courtesy of Premier Networks.
[02:05:57]  Wildcard line, you're on the air.
[02:05:59]  Hello.
[02:05:59]  Dr. Democrat.
[02:06:00]  Well, well, well.
[02:06:01]  Good morning, Art.
[02:06:02]  Hello, hello.
[02:06:03]  You know what I think happened in this Paula Jones case?
[02:06:06]  What?
[02:06:06]  I think she did go to his room, but she accused Clinton of pulling his pants down.
[02:06:12]  Yep.
[02:06:12]  And I think what happened is she pulled her pants down, and Clinton rejected her.
[02:06:17]  She got embarrassed.
[02:06:18]  Ah, scorned.
[02:06:19]  Then her embarrassment turned to anger.
[02:06:21]  Scorned at nothing like a scorned woman, right, Doc?
[02:06:24]  That's right.
[02:06:24]  So now she's getting even.
[02:06:26]  I mean, he told her to leave the room, you know, because that was pretty insulting.
[02:06:32]  But anyhow, I think President Clinton is going to get immunity, and I think he deserves it.
[02:06:38]  Well, that's going to smell pretty bad, huh?
[02:06:40]  Not really, because it's common sense that they can't allow this to go to court because the Republicans could line up a thousand women and keep following suit, and the president wouldn't be able to do his job.
[02:06:52]  Well, they may have a thousand women.
[02:06:54]  That's right.
[02:06:55]  And if you look at the polls, nobody cares.
[02:06:58]  Well, I don't know about that.
[02:07:00]  There's a kind of a collective thing that's beginning to settle in on the American people, and that may be more evident at election time, Doc.
[02:07:09]  Well, that's right.
[02:07:10]  You know, the election time is what counts.
[02:07:12]  But only 17% of the people think Paula Jones is telling the truth.
[02:07:17]  Well, I know, but have you seen the percentage that believed the president?
[02:07:21]  Well, it's a lot higher than 17.
[02:07:23]  But it's nowhere near 50.
[02:07:25]  Well, that's okay.
[02:07:26]  Clinton's winning the game, and you guys are going to be able to get it.
[02:07:28]  I don't know.
[02:07:28]  I don't know.
[02:07:29]  He may be winning the skirmish with Paula Jones.
[02:07:32]  But see, Doc, what he's not winning is the game, the overall game.
[02:07:36]  If the game is re-election, I don't think he's winning because there is a kind of thing that's building about Bill Clinton and his adventures.
[02:07:46]  Yeah, but the same thing with Whitewater.
[02:07:48]  Nobody cares about that either.
[02:07:49]  Well, we haven't had the hearings yet.
[02:07:51]  They're coming in the fall.
[02:07:52]  Well, that's just going to vindicate Bill Clinton.
[02:07:54]  We know that.
[02:07:55]  There's no evidence there.
[02:07:56]  Well, we'll see.
[02:07:57]  And as far as Danny Boy, Rodenkowski?
[02:07:59]  Yeah.
[02:08:00]  Oh, yeah.
[02:08:00]  What do you think?
[02:08:01]  Will there be a pardon?
[02:08:02]  I think he deserves one, and I think there should be.
[02:08:04]  And I'll tell you why.
[02:08:06]  The Republicans, Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon.
[02:08:09]  And look at all the things Nixon had on him.
[02:08:12]  All right, listen.
[02:08:13]  Listen.
[02:08:14]  I want you for a debate, Doc, just based on what you just said.
[02:08:18]  Hold on, please.
[02:08:19]  All righty.
[02:08:19]  All right.
[02:08:20]  Let's do a debate on this.
[02:08:22]  He thinks that Dan Rostenkowski should be pardoned by the president for whatever his sins may be.
[02:08:32]  And there are certainly a multitude of allegations about Dan Rostenkowski.
[02:08:37]  So what I want now is somebody who'd like to debate this with Doc.
[02:08:41]  Somebody who thinks, for example, that a pardon would not be such a good idea.
[02:08:51]  If that's the way you feel, pick up the telephone now, and I'll put you on the air with Doc, and we'll let you all have a bit of a discussion about the possibility of pardon for Dan.
[02:09:01]  I almost can't say it the way it's supposed to be said.
[02:09:04]  Rostenkowski.
[02:09:23]  All right, let's see.
[02:09:25]  Here's Doc.
[02:09:27]  Are you there, Doc?
[02:09:28]  Yeah.
[02:09:28]  All right.
[02:09:29]  Here's a man from Seattle that would like to debate this with you, and you're both on the air.
[02:09:34]  The subject is a pardon for Dan Rostenkowski.
[02:09:38]  Okay, like I was telling Art, I think Danny Boy should get a pardon because the Republicans gave Richard Nixon a pardon, and if that's okay to give the President of the United States a pardon with the magnitude of evidence they had on him, I don't see anything wrong whatsoever to let Rostinkowski off the hook.
[02:09:56]  You got anything to say about that up there in Seattle?
[02:10:00]  Hello, sir.
[02:10:01]  I must be debating myself, huh?
[02:10:04]  Yeah, where are you?
[02:10:04]  Am I on?
[02:10:05]  Yeah, you're on, sure.
[02:10:06]  I don't know how I got on.
[02:10:07]  If I'm not in Seattle, I'm in Graft Valley, California.
[02:10:10]  Oh, well, then I lost the guy in Seattle.
[02:10:11]  Thank you, sir, for the call.
[02:10:13]  Did you want to debate?
[02:10:14]  Well, I can debate to a point.
[02:10:16]  Well, okay.
[02:10:17]  Let me look for somebody who thinks that I'm putting you back on hold, Doc.
[02:10:21]  Okay.
[02:10:21]  All right, something happened to the other side of my debate there.
[02:10:26]  I don't know what it was.
[02:10:27]  That happens on these phones all the time.
[02:10:29]  I mean, somebody disappears and somebody else is there.
[02:10:31]  It's really, really ridiculous.
[02:10:33]  So if you want to debate, Doc, don't think a pardon's a good idea.
[02:10:37]  Come on now.
[02:10:38]  On the wildcard line, you're on the air.
[02:10:40]  Hello.
[02:10:42]  No, you're not.
[02:10:43]  On this wildcard line, you're on the air.
[02:10:45]  Good morning.
[02:10:46]  Good morning.
[02:10:46]  Are you interested in debating, Doc?
[02:10:49]  No, I can't.
[02:10:50]  Okay, well, thank you for the call, then.
[02:10:51]  That's what we're looking for right now.
[02:10:55]  Geez, now I've lost Doc.
[02:11:00]  What's happened here?
[02:11:01]  Now Doc's going.
[02:11:02]  I wonder what's happening to my telephones.
[02:11:05]  We may have just had one of those telephone glitches.
[02:11:10]  I'm terribly sorry that happens once in a while.
[02:11:12]  And what happens is every single line here simply first-time callers call area 702-727-1222.
[02:11:23]  Let's see, on the wildcard line, you're on the air.
[02:11:26]  Hello there.
[02:11:28]  No, you're not on the air.
[02:11:29]  On this wildcard line, you're on the air.
[02:11:31]  Hello.
[02:11:32]  Mayor, this is Jason Bellingham.
[02:11:33]  Hello, Jason.
[02:11:34]  I just wanted to call up and first of all say I think that Leonard's arrogant just for saying that every other teaching is wrong.
[02:11:41]  And last night, I think I could have done a lot better job arguing the evolution side of it.
[02:11:45]  Well, you all got carried away.
[02:11:48]  I mean, that happens in debates.
[02:11:50]  Yeah.
[02:11:51]  I have a joke that I want to tell you.
[02:11:52]  I think you might get a kick out of it.
[02:11:54]  Is it clean?
[02:11:55]  It's pretty clean.
[02:11:56]  No, it's got to be clean.
[02:11:57]  It is clean.
[02:11:58]  All right.
[02:11:58]  Do you know why you shouldn't let Lorena Bobbitt near your computer?
[02:12:03]  She'll turn your 200-megabyte hard drive into a 3.5-inch floppy.
[02:12:09]  Well, that's terrible.
[02:12:12]  Goodbye.
[02:12:13]  goodbyes uh...
[02:12:19]  computer bothered jokes On the wildcard line, you're on the air.
[02:12:26]  Hello.
[02:12:26]  Yeah, Mark.
[02:12:28]  Just because Nixon was pardoned, you know, if you pardon Ross and Kowski, that's like using two wrongs don't make a right, you know.
[02:12:39]  Yes, I do know.
[02:12:41]  They're using that pardon and creating among themselves a privileged nobility.
[02:12:48]  That's certainly, thank you, the way it's going to be perceived by the American people.
[02:12:51]  No question of it.
[02:12:52]  I'm still trying to set up my debate.
[02:12:54]  I don't know what happened.
[02:12:56]  First I lost one, then I lost the other.
[02:12:59]  I believe that we had a massive telephone disconnect, so I apologize for that.
[02:13:03]  And on the wildcard line, you're on the air.
[02:13:06]  You just said you're looking for someone for debate.
[02:13:08]  I'm not.
[02:13:10]  You're not what?
[02:13:11]  I'm not interested in debating.
[02:13:14]  Oh.
[02:13:14]  Is that okay?
[02:13:16]  Yeah, I guess so.
[02:13:16]  Where are you?
[02:13:17]  I'm from Sacramento.
[02:13:18]  Sacramento.
[02:13:19]  All right.
[02:13:19]  Well, what are you interested in?
[02:13:22]  Well, I'm not hearing any gunfire, and I live in a suburb of Sacramento.
[02:13:26]  Well, I wasn't suggesting that it was everywhere in Sacramento.
[02:13:29]  No, no.
[02:13:29]  It was in a poorer area of Sacramento.
[02:13:32]  Yeah.
[02:13:34]  Rancho Cordoja.
[02:13:36]  No, I was just saying that it was in one specific area in Sacramento.
[02:13:40]  Yeah, I have a couple of places in mind that you might have been thinking of, but I'm just far enough away from it that I'm pretty safe.
[02:13:48]  Anyway.
[02:13:49]  That's a good way to measure the right distance, you know, far enough away so you don't hear the gunfire.
[02:13:55]  Right.
[02:13:57]  Anyway, speaking of guns, I'd like to revert back to a subject you were speaking on, I think, a couple of days ago, about Great Britain's supposedly low homicide rate compared to the U.S.
[02:14:15]  I thought I was reading some information on Dr. Gary Kleck's book, Point Blank.
[02:14:24]  Yes.
[02:14:24]  And he talks about that comparison with the U.S. and the homicide rate with Great Britain.
[02:14:30]  And he mentioned that, first of all, he said that Great Britain had a low homicide rate before it had strict gun control.
[02:14:42]  Long before they had strict gun control.
[02:14:44]  Right.
[02:14:45]  And also he mentioned that Great Britain has a lower murder rate with knives and a lower murder rate with hands and feet.
[02:14:56]  And which is an interesting point because you don't hear anyone saying how Great Britain's murder rate with hands and feet and with knives is lower because people in Great Britain have fewer hands and feet than Americans.
[02:15:13]  How many steakknife murders do you think there were?
[02:15:17]  Versus, say, blunt instrument murders.
[02:15:20]  All right.
[02:15:21]  All right, sir.
[02:15:22]  Thank you very much for the call.
[02:15:23]  I don't know where we're going with all that.
[02:15:25]  I just know that I have not heard anybody, not one person yet, dispute Pat Buchanan's statement, which is what launched us into a couple of days' discussion with regard to all of that.
[02:15:38]  Well, all the lines, of course, are ringing.
[02:15:42]  I'd like to be able to find Doc again.
[02:15:44]  I'd like to be able to find someone to debate him, so if I do, we'll still try and do that.
[02:15:50]  Wildcard line, you're on the air.
[02:15:52]  Hello?
[02:15:52]  Good morning.
[02:15:52]  If you find Doc, I'd like to debate him.
[02:15:55]  All right, fine.
[02:15:55]  I'm putting you on hold.
[02:15:56]  Can you stand by?
[02:15:58]  Sure.
[02:15:59]  All right.
[02:16:00]  Hold is where you are.
[02:16:01]  All right, Doc.
[02:16:02]  If you're out there, then we're in business, I think.
[02:16:06]  On the wildcard line, you're on the air.
[02:16:08]  Hello.
[02:16:08]  Well, hello.
[02:16:09]  This is the conservative nightmare.
[02:16:11]  Oh, good Lord.
[02:16:13]  It's like hearing from a dead person.
[02:16:16]  Well, actually, today, Saturday, is the first Saturday I have off since the last Friday I called you, so I've been a working man.
[02:16:25]  Hey, I'll dispute that England murder rate statistic.
[02:16:28]  Actually, I'll use the same argument that Michael Kinsley did.
[02:16:32]  If you took that I guess what the fact supposedly was that if you took the black population out of the murder statistics here in the United States, England's murder rate would actually be much lower.
[02:16:44]  No, ours would then be lower than England's.
[02:16:47]  Yeah, that's what Pat Buchanan said.
[02:16:49]  And three other European countries.
[02:16:52]  But, of course, if you took away the lower stratum of the English economic murder rate as well, then ours, of course, would be higher again.
[02:17:02]  well i don't know about that one uh...
[02:17:05]  that may or may not be true but this country you have to admit that's a pretty big if today If you take away the power of the country, look, poverty is a gigantic factor.
[02:17:15]  There's no question about it, but it's not the only factor.
[02:17:18]  Well, I know, but I mean, to say that if you take away basically the class where the most criminal activity is going on, and then you compare it to somebody else, of course, our numbers are going to be more in comparison.
[02:17:31]  But that's a pretty big if.
[02:17:34]  Also, I love it when you predict years before an election who's going to win it, because I remember very well how you declared George Bush was unbeatable a year and a half before 92, and you even declared that Jesse Jackson was the front contender for the Democratic nomination.
[02:17:50]  Well, at the time that I declared George Bush unbeatable, he certainly was.
[02:17:54]  He had above 90% approval rating, and Bill Clinton would have been a laugh at that point.
[02:18:01]  You predicted that he would be.

=== Voters' Last Stand (15:22) ===

[02:18:03]  Yeah, but that was before he went and did the tax thing.
[02:18:06]  No, no, it wasn't.
[02:18:07]  That was during Desert Storm.
[02:18:09]  It was after the taxes.
[02:18:11]  It was after the taxes.
[02:18:12]  Well, that's true.
[02:18:13]  You're right.
[02:18:13]  You're right.
[02:18:14]  So your pre-election predictions are notoriously partisan and incorrect.
[02:18:18]  A fact this nation should be eternally grateful for.
[02:18:21]  Oh, and your predictions are non-partisan.
[02:18:23]  Well, I didn't say that.
[02:18:25]  Yeah, good, because it would have been just as laughable as you regard mine.
[02:18:29]  Well, I mean, still, face it, your predictions always turn out incorrect.
[02:18:34]  I mean, every time.
[02:18:36]  Also, I don't believe that Dan Rostenkowski should be pardoned because I think that if the president did this, he would very, very substantially weaken himself to charges of corruption and things like that.
[02:18:53]  I don't think that he can pardon Rostenkowski unless he waits until the last day of his administration.
[02:18:58]  All right.
[02:18:58]  Thank you.
[02:18:59]  The last day of his administration.
[02:19:01]  Thanks for the call.
[02:19:02]  I really wish that I could find Doc.
[02:19:06]  Doc, if you're out there, try to get through.
[02:19:08]  Will you please?
[02:19:09]  Try to get through, because I've got a guy here who wants to debate.
[02:19:11]  I really wanted to get a debate going on that subject, the possible pardon of Rostankowski.
[02:19:18]  Hello there on the wildcard line.
[02:19:20]  You're on the air.
[02:19:21]  Hi, Art.
[02:19:22]  Hello.
[02:19:22]  This is Don, Palm Springs, KPSI.
[02:19:24]  Hi, Don.
[02:19:26]  I wasn't sure if I would be able to get in on the debate.
[02:19:28]  I just think it's kind of ridiculous that Doc would make that comment.
[02:19:32]  I know, and the minute he made it, I knew I wanted that debate.
[02:19:35]  Now I can't find the guy.
[02:19:36]  Yeah, well, you know, that's symptomatic of what's going on in the country.
[02:19:39]  Everybody should get a pardon because everybody else did something and made them do it.
[02:19:42]  I thought you were going to say it's symptomatic of liberals in general.
[02:19:46]  Well, and of the phone company that I lost him.
[02:19:49]  We broke up the phone company, and now look what happens.
[02:19:51]  Well, I'm sure it's a conspiracy.
[02:19:53]  Yeah.
[02:19:53]  All right.
[02:19:53]  Well, let me look for Doc if I can.
[02:19:55]  Thank you.
[02:19:56]  Doc, quick call in, will you?
[02:19:58]  See if you can get through.
[02:20:00]  Try one of the wildcard lines.
[02:20:02]  I'm going to only give it a minute more here.
[02:20:04]  Is this Doc?
[02:20:06]  No, but I'm on the side of Doc, and I'll be happy to debate the issue.
[02:20:09]  I've only called you once in two years.
[02:20:11]  All right.
[02:20:12]  Well, by golly, you're on.
[02:20:14]  So you're sort of a doc replacement.
[02:20:17]  All right, here's somebody who thinks it's a terrible idea.
[02:20:20]  Where are you calling from, by the way?
[02:20:22]  Both of Washington.
[02:20:23]  Both Washington.
[02:20:24]  And my other caller, where are you?
[02:20:27]  Where are you?
[02:20:29]  Oh, no.
[02:20:30]  No, this can't be happening.
[02:20:35]  Let me see.
[02:20:35]  Let me try it again here.
[02:20:36]  Wait a minute.
[02:20:37]  Let's try this.
[02:20:38]  All right.
[02:20:39]  Are you there?
[02:20:40]  Yeah.
[02:20:40]  All right.
[02:20:42]  I got disconnected, but I'm here now.
[02:20:43]  You're here.
[02:20:44]  And which side of this do you want to argue?
[02:20:47]  Oh, I'm against Doc.
[02:20:49]  You're against Doc.
[02:20:50]  Well, it's okay.
[02:20:51]  It's not Doc we've got, but we've got a fellow here in Bothwell, Washington who agrees with Doc.
[02:20:56]  So both of you are on the air.
[02:20:57]  Go ahead.
[02:20:58]  Oh, okay.
[02:20:58]  He's in for Doc.
[02:20:59]  Yeah.
[02:21:00]  I'm Nick the Radical.
[02:21:03]  You're crazy.
[02:21:05]  I am so tired of you people.
[02:21:12]  Ma'am, turn your right.
[02:21:13]  Whoever's got the radio on, turn it off.
[02:21:15]  It's off.
[02:21:15]  The radio's off.
[02:21:19]  Go ahead.
[02:21:19]  I want to hear you.
[02:21:20]  Go ahead.
[02:21:20]  Well, you said I was crazy.
[02:21:22]  Go ahead.
[02:21:23]  I would like to give you a reasoned argument if you'll just stop and think about it for a moment.
[02:21:30]  I'm willing to hear you.
[02:21:31]  Go ahead.
[02:21:31]  Well, what is your most precious right as an American citizen?
[02:21:35]  If you'll answer that, I can go on.
[02:21:37]  What is yours?
[02:21:38]  My right to vote.
[02:21:40]  Telling me what my rights are?
[02:21:41]  No, I asked you, and I believe that my most precious right, if you don't agree that it's yours, is the right to a secret ballot, just like you have when you go to the voting booth or when you're in a jury or whatever, or in a labor union.
[02:21:58]  Okay?
[02:21:59]  Now, if you agree that that is a very precious right, and then if you agree that the boss, the true boss of elected officials is the voters, nobody else, just the voters, then the only reason that we should ever permit an elected person, whether they're a mayor, a congressman, a president of the United States,
[02:22:26]  the only reason that we should ever permit anyone to push them out of office, only the voter should have that.
[02:22:34]  The only reason is for a high crime or treason.
[02:22:36]  Because if you say...
[02:22:39]  Why was it wrong for Nixon to be pardoned, but okay for Rostin Kowski?
[02:22:45]  Why, then, if that's what you're saying.
[02:22:47]  Do you mean for?
[02:22:48]  Then why?
[02:22:49]  Why is it okay for him?
[02:22:50]  This is what I'm saying.
[02:22:51]  I'm tired of the contradictions.
[02:22:53]  I'm tired of the people on your side telling us what we do, everything we do is wrong, but then you turn around and you do it, and it's right.
[02:23:01]  No, I'm on the same side you are, if you'll stop and think about it.
[02:23:05]  I had no idea.
[02:23:06]  I thought I was debating someone who was not on my side.
[02:23:09]  Well, I was, if I had been president, I would not have pardoned.
[02:23:16]  Richard Nixon was a president.
[02:23:18]  But he had that position.
[02:23:20]  To continue the government of the United States as a democracy, you've got to have the power.
[02:23:25]  You can start talking like a democracy and stop having the people on your side telling us what we're going to do, every move we're going to make, what we're going to eat, what we're going to drink, how we're going to live.
[02:23:34]  Well, forget me.
[02:23:35]  Just go ahead and give your position.
[02:23:37]  Well, I already gave it to you.
[02:23:41]  Why is it that you want an elected official to be pushed out of office by anybody but the people that voted that person in?
[02:23:50]  If you believe that a legislator or an elected official should be pushed out of office because he drops his pants or because he steals a little bit of money, then the whole government is going to collapse because the people who are for term limits and the reactionary right-wingers will push out everybody.
[02:24:10]  Everybody's got their sin.
[02:24:11]  The right-wingers?
[02:24:12]  Huh?
[02:24:13]  The right-wingers?
[02:24:15]  The power department goes back.
[02:24:17]  You'd go ahead and drop out and go with the right wingers like your party does.
[02:24:23]  But that was a power that we learned from England when the king could have a legislator arrested in parliament and be a dictator.
[02:24:31]  What do we do with the United States of America?
[02:24:34]  We've got to know our history to understand what's going on now.
[02:24:37]  Hey, listen, you two.
[02:24:38]  I've got a break, but I'll hold you both over if you want to.
[02:24:40]  Fine.
[02:24:42]  Okay, all right.
[02:24:42]  Stand by the both of you, and we will be back.
[02:24:45]  This sounds like fun.
[02:24:47]  The issue is the pardoning of Dan Rostinkowski.
[02:24:51]  Yay or nay, and there'll be more in a moment.
[02:24:54]  This is Premier Networks.
[02:24:55]  That was Art Bell hosting Coast to Coast AM on this Somewhere in Time.
[02:25:34]  Tonight, featuring Coast to Coast AM from May 20th, 1990.
[02:25:38]  Welcome back, everybody.
[02:25:39]  I'm Art Bell, and we've got a couple of debaters here subject to possible pardon of Rostinkowski.
[02:25:44]  And I actually just thought of one circumstance under which it might be okay.
[02:25:50]  You know how people keep saying, well, he could only do it if it was his last day in office?
[02:25:58]  Well, that'd make a pardon round about Monday or so okay, my way of thinking.
[02:26:03]  But right now, back to my two callers.
[02:26:06]  You're both back on the air again.
[02:26:07]  Hello.
[02:26:08]  Hello.
[02:26:08]  Hi.
[02:26:09]  Well, his last day in office, Bush pardoned the contra conspirators.
[02:26:13]  I want our other caller to know that I'm not speaking for Rostinkowski or any of them.
[02:26:20]  I think a lot of them are crooks.
[02:26:22]  But if you just think a little further, do you really want to have a prosecutor or somebody drum out of office, somebody that you elected unless they committed a high crime like Nixon did?
[02:26:38]  Nixon would have been impeached.
[02:26:40]  That's why he got out because he did commit a high crime.
[02:26:42]  He tried to overturn the Constitution.
[02:26:45]  You know what?
[02:26:46]  That's another thing that I'm so tired of, of your side, saying all these if, You know, it's like you people can read the future.
[02:26:56]  If, if, if.
[02:26:56]  Well, this is going to happen.
[02:26:57]  That's going to happen.
[02:26:58]  If, if, if.
[02:26:59]  Well, don't you see that the frustration that you and a lot of Americans have right now?
[02:27:04]  The frustration I have is your contradiction, okay?
[02:27:07]  What about Oliver North?
[02:27:09]  What about him?
[02:27:11]  He, whatever he did, whatever, was found out to be that he didn't do anything wrong.
[02:27:16]  But you know what?
[02:27:17]  As soon as Oliver North said he was going to run for office, oh.
[02:27:21]  He tried to overthrow the U.S. Constitution.
[02:27:24]  It was ran across the news that this man did every single thing wrong that was allowed.
[02:27:29]  I mean, you people convicted him.
[02:27:31]  He tried to overthrow the Constitution.
[02:27:33]  He went against his own vote.
[02:27:35]  Why was he not convicted of anything?
[02:27:39]  The man was not convicted of any crime.
[02:27:42]  Because a deal with struggle.
[02:27:44]  But that's what a deal was struggling.
[02:27:47]  And you know darn well this Rostinkowski.
[02:27:49]  You know that what he did is wrong.
[02:27:52]  That doesn't mean he should be taken out of office.
[02:27:55]  I mean, the people, don't you believe the people are the boss?
[02:27:59]  Don't you believe the people?
[02:28:00]  He did something wrong.
[02:28:01]  He should stay.
[02:28:02]  But the voters are the boss.
[02:28:04]  Nobody else.
[02:28:05]  That's right.
[02:28:05]  The voters should leave him in.
[02:28:06]  He did something wrong.
[02:28:07]  You know, that's what America is.
[02:28:08]  Yeah, that's what the problem with America is.
[02:28:10]  He did something wrong.
[02:28:11]  Leave him in.
[02:28:12]  Was it a high crime or treason that he did?
[02:28:14]  Oh, now you're going to justify whether it was a bad crime or if it was a good crime.
[02:28:19]  If you elect the mayor, where are you from?
[02:28:21]  What town are you in?
[02:28:24]  What city are you in?
[02:28:25]  What city?
[02:28:26]  Yes.
[02:28:26]  I'm in Chandler, Arizona.
[02:28:28]  Okay, if you elected the mayor of your city and he did something wrong, like he went illegally and got him tickets.
[02:28:37]  Because I won't vote for him again.
[02:28:38]  Well, let's say that it's somebody you did vote for and he had an illegal parking ticket.
[02:28:45]  He knew it was wrong and he went and did it.
[02:28:46]  Would you kick him out of office for that?
[02:28:48]  That's right.
[02:28:49]  That's taken on public office.
[02:28:52]  He knows darn well that he had better have a clean slate.
[02:28:56]  And if you don't have one, don't run for office.
[02:28:58]  So you would kick out an elected official because he gets a parking ticket.
[02:29:02]  That's right.
[02:29:04]  I sure would.
[02:29:04]  I don't want nobody in there who's got any bad records, any skeletons.
[02:29:08]  If you can't go into public office without having skeletons, well, then you should not be there.
[02:29:13]  You should not go in there.
[02:29:14]  Does anybody lack a skeleton?
[02:29:16]  No, before you even run, you know they're going to take a scan of your life.
[02:29:19]  But that's exactly what democracy is.
[02:29:21]  They just think that because he's Clinton's buddy, he's going to get off just like Clinton and Hillary and everybody else.
[02:29:27]  Well, then you couldn't serve.
[02:29:29]  Oliver North and Nixon and every other Republican, you tell me what, oh, you just, I can't believe how you sit there and say that it's okay for your side, the people on your side, you sit there and say it's okay, it wasn't a bad crime.
[02:29:44]  But it wasn't that bad of a crime.
[02:29:47]  It was wrong.
[02:29:48]  I thought you said anything wrong, they should be kicked out.
[02:29:52]  Even a fucking ticket.
[02:29:54]  You said, well, was it a bad crime?
[02:29:56]  All right, for the sake of the argument.
[02:29:58]  Look, for the sake of the argument, you two, let's look at what the allegations are.
[02:30:02]  There are allegations of shadow employees involving just short of a half million dollars.
[02:30:07]  I mean, if these are proven, these are not exactly, sir, misdemeanors, and yet you're still in favor of a pardon.
[02:30:14]  Right.
[02:30:15]  No, I'm saying this.
[02:30:16]  I'm saying that unless an elected official commits a high crime or treason, he should be only judged by the voters, nobody else.
[02:30:24]  Because if you do anything less, why, you're destroying the very Constitution of the United States.
[02:30:30]  You're right to try to enforce on me someone that I don't want in there.
[02:30:36]  Okay, then vote him out.
[02:30:38]  Well, thank God I didn't have to vote for him.
[02:30:40]  Contribute money to defeat him in the next election.
[02:30:43]  See, if you compromise this one issue that the people, the voters are not the boss, but neither was Oliver North, and you just said that he tried to overthrow the Constitution of the United States.
[02:30:58]  And I mean, how can you sit there and say that and then yet stand up and stick up for this man when you know Don Well what he's doing?
[02:31:06]  Oliver North has the right to run for senator in that state, Virginia, wherever.
[02:31:10]  Okay, yeah.
[02:31:10]  He has that right.
[02:31:12]  They should run for senator.
[02:31:13]  He's putting himself up to the judgment of the voters, and he's got a lot of courage to do that.
[02:31:18]  All right, you two.
[02:31:18]  I've got a hold of that.
[02:31:20]  Thank you both very much and have a good morning.
[02:31:23]  Well, that was a good one.
[02:31:24]  We didn't get Doc back, but that was nevertheless a very, very good debate.
[02:31:29]  On the toll-free line, you're on the air.
[02:31:31]  Good morning.
[02:31:32]  Yes, Art.
[02:31:33]  Hello.
[02:31:34]  Do you remember that medical package that was delivered to Clinton in the doctor who said he would not allow it to be passed through until he checked it out?
[02:31:43]  Yes, I remember all that because of the supposedly because of the allergies.
[02:31:48]  And the next day that doctor was out of there?
[02:31:52]  Do you suppose that anything to do with drug deal or drug usage?
[02:31:57]  Is this Larry Nichols?
[02:31:58]  No.
[02:31:59]  Oh, no?
[02:32:01]  It's not Larry Nichols.
[02:32:03]  No, I wouldn't have any reason to believe that, Larry.
[02:32:05]  And since I've got you on the phone, where's the proof?
[02:32:08]  Where's the proof?
[02:32:10]  You have proof that it was some sort of drug deal that you're talking about there?
[02:32:14]  Oh, I was just suggesting that.
[02:32:16]  Well, see, all right.
[02:32:17]  Thank you, Larry, Nichols.
[02:32:20]  Here's the facts.
[02:32:21]  Dear Art, Pauline, and I sent a fact last night, but it was almost 4 a.m. and you didn't comment on it.
[02:32:28]  Our question was: if Mrs. Kennedy was going to be buried with Jack Kennedy or with Onassis, the front page today of the Arizona Republic says she'll be buried at Arlington alongside the slain president.
[02:32:41]  Also, why do you think it's so important for her comments after the assassination to be kept from the American public, only to be revealed 50 years after her children's death?
[02:32:53]  Think it's possible for them to be released sooner?
[02:32:58]  Her death to us is devastating.
[02:33:01]  She will be missed.
[02:33:03]  But we have to remember she is with and has been with Jack for over a day now.
[02:33:08]  They've got a lot of catching up to do.
[02:33:09]  I'm sure they're so happy now together again.

=== Royalty and Risk (12:45) ===

[02:33:12]  That's from Curtis in Phoenix.
[02:33:19]  Yes.
[02:33:23]  I don't know how to comment on that.
[02:33:25]  I think that Jacqueline should be buried where she wanted to be buried, and I'm sure that's what's occurring.
[02:33:33]  That, I guess, is my comment.
[02:33:35]  On the toll-free line, you're on the air.
[02:33:37]  Hello.
[02:33:38]  Yeah, hi, Art.
[02:33:39]  Hello.
[02:33:40]  My name's Walter from Hawaii.
[02:33:42]  Hi, Walter.
[02:33:42]  How's Hawaii this morning?
[02:33:44]  Okay.
[02:33:45]  I talked to you for the first time Monday, and I told you our group was instrumental in getting that 10th Amendment.
[02:33:54]  Oh, I recall.
[02:33:55]  Yes, yes, yes.
[02:33:56]  Yeah.
[02:33:58]  A person in our group sent that off to you, that document, the resolution there.
[02:34:04]  Great.
[02:34:04]  Did you enjoy the interview this morning?
[02:34:08]  Which one?
[02:34:09]  Oh, you did not hear the interview, I take it, with our Time magazine correspondent?
[02:34:14]  No, no, I didn't.
[02:34:15]  We'll hear it later on tonight, I guess.
[02:34:17]  Oh, all right.
[02:34:18]  You will enjoy it, believe me.
[02:34:21]  What I wanted to ask you about was now, I know you don't, well, early on, the first time I really heard you was with Linda Thompson on there.
[02:34:33]  And I know you're not in favor of having the militia march in Washington, but the ultimatum, that document that she wrote.
[02:34:41]  Yes.
[02:34:42]  I was wondering what you thought of a couple of the issues that she stated in the market.
[02:34:47]  Actually, I think she's almost right on with every issue, to be honest with you.
[02:34:51]  They are all legitimate complaints.
[02:34:53]  It is simply her conclusion and call for action, I disagree with.
[02:34:57]  Right.
[02:34:57]  Well, what would you suggest?
[02:34:59]  Like the couple, like the Well, I would think in the case of the killed.
[02:35:04]  All right, I'm going to give you the answer.
[02:35:05]  Listen on the air, please.
[02:35:08]  I think instead of mixing it up with everything else, though I consider her complaints legitimate, she did her best work on Waco.
[02:35:16]  And had she called for a march to demand an investigation into Waco, I think something very positive would have occurred.
[02:35:25]  You asked my opinion, I'm giving it to you.
[02:35:28]  And instead of hurting her credibility, in my opinion, by what she did on this program, I think had she called for a march in Washington to demand, to demand a peaceful march, to demand an investigation, I would have been there myself, and so would have a lot of other Americans.
[02:35:50]  So if you're asking me what I think she should have done, that's it.
[02:35:56]  We'll be right back.
[02:36:16]  First-time caller line, you're on the air.
[02:36:18]  Good morning.
[02:36:19]  Hi, Art.
[02:36:19]  I was just wanting to comment about that guy for Ross Nukowski.
[02:36:24]  Yes.
[02:36:25]  I don't see how he could even think the guy should be pardoned after doing half a million dollars in funds like that.
[02:36:31]  That's crazy.
[02:36:33]  Well, and that's not the only allegation.
[02:36:35]  I mean, these are really big, serious allegations.
[02:36:38]  And not only that caller, but Doc as well, thought was trying to make a case that he ought to be pardoned.
[02:36:44]  Well, I was a Democrat, but I'm not now.
[02:36:47]  I voted for that Jerk in the White House, but I'm not going to vote for him no more.
[02:36:52]  You've had it, huh?
[02:36:53]  I've had it.
[02:36:54]  I'm an independent or Republican, who's ever better than he is.
[02:36:58]  Anybody but Clinton?
[02:37:00]  Anybody.
[02:37:00]  Anybody but Clinton.
[02:37:01]  All right.
[02:37:02]  Thank you very much for the call.
[02:37:03]  Wonder how many people are going to be like that come election day?
[02:37:07]  ABC, they call it.
[02:37:08]  ABC.
[02:37:09]  Anybody but Clinton.
[02:37:10]  On the toll-free line, you're on the air.
[02:37:12]  Good morning.
[02:37:13]  Good morning, Art.
[02:37:14]  This is Mike.
[02:37:15]  Last time I called you was right after the election, and you had hung up on me.
[02:37:22]  Why did I do that?
[02:37:23]  Well, I had told you that if Mr. Clinton had got us involved in a war over in Bosnia or somewhere else, that I wouldn't no longer be willing to fight for this country.
[02:37:34]  Oh.
[02:37:35]  And I was wondering if you had.
[02:37:37]  Well, I think probably the conversation went like this.
[02:37:40]  I probably said, look, it's going to depend on the nature of the conflict, and you're not fighting for a president.
[02:37:47]  And I'm telling you that again right now.
[02:37:48]  If we got into a war, now there'd be some marginal ones, but Korea, let's take a possible example, Korea.
[02:37:56]  And you would say, I'm not going to go fight for this president.
[02:38:00]  Well, you wouldn't be fighting for this president.
[02:38:02]  You'd be fighting for your country.
[02:38:04]  Would we now, though, with the way the government has taken control and decided to throw out the Constitution?
[02:38:11]  Are we fighting for our country anymore?
[02:38:13]  Are we fighting for their government?
[02:38:15]  It's not our government anymore.
[02:38:18]  Well, if you feel that way, that means you've given up totally, and I suppose you might as well get the gun and join the crowd in September, eh?
[02:38:25]  No, I went to the gun store the other day.
[02:38:27]  Funny you mentioned that, on Wednesday, and I bought five of their outlawed assault weapons.
[02:38:36]  Did you?
[02:38:36]  And they're very cheap, the SKS.
[02:38:39]  So what are you going to do?
[02:38:39]  Are you going to hunker down now and wait for them?
[02:38:41]  No. I...
[02:38:43]  They're put away.
[02:38:44]  And I had mentioned, though, to the clerks at two of the gun stores I went to about the Linda Thompson thing to see if they'd even heard of her.
[02:38:53]  And apparently many people have.
[02:38:55]  And from what they were telling me, she has a whole lot of support.
[02:38:59]  Well, I don't agree with her, unlike you, to the extent that that would be futile.
[02:39:06]  Marching there to Washington is just going to get this topic alive, because I think it's an incredibly, horrendously dangerous thing that she's doing.
[02:39:16]  Yes, it is.
[02:39:18]  And it's very ignorant for an intelligent person to come up with something like that.
[02:39:22]  Appreciate your call, sir.
[02:39:23]  All right.
[02:39:24]  Thank you.
[02:39:26]  You know, it would depend on the context.
[02:39:29]  I don't think I probably ended the conversation.
[02:39:31]  I don't hang up on that many people.
[02:39:33]  I end conversations, but I don't really hang up on them.
[02:39:36]  I'm not afraid of any topic.
[02:39:38]  And I would make the case to you.
[02:39:40]  I guess it was a long time ago.
[02:39:42]  I certainly now would make the case, and I would bet that I did the same thing then.
[02:39:48]  Saying to you that it would depend on the nature of the conflict.
[02:39:54]  I might, in the case of Haiti, for example, agree with you.
[02:39:58]  But look, if the North Koreans come across the parallel without Bill Clinton standing there and causing it somehow, you know, wagging his tongue at them or something, then we are obligated to protect South Korea.
[02:40:15]  And it would be our nation's war, not Bill Clinton's war, our nation's war.
[02:40:21]  We have agreements.
[02:40:23]  we would protect uh... korea as we would some other countries and uh... it would be in my opinion a legitimate obligation and i think you would be what's the right word I want to be gentle if I can here, but I think you would be very errant indeed to toss off an obligation to your country by saying this is Clinton's war and I'm not going to fight it.
[02:40:52]  I just don't think that one would go down.
[02:40:54]  First time caller line, you're on the air.
[02:40:56]  Hi, Art.
[02:40:57]  This is Ina from Reading, California, KQMS.
[02:41:00]  Hi, Ina.
[02:41:01]  You asked a while back why Jackie Kennedy was so special.
[02:41:04]  Yes.
[02:41:05]  And I wanted to tell you why she's so special to me.
[02:41:08]  Good.
[02:41:08]  I was 15 years old when John Kennedy was assassinated, and I had never really suffered a personal loss through death.
[02:41:17]  I'd been insulated from that.
[02:41:19]  Sure.
[02:41:19]  I'd never really known the finality of it.
[02:41:22]  And I remember the feeling of literally not knowing what to do, not knowing how to handle this.
[02:41:29]  Right.
[02:41:30]  And the range of possibilities.
[02:41:32]  You could go berserk.
[02:41:33]  You could be enraged.
[02:41:34]  You could do all of those things.
[02:41:36]  And watching the way she handled it got me personally through it.
[02:41:41]  And I think a lot of other Americans felt the same way.
[02:41:46]  Do you have any idea why they would take the remarks she made immediately after the assassination and not allow them to be released to the American public for half a century?
[02:41:57]  I deeply fear that she just knew things that people that if they were exposed, it just couldn't be exposed.
[02:42:09]  I mean, would put maybe her in danger, or I think she may have known things that we can't really imagine at this point.
[02:42:18]  Well, now they're gone with her.
[02:42:19]  That's pretty frightening, yeah.
[02:42:21]  Well, she was an incredible person, and we are very anti-royalty in America, but she sure was for American royalty.
[02:42:30]  But it was, there was, what impressed me was her composure through the whole thing that helped me, but subsequently, the way she lived her life under such intense public scrutiny, and never really, you never really saw her make an embarrassing comment in public or appear in some manner that belied her inner dignity.
[02:42:52]  I think that she was special, not just that she was the first lady.
[02:42:55]  She was just a remarkable person.
[02:42:57]  You answered it very well.
[02:43:00]  Thank you.
[02:43:00]  Well, thank you.
[02:43:01]  Take care.
[02:43:02]  Yes, very well indeed.
[02:43:03]  That was a good call.
[02:43:06]  Yeah, I feel the same way, and I thought I would just ask so that some of you could articulate that yourself.
[02:43:14]  And we could talk about why she was and is so special now, I guess, forever, huh?
[02:43:21]  The fact of Jacqueline Kennedy is now turned into the no doubt growing myth about Jacqueline Kennedy, based certainly in reality.
[02:43:31]  So years and years and years from now, when she's talked about, you'll know the truth, won't you?
[02:43:39]  But it is the thing, it is the kind of thing that myths come from and build from from this moment.
[02:43:47]  And so it's really something to think about.
[02:43:51]  We are not, we're really in America pretty much anti-royalty.
[02:43:55]  A lot of anti-royalty sentiment.
[02:43:58]  And yet, she most closely, certainly approximates royalty for America, doesn't she?
[02:44:05]  On the toll-free line, you're on the air.
[02:44:08]  Yeah, Art.
[02:44:09]  Yes, sir.
[02:44:10]  Yeah, I am.
[02:44:11]  Why do you have your radio on, sir?
[02:44:12]  I shut it off.
[02:44:14]  Thank you.
[02:44:14]  Where are you?
[02:44:15]  I'm in Phoenix, Arizona.
[02:44:18]  All right.
[02:44:18]  Yeah, I was listening to what you said about royalty, and that gets my air up.
[02:44:24]  I hate when Americans classify somebody like her.
[02:44:31]  She was an all right gal, maybe.
[02:44:34]  But we're not going with that over this country.
[02:44:40]  No, it is true.
[02:44:42]  It is true.
[02:44:43]  We don't have royalty, but in the sense or the way you feel about royalty, a lot of Americans, believe me, sir, felt that she was pretty close.
[02:44:51]  Well, I don't really believe that.
[02:44:54]  I think that's another thing of the press.
[02:44:58]  And I think the stuff over on the other side of the pond there, too, is pretty crazy.
[02:45:05]  I think the British are fed up with it.
[02:45:07]  All right, well, you are a perfect example of exactly what I was saying about the attitude in America toward royalty.
[02:45:13]  And I suppose we've always had that bee in our bonnet, right?
[02:45:18]  Because we had so much trouble with royalty.
[02:45:23]  Okay, well, I'm sorry I'm out of time.
[02:45:25]  Darn it.
[02:45:27]  This has been fun.
[02:45:28]  It's been a fun week.
[02:45:29]  I want to remind everybody that we'll be here on Dreamland Sunday.
[02:45:34]  Dreamland comes on 7 o'clock Sunday evening.
[02:45:38]  We'll be back with the regular program, live edition, on a Monday night, Tuesday morning once again.

=== Tripping into Shortwave (00:47) ===

[02:45:47]  So it is for me to say thank you for another wonderful week of talk radio.
[02:45:51]  There have been so many.
[02:45:53]  And we'll do it again next week.
[02:45:55]  So Dreamland, the repeated show Sunday night, Monday morning, or the new live show premiering on KFYI in Phoenix Monday night, Tuesday morning.
[02:46:07]  We'll see you then.
[02:46:08]  I'm off to shortwave, and I will make an appearance on 3890 or 92 right in there.
[02:46:15]  So I'll turn one switch off and another on, and we'll go tripping into the land of shortwave.
[02:46:20]  That's 3.892 in all likelihood.
[02:46:25]  See you up there.
[02:46:26]  For the rest of you, see you next week or a Sunday.