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Nov. 30, 1995 - Art Bell
02:47:27
Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Government, Taxes, and Immigration - Harry Browne
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Welcome to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
Tonight featuring Coast to Coast AM from November 30th, 1995.
From the high desert and the great American Southwest, I bid you all good morning, or good evening, I suppose, depending on your time zone.
Time zones ranging from the Tahitian and Hawaiian Islands in the west all the way east to the U.S.
Virgin Islands, south into South America, north all the way to the pole.
This His Coast to Coast AM, and I'm Art Bell.
And I bid you all, or the majority of you, a good morning.
As promised, coming up in just a very few moments, Harry Brown, who is one of the main Libertarian contenders for the Libertarian ticket, top of the Libertarian ticket.
In other words, he would like to run for President as a Libertarian.
And I'll tell you all about Harry Brown, and there is a lot to learn about him.
in just a moment and now harry brown is an investment advisor
He is the author of nine books.
I am awed by that.
A newsletter writer, a public speaker, born in New York City.
We share a birthday, June 17th.
His 1933, mine 1945.
Harry grew up in L.A.
Graduated from high school, attended college for only two weeks, has lived in Vancouver, Canada, and Zurich, Switzerland.
Now resides in Tennessee.
Wow.
Was unknown to the investment world when his first book crashed in, How You Can Profit from the Coming Devaluation.
That was published back in 1970.
The book warned the dollar would be devalued, inflation would be severe, Gold, silver, and foreign currencies would skyrocket in value.
The book's theme clashed with prevailing wisdom, but was in tune with the concerns of hundreds of thousands of Americans, and the book made the New York Times bestseller list.
Bet you've heard of it.
His 1974 book, You Can Profit from a Monetary Crisis, was a greater success, yet staying on the Times bestseller list for 39 weeks, getting to number one.
His message amplified the themes in his 1970 book, Allowed Thousands of Investors to Profit from the Turmoil of the Late Seventies.
Then he followed that book with six more big, best-selling investment books, including one-time's Best Seller.
Meanwhile, in 1973, he had published How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World, a non-investment book that continues to be in demand today.
Since 1974, he's been writing Harry Brown Special Reports, a financial newsletter, also acts as an investment consultant.
His fee is about $500 an hour.
Hope he's not charging us that.
He's been a popular public speaker since the early 1960s.
He is one of America's best-known investment advisors, has been on the Today Show, Wall Street Week, Cable News Network, Larry King, of course, Financial News Network, And other national local radio TV shows now here.
Since 1985, he's been married to the former Pamela Lanier Wolf.
Has a grown daughter.
His main non-professional interests are classical music, opera, good food, wine, sports, television, and fiction.
Sounds like many of us, doesn't he?
Here he is from Tennessee.
It is Harry Brown.
Harry, are you there?
Yes, I am.
Thank you very much for having me this evening.
I'm glad I'm going to be able to add the Art Bell Show to my resume.
Well, there you are.
It is good to have you, and I just discovered we share a birthday.
June 17th, you would be a Gemini.
That's right.
Okay, Harry, you want to be the Libertarian nominee for President, eh?
That's right.
Running for the Libertarian nomination.
The convention will be next July 4th weekend and I am assuming that I am going to be the nominee and so after a year of base building and working with the LP we are now directing our attention to the general public with the publication of my new book which is called Why Government Doesn't Work and is now in the bookstores.
It's the campaign platform and the campaign message and explains what it is I want to do.
I've got to ask, because I have written one book, I'm never going to do it again.
It almost killed me.
How have you written so many books?
Well, when you said that, nine books, you have to remember that's over 25 years.
I went through the same agony with each one of them that you went through with yours.
When you finish a book, you don't feel like you'll ever do it again.
That's exactly right, but you did.
That's what women say after they have a baby.
You know, I'll never have to go through this again.
Actually, I think the process is similar.
Now, I've never had one, but I'm told the process is very similar.
I guess there's a million directions I want to go, but I'm going to start with some current news.
Let me read you the Reuters top of the news right now.
It says, Dole backs Bosnia mission.
Senate Republican leader Bob Dole has given the Clinton administration's Bosnia peace talks a big boost by announcing his support for the planned deployment of 20,000 U.S.
troops.
Made a big speech on the Senate floor.
I guess you should know, Harry, I am a conservative with libertarian tendencies, alright?
And I am absolutely blown away at the Dole, apparent Dole, certainly Dole, and maybe Gingrich support of the Bosnia plan.
And I'm not an isolationist, but I think this Bosnia business is going to be an outright disaster.
And I wonder where you chime in.
And are you surprised at Dole?
No, I'm not surprised.
I think that he wants to look nonpartisan.
He wants to look statesmanlike and professorial, but he's doing it with other people's lives.
He's going to put the United States government on the side of death and destruction over there.
Those people have been fighting for hundreds of years, and especially since just before the First World War, and the idea that the American government is going to come in and settle things is as outrageous and arrogant as it was that we were going to settle things in Lebanon or Somalia, or that we were going to end drug dealing in Panama, or that we were going to end corruption in the Philippines in 1986 when they intervened in the election there.
What we have to realize is that government doesn't work.
It doesn't deliver the mail on time.
It doesn't educate our children the way we want them educated.
It doesn't keep the cities safe.
And it certainly does not keep peace in the world.
And Bosnia is going to be no exception.
Well, let's look at the political side of it, though.
It's very interesting.
In other words, I think it's going to be a failure.
I think about, oh, I forget, 60, 70, 80% of the American people, whatever it is, Don't like the idea of going to Bosnia.
Now, here would be a political opportunity for Bob Dole to cut himself a difference with the President.
You know, it looks like it's going to be a Dole-Clinton battle.
Dole's got a lot of New York electoral votes and elsewhere very tied up behind the scenes.
It's Dole.
And so he could delineate a difference between himself and the President, and yet he has chosen to take sides with the President on this issue.
I'm astounded Why wouldn't he take the political opportunity to have a near-sure win?
Well, this is an opportunity to show that he's above politics.
He has so many issues in which he poses as being different from Clinton.
The amazing thing is that there is practically no difference between the Republicans and the Democrats at all.
All they've been arguing about is whether the government should grow at 4% a year or at 3% a year.
Not either side, not Bill Graham, not Pat Buchanan, not Robert Dole, not Bill Clinton, not any of them are saying, look, government shouldn't be growing at all.
We're here to cut government.
We're here to reduce it by 50% over the next couple of years.
We're going to balance the budget now.
We're going to cut taxes now.
We're going to cut the federal budget today.
Not in seven years, not after we let it grow, and not after we add another $700 billion worth of debt to what our children are going to have to pay and what we're going to have to pay interest on year after year.
What we should be seeing are huge spending cuts now, huge tax cuts now, and a balanced budget now, because that's what the American people voted for in 1994.
And I believe that's what they're going to vote for in 1996.
And the reason The Libertarian Party has an opportunity this time, unlike any before, is because the Republicans and the Democrats refuse to seize and exploit this opportunity that the voters have given them.
But the Libertarian Party will, and I guarantee you I will be there on national television telling people that there is a credible alternative, that there is somebody who wants to reduce taxes drastically.
All right, Harry, let's talk about how drastically you'd like to reduce them.
Your competitors are Rick Tompkins, Irwin Schiff from near here in Las Vegas, and Doug Ullman.
Delineate the differences between yourself and these other gentlemen.
I'm not really in a position to speak for them.
All libertarians would like to get rid of the income tax.
In my book, Why Government Doesn't Work, I present a plan to do that.
What I want to do is to reduce the federal government to just those functions that are specified in the Constitution.
And there's no constitutional authority for the federal government to be in housing, transportation, education, welfare, crime control, regulation of individuals and companies.
And if we get the federal government out of all of these areas, then we can reduce the federal budget enough that we can repeal the income tax without replacing it with any other tax.
Alright, the spirit of my question, though, was Where, ideologically, as a libertarian, where do you think you fit in?
Are you more of a moderate, for example, than Erwin Schiff on tax?
No, Erwin Schiff says that the income tax is illegal, and he says that there's no reason to talk about abolishing a tax that isn't even legal in the first place.
I don't happen to agree with that.
Rick Tompkins, I would presume, is against the income tax, although I've never read anything In which he has stated a platform of any kind or a set of proposals of what he would do if he were elected president.
I think it's very important that the American people know what we are proposing and that's why I wrote my book in order that anybody can read.
What do I intend to do about welfare?
I intend not to reform it to get rid of it completely.
What do I intend to do about education?
Get the federal government out of it completely.
Get the federal government out of all crime control.
All right, you're moving very quickly.
Let's go back.
We've got plenty of time.
This is radio, not TV.
Welfare.
You say get rid of it completely.
Get rid of federal welfare.
Now, I'm running for president, not for alderman or state legislature.
Would you see any federal money go back to the states for the purpose of welfare, if DC-type welfare?
No, see the difference between the Republicans and Democrats is the Democrats want the present system with some improvements, the Republicans want to take the money from the people in the states and then dole it back to the states as though they were children not on allowance.
What I want to do is to get the federal government out of it completely so that the money doesn't even go to Washington in the first place.
Then let each state decide what it wants to do about it and I would bet if you did that you would find that most states would get out of the welfare business entirely and we would be back to where we were in the 1950s When the word welfare wasn't even used.
You're 12 years younger than I am, so you may not remember that before the 1960s, we didn't even use the word welfare.
We talked about charity occasionally, and there were service clubs and churches that took care of indigent people, but the idea of a permanent welfare class didn't exist, and so we never even discussed welfare.
It was when the federal government moved in in the 1960s that welfare became a national scandal.
So the first step is to get the federal government completely out of it.
All right, well, let me be a teary-eyed liberal and come at you with their normal attack, and that is, but Harry, what about the children?
There will be photographs and pictures on the nightly news of children starving, emaciated, flies buzzing around their little heads, that sort of thing.
And all of that will be on your head because you abolished welfare.
I accept the responsibility.
First of all, I want to put the money back in the hands of the American people so that they can be generous as they want to be.
And those people who are concerned about the welfare mothers and concerned about people who continue to have children can take care of them because they'll have the money.
They will no longer be bled from them by the federal government.
But secondly, even if it were true, That there would be welfare mothers who would never be taken care of by anybody and children who might go hungry.
We can no longer allow those people to hold the rest of the country hostage.
That's what has happened.
This fear of somebody going hungry has caused thousands and even millions of people to go hungry because they are not able to keep the money that they earn.
It's being taken from them by Washington.
And as a matter of fact, the tax load today is 47%.
That is, federal, state, and local taxes of one kind or another are taking 47% of the national income.
So we are being held hostage.
Half of everything we earn is going to one government or another because of this fear that if we don't let the government take care of all these things, somebody someplace is going to starve.
Okay, well, but it might happen.
In other words, I don't think Harry Brown or Art Bell give two hoots about the great big welfare queen who has her favorite place on the couch.
You know, cut her off.
The trouble is, she has three innocent children.
Now, after you've cut her off, You've got a two-year-old, a three-year-old, and a five-year-old, let's say.
What happens to those children?
We are going to put a trillion dollars back into the hands of private individuals.
A trillion dollars.
And if from that trillion dollars we can't find the charity to take care of people who are truly in need, Then this country doesn't have a generous bone in its body, if I can take a terrible metaphor.
Well, I'll tell you, bones have been picked a little clean over recent years, and charity and giving has kind of slackened a bit.
Oh, well, of course.
But if we put a trillion dollars a year back in the hands of the American people to spend as they see fit, Can you imagine?
Back in the 1950s, we had situations like you talk about, except that they were very, very rare.
But when they happened, churches took care of these people.
Service clubs took care of them.
There were homes for mothers who did not have husbands, but had children.
There were all kinds of things available.
But when the federal government moves in, the first thing it does is bankrupt everybody, so that nobody can take care of himself anymore.
And then it says, see, you can't take care of this only if the government does it.
But where does the government get the money in the first place?
The government has no money that it gets from heaven that comes raining down that if it isn't spent by the government, it'll never be spent at all.
That money is being taken from us.
And if it's given back to us, then we can decide for ourselves who is needy and who isn't.
All right.
Well, I've got a little Harry Brown Hot Topic sheet that you sent, and hot indeed.
You would cut federal spending by 50% the first year, and end personal income tax the first year.
Correct.
Now, what I would like to know is, there are certain, I believe we would agree, legitimate functions of government.
One being protection, you know, the U.S.
military.
Yes.
Where does the money come from for the military?
From excise taxes and tariffs, we do not need to spend $270 billion a year on the military if we are not going to defend the whole world.
If we bring the troops home from overseas, if we get out of all treaties that make us vulnerable to other people's arguments, if we get out of the international organizations, And worry solely about defending this country.
I believe we could defend this country very, very easily with a figure on the order or magnitude of about $50 billion a year, and that would be very generous.
All right, but it is argued now by our president, the one who would not go to Vietnam, that we must go to Bosnia for reasons of compassion, for reasons of keeping the war from spreading in Europe and all the rest of it, and if we do not do it being the strongest Only surviving superpower?
then who will? The same argument that's given every time.
It was given in Iraq, it was given in Somalia, given in Lebanon, given in Haiti, given in the Philippines, given in
Nicaragua, given in Panama, over and over and over again.
And nobody ever looks back over his shoulder to see the wreckage of all of these wonderful things that only we
could do in the past.
In all of the post-war period, can anybody show a victory where the United States went in and actually accomplished
what it set out to do?
The only thing anybody ever holds up is Iraq, and even there, the whole idea was to get rid of Saddam Hussein, and Saddam Hussein, at the last I heard, is still sitting on the throne in Iraq.
Well, I'm not sure that's totally fair.
The idea was to get the Iraqis out of Kuwait, and that, of course, was accomplished.
Yes.
So that was at least a partial victory.
And although I personally think we're going to end up having to deal with Saddam Hussein yet again, and I'm afraid it might occur after we get a lot of our troops committed someplace, he'll take that opportunity in a moment.
At any rate, we've got to take a break here, but when we come back, I would like to talk to you about the big question, the one that always sort of separates the conservatives from the libertarians, And that is the Libertarian position on drugs.
So I want to get that one past us, and we shall do that when we return.
Stay right there.
Harry Brown, candidate to... actually would like to be the candidate for the Libertarian Party, is probably the most likely one.
Back in a moment, we will talk about libertarian principles as well.
Stay right there.
You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in time on Premier Radio Networks.
Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from November 30th, 1995.
This is a presentation of the Coast to Coast AM concert, which will be held on November 30th, 1995.
The concert will be held on November 30th, 1995 at the Coast to Coast Amphitheater in New York.
Thank you for watching.
Coast to Coast AM concert, November 30th, 1995 at the Coast to Coast Amphitheater in New York.
you Beggin', darlin', please, will ya?
Darlin', won't you ease my worry now?
Try to give you consolation, your old man let you down.
Life gave you, I fell in love with you, you turned my whole world upside down.
Hey love.
I'm gonna make you happy.
www.LRCgenerator.com Probably take calls next hour.
Right now, Harry Brown's libertarian self is mine.
And I've got a number of questions.
to go to him from november thirtieth nineteen ninety-five probably take all
snacks our uh... right now harry brown's libertarian self-designed and i've got a number of questions will get to them in just
a moment once again harry brown
and harry as they say on one of the cnn shows the big question
The one thing, you know, I've got a lot of libertarian bones in my body.
And I share a lot of what you believe.
But then it gets to drugs, and that's where generally conservatives and libertarians part ways.
I think, and I'm going to give you my position, then I'm going to let you tear it apart if you wish.
That marijuana should not be classed with the other drugs.
Marijuana is arguably not good for you, but arguably no worse and perhaps less harmful than alcohol.
So we do harm when we lump it in with the harder, more addictive drugs, cocaine, crack, heroin, etc.
The speed and all the rest of those horrible things that really do addict people terribly.
So I would like to separate marijuana by decriminalizing And then having a real war on drugs, not the fake war we've got going on right now, where so much of our resources are devoted to eradication of marijuana.
So that's where I am, and I would bet that you would go further down that road.
And in fact, your literature here says you would release all non-violent drug offenders from prison.
So elaborate.
Yes, I think in the first place that the drug war is our domestic Vietnam, it's our domestic Bosnia.
It is an unwinnable war that the United States government has been engaged in for 30 years.
We didn't have the kinds of crime problems that we have today until the federal government declared war on drugs in the 1960s.
As a matter of fact, the murder rate was dropping from the end of prohibition through to the early 1960s until the war on drugs started and then the murder rate started going back upward again.
I can't think of anything that would do more to reduce crime in this country than to end the war on drugs completely and fully and get the federal government completely out of it.
It is one thing to be opposed to things like heroin and crack and all of these other things and to think that they are terrible.
It is another thing to believe that the federal government is going to do anything about it.
The federal government cannot keep these drugs out of the country.
It cannot keep them out of our schools.
It can't even keep them out of their own prisons.
So why should we believe that more money or tougher penalties or anything is going to change that?
All that has happened is that it has financed tremendous gang warfare in this country.
It has run the price of drugs up so much that gangs are fighting over territories and innocent people are being killed in drive-by shootings.
There are rewards for pushers to go on to elementary and high school campuses to try to addict kids at early ages.
All of these things would not exist if drugs were legal.
Before the First World War, a 14-year-old could walk into a drugstore in this country and buy heroin if he wanted to.
And yet there was no drug problem as we know it today.
Nobody was worried about were kids going to get addicted on heroin.
Nobody was worried about drive-by shootings.
None of these things existed when drugs were legal.
It is drug prohibition that has caused all of the things that we associate with drugs today.
All right, as you mentioned, though, Harry, one day in this country, you could.
You could go into a drugstore and buy heroin or cocaine, and people did.
And it is my understanding of history Well, there's a lot of literature on that subject, and I don't pretend to be an authority, but a lot of literature on what it was that prompted these laws.
Some people say, for instance, that the laws against opium were passed as an anti-Chinese thing, and that the laws against heroin were passed as an anti-black thing.
and so forth uh... i don't know whether it's true but i don't think that it is
necessarily true that the laws were passed simply because more and more people were becoming addicted
so then in harry brown's world of fourteen-year-old should be able to go
into a drugstore and buy her own
yes which does not mean that he will will do so or that your children will
and if if we did not have a war on drugs
your child would be left likely to do so and you would be able to influence him a lot more than you
can today Today, there are so many things working against your parental guidance with that child.
But if this war on drugs didn't exist, and there weren't gangs that were peddling these drugs, SmithKline doesn't go around the country trying to hook people on their drugs.
Bayer doesn't go onto high school campuses and try to get kids to take aspirin.
Drug companies, legal drug companies, don't do that sort of thing.
It's only when these things are illegal that we have all of this tremendous pressure on people to try to get them hooked, because the rewards are so great for the people doing the hooking.
The way this would have a really big effect on crime is that we would empty the jails of all of the heroin users, all of the crack users, all of the marijuana users, and then there would be room in the jails, in the prisons, And in law enforcement resources and in the courts for the rapists, the child molesters, the murderers, the thugs that are terrorizing people on the streets today who are getting out on early releases, who are plea bargaining, and who are able to walk the streets because we have to fill up the jails with marijuana smokers and heroin users and people like that.
You have to make a decision.
There are not enough prisons in this country, and there isn't enough money to build enough prisons to house everybody.
It's true, and I find it a profound, very profound argument, Harry, but I hear stories, I'm going to be very frank with you, from women who shoot cocaine.
They describe that experience as a greater experience than that of sexual orgasm.
That's a pretty strong thing.
Well, I would never have said that strong, but I once got quite a thrill out of smoking.
But I quit one day, and it didn't ruin my life.
Well, but my question was going to culminate in this.
If drugs were readily available, and certainly a lot cheaper than they are now in the black market, what would you expect in this wide open, wild west, get drugs right here atmosphere?
How many more addicts would we have?
I would say that on the one hand you would have some more addicts because they would no longer be put off by the danger involved and they might want to try it.
But on the other hand you would have far fewer addicts because nobody would be pushing the drugs on them anymore.
Nobody would be saying at a party, here you ought to be taking this.
Nobody would be stopping on a street corner or on a schoolyard or other places.
So you would have A trade-off.
Which way it would go, I don't know.
All I know is it couldn't be worse than it is today.
Today we have streets that are unlivable.
It wasn't this way in the 1950s.
How can you be sure that it's drugs that's driving it and not a simple, or not so simple, sociological change?
I mean, we've got youngsters now, Harry, that are You look at their eyes, and it's almost like there's no soul in there.
And the price of life is near zero.
There was a day you'd go in, and there was at least some honor among thieves.
They'd go into a 7-Eleven, they'd rob the guy, take the money, and leave.
Now, they rob the guy, take the money, and shoot him to see what it feels like to kill somebody.
Oh, I agree with you.
And I think there is a triad here, that there are three things that are influencing this.
One we've discussed is the drug war.
The second is welfare.
Which is bred entirely by the federal government.
We didn't have, as I said earlier, this kind of welfare problem until the federal government got into welfare with both feet in the 1960s and the war on poverty.
And the third leg of the triad is education.
There is... I mean, education has come to a stop in government schools in many parts of the country.
Not in all parts of the country, but in many parts of the country.
And the greatest thing we can do for a family that wants to educate its children is to repeal the income tax so that that family can choose any school in the city to take that child to.
Any private school, any religious school, any school that it wants.
If it wants prayer, if it wants moral values, it can buy that for them because they will have the money that's now being bled from them by the federal government.
If they want a school that has excellence in education, they can get that.
If they want a school that has a cheaper education but strong discipline, they can get that.
They can choose for themselves.
Today, they can't do that because they don't have the money.
So I think it is very important to get the federal government out of welfare, get the federal government out of education, get the federal government out of crime control, and more than anything else, repeal the income tax so families have control over their own lives again.
When you said crime control, you meant with respect to drugs.
Oh, I mean with respect to everything.
All crime is local.
Every crime takes place in the jurisdiction of a police department or a sheriff's department.
Having the federal government involved in crime busting is the worst possible thing that could happen and the founding fathers knew that and they were absolutely adamant against the idea of a federal police force.
And this would even apply to Crimes, for example, the building blown up, or that was attempted to be blown up in New York City, where foreigners are involved.
It took place in New York City, and if the New York City police needed help, they could get it from any police department in the country, and they would undoubtedly be agencies that would be developed, not by the federal government, but by the states themselves, or by private enterprises, to assist uh... in things that cross state lines and i think that
future that we have that today the only differences
that when private companies track down fugitives they can't uh... abuse anybody's rights the way the federal government
can but having the federal government involved with such things as the p a p f
and and the d e a and the f b i and all of these things is just asking for
trouble it's asking for things like waco and ruby richard yes it's like that
um...
the actually i agree with a lot of that uh... let me take a jump though it
If you don't want the FBI, what about the CIA?
That's a question that comes closer to the military in a lot of ways.
Would you maintain a CIA?
Well, I think that we have to take a step back and look at the whole question of national defense.
The problem is that so much of national defense is based on how do we retaliate against some country that attacks us.
We have to have long-range bombers that can bomb Moscow.
We need to have intelligence to know what Countries and governments in Europe are doing, or Africa, or Asia, or the Middle East, or whatever it is, and all of this is based on the idea that we're going to fight wars overseas.
What we need is a military that will defend this country, and the one thing that we need for defense is the one thing that our government has strenuously avoided, and that is a missile defense.
So that any two-bit dictator in North Korea, or Iran, or Iraq, or any place else who wanted to lob a missile in this country either by design or by accident
that that could be fended off and then the only other thing we need
is the something to defend the border against those rampaging canadians are
going to come running across the country here to try to take us over
uh... but we don't need to be able to retaliate in all of these places of the
world if we are able to protect our own borders but because our country our government
not our country our government has gone looking for trouble all over the world
messing in all kinds of places.
We have built resentments, we have people who want to attack us, and because we have no defense, then we have to say that the only reason you shouldn't attack us is because we're going to retaliate and bomb your cities.
You bomb some of our innocent civilians, we'll bomb your innocent civilians.
And this is not the purpose of a government.
The only purpose the government should have is to keep us out of war, to protect our borders, to protect us from being attacked, not to show that we can attack anybody in the world and that we can bomb anybody into oblivion.
So, Harry Brown would eliminate the CIA, too?
I don't see any need for the CIA if you are working with defense, if you are working with offense, and of course you need intelligence.
Interesting point.
Suppose Harry Brown became president.
Suppose this was the year, because people don't see a dime's worth of difference between the major candidates, and all of a sudden the American people decided, all right, let's try a whole new way.
Let's try Harry Brown's way.
And you got elected president.
Arguably, you would still have mainly a Congress made up of hopefully a, from my point of view, conservative majority and a Democrat minority.
In other words, there wouldn't be a bunch of Harry Browns there.
How would you deal with Congress?
Okay, I believe I do have a chance to be elected.
I wouldn't be running if I didn't think so.
But realize that if I were elected, it would be an earth-shaking event and we would not be talking about business as usual as it is today.
No one could possibly think that I had been elected because people thought I could deal better with Boris Yeltsin or because I was going to make better speeches at the United Nations.
They would know that I had been elected because the American people wanted to reduce government dramatically.
So the people in Congress who would oppose this would be doing so at their own political peril.
Plus, I would assume that I would bring a number of Libertarians with me.
Now, I know that we are not going to win Congress next year.
We will have Libertarians running in a majority of congressional districts, and I think this is the first time a third party has done so in this century.
But I still know that we are not going to be able to win a majority in Congress, but I would think that if I won, I would take some Libertarians into Congress with me, a number of Republicans and Democrats would probably switch parties, and the rest of them would have to wonder whether they really should oppose me.
Now, let's suppose that they do oppose me.
It only requires one-third of one house, one of the two houses, just one-third in one of the two houses to sustain any veto.
And believe me, I would veto.
I would veto as Ronald Reagan never did.
I would veto as George Bush never did, and Bill Clinton never has, and Richard Nixon never did.
I would veto everything that didn't conform to the program of getting the government cut in half the first year and continual.
Continue to whittle it down from there until we were down to it was doing nothing but what the Constitution says it's supposed to do.
Terry, of the presidents we've had in your lifetime, who do you favor most?
I've been asked that question before and I still don't have a very good answer for it.
There are ones that I like more than others.
I liked Ronald Reagan as a person, but he may have been the biggest failure of all because he was elected on a platform to get government off of our backs and that government was the problem and not the solution.
And he was the one who could have turned it around at a much lower cost back in 1980.
Yes, but one might argue he indeed tried.
There were other circumstances that came to bear, the defense buildup and the rest of it, that caused him to have to compromise with a lot of people who wanted more social programs.
One could argue he tried, but he ran up against exactly what I just talked to you about a few moments ago, a Congress who wasn't much in line with him.
But you know, in eight years, Congress overruled his veto only once on a budget bill, so that all of those budgets in all those years, only one of them was passed without his approval.
And there were only seven other bills, non-budget bills, that were passed without his approval.
Only eight times in eight years did Congress overrule his veto.
So, he got what he wanted.
What has been going on for much too long, and is certainly going on today, is a game of let's pretend.
The Republicans pretend to cut.
And the Democrats pretend to think that the Republicans are mean-spirited, and the press pretends to worry about the widows and orphans.
That's true.
And that's all that's going on.
And when the Republicans are running like Phil Graham and Robert Dole and Pat Buchanan today, they run, they campaign as though they were libertarians.
But once they are elected, they govern as though they're Democrats.
And there is not, as you said, a dime's worth of difference between them, as George Wallace said.
Well, there may be about a dime's worth of difference when you're talking about Buchanan.
He seems pretty ideologically grounded, and while I may not agree with his isolationist tendencies, or yours, I think that he is a sincere individual and would be, in another world, a pretty rough running mate for Clinton.
Well, I'll tell you, I've been down in Florida before that straw poll telling all those senior citizens there that the Republicans were much too harsh on their Medicare cuts when he knew, in fact, that there were no Medicare cuts like the rest of them.
But I don't doubt his sincerity.
I don't doubt any of them.
They're all honorable men.
So are they all honorable men, as my old friend Mark Anthony used to say.
But the fact of the matter is that they are politicians and they make their living there.
We have to elect somebody who is not.
I want to go to Washington, spend four years there, clean up this mess and come back and live the remaining years of my life in peace and freedom.
You would not seek a second term?
I won't say now that I won't seek a second term, but my hope is that I could do it all in four years because I'm 62 years old.
I don't want to spend the rest of my life in politics.
I want to get this thing done and get back and enjoy the last 20, 30 years of my life.
Maybe 40 years if we get rid of the FDA.
And enjoy that without the income tax, without the kind of big government that we have today.
Why is the FDA not a needed agency?
In other words, certainly it is possible that drugs get out on the market that make claims that are fraudulent and untrue and or dangerous.
Why is there not some agency needed to I think that all of us feel that we want some protection.
The question is, should it be the federal government that provides it?
First of all, the Constitution says no.
There's no warrant in the Constitution for this, and there was no federal drug administration until this century.
We never had one in the first 150 years and somehow or other there weren't many people dying from dangerous drugs but what has happened since we've had the FDA is we have had tens of thousands of people dying because the FDA has held drugs off the market which later proved to be safe.
Drugs that at the very time the FDA was holding them off were legally available for sale in European countries for instance and yet even during that time the FDA made sure that people couldn't even import those drugs on their own into the United States.
People died because the FDA held beta blockers off the market for many, many years.
Well, it's certainly true, Harry.
I've traveled the world, and in almost every country I've been in, you can walk into a pharmacy and you can buy, as you pointed out, just about any kind of drug you want, just for the asking.
It's all there right on the shelf.
It is absolutely amazing, and sure enough, they don't seem to have a lot of people hooked on this or that.
So, I find your arguments fairly profound, but We're going to have to pause here at the top of the hour, so you've got about seven minutes.
Sit back, relax, and we'll come back and go to the phones.
Great.
All right.
Harry Brown would be a Libertarian Party candidate.
He's all yours.
Next.
You're listening to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from November 30th, 1995.
Coast to Coast is a production of the National Geographic Association.
This is a story about a man who was lost in the middle of the night.
He was lost in the middle of the night.
Artworks presents Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
Tonight's program originally aired November 30th, 1995.
Good morning, everybody.
My guest is Harry Brown.
He is one of a total of four contending for the Libertarian top or the Libertarian ticket.
And we are interviewing him about where he stands on various issues.
Fascinating.
And we're going to get the telephone lines open in just a very few moments.
So stay right where you are.
If you've wondered what a libertarian is all about, and many have, you hear a lot of talk.
This morning is your opportunity to hear the real thing.
Stay right there.
Back now to Harry Brown.
And in a moment, your calls.
Harry, welcome back.
I do want to ask you, you wrote A very interesting book about the coming devaluation.
And looking at today's stock market, for example, which is up through the 5,000 roof and still going strong, did drop about 30 some odd points today, but basically the trend is up.
Looking at the debt, looking at the Clinton claims of cutting the additional uh... yearly debt in in uh... in a half or deficit that
adds to the debt uh... where are we what do you think is going to happen
happen to happen to the stock market no
happened generally economically i assume the stock market at some point is going
to come crashing down
well i can tell you more about what has happened that people uh... may not have
recognized and that is that through the first part of the century all the way through
nineteen seventy two the economy grow at a rate generally a real rate of about
four percent a year and that includes that averaged out even including the
great depression of the war and all these other period
but since nineteen seventy two it has been just under two percent a year
but the economy has grown and incomes have grown At a rate of 0.2% since 1972, whereas they were growing at a rate of about 2% a year for the first part of the century.
The point is that we finally reached a level where government was so heavy that it was actually weighing down the economy and it actually made a difference.
And unless we do something to turn this around and not just slow the growth of government, but to actually reduce it, I said earlier that government is taking 47% of the national income and taxes unless we cut this down to
30 percent or 25 percent or 20 percent and keep working downward with it we
are going to see this growth continue to slow down until we actually have a
negative situation in the United States and we're going to see our incomes go
down from year to year.
A devaluation is a actual devaluation in our currency a likely event?
No at the...
In 1970, we were on an alleged gold standard at the time with a fixed price, and that's the only time you can actually have a devaluation.
Now gold is floating freely, so what happens is the currency depreciates, but an outright official devaluation does not take place.
So it's like the slow lobster boil.
Yes.
Well, look what just happened, and let me ask you quickly about Mexico.
I was just down in Mazatlan a couple of weeks ago, and it was astounding how far the American dollar goes in Mexico because of their devaluation.
Yes.
We pumped, what, $20 billion or more into the Mexican economy?
It didn't even seem to make a tick.
No, of course not.
It never does.
All of these programs, when they're presented, bail out the Mexican situation, go to Bosnia, whatever it may be.
It always is that there's some precise objective that we are going to accomplish and that everything is going to be alright.
And nobody ever looks back afterward and says, you know, they told us at the beginning that A, B, and C were going to happen and not one of those things happened.
Not one of those things were accomplished.
You spoke earlier about how we saved the Kuwaitis in the Middle East.
Earlier, but the fact of the matter is that all of the buildup before that war was that Saddam Hussein was a madman, and that he was the modern day Hitler, and that we had to get rid of Saddam Hussein, that he was a threat to the world as long as he existed there.
When the war was all over, then everybody congratulated themselves on other goals having been achieved, but not the goals that dragged us into the war in the first place.
Because government simply doesn't work.
Whatever it is that government sets out to do, government never succeeds.
All of its promises turn to ashes eventually.
And whatever it is you want to see happen, whatever social problem you want to see solved, the last place you want to turn to get it fixed is government.
There's got to be a better way, whatever it may be, whatever the problem may be that you want to solve.
Well, you said yourself, Ronald Reagan aspired to reduce the size of government, and I think he tried.
A lot of things got in the way.
If Harry Brown became president, how could Harry do what Ronald couldn't?
Well, I have the will and determination, which no politician apparently has.
I am not aware of any politician that I would trust to stand fast and do the job.
In fact, the reason I ran for president after thinking about it for two years was because I could not imagine any other person going in there and actually standing fast and saying, this is what we're going to do.
and nothing can dissuade me from it no compromise can take me from the course that have to be followed here
we have to do this and we have to do it pretty soon
the federal government is running up liabilities that there are not going to
be the assets to pay for and what's going to happen is if we don't turn this
thing around in the next few years than a tremendous number of promises are going to be broken
and all this weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth about slowing the rate
of medicare will be nothing compared to what happens when the rug is pulled out
from all kinds of people who have had promises made to them that will not be
kept because the only way to keep those promises will be the jack up the tax
rates to sixty seventy eighty percent which would of course not even produce
the revenue that would they be designed to produce And what we are going to have are massive defaults of all different kinds on promises made by the government unless we get the government out of all these areas and do it right now.
And I don't know anybody else that's going to do it, so that's why I decided to run for president.
All right.
Earlier you mentioned Waco-Ruby Ridge when we were talking about the ATF.
Indeed, Waco-Ruby Ridge, the bombing in Oklahoma, militias are forming around the country.
There's a Supreme Commander, somebody or another, Compton, I think, who wants to take 250,000 people down to the Mexican border and stand there and somehow with the weapons, I guess, and prevent Mexicans from coming into the country.
There is, Ms.
Brown, a collision coming, and I have likened it to the militias and the anti-government folks and the government And all the alphabet agencies, it's like two trains coming at each other on the same track, doing about 70 miles an hour, and there's going to be a collision.
Unless, unless we can head it off, not by outlawing the militias, which would be stupid, not by giving in to the government, not by doing anything except simply getting the government out of all these areas where it doesn't belong, and that would defuse this entire issue.
These people are scared.
They are scared of what's happening.
They see that their families are going to pot because they have to work, have to have two earners in every family in order, one of them to support the government, the other to support the family, and they can't raise their children the way they would like to if we would repeal the income tax so that if parents want to, one of the parents could stay at home and raise the children in their value so that parents could put their children In a private school of their own choice where they will get the kind of values they want and they will no longer feel vulnerable to all of the alien theories that are being taught in government schools and all of the alien theories that are making their ways around.
And if we could diffuse all the arguments between groups, arguments that are created by the federal government by bestowing benefits on one group at the expense of another group, which is the surefire way to have groups at each other's throats.
All of the animosity that exists in this country is caused by forcing people to give up money or rights or something else to other groups.
And so the groups are clawing at each other, each one trying to get supremacy.
We have to put a stop to this.
And that's the only way we're going to stop that train wreck from happening that you're talking about.
Do you see it going in the right or wrong direction presently?
Obviously, I guess you would say the wrong direction.
That's why you're running.
It's going in two directions.
On an educational level, we have won the war.
The American people recognize that government doesn't work.
All the polls show that three out of every four Americans believe that the federal government is way too big.
Not just a little too big, Not just a little oversized, not just a little bit too much waste and fraud, but way too big and needs to be reduced drastically.
Every time the question is asked on that basis, the 3 out of 4 say, yes, the government must be much, much smaller than it is now.
You're absolutely right, but 9 out of 10... But we are losing the battle politically.
You're absolutely right, but 9 out of 10 incumbents are returned time and time again.
Yes, of course, because everything is up to their advantage.
They have free franking privileges, They send out reelection literature disguised as monthly reports for their constituents.
They have all the largest of the federal government to bestow upon their number one donors in their districts and so forth.
Everything is in their favor, which is one reason you need term limits.
But the point is that the American people recognize that government doesn't work and they are ready to cut it.
But politically, we are continuing to lose because the two parties in Washington are still arguing not about how much government should be cut, but at what rate government should continue to grow.
I take it you are a strict constitutionalist?
Absolutely.
How are term limits constitutional?
They're not necessarily at the moment, but I think they should be added to the Constitution.
I think that they are something that the Founding Fathers missed, and so they should be added by constitutional amendment.
Good answer.
Some people say that's anti-democratic not to let people elect a congressman to a 20th term, but the entire Constitution is anti-democratic.
The entire Constitution is putting limits on what government can do, on what people can vote the government to do.
You can't vote to take away people's free speech according to the Constitution.
All right.
Let me do what I promised I would do before they lynch me and go to the audience.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Harry Brown.
Good morning.
Hi, Harry.
This is Brett.
I'm from Denver.
Got a couple questions for you.
Number one, you said that you want to legalize drugs?
Yes, I want to end the federal government's war on drugs.
Okay.
Now, I have a question for you.
Say my children get addicted on drugs.
Now, is the United States government ready to pay for the rehabilitation?
Is it now?
Is it now with the war on drugs?
Well, through the welfare system at points.
No.
I don't believe that the federal government would give you money.
Of course, it's gotten to the point where you could sue an employer because your children couldn't get a job because they were addicted to drugs, but I know you don't think that's right.
The point I'm trying to make is that whatever it is you fear, from ending the war on drugs are just the same things that are existing now already with the war on drugs.
He's saying your children's addiction, if it should come, is your problem, not the federal government's.
And that's the way it is now, and that's the way it would be if the war on drugs were repealed.
It wouldn't change that in any way whatsoever.
Nobody is going to protect your children from drugs except you.
Nobody has an interest in it.
Nobody has the same self-interest in that that you do.
You can't farm this out to the federal government.
You can't farm it out to your schools.
You can't farm it out to anybody else.
But what I'd like to do is to give you the tools to be able to do this, the tools that are being taken away from you now by a terribly oppressive income tax, by regulations that take away your earning power at work, by hidden taxes that run up the price of everything that you buy, to try to give you control over your life again so that you have the time to work with your children and to teach them the values that you believe in, and to be able to afford to put them in a private school I agree with a lot of what you're saying.
Also, how far are you willing to cut back on government?
these are the tools that you don't have now that have been taken away from you
and i want to give it back to you so that you do have a chance to protect
your children okay yeah i agree with a lot of what you're saying
also how far you uh... willing to cut back on government i'm i'm going to cut it all the way to the uh... down to
where the government isn't doing anything that isn't specified in the
constitution that means getting rid of
of the federal government getting it out of welfare education transportation
housing crime control regulation of individuals and corporations
and probably three or four other major areas that i've forgotten about
You say you would eliminate income tax.
Income tax now is the power base that Congress uses to manipulate social behavior.
Absolutely.
So you would be literally cutting their legs off.
Yes, the federal government has no business deciding what's right for them.
And you would have to get them to go along with that, Harry.
How would you do that?
You mean to take away this power from the politicians?
That's right.
To be able to hold these hearings and say, come on up here and tell me what you're going to do for me before I give you an exemption from this new tax?
You mean that sort of thing?
Sure.
What we have to do is to create a mandate.
We just have to create a groundswell of public opinion here that's going to overwhelm the politicians.
We're going to get into Congress, I think, over the next few years, more people like myself who only want to be there for two or four or six years and then get the heck out of there and come home and enjoy the fruits of it.
I don't want to be president.
What I want to do is to accomplish as president the things that will make my life as a free citizen what they should be in a free country.
And I think that we're going to find a lot more people who are in a position To do the same sort of thing in Congress.
People who are well enough off that they can afford to take two or four or six years off to do this sort of thing.
Harry, the American people, and I'm just going to come at you hard on this, and you come back at me hard, are getting very cynical as you pointed out about government.
Now, you say, I just want to be, I want to go there for four years, I want to do this, this, and this, and then I want to walk away.
They all say that.
I mean, almost all of them say that, and inevitably they get there, And Ms.
Jones gets to Washington and something changes.
Why would that not happen to Harry Brown?
Well, I don't have a ready answer for that, but it is a very intelligent question, believe me.
And my staff and I have discussed this at great length.
We even started to work on preparing a contract that I would sign and that we would put in the hands of an independent committee that if I broke any one of my promises, They would have my resignation already signed in hand and could turn it over to the Secretary of State, and I'd be out of office.
But we found that there were a lot of legal problems with it, but it didn't work out.
In the free market, when one company finds itself in an industry that's populated by thieves, that one honest company is forced to find a way to prove its honesty.
And once it does, then all the others pale by comparison, and they are unable to compete.
Some time between now and the next six months, I will find that magic key, that way of guaranteeing my honesty.
It will be a part of it.
But one of the ways is that I have written a book that has set out my platform in excruciating detail.
The book is very short.
You can read it in three or four hours, but it says exactly what I intend to do about welfare, about education, about the federal budget, how I am going to privatize Social Security in a way that people who are dependent upon it today will be taken care of and will have contracts with private companies.
Well, there's some very recent news, Harry, about the 401K plan, which is a mostly private sector kind of deal.
And there's been all kinds of shenanigans with 401K money.
book why government doesn't work although even uh... there's some very
recent news uh... harry about the four oh one k plan which is a private sector kind of
mostly private sector kind of deal and there's been all kinds of shenanigans
with four oh one k money and for the government has been prosecuting and going after
companies that have been giving into the four oh one k plans
uh... with excuses like well we did this so we we didn't have to lay people off
uh...
Why would the ethics or the morality of some sort of retirement plan in the private sector be any better and might arguably be worse than they are with Social Security?
Well, how would you like to deal with a company that sold you an annuity and sent you a letter that said, Your money has been put in your own account that is going to be fed away for your future.
And then you found out that the moment that the company got its hands on your money, it turned around and gave it to somebody else.
Which is exactly what the federal government does.
If all the stories about the private sector were true, they couldn't be worse than what we're putting up with legal security.
Uh-oh.
Uh-oh.
Something is happening to our connection, Harry.
Well, there you have it, ladies and gentlemen.
You heard it.
Fortunately, it occurred right at a break point at the bottom of the hour.
I think that maybe the guys in the suits at the phone company just pulled the plug on us.
Sounds pretty conspiratorial, huh?
God, why did we break up the phone company?
All right, well, we'll get Harry Brown back on the air here in just a moment, and we'll continue.
It is the half-hour mark.
It never fails.
This time, fortunately, you got to hear it happen.
You heard the breakup, and then the final disconnect.
Can't even hold a line from one end of the country to the other.
Oh, Ma Bell.
You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in time on Premier Radio Networks.
Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from November 30, 1995.
AMC's Coast to Coast AM presentation.
Coast to Coast AM presentation.
Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from November 30th, 1995.
Here I am.
the you're listening to our film somewhere in time on premier
radio networks tonight's on-call presentation of coast to coast and from
november thirtieth nineteen ninety five here i am actually that was kind of
cool it was possible on our end to actually hear the deterioration
in the phone line And here the disconnect tones begin to plague us in the
last few moments.
Then, finally, a crackling, distorted end as we lost Harry Brown.
But we have him back, and he will be back in just a moment.
Ah, the phone company.
Now, we are going to Bosnia.
I don't want to.
Harry Brown doesn't want to.
Most of you don't want to.
Bill Clinton wants to.
Bob Dole wants to.
We don't.
But we're going to go.
It's obvious.
In fact, really, they've already got troops on the ground preparing the way for many more.
The real news, if you're going to get it, out of Bosnia is not going to come from the American press.
I guarantee that.
I guarantee it.
As a matter of fact, we had to wait until earlier today to finally get a poll, and the President's position, by the way, on Bosnia is deteriorating since the speech.
ABC reported that last night.
But the real news is going to come from Europe.
It's going to come from the BBC.
It's going to come from Radio Australia.
it's going to come from all around the world and if you want the real news
you've got to have shortwave ok
ok Harry Brown, hopefully you're there.
Yes, I am.
Here.
Oh, good.
All right.
Boy, I'll tell you.
As you pointed out to me when we reconnected, it was probably all the talk of Social Security that did it.
Anyway, you're back, and here's a fax to the both of us.
Aren't love the show?
This evening's guest, Harry Brown, is remarkably sensible on many issues, but each area requires massive change and reform, as Mr. Brown must know, With every major change, an adjustment period is needed.
Specifically, what transitions do you see as being the most difficult, and what would you do to ease the pain of the transition?
I mean, these are big changes you're talking about.
Of course they are, but the fact of the matter is, if you ask the government to undertake a program of transition to phase out some federal function, Over a period of time you are signing the death knell of freedom.
What you are saying is the government is never going to get out because government does not extricate itself easily from things.
And any government program to ease the transition for people off of welfare or from federal education to no federal aid to education and so on, It's just a government program, and a government program is not going to work any better than the government program we're trying to get rid of.
So the only thing to do is to get the government out of it, but the thing that is lacking when Republicans talk about cutting is that they are not putting any money in the hands of the American people to be able to take care of this transition themselves.
That's the important part of it.
So you do it with a sharp knife?
Yes, but make sure that the money is there in the hands of the American people so that they can weather any adjustments that take place.
And if there are people who do not get any of that money, there will be plenty of money in the hands of other people who will want to help them.
Okay, I recall Newt Gingrich once saying something I thought very wise.
He was talking about eliminating several federal agencies, Commerce and some others, I recall.
Oh, those were good old days.
And he did say, you know, to cut it in half and not eliminate it is equivalent to kind of like taking half the cancer out.
Sure.
In other words, it's going to grow right back again, and I take it you agree with that?
Absolutely.
Ralph Klein, the Premier in Alberta, who has done so much to actually reduce the size of the Albertan government in Canada, not just slow its growth, but to reduce its size, said you cannot jump over a canyon in two leaps.
You have to do it at once, because everybody in Washington has a vested interest in seeing that this does not work.
and it's so if you do it in a half-hearted way if you do it in a
slow way they will make sure that it does not work that the and that
you get the blame for it and not the government
look at the savings and loan scandal so many people think that was from deregulating savings and
loans well in fact they were barely
deregulated at all they were still subject to massive regulation by the
government but what happened was when
uh... of the combination of the changes in laws created the incentive for
savings and loans to start speculating like crazy.
Then it was the free market that took the blame for it, when in fact it was government deposit insurance that was at the root of the Savings and Loans scandal.
It was indeed.
Alright, one more and then back to the phones.
Somebody says, wow, I've just discovered I'm a dyed-in-the-wool libertarian.
So far I haven't disagreed with one thing.
But, here's a question.
Our government possesses I believe, and I think it's true, many secrets.
The program I do, Ms.
Brown, is a very eclectic kind of program.
We might talk about UFOs every now and then.
In fact, on television, it's almost like we're being prepped to receive some sort of information that the government may have been holding for years.
It's not such a far-out concept when one listens to Hazel O'Leary saying, yes, we gave plutonium to children, And that kind of thing, the JFK assassination, a lot of secrets in the government over many years.
If you were to get to the White House, what would you do with those?
I would open up all the doors, all the closets, all the trunks.
There is no reason for our government to have any secrets at all.
And I would do everything in my power to make all of that information available.
Probably most all of it is harmless, but there probably are A number of things that will turn out to be very scandalous.
You cannot give so much power to people without expecting it to be abused.
And so I'm sure that there are a lot of crimes that have taken place that have been buried, and if there is any evidence of it, we'll bring them forward.
I don't plan to conduct a vendetta against former government officials, but I think that there is no reason for there to be any secrecy in government, because government is not there to operate in secrecy.
Government is there to do certain specific things that are open and above board.
So let's limit it to that and then we don't need any of these other things.
I appreciate what the person said when he said he hasn't found anything to disagree with so far.
I'm sure that a lot of people listening to this have found things that they agree with me on and then run into something and say, well, gee, I never thought about that before and I'm not so sure I agree with that.
And I understand that.
I am giving you an awful lot to swallow at one time.
But remember this, when you stop and think, well, I'm not so sure I agree with him on the war on drugs or on some other thing.
Ask yourself, how much do you agree with the Republicans and the direction that they're going in?
How much do you agree with the Democrats?
If you only agree with me on 80% of what I'm saying, then we're probably far more in agreement than you are with any other politician, per se.
Good point.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Harry Brown.
Where are you calling from, please?
Toledo.
Toledo, Ohio.
Alright.
Yes, I think the concepts are being misdefined here.
I think the real problem with government is not that it's government, it's that it's controlled 99% by big business and the transnational corporations.
I think you're fairly sensible on foreign policy, but on domestic policy I think you would Uh, give away a totalitarian control that is perhaps 99% controlled by these corporate lobbyists and military industrial complex over the government.
There would be a total control by big business.
And I would mention Newt Gingrich.
He was quoted in a speech he gave to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
And it shows the similarity between, I think, the Democrats, the Republicans, and even yourself.
Not on this issue, but on domestic policy, the Libertarians seem to be the ultimate right of the Republican Party.
In effect, he said, let's rename the Department of Defense the Department of Imperialism, when he was talking to The Center for Strategic and International Studies says you do not need today's defense budget to defend the United States.
You need today's defense budget to lead the world.
If you're prepared to give up leading the world, we could have a much smaller defense system.
But until somebody's prepared to say you need a big defense system in the United States because you're going to lead the planet, there's no good justification for the present defense system on this scale.
So there's a frank admission that the purpose of this is really to go swagging around the world Alright sir, I've got the core of your question.
Let's go back to the core of his question.
to uh... to be the bully cop of the world and yet he was always humanitarian
a pretext from vietnam or we slaughtered three million people to uh...
harris are i've got the core i think that's a very good point uh... let's go
back to the core of his question he says if you eliminate government
then in essence it would be replaced by uh... of very dictatorial of business
uh...
world and that uh... could that happen well i think the the only way that we can look at it is to
take the most unregulated area of the economy today and that's the
computer industry And what we have there is giant, cutthroat competition of all kinds of companies making computers, all kinds of companies making software, vying for your attention.
People think Microsoft runs the computer business, but they really have only a fraction of the software industry.
They are in fear of Lotus.
They're in fear of Novell, of WordPerfect, of all these other companies.
And any time you find yourself in a position where you don't like what you're getting, this is an incentive to somebody else to make a profit by taking this fear away from you, by satisfying whatever it is that you're not getting, by removing the fear.
but what he said before was that ninety nine percent of the domestic policy is
controlled by big business and uh... i appreciate that fear what we have to do
with the take the power out of washington so that we don't have to be
afraid that somebody else is going to control what there will be nothing to
control as long as that power exists there you're going to have lobbyists
the answer is not the past laws saying lobbyist shouldn't be allowed to do
this or should do uh... be allowed to do that The answer is to take the jackpot away that these lobbyists are fighting over, and then the lobbyists will have to go find something else to do for a living, because there will be no point hanging around Washington because there's no money to be doled out.
I take it you would eliminate all antitrust legislation?
Oh, yes.
The antitrust laws were created in the first place by large companies who were afraid of losing their markets.
To smaller companies.
The antitrust laws do more to keep young upstart companies out of big industries that exist, and protect the positions of the large companies that are there already.
Government doesn't work, and whatever it is we think that it's going to do for us, we find that all it does is make it worse.
And in my book, Government Doesn't Work, the first half of it explains why it is that all of these programs That we keep thinking, oh, if only they would do this, it will take care of us.
Why they all turn to ashes eventually.
Are you, Harry, are you, I think that information ultimately is going to be the big power in this country.
Now, are you satisfied there will be sufficient diversity that somebody, Mr. Gates or whoever else, wouldn't get enough control of the flow of information to literally, without a government that you would eliminate, Be the kingmaker.
Well, you know, it's funny.
Everybody was afraid that Microsoft was going to control the access to networks because they added one feature to Windows 95.
And at the very time that everybody's writing these articles about this, everybody at the same time is getting flooded with all these disks from America Online.
You get them in magazines, you get them uncollected in the mail, and all of these opportunities to sign on through a competitor to Microsoft.
We have never had a situation in this country where one company has tied everything up and been able to control the market, and yet we hear about it over and over and over again.
Gee, if it weren't for the government, we'd have this terrible situation.
Standard Oil was lowering the price of oil day by day by day at the turn of the century until The Federal Trade Commission moved in and stopped Standard Oil from lowering their prices and broke up Standard Oil, and then the oil prices stabilized instead of continuing to go down.
Everything that government does turns out to be the opposite of what well-intentioned people want.
Milk, sugar, there's plenty of other examples.
Oh my gosh, sugar.
The price of sugar is way higher today than it should be because the federal government is keeping foreign sugar out of the market.
All right.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Harry Brown.
Hi.
Hello, Art.
Harry?
Where are you, sir?
Eugene, Oregon.
All right.
This is Tom, and I have two quick questions for Mr. Brown.
The first one has to do with his predecessor, Mr. Maru, from Alaska.
In 1992, he made the He was the Libertarian candidate in 1992.
What I was wondering was, his thinking about the FDA was to fold it up and return power to private citizens and doctors.
I was wondering whether your ideas would mesh with that.
Oh, I would definitely get rid of the FDA because of the enormous cost in human lives that occurs every year by the drugs the FDA holds off the market.
We have numerous sources available to us that we can choose ourselves who we want to be our regulators.
But when the federal government does it, everybody is forced to abide by the one regulator, the FDA.
We can rely on our doctors.
doctors can rely on all kinds of sources like insurance companies
uh... uh... magazines uh... laboratories investigators uh...
scientists all kinds of people are going to be offering advice as to
to which drug birthday from which art
and if there's ever a problem with drugs what's going to happen is
that nobody will be able to so a drug then
unless it can guarantee the safety and back it up by an insurance policy or
something else so we have nothing to fear from the free market the free
market will do everything possible to make things safer
we have everything in the world to fear from the fda i had a one last comment
that was I like a lot of what you're saying, but the problem I have is that going to Washington, let's go ahead about a year here and assume that you got elected, you must assume that there's going to be a great deal of
Well, we discussed part of this before.
The question is, can it be done in four years?
you're expecting even from a conservative republican char so and you're trying to go there is
harry brown night
mister smith professional politician
and do you really think you can accomplish a lot of what you're
talking about within only four years
good question well we've got a report we discussed part of the before the
question can it be done in four years in in my book why government doesn't
work i lay out a picture plan but instead of being like the
republicans plan where all the goodies are supposed to come at the end of the
program they're all loaded at the front of this program
We repeal the income tax the first year.
We cut government in half the first year.
We balance the budget the first year.
Then we continue to cut from there.
We sell off federal assets, assets that the government has acquired that it has no constitutional business owning, like 52% of the Western lands.
Uh, like all the pipelines and the mineral rights and the oil rights and all these other things.
And we use the first proceeds that we get to buy annuities for all people who are dependent on Social Security today so that they will have fixed contracts that they can depend on for the rest of their lives.
Then we continue selling assets and use those proceeds to pay down the federal debt.
And if we can get it down all the way to zero, get the federal debt down to zero, Then we can eliminate the interest expense from the budget, and we should be able to operate the federal government on $100 billion a year.
We could accomplish that whole program in six years, but 90% of it would be done within four years.
All right.
Harry, here's something to run into.
You say you would sell off a lot of federal assets.
I live here in Nevada, where the majority of the land, great majority, is owned.
Overwhelming majority.
Possessed by the U.S.
government.
If you were to, I'm not a tree hugger, but if you were to take all this land away and sell it off, maybe pay off our debt, do whatever you're going to do with it, arguably the miners would begin their strip mining, the people would take down the old growth, all of it stripped away.
What about environmental concerns?
Do you have any?
Yes, of course.
The problem with the environment is that so much of the degradation is taking place on government land.
The timber rights, the problems exist when you lease out timber land that is owned by the government.
Then the people who are cutting the trees down have no interest in the future of that land because they don't own it.
The strip mining almost always takes place on government property that's being leased to the miners, because the miners have no interest in the future of that land.
If it were privately owned, then they would care not only about what they get out of it this year, But what the land is going to be worth next year, and five years from now, and ten years from now... Well, I wish I believed that were true, but if you're a miner, in an individual situation, you're going to strip and run, and you're going to run to the next area.
Now, you're saying, suddenly, the human being is going to form some greater consciousness, and they're going to say, why I can't do this, I'll ruin the land, and I won't be able to come back here.
Well, I'm not talking about an emotional or psychological attachment.
I'm talking about a profit-making attachment, a financial attachment.
That property has value if it isn't despoiled.
And when they are finished with it, if they have handled it properly, it can be sold and used for other purposes.
But if they ruin it, then they lose a great deal of the value that they could have in the land in the first place.
And when they buy the land, they have to pay for that land based on what the value could be in the future.
And if they despoil that value, then they're going to lose money on it when they try to sell it.
The simple question is, which has more litter per square feet?
Your front lawn or your local park?
The local park is owned by the government, and people walk in there and drop anything they want on the property because they don't care.
but you certainly make sure that there is a front yard of your property is not littered
and of course which is more likely to have a drug deal and it's obviously
uh... the local park that's owned by the government or somebody who owns the
property and has an interest in making sure that it's police properly
that's a really good answer harry uh... we're at the top of the hour and i'm prepared to
offer you one more hour if you have the constitution for it
I guess I'll stay.
I appreciate the offer, and you've got me so wound up now, I guess I'll need an hour just to slow down so I can go to sleep tonight.
Well, that happens to me every night, Harry.
All right, stay right where you are.
We'll be back to you.
Harry Brown, libertarian contender for The nomination to be President of the United States, what would he do?
Stick around and find out.
It definitely is radical.
You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in time.
Tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from November 30th, 1995.
This is a teaser for the first episode of the show.
You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in time.
Tonight, featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from November 30th, 1995.
Actually, the largest live overnight talk program in America.
My guest is one of the main contenders for the Libertarian nomination for presidency, Harry Brown.
He's been with us for two hours now.
if uh... you're just joining us you've missed a very good two hours
uh... harry are you there Yes.
Great, welcome back.
Now, Harry, there is a currency change on the way.
They've already shown us the form of the new $100 bill, and they say the other denominations are going to follow.
Can you give us any information on this?
Yes, I have to say that I believe that the government is Telling the truth in this case, there is a problem with counterfeiting because of the technological changes that have taken place in the last couple of decades in copying machines, printing machines, and so on.
It is true.
And so new currency with things like metal strips in it are necessary.
Now, what may be done on top of that?
If the metal strip may eventually carry information in it as to where the dollar has been and something like that, I can't really say.
I wouldn't know.
All I can tell you is, elect me president and I'll see to it that your money does not have any secret things inside of it.
I don't know what else to say.
Here is kind of an interesting fact.
from Bill in Seattle.
Perhaps, as your guest waxes so eloquently on the virtues of private enterprise, you could ask him for me how much reign he thinks industry should have.
Many of the regs over business were brought about because of horrible working conditions.
Does your guest favor bringing back the days of 2 cents an hour wages and 15 hour days for 12 year olds in sweatshops?
We all need regulation in some form or another.
The question is should the government do it and force it upon us and tell us that this is going to be your regulator whether you like it or not or should we each be able to choose whom we want to regulate us and to decide which products are safe which are safe enough for us to use and which we should stay away from and I favor the latter route because anytime you force everybody to abide by one particular way then this becomes a political football and then Jesse Helms and Teddy Kennedy And Robert Dole and Robert Byrd and all these other wise people in Washington sit down and they figure out what's good for you.
And that just doesn't work.
It hasn't worked.
It never worked.
It never will work.
But in the areas where we make choices for ourselves, we rely on magazines, we rely on books, we rely on advisors that we hire, we rely on our insurance companies to tell us which cars are safer than others by the prices that they charge us for the insurance on the different types of cars and so on.
We have a multitude of choices available to us.
Now, are we going to throw that away and have the government force one choice on us?
Most of the regulations did not come about in the first place because of terrible conditions, as much as they did because the people who were already in business saw those regulations as an opportunity to keep upstarts out of their business.
That's the way the railroad regulation started, which was the first regulation that we had in this country in the late 19th century, and it went from there to the oil industry and And the other big industries where some companies wanted to keep new companies out of the markets, and it's always been that.
That's why we have licensing laws and other things.
Harry, suppose I'm making widgets, and I've got a widget factory, and I decide that I'm going to hire a bunch of 12 and 15-year-olds, and I'm going to pay them 75 cents an hour to make my widgets.
In Harry Brown's world, I could do that, couldn't I?
If their parents would let them work there, And if their parents would let them work there, then we ought to inquire why is it that the parents would be willing to do so?
What kind of conditions exist that lead the parents to want to do that?
The reason that there were children working in the 18th century and the 19th century was because technology had not reached the point where it was possible to have people who were not working.
Everybody had to work, who was old enough to do anything, just to keep everybody alive.
But as technology has developed, the need for child labor, the need for old age labor, has abated tremendously.
Now people can retire at 60 or 65 years old.
Before, they worked up until almost the day they dropped dead.
And all of these things are the result of increasing technology, not because government has outlawed child labor or outlawed elderly labor.
All right.
I have not really asked this directly of you yet.
There are three other competitors for your position.
Where is your campaign?
How likely is it, in your opinion, that you will be the candidate?
Well, I'm the only one who is actively campaigning to any extent.
I've already visited 32 states in my campaign over the last 15 months.
We've already raised a half a million dollars, and we are now at the threshold where we're ready to go public.
With the publication of my book, Why Government Doesn't Work, we now will have a full-scale national campaign.
I'll be on television and radio, and none of the other candidates are conducting that kind of a campaign.
And I've been to state conventions all over the country and amassed a tremendous amount of support.
I really don't think that there is going to be much of a battle for the nomination.
Just this morning, the treasurer of our campaign notified me that we have already qualified for matching funds, and no libertarian candidate in the history of the party has ever qualified for matching funds before.
We are not going to accept them, but we are going to make the most of them.
If it were possible to receive it in one check and hold it up on television and burn it, that's exactly what I would do to make the point that libertarians do not believe in taking other people's money away from them, even for such a good cause as getting me elected president.
You will not accept matching funds?
No.
There are three reasons for it.
First of all, it is simply wrong to take other people's money for your own purposes.
Strategically, I think it sends a terrible message.
I am saying that government does not work and that government is not in a position to solve our social problems.
So why should it be in a position to solve my campaign problems?
And third, pragmatically, it has very little value.
If we raised $6 million, for instance, we would wind up getting about maybe $2 million in matching funds.
We, under any circumstances, will not get what the Republicans and Democrats get to run their general election campaign next year.
Each party, the Republicans and the Democrats, will each get $60 million as a, quote, gift, unquote, from the federal government, meaning it'll be taken out of your pay to finance their general election campaign.
We will not get any, no matter how much money I raise.
Parties that had 25% or more in the last election get that $60 million gift.
And of course I can guarantee you that if we get 26% in this election, but that I don't get elected president, that between now and the next election they will raise the bar to 30% or 35%.
Alright, Ross Proe is building, he says, a third party.
Qualified in California and elsewhere now.
Did you go down and participate in Ross's little call to the candidates?
No, it was supposed to be a convention to decide whether they needed a third party.
Right.
And so they invited people from the two old parties to come, but they did not invite anybody from any third party to get their perspective on it.
And so I was not invited.
It was funny that when it was all over, he said, well, the Republicans sound so good, we don't need a third party.
And then a month later, he said, we're going to start a third party.
And then they qualified to be on the ballot in California, and as soon as they had qualified to be on the ballot, he said, well, I hope we don't need this, because if the Republicans do what they say they're going to do, then we'll call off our third-party effort.
Yeah, it's vintage Ross Perot.
So these poor people who have been following him around are really getting tossed back and forth.
He is going to have a difficult time qualifying to be on the ballot in all 50 states.
I have no doubt that the Libertarian Party will be on the ballot in all 50 states, as we were in 1992.
We are running a first-class campaign.
Okay, wouldn't it be a natural appeal for you, Harry, to appeal to the disaffected who have seen Ross come and go and come and go and come and go?
Oh, definitely.
And a lot of those people are more libertarian than they are reformist.
Indeed.
Ross Perot is a reformer.
He's saying, you let me have my hands on Washington and I'll make it run right.
And I'm saying the engine doesn't run, we've got to get rid of it.
And a lot of the people who followed him felt that he, even though he was not libertarian, was a lot better than Bill Clinton or George Bush were in 1992.
And I really have to hand it to him.
Getting 19% of the vote when he had absolutely no chance of winning in the voters' eyes was a Herculean achievement.
And I take my hat off to him.
And he broke the game wide open.
Made it a lot more possible for me to be elected in 1996.
Well, Harry, he wanted to get under the hood and tinker and you want to rip the hood off.
Right.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Harry Brown.
Good morning.
Oh, good morning there.
Where are you, sir?
Denver, Colorado.
Denver?
Oh, good.
All right.
Okay, how?
Yes, sir.
And from Mr. Brown, you realize, of course, that you have an army of accountants and lawyers out there.
I see you taking their bread and butter away from them.
You know, that's interesting.
I don't want to interrupt you and take away your question, and we will certainly get to it, but you make a very interesting point.
The funny thing is that I would expect exactly that to be true, and yet I have not met a tax accountant or tax attorney yet who hasn't said, I'm with you 100%.
I will find something else to do if you can get rid of the income tax, because they have to pay the income tax, too.
Well, they don't really pay it, they pass it on, like any other business.
But what they take home, they have to pay tax on, and they would just as soon get rid of that.
Well, again, they don't pay it, they pass it on.
It's hidden in the price of their service, just like anything you buy in America.
It's getting to the point where if you can't eat it, it's not made here.
Most people, if they really understood the income tax and how it works and how it's passed on and how it ends up hidden in the price of any given product, Fascinating.
So the price of products would take a real nosedive along with the price of foreign products.
Yes, for a lot of reasons.
would fall fifty to sixty percent really easily. And so would the foreign products
because that would be the only way they could compete then.
Fascinating.
So the price of products would take a real nosedive along with the price of
foreign products. Yes, for a lot of reasons. First of all...
But Harry, you said the only way that you would raise money is with tariffs.
Right, but I'm talking about the existing tariffs and excises that exist now raise about $150 billion a year.
So eventually, we would even lower those.
But to begin with, we would leave them just as they are.
But eventually, after the first year, that would be the sole source of income for the government, except for the proceeds from the asset sales.
Which would serve to fill in the budget a little the first couple of years.
This is laid out.
It's a little difficult to explain without my hands waving around.
But if you get hold of my book, it's laid out very carefully and you can study it and decide whether you think this makes sense.
I think it makes eminent sense.
All right.
As you talk about that source of revenue as the only one for the government, along with asset sales, how do you deal with the debt?
By selling off these assets and using it to pay down the debt.
If the assets of the federal government, and in the book I list the whole slew of them that exist, if those assets will bring $12 trillion being sold over a six-year period, then we can do, as I said earlier, get private annuities for everybody who's dependent on Social Security today and get the government completely out of Social Security.
and pay off the entire five trillion dollar federal debt that exists today
which would wipe out the interest expense that we pay every year that now
cost you and me your wife my wife and every individual in this country a
thousand dollars a year
just for the interest uh... that it's necessary to get rid of the debt just to
get the budget down uh... because two hundred seventy billion dollars a year
is going to interest expense alone And plus the fact that there shouldn't be any debt.
The federal government should not be carrying debt from year to year, and I would gladly see a constitutional amendment that prohibited the federal government from ever going into debt for any purpose whatsoever.
Harry, remember those millionaires, billionaires that left the country, renounced their citizenship, and took their money with them?
Do you have sympathy with them?
I don't necessarily have sympathy with them, but I don't think that they should suffer any punitive tax.
What I would like to see is that they be relieved of the income tax entirely, but I also want to see everybody who stays here relieved of the income tax.
Okay.
Wild Card Line, you're on the air with Harry Brown.
Good morning.
Good morning from KBC Los Angeles.
Yes, sir.
Mr. Brown, when you were talking about missile defense and no CIA, With the proliferation of tactical nuclear weapons now, I don't think a third world country would lob one at us, not shoot it by a missile.
They'd probably just drive it into the country and leave it in a metropolitan area and detonate it.
So I think there is a use for a CIA as far as intervening in instances like that.
That's a good point and I really should have followed up on that myself.
Harry, it is true.
These are dangerous times.
They're different times.
And while we may not face an all-out shoot-em-up with Russia, somebody eventually is going to get hold of nuclear materials.
There was a horrid little story about something going on in Moscow the other day.
Cesium-137 buried all over the city or something.
Eventually, that's going to occur here.
Without an intelligence-gathering organization, an official one, we're wide open.
Well, I can't guarantee you a world completely at peace, but I can guarantee you an America that will be much more at peace than the America we have today.
For one thing, part of the reason we fear terrorists is because our government is messing around in all kinds of private disputes around the world and getting people mad at us.
The World Trade Center was bombed by people who were upset with our foreign policy in the Middle East.
America shouldn't have a foreign policy in the Middle East.
We shouldn't be arming Israel's enemies.
Because we arm Israel's enemies, we have to arm Israel.
Because we get on one side, then necessarily that side gets built up and we find ourselves on the other side.
We have armed over a hundred countries in the world since the end of the Second World War.
Over a hundred countries have received arms from the United States government.
It's true.
It's unbelievable.
It is true.
Alright, what about this scenario?
We withdraw, in essence, from all foreign adventure.
Islamic extremism, which does not need a specific reason to dislike our existence, begins to build and spread throughout the world.
Does Harry Brown's government do anything to prevent that, stop it, slow it, or just ignore it until it gets to Toledo or something?
No, but I would do nothing until it threatened the United States directly.
But I can tell you this, that if we create a United States at peace and a United States that is far, far more prosperous than any of us has ever seen in its lifetime because we have practically no federal tax in this country and we have no federal government holding down the economy, we are going to be a beacon to people all over the world who are not going to tolerate tyrannical governments and oppressive governments and adventurous governments In countries around the world, the difference is going to be so sizable between the United States and France or the United States and Iran or the United States and some African country that people everywhere are going to demand the same for themselves.
Finally, the United States will be the beacon of freedom that we are supposed to be.
It sounds so good.
Well, it's not perfect.
It's not utopian, but utopia is not an option.
And what we have to compare it with is not A perfect world, but compare it with what we have now, a world in which we are so vulnerable to every two-bit dictator who can get his hands on a nuclear weapon and just fling it into the United States if he gets upset and angry.
Why would he do so?
Well, according to George Bush, Saddam Hussein was a madman who was not given a reason whatsoever, and that was why we had to go in there.
Well, if he's not given a reason, just let him get his hands on a missile.
It'll fling at us.
So why is it that the United States signed away in 1972 any right to build a missile defense?
All right, Harry, hold it right there.
You are listening to the Libertarian Way, and it is fascinating, isn't it?
Harry Brown, main contender, I guess I would say, for the nomination for the Libertarian Drive to the White House.
I'm Art Bell.
There will be more.
Stay right where you are.
You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in time on Premier Radio Networks.
Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from November 30th, 1995.
Don't you think you're a Romeo? Playing the part in a sixty show.
Take the long way home.
You're the joke of the neighborhood.
Should you care, you should be good.
Take the long way home.
There are times that you need a father.
Take the long way home.
Tonight's program originally aired November 30th, 1995.
One more time, here I am, along with Harry Brown, who would be Libertarian candidate for President, may well be.
So if you've been curious about Libertarianism, it's bleefs, Harry's bleefs.
And that's an interesting question, whether there's any delta between his core bleefs and that of the Libertarian The party itself, and we'll ask that question in just a moment.
I'm Art Bell, and this, of course, is Coast to Coast AM.
All right, let's try a couple of quick questions.
Harry, if you do differ anywhere at all with the General Libertarian Party platform, are there any areas you could tell us you There's a delta?
I don't believe so.
I've been a libertarian for, I guess, 35 or 40 years, and probably an individualist all my life, and when I first decided to run as a libertarian in 1994, made the decision then, I read the Libertarian Party platform and I was very, very pleased to see how much I agreed in all respects.
And the other two gentlemen who are running are very fine Libertarians also.
They're named Rick Tompkins and Erwin Schiff, the two you mentioned before, and they are very fine Libertarians, and I doubt that we have a great deal of disagreement between us about philosophy or what the government should do or whether or not government works.
The difference would be in who is going to campaign aggressively and who is going to carry the Libertarian Party to victory.
And I'm doing it because I don't see that anybody else can do it.
But the Libertarian Party, fortunately, is full of a great many people who are articulate and who understand the nature of government and the nature of human freedom and what it can do.
All right.
Do you remember the movie Network?
Yes.
Do you remember that moment when they took the Network guy into the big room with the oak table and down at the other end there was some all-powerful guru who kind of instructed him and said, Orson, you're tampering with the basic forces of nature here, and you'll recall the ending to that movie.
Somebody has sent me a fax saying you'd last about two or three months, and your bullet-riddled body would be lying in a pool of blood somewhere.
Well, I appreciate the faxer's concern for my health and my welfare, and believe me, I do not have a death wish.
I will take care of myself.
But you are tampering with the basic forces of nature here.
Well, I'm tampering with the basic forces of politics.
I'm trying to restore the basic forces of nature.
Good line, good line, Harry.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Harry Brown.
Hello.
Hi, this is Sean from Sacramento.
Hi, Sean.
Quick question.
As far as selling off government assets, Would foreign investors be allowed to buy some of that stuff?
Yes, because we would want to get the highest value possible.
Before, when we talked about the western lands and the environment and so on, I think it's important to realize, who would you rather have taking care of Yellowstone Park?
The Wilderness Society or some federal bureaucrat who's based in Washington, D.C.? ?
Foreigners can do a better job of taking care of this property than I'm all for it.
But whoever is going to pay the highest for it is going to have to take care of it well in order to protect his investment.
And being from California, how would you handle FEMA?
Well, it seems to me ludicrous that the people of Florida send money to the people of California when there's an earthquake in California and then six months later the people of California send the money back to Florida when there's a hurricane in Florida.
And of course it's not just those two places, there are all the flood victims in the Midwest and on and on and on and the money just gets passed around and it gets wasted so badly.
The horror stories of people who rush in and set up businesses on the spot in order to qualify to To be contractors for this federal money that's tossed around.
The waste is just unbelievable in these emergency management programs.
I would get rid of all of those.
Certainly the people of California, if they think that there should be some kind of governmental function, can at least keep it to the people in California.
All right.
Harry, I've got one for you.
Pat Buchanan would build a fence on our southern border.
Dean Compton would take a quarter million men down there to stand and protect it.
Our government does not seem to be protecting its own borders, and if there is a proper charge of the federal government, you would think it would be to protect the borders.
Where do you stand on that?
The government is trying very hard to protect the borders, but the government's war on immigration is no more successful than its war on drugs, or its war on poverty, or its war on anything else.
The problem is not with immigration, the problem is with welfare, And all of the benefits that are free to the worst elements that are being attracted to come across the border and get on the gravy train here.
The answer is not to add a new layer of government on top of it but to take government out of the picture by getting government out of welfare and all of these other areas.
So that there is no longer an attraction for these people to come rushing across the border.
Okay, you remove the magnet, but the magnet is still there, Harry.
You've got an economic paradise in Harry Brown's libertarian world.
But for people who are willing to work.
For people who are willing to work, yes.
This is no more gravy trade.
So then would you have unrestricted immigration?
The only people, yes, because the only people who would come in would be people who would be adding to our society and not taking away from it.
All right, good answer.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Harry Brown.
Good morning, where are you, please?
I'm in Evans, Colorado.
Where am I?
I got a question for you, Mr. Brown.
It has to do with the abortion issue.
Exactly, what is your stance?
It hasn't been addressed so far.
All right, so let it be.
It's a big one.
Abortion, and I suspect I know your answer, but go ahead and give it.
Well, maybe you don't know my answer.
I think until Science can prove otherwise.
I have to assume that life begins at conception.
So I am personally very, very opposed to abortion.
But I don't believe that a government war on abortion is going to be any more successful than a war on drugs or a war on poverty.
Harry, I asked you a little while ago where there was a delta between you and the general platform.
This has got to be one of those areas.
Well, there are a lot of libertarians in the party who are pro-life and a lot of them who are pro-choice.
I don't like those terms very well.
The fact is that government doesn't work.
And if I want to get rid of abortion, then there are a lot of things that can be done that have nothing to do with government.
One of them would be to get rid of the restrictive laws that prevent people from making adoptions easily, and have made them so difficult that abortion becomes too strong of a choice for many, many young women.
I applaud all the efforts that are going on by people who are trying to Fund advertising to celebrate those people who were not aborted, the children who were not aborted, all the other private efforts that are taking place.
But I do not want the government trying to solve social problems.
And the things that I want in this world, the last place I will turn to get those solutions are to the government, because the government is the kiss of death to whatever it is you want.
Well then, would you turn the government toward preventing abortion?
No.
No, I don't want the government involved.
I don't want it subsidizing it.
I don't want it promoting it.
I don't want it trying to stop it.
I want to get the federal government out of this area as I want to get it out of all other areas.
So you would use the presidency then as a bully pulpit as best you could to try and stop abortion?
I wouldn't even do that.
You wouldn't?
No, because I don't believe that people elect presidents to be their, how should I put it, their Sunday school teacher.
I don't think that that is the purpose of the President.
The President can do far more for family values in this country by repealing the income tax, by getting the federal government out of education, by getting the federal government out of welfare, and doing things that are really positive instead of just going around blowing smoke at people.
All right.
At least you seem very, very true to your values.
First-time caller line, you're on the air with Harry Brown.
Hello.
Hello.
This is Rock from San Diego.
Yes, sir.
You mentioned something earlier, Mr. Brown, about the leaping over the canyon.
Partly, I follow what you're talking about, but in the time it takes for the stability to come back in with all the people being let off from their jobs and the government and such, how do you get past that turmoil?
It isn't going to take any time at all, because we're going to repeal the income tax immediately.
The reason the Republicans are unable to cut government programs is because all of the dice are loaded against them.
If you say, we're going to get rid of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, then everybody defends on Washington, who has a vested interest in seeing that continue.
All the rest of us would love to see the thing Aced out completely.
But we're not going to have our lives changed as a result of it, so we don't go to Washington, we don't lobby to get rid of it, and so on.
And the result of that is that each one of these programs are going to be kept, or all the promises made to get rid of them are going to be whittled down and neutralized to some extent or the other.
What has to be done is you have to wrap all of these things up in one gigantic program.
One gigantic cut that's going to get rid of all of them at once, and as part of the same package, will reward the American people By repealing the income tax and getting the income tax completely out of their lives, then I can go before the American people and say, now, which do you want?
Your favorite federal program, or do you want to be free of the income tax for the rest of your life?
And when you look at your paycheck this week, I want you to look at that stub and see how much is being taken from you in income tax and Social Security tax, and then ask yourself, What are you going to do with that money when it's yours to spend as it should be?
Would you put your child in a private school?
Would you move into a better neighborhood?
Would you save up for that business you've always wanted to go into?
What would you do?
I will not rest until I get that money back in your hands where it belongs.
Then the American people will be on our side.
Then the American people will be in favor of all of these cuts that the Republicans can't get through Congress.
It is the only way it can be done.
There is no halfway measure.
Do it halfway, and the whole thing will be aborted overnight.
All right.
My wife is presently filing for a license for an FM radio station.
This is something I understand.
It's broadcasting.
When you do that, you deal with the Federal Communications Commission.
And it's about as much fun as getting hit on the head repeatedly with a hammer.
Now, in Harry's world, we'd eliminate the FCC, I presume, and with it, any structured broadcasting in America, and we would have, would we not, anarchy.
We would have people putting on television and radio stations and interfering with each other, and we would have no Really structured good communications in America.
Well, how would you handle that?
Well, first of all, there are millions, millions, literally millions of frequencies available out there in the ether.
What happens is the government says we're only going to allow a few hundred of them to be used or a few thousand of them.
We are going to decide who gets to have them.
Yes, but with reason.
With reason.
Why?
We've got the AM band, the FM band, and then we've got various other services on shortwave and so forth, but basically AM and FM, and if you allowed everybody or anybody to put anything on anywhere, you would have a jumbled mess.
Well, if I were going to start a radio station, I wouldn't want to start it on a frequency that somebody else already had, because nobody would be able to hear me.
It wouldn't be in my interest, I wouldn't be able to sell any advertising, I wouldn't be able to accomplish anything.
So obviously I would want a frequency that wasn't in use now, but the point I'm trying to make is that there are millions of frequencies available that the FCC will not allow anybody to use.
It doles them out, opens up a few more every year, it opens up some more for cellular phones, and it opens up some more for other technologies and so on.
There is no shortage of frequencies.
There is no need for two people to be using the same frequency, except for the fact that the FCC has limited it and made these frequencies very, very expensive as a result.
This is a typical example of government crippling people and then coming along with a crutch and saying, gee, without me, you wouldn't have a crutch.
You wouldn't be able to walk.
This is what happens over and over and over again in one area after another.
Alright, I get the idea.
Ease to the Rockies, you're on the air with Harry Brown.
Hi.
Hi, Art.
Thanks for having me on the program.
Sure.
I admire your dedication.
I hope you'll be back to talk to us again, Harry.
Everything sounds good to me.
It looks like your party is giving more freedom than this New World Order crowd is going to even think of.
But I do have a problem with this.
I think there should be some control of drugs because of the vulnerability, the curiosity, the peer pressure of children and young people.
They can't be trusted to not delve into drugs because they're immature and they don't know what they're getting into.
I think there should be some control in that respect.
Well, you're absolutely right that that curiosity exists and that's why they get involved in drugs today with the control that exists.
but the control has not stopped that and it has not prevented
teenagers and others from acting on that curiosity when they wanted the
government is incapable of stopping the drug trade that's the first thing we have to recognize
so one of the options is no dr one of the options is not
that there will be no drugs in america they're going to be drugs in america
the question is do we want them in the hands of criminals
uh... and the subject subject of gang warfare and drive-by shootings and and that
the enormous crime rate that we have today
or do we want to handle peacefully by companies that are legitimate companies
like the drugstore on the corner and other people who who do not go around shooting their
competitors but there is no option that says there will be no drugs in
america there will be drugs in america you're very articulate harry do you
think you're going to get the opportunity
to be up on a stage or have a forum someplace when the debates begin and we've got bob dole
arguably and we've got bill clinton and we've got harry brown and maybe some others do you
think you'll get that And if so, how do you think you'd come out of such a debate?
Well, to answer the first question, I am determined that we are going to get to that point.
We need to raise the money that is necessary.
If we can raise five million dollars, for instance, over the next six months, We will be able to do the advertising, to get the name recognition, to do all the things that would embarrass the other parties into having to include me in a debate, or else cancel the debate entirely.
If we raise $15 million, we will just assure it that much more.
The more money we raise, the stronger my position will be.
If I get in that debate, I have every confidence that the American people will see the difference That the Republicans and Democrats are saying virtually the same thing, but that there is a party, the Libertarian Party, and there is a candidate, Harry Brown, that says, look, we don't have to argue over how much government should grow.
We don't have to argue about how much tax should be taken out of your pay every week.
We can get rid of the income tax entirely.
We can get the government out of your life.
We can bring prices down in this country.
We can bring wages up by getting the government's heavy hand off of all of our backs.
And I think that when the American people see that there is a credible alternative, they will jump for it.
All the polls indicate that.
Are you at times worried that the Republicans are stealing so many libertarian ideas, particularly in the area of tax right now, that they will simply sort of absorb you?
Well, as I said earlier, they always campaign as though they were libertarians.
Yes.
But when they get in, they govern like Democrats, and we have to At some point, show that up.
We have to show that Phil Graham, for instance, who is going around saying government is too big and too oppressive, is the very man who voted for this oppression.
He's the one who voted for the Department of Education that he wants to get rid of.
He's the one who voted for the tax increase in 1982 and 1983.
And he's the one who arranged the Bush tax increase in 1990.
That he is, and Robert Dole and the other senators who are running for president, Are all part of the very problems that they try to say that they're going to get rid of today.
Only the Libertarian Party has stood fast since its inception in 1971 as the party of individual freedom, self-responsibility, and a lot less government.
And we will always stand for that.
And I hope that after all this time that I've spent with you, I may have answered indirectly the question you asked earlier that I didn't have an answer for, and that is, how can you be sure That I won't change if I get into office.
Well, when you sink into the soft seats on the newly refurbished Air Force One, and as you begin to enjoy the trappings of power and all that comes with it, which is many times more than just money, how Harry Brown doesn't turn into what everybody else, Mr. Smith and everybody else, probably eventually turns into, politicians.
Well, one small answer, and it's not the whole answer by any means, is that people like Robert Dole and Phil Graham and Lamar Alexander have lived off the government dole all of their lives.
All they know are the perks of government.
I have lived in the private sector.
I am a best-selling author.
I've made a great deal of money in my life.
I have enjoyed life.
I have flown on the Concorde four or five times.
I don't think Air Force One is going to be any more exciting than that.
I don't think that there's anything that the government has to offer that would compare with being at home here in Nashville with my wife listening to a Puccini opera on the stereo.
Certainly not listening to Hail to the Chief.
Yeah, the Concord was fun.
The only complaint I had was the heat.
You get going Mach 2, and boy, it starts warming up in there.
I don't remember that.
It's been several years since I flew on it, and I don't remember that.
It was a wonderful experience.
Oh, indeed.
East of the Rockies.
Maybe we have time for one more with Harry Brown.
Where are you calling from, please?
Good morning, Mr. Bell.
This is a socialist from Kansas.
Oh, boy.
A fitting conclusion to our night.
Yeah, that's right.
All right, Mr. Socialist.
Do it quick.
Oh, this guy is all wet.
Everything he says.
You know, he says he isn't a politician.
He sure does blow wind like a politician.
He didn't say he could end death, but my God, he's going to promise us no taxes.
No, I didn't promise you no taxes.
Let's at least get the record straight.
He's had too much time on his hands.
He's got his pordium set up, and this lame talk on each of these subjects is anti-government.
It would end everything as you know it, wouldn't it?
It would end your workers' paradise, which you've had for the last 60 years in this country.
Government stopped communism.
It stopped fascism.
It ended extreme poverty.
It's protected our old people.
It's saved our farms.
It's stopped soil erosion.
I could go on and on and on.
I'm sure you could if you had the time, but you don't.
Harry, that would have been fun had we had more time.
It has been a blast.
I wish you all the luck in the world.
All right, that'll have to do it.
Harry Brown, what a pleasure.
Thank you very, very much.
Take care.
Good night.
Good night.
You're listening to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from November 30th, 1995.
Coast to Coast is a music production based on the work of the American band The Coast to Coast.
The band was founded in 1924 and is a record label.
You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in time on Premier Radio Networks.
Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from November 30th, 1995.
Here comes Open Line Talk Radio for the remainder of the program.
Good morning, everybody.
I'm Art Bell.
You wanted a peek at libertarianism, and you got a really good look over the last three hours.
That was mainline libertarianism, purity, Briefly, a look at the news, and you talk about anything you want to.
Pacific Northwest is inundated, wet weather.
Understates it.
Floods have torn up a lot of the state of Washington.
It's moving south now.
The rivers are out of their banks up there.
It's pretty awful, actually.
Northern Oregon now getting hit as the whole thing begins to move south.
Sandbags and levees, the order of the day.
Sixteen counties now declared disaster areas.
Great weather, huh, folks?
The lead story in the Reuters this hour is about Bob Dole.
And the headline is, Dole Backs Bosnia Mission.
Senate Republican leader Bob Dole has given the Clinton administration Bosnia peace mission a big boost by announcing his support for the planned deployment of 20,000 U.S.
troops.
In a speech on the, you know I said this the other day, Bob Dole was going to do this and somebody called up, no faxed me and said I'm never going to listen to you again.
You're a tax Your attacks on the Republicans.
Your attacks on Bob Dole.
He's not supporting Bosnia.
How can you lie like that, said the faxer.
Anyway, to go on.
In a speech on the Senate floor, the GOP presidential candidate said he was drafting a resolution of support for the Bosnian mission, hoped it would pass Congress late next week or early the week after.
Clinton has said he would send a U.S.
contingent with or without congressional support.
So, I guess whoever it was who said he wouldn't listen to me anymore because I said Dole was going to support Bosnia is probably gone and will not hear me saying, you see?
That's alright.
Our president, meanwhile, in Ireland, where he got the hero's welcome.
Crowds enthusiastic, like he never sees here.
The British still control Northern Ireland, of course, but peace is broken out there.
Saturday the President will leave Ireland and all that adoration, which I guess he needs, and he will go to Germany, where he'll talk with the first troops that are going to hit the ground in Bosnia.
Baby, it's going to happen.
Defense Secretary Perry yesterday said 20,000 U.S.
troops will be in place by February.
Six months of peacekeeping, six months to get out cost to us you dot s dot two billion dollars finally we get a poll on ABC and the president's speech speech has caused an erosion 58 percent of the people now oppose our going to Bosnia and the speech actually caused an erosion in support so
Go figure.
I've got kind of an interesting, eclectic sort of story here.
Several of them, actually, that I want you to hear.
You remember the story we did the other night on the magnetic variations that shocked so much people?
Boy, I'll tell you why.
I've got a Transworld Airlines newspaper article here.
That confirms Runway 220 is no more.
It has fallen victim to magnetic variation.
The designation for Portland International Airport's Crosswind Runway 220 has changed to 321 because each year the magnetic variation between True North and Magnetic North shifts a tenth of a degree to the west.
Why is it happening?
Laymen on the Earth.
It just keeps rotating.
It's up to the FAA to keep track of such things.
So there you have it.
There actually has been a shift.
So, maybe not as much as some read, but the people that called weren't that far off base.
That really did occur.
So there you are.
Um, and from Peggy down in San Antonio, Texas, um, Art, I missed the network TV news tonight, but I did listen to network radio news, and I heard nothing of an emergency in Nicaragua, that is, until I watched Russian TV news on C-SPAN.
There were the pictures, scary ones, of a humongous erupting volcano in that country, meaning Nicaragua.
Have you heard of it?
Yes, Peggy, I have and reported on it here.
I'm telling you, you've really got to listen to media outside this country to really know what's going on.
That's why I keep trying to push people toward shortwave radio.
Dear Art, did you watch Apollo 13 this morning?
What did you think?
By the way, I think the music during the first four minutes of the closing credits would be a great piece of bumper music.
Do you agree?
Well, yes.
You bet your bippy I got off the air yesterday and watched Apollo 13.
And it awed me.
That was a good movie.
Excellent movie.
Very well done.
Now, I've got a couple of other stories here, but I think I'm going to hold them Um, so that we might begin two-way talk radio.
What do you say?
The rest of the night is all yours.
First time caller line, you're on the air!
Hello.
Hi, Art.
Hi.
Uh, this is Steve from Albany, Oregon.
Yes, Steve.
Uh, KPNW.
Yes, sir.
Yeah, um... Are you Just a regular Steve or a Steve?
I'm just a Steve.
I've been listening to you for a few years now and finally got through.
I just heard that caller from California that was talking about evolution.
Oh yes.
And that's exactly one of the reasons why I was wanting to call you too.
But anyways, I just want to first say that I agree with you on Pretty much 99.9% of all your views.
The same thing with this libertarian business.
Pretty much, I would consider myself between a conservative and a libertarian.
So would I. About where I am.
I've got an odd, eclectic mix of political views.
Some of them tend toward libertarianism.
As described by Mr. Brown, it sounds so good, but I don't think that it is practical.
Yeah, I agree with you too.
We do need things like the FDA, the FCC.
I do believe we need a CIA and a good National Defense.
But I wanted the audience to get a good, fair rendition Of what it is Mr. Brown has to say, he is arguably one of the better spokesmen for libertarianism, and he delivered the real thing.
So, the audience got the real thing.
Now, if I'd have sat here, as a lot of talk show hosts do, and just beaten the guy to death over each issue, the audience in the end would not have heard a good rendition of that philosophy, that ideology.
And that's why I don't do that.
I know and I'm really glad about that too.
That's real good.
Anyways, I really appreciate you taking my call and on that evolution thing, I would really like to send you a book titled by a doctor of biology who used to teach evolution and then changed to creation.
You mean he got religion?
Pardon me?
You mean he got religion?
He just accepted the Lord as his Savior.
Yeah, that's what I just said.
Alright, thank you very much for the call, and that is fine.
I stand back as I told the caller who called.
He was very sincere, very passionate, and I tell this man, who obviously was in line with his thinking, that I do not find difficulty believing, and I do believe, That both are involved.
In other words, evolution is a process.
And who are we to say it is exclusive of the hand of God?
Hmm?
Who's to say it cannot be both?
In how many years, what is one second or one year or one light year to God?
I don't know.
You don't really know.
None of us really knows.
So, I see the hand of God in creation.
I'm very, very comfortable, Sue, with that view.
And, um, I guess that makes a lot of other people very uncomfortable, and I just, I have to live with that, you know?
Wild Card Line, you're on the air.
Good morning.
How you doing, Art?
Okay.
All right.
This is Phil from Yakima KUTI.
Yes, sir.
Uh, listen to your guest tonight.
Didn't have too much use for his politics.
No?
I was going to ask you a question about him.
Was he proposing that we take the power from the federal government and give it back to the states?
He was proposing generally, yes, that the power be taken from the federal government, period.
Well, I'd like to give you a little personal story of mine.
I'm currently disabled.
At a very young age, because of an accident that happened at work by a corporation who was basically ignoring safety regulations to cut corners to make more money.
If it wasn't for the federal government, in my case, I'd basically be out on the street.
In our state, the regulations and laws dictate that an employee Cannot sue an employer if he's injured on the job.
And if it wasn't for the Social Security Administration stepping in and basically allotting me disability income, which is not that much, I'd be in major trouble.
And I'd just like to hear your thoughts on that.
Alright, then listen.
You'll have my thoughts on that.
I think Mr. Brown would say that there would be a private sector way of handling what has happened to you.
But, frankly, to some degree, I really do agree with you and disagree with Mr. Brown.
Because I allow a guest to get his message out should not ever mean to you that I automatically agree with him.
It is my style of interviewing.
I don't bring people here on the radio to break them into little pieces and pin them on the wall and make them sweat and put a light in their eyes.
I let them say what they want to say.
So in answer to your question, I am not a libertarian.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air, top o' the morning.
Yes, Mr. Bell?
Yes.
About your guest, Mr. Brown?
Harry Brown.
Yeah, I thought he was very interesting.
Now, he mentioned something earlier about Nicaragua?
Oh, yes, well, he did.
He mentioned many foreign, adventurous things that we have done.
Nicaragua was one of them.
Okay, but we were only involved in covert operations.
The United States never sent ground troops there.
We didn't have no actual war in Nicaragua.
Pretty much true.
We had a lot of CIA types down there.
That's it, but no, no, no fighting there.
I would never compare it in a million years to ten years of fighting communism in Southeast Asia.
How do you feel about Mr. Dole going along with the President on what we're about to do in Bosnia?
Well, he's compromising.
A lot of the Republicans, you see, are very liberal.
They pretend to be conservative, but They hit out always at the Democrat-Conservatives, but way back, like even in the 60s, you had a very powerful liberal Republican, like Mr. Rockefeller, and Jacob Javits, and look at Earl Warren at the Supreme Court.
Well, you know, I've got to say this.
Maybe Bob Dole, you know, really believes that this should be done, and so I guess I will just say he has missed an incredible political opportunity.
If he wanted to beat President Clinton, He could have taken this and run with it, and so maybe this is what he believes, and it is very revealing of what he believes, and it really does make Mr. Brown's argument there's damn little difference.
It's gonna start World War III, maybe.
God forbid, I hope it doesn't.
But getting back to Nicaragua, you can never compare Nicaragua to the Iraq War, either.
That wasn't... Right, I... No, I... All out war, where they bombed Baghdad... Yes.
American boys died, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi died.
That's an... What shall I call it?
The big wars that they have is always Europe or Asia.
All right, all right, thank you.
I... No, I... Look, I agree with you.
They are not the same.
However, it was an official U.S.
government commitment To a foreign adventure.
Even though they did toy with the idea of American troops in Nicaragua.
Believe me, they had plans.
They had maps.
They were ready.
But, the point Mr. Brown was trying to make was, whether it was Nicaragua, or Iraq, or Panama, or Somalia, or any of the other adventures, at whatever level, we ought not be involved.
Now, I'm not saying that's my view.
I'm saying that was his view.
So whether it was covertly or overtly, I think he was trying to make the point that these foreign adventures cause more trouble than they cure.
Wes to the Rockies, you're on the air.
Hi, George.
You finally answered the phone before it ran out of time.
Let me get this thing turned off here.
Turned off, yes.
Get that thing turned off.
Oh, man.
Long time.
I've tried the first-time caller line one night and I...
I don't know what happened, but it's been at least a year I've been trying to get you, and now I finally did.
You did.
Where are you?
I'm in California, Contra Costa County.
Yes, sir.
And I just wanted to talk about the Libertarian for a moment, but first let me ask you, how long since you've heard Pat Buchanan on radio answering questions, on TV or radio?
I've seen him on some interview shows.
I interviewed him here about...
No, no, no, no.
About three months ago.
Oh boy, I tell you, I heard him on C-SPAN tonight.
I went down to check it.
I copy a lot of stuff on C-SPAN and I'm telling you, he was just absolutely marvelous.
An hour and 15 minutes answering questions and not a single one did he falter on.
He really is the only man in my mind.
He's the only man for the job.
I hit him with all kinds of rapid-fire questions for about an hour.
As a matter of fact, you can get a copy of that program, sir.
Well, I've got it.
I've got this copied down here on C-SPAN, and I really... It was everything.
I mean, you know, there are so many people who say, well, yeah, I like Pat, but I don't know if he could win.
Well, my God, Sri, of all the people who like Pat and know he's the only real man for the job, but just get out and vote for him, he couldn't lose!
It's that good.
I mean, it's that simple.
He's the only real man of the thing that hasn't got a flaw in him, as far as I'm concerned, about any doctrine or any issue that should come up.
No, I disagree with that.
Which one would you think?
Uh, he's too isolationist for me.
Oh my goodness, he's not isolationist.
Oh, yes he is.
Oh, I don't know what you mean by that.
He certainly doesn't want to... Well, that means, sir, what that means is that you agree with him.
No, no, no.
I've lived long enough to know what an isolationist means.
They called us an isolator.
Roosevelt got us involved in World War II.
I served my time in that conflict.
Well, I ended up in Nagasaki at the end of the war.
All right, sir.
Well, I have no problem with the fact that you agree with that.
Well, okay.
I really didn't call you to talk about that.
I called you to talk about something.
The one time I did talk to you for one minute was right at the end of the show when I reached you and I told you that I had the most important topic in the whole world to discuss with you.
I'd like to be your guest some night and talk with you about it.
And that is the great lying conspiracy of evil.
That has imbrued the minds of everyone in the world, especially our country, for the last, well, since they founded the National Liberal Reform League in 1870.
My, what is it?
Just 11 years after Darwin finished his book.
What is that?
And that is the scam, the hoax, the evil philosophy of evolutionism being passed off as science without allowing any Competition, it's all in it, in the schools throughout the land.
Whereas all of the great founding fathers of our sciences, from Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, Sir Isaac Newton, the greatest of all probably, Kepler, Johan Kepler, 115 or 20 others, including Werner Von Braun and Jastrow of the Space Agency, these are all creationists, man.
And why we can allow this evil scam to really, I think it, I agree with Dr. Henry Morris, Um, Art, who says, quote, evolutionism is the basis of all harmful philosophies and evil practices in the world today.
All right, sir.
Now, that's a heavy statement.
Don't go away and leave me.
I've got to go away and leave you, uh, because I have things to do, sir.
It's awfully hard to reach you, but I understand.
How does the socialist get into office?
You got another phone number or something?
Uh, nobody has another phone number.
All my, I have no private phone numbers, period.
Just the ones you've given out.
You got it.
Boy, you're hard to reach.
I understand.
I sure wanted to talk to you about the scam of evolutionism.
The scam of evolutionism.
Alright, sir.
You see, my view is there is not necessarily a conflict between those who believe in evolution and those who believe in creation.
and why is it so hard to imagine the hand of god began the process and continues process of
creation you're listening to art bill somewhere in time on premier
radio networks tonight's on-call presentation of coast-to-coast a m from
november thirtieth nineteen ninety-five
the the
the the
the Send your camel to bed
and I'll see you next time.
Shadows painting our faces, tracing the romance in our heads.
Let's rip off to a sad blues, free and soon, kick up a little dance, and dance, dance, dance.
The time is just for us.
Let's rip off to a sad blues, free and soon, kick up a little dance, and dance, dance, dance.
Come on, can't you see it's all red?
He'll point it out the way.
You're listening to Art Bell's Somewhere in Time on Premier Radio Networks.
Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from November 30th, 1995.
Ah, what a voice.
People either love this or hate it.
I'm one of those people who love it.
Probably the, uh... Probably my desert that does it.
And her voice.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Hello?
Hello?
Yes, sir.
Turn your radio off.
Is this ARD?
Yes, it is.
Okay.
Yes, ARD, this is Bottom from St.
Louis.
Yes, sir.
You keep referring to Pat Buchanan as an isolationist.
Could you elaborate on that, sir?
Glad to.
Thank you.
Yes, Pat Buchanan would arbitrarily raise tariffs so high that he would attempt to force American industry back into manufacturing, or back into the manufacturing sector, back into manufacturing the things that now come from Japan, come from Mexico, come from other parts of the world.
And it is my sincere belief that we have passed way beyond... No, let me even go further, that that is a simply incorrect and wrong philosophy.
That the Earth is becoming one economically, and if we choose to stick our economic heads in the sand, that for a short time there'll be a short-term gain.
But in the long term, the rest of the world, trading back and forth, will get up and gallop straight past us.
So, I am not an economic isolationist.
I am, to some degree, a military isolationist.
In other words, I do agree with Pat that the old boogeyman communism is pretty much dead, and we don't need to be doing things like we're about to do in Bosnia.
But economically, I do not agree with him.
It is approaching a one-world economy, and it's going to do that whether we like it or not.
Ladies and gentlemen, I've been to China.
I've seen what's happening.
If we want to ignore it, as opposed to being part of it, it's going to leave us in the dust.
I guarantee you that will occur.
I guarantee you that will occur.
So I am not the economic isolationist Mr. Buchanan is.
I hope that explains it to you, sir.
Wild Card Line, you're on the air.
Hi.
Hi, Eric.
Hello.
Broadcasting to you 900 megahertz strong from Seattle here.
This is Howard.
Hello, Howard.
Well, you're a good advertisement.
You sound great.
Good.
Last time I started talking to you about sports teams, and as you know, the Mariners out here, they're going to get a stadium, even though the voters out here declined to vote them the tax money, and the government out here has decided to give them a stadium anyway.
How can they do that?
Well, they just decided to do it.
With taxpayer money?
Taxpayer money, yeah.
Against a taxpayer vote?
Against the vote in the last primary here.
Well, if it was football, I could understand it.
But it's not, right?
It's not.
And it's getting even crazier.
Now, Ken Bering of the Seattle Seahawks is demanding now that they want a new stadium.
And not only that, they want a parking garage.
Well, the Seahawks deserve it.
Well, it's getting crazy out here, Art, as it is now.
I know.
The whole sports thing is getting crazy.
Well, I think we need to start directing our money towards achievements.
Start directing money towards people who are making strides in, say, medicine, or back into the space program, which created a lot of technology, such as what I'm speaking on now.
Well, I just watched Apollo 13.
But I'm a big backer of the space program anyway, so I do agree.
I appreciate your call, sir.
Okay, Eric.
Thank you, and good luck to you all up there.
Is it wet?
It is very wet.
All right, thanks.
It's really raining up there.
Mr. Bell, tonight on your program, you accepted a call from a man claiming to head a Serbian voters' lobby who made some accusations about Senator Dole.
You hung up on him, accused him of slandering Mr. Dole.
I remembered reading this information recently, and I unearthed the source.
It was an article written by Alexander Cockburn of the Los Angeles Times.
Surely, Mr. Cockburn is not a nut.
No, I don't think he is.
He is publisher of a magazine called Counterpunch.
I'm enclosing the article, which he has done.
Maybe you should have given the CERB a fair hearing.
We never hear their side of this war, and I would have enjoyed that, by the way.
There certainly is one.
Yes, I agree.
Maybe there is something, too, birds of a feather, that you so easily discounted in this man's concern of Mr. Dole's relationship with the people in Bosnia and Croatia.
George, in LA.
George, I absolutely would have enjoyed hearing the Serb side, but the attack on Mr. Dole in the way it was carried out, and I don't give a rat's patootie who's in his office, It was absolutely an unfair way to attack Dole, and I'm no buddy of Dole.
If you've been listening to me, you know that.
But to attack Dole by saying, well, look at the relatives of the people who work for Dole, or for one person who works for Dole, that is a very unworthy attack.
Improper, in my opinion, George, attack, and I would have rather uh... heard this serbs uh... defense of uh... the serb behavior uh... in bosnia right now generally than i would have an attack based on generations ago some connection to somebody who works in his office that's outrageous george and even if it is true it is irrelevant in my opinion that's why i uh... terminated that call wildcard line you're on the air thank you very much
I don't know much about astronomy, but I was just curious.
I'm calling from Manhattan Beach in California, and there's been lately, for the last few months, I've heard people call another talk show about it, but they told them they were crazy.
I don't know if you could see satellites or what this is, but it's in the blue.
It appears to be a star, but it has a bluish color.
Yes.
It's lowest in the horizon.
It appears to be low.
It's definitely by far the largest star in the sky.
Yes.
It's to the west, I'm sorry, to the east, kind of to the north.
And it definitely moves.
I mean, it definitely moves in short, like, jerky motions.
Venus.
Excuse me?
You are seeing Venus.
That is Venus?
Yes.
And it is not actually moving, however.
Listen to me now.
Okay.
If you stand there and you stare at it, it sure as hell looks like it's moving.
Like it dips down and comes back up.
Sir, that is an optical conclusion.
Thank you very much, Art.
You just made me feel a lot better.
Alright, have a good morning.
If you sit there and stare at Venus, Uh, it really does appear to be moving.
There is no question about it.
Venus is reported frequently as a, um, a UFO.
And, um, and your eyes do that.
It is an optical conclusion.
Wild Card Line, you're on the air.
Hi.
Hi, Art.
This is Apple Valley.
Long time no caller.
Boy, it has been a long time.
Yeah, well, it's been a little slower on the second go-around on the bypass operation.
Oh.
But what I'm calling about the standard Bosnia problem, two items.
We hear a lot about mission creep and the prevention of, but we hear very, very little about the troop strength creep.
And I do not believe that 20,000 combat troops... Well, they are one and the same.
When you have mission creep, you have troop strength creep along with it.
Well, yeah, but you see, we haven't heard anything about the support for size i recently heard yesterday i think what we started
hearing thirty eight thousand national going in yeah but the mission creepers
already taken place
and by way of what nato was originally designed to do i was in nato for a couple years and i don't recall any
peace plans that we had a repeat exercises or peace game well nato needs a mission
well that's true but the treaty that we signed for nato did not include this
given either either nato gets a mission or nato will rot well and that you you know
I'm not justifying it.
I'm simply saying that is a fact, and they know it.
Well, they know it, but they're not bringing it out very well when they come up with this either-or position of, if we don't go in, then the whole area will collapse.
I keep hearing echoes of the uh... the vietnam of domino theory so i know that's that's
absolute crap and uh... i would uh... when we get a week ago look we
could prevent that war from spreading with their power as we brought them to the
table in Dayton with their power so
you know that's baloney well you know it's strange that the people that were so
opposed to to the jury term of god the domino theory
are now employing that as a basis or justification of another well you're exactly right
Fracka.
You're exactly right, and they are the identical people that years ago were out marching around saying, hell no, we won't go.
Yeah.
Same folks.
Yep.
Mm-hmm.
The mess.
And on the bypasser?
Well, at the second go-around... I was going to say, it beats the alternative.
Yeah, it certainly does.
It certainly does.
I think I've lost half a step, or maybe half an aft.
Well, keep your chin up.
I still got a half left, so... I can hear it's there.
Right.
Thanks for the call.
Okay.
Take care.
That is a voice that is not called in many years.
We'll be right back.
Good morning, R.T.X.
Portland.
What a pleasure to get through.
Yes, sir.
Boy, I haven't heard your voice in a while.
Well, I sure hear yours every night, and yours is always just a beacon in the night.
Two quick comments.
I think so highly of Mr. Brown.
I read his second book, and it helped me financially many years ago.
I'm with him right up to this point of the drugs, and I have to back off, because I have some background in it, and people who feel the way he does, and I know libertarians up here, and I'm associated with some.
They're very well-meaning, but it's a form of idealism, and it's just not realistic.
But in any event, it was a very fine show you had with him.
My main comment for calling is about Bob Dole.
You know, I am going to vote for Pat Buchanan in the primary, and I was going to vote for Bob Dole in the general.
But I tell you, I called you just before when Bush and Clinton were running, and I told you that I didn't know that if I could vote for President Bush again, I don't think I'd pull the handle for him.
I don't know about Dole.
I got the same feeling tonight when I heard Bob Dole say what he did about supporting Clinton on Bosnia.
I felt betrayed.
I know.
I feel the same.
I feel very, very bad about it.
I'm going to write him a letter, but that's not going to mean anything.
It's a very discouraging feeling I have.
I don't know where to turn because I need somebody to stand up and
Point out to the opposition to it and not to Not to go along and kind of waffle and say well
I'm sort of opposed, but we're going to go along because of the troops sake is basically what he's saying. I'm very
pragmatic I think it's going to be a Dole-Clinton race, and in such a situation, I have no idea what I'm going to do.
Well, I don't either, but I'm afraid there's some kind of a trade-off going off behind the scenes there.
This Bosnia thing is just not going to work out well, and I'm just so sorry that Dole is uh... getting uh...
you know getting aboard but in any event uh... as always i want to say that i i'm very
grateful for uh... talk radio for men particularly yours because uh...
it is the only chance that people of
everyday citizen has to really get the news and to uh...
given and receive news we just don't get it any other way and
your your to the best thanks a million thank you sir have a good morning
uh... very nice i really don't know what all do
think that like that man are if i had to vote right now i would vote uh... for pat buchanan
in a primary Gary.
Gary.
If the nominee is Bob Dole, and I fully expect him to be, and the race is with Bill Clinton, I don't know what the hell I'm going to do.
I don't want to vote for either one of them.
So, I'm out there slowly twisting in the breeze right now, politically, and I don't know what to tell you about my own situation.
I'm sure that I'm not alone.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Hey, Robert Newolian.
How you doing, Robert?
I'm doing just fine.
I'm kind of curious, do any of these people actually read your book?
They know how you felt about God and stuff.
Well, some of them obviously have.
You know, because they say that you, like, deny them the right to not believe in God?
How could you do that?
I don't.
That's impossible.
I mean, they have the right to believe in whatever they want.
And they are upset that I am comfortable with what I believe in, Robert.
By the way, for those people who haven't read the book, if you don't go get the book, you must be insane.
It is absolutely one of the best things I've ever read.
Thank you.
And I don't even like books that much, but I did rush out as soon as you put it on sale and got it.
I read the entire thing on a flight to San Antonio.
Oh, no kidding.
I couldn't stop reading it.
Once you start it, you've got to finish the book.
Now, listen, I understand you're listening to Whodat, right?
That is correct.
Whodat.
I understand they had trouble with the show last night.
And I take it they've got it back straight tonight.
Oh, yeah.
Good.
Yeah, good.
Yeah, it is a good book.
It really is.
I'm very proud of it, I guess.
You know, the way somebody would be of a child.
And it was...
It was like birthing a child.
It is as close as a man will ever come to birthing a child.
I believe it must be, because you put a lot of things in there I didn't think you would exactly write about.
Right.
And you really did put your heart and soul into it.
I do give you that.
Thank you.
All right.
You take care.
Thank you, my friend.
I did.
So, can I refrain from hitting it one more time?
No, I can't.
It really is what he said.
Thank you.
And this really is coming toward the tail end, and I'm sorry about it, of the autographed copies.
It's a good book whether you get an autographed copy or not.
Okay?
But we've got this little Christmas special going on, and I signed my heart away so you could get an autographed copy of the book.
It is still available, but please ask the operator when you call.
If you can get an autographed copy.
And as far as I know, right now, you can.
But it's coming down to the end of it.
The number to order the Art of Talk, cutesy title, huh?
1-800-864-7991.
I did put a whole lot of very, very personal stuff in there.
And that was very intentional.
And if you ever wrote a book, you would be confronted with the same problem.
You could skip stuff.
There is stuff that you could not say or that you would be a little bit dishonest about.
And when I wrote the book, I had a long talk with myself.
And I said, who cares?
I'm 50.
I don't care anymore.
I'm going to say exactly what I think about talk radio.
About my life, about what I've done with my life, and that's what I did.
So, I was talking earlier with Mr. Brown, and he said, every woman after she has a baby says, never again.
And I am saying never again, and I really mean it.
But of course, I guess all women do too.
But I think this is the only book I shall ever write.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
I'm calling from Renton, Washington.
I still probably don't have very much time, but I wanted to make a comment on the guy who calls from California on disability.
I'm currently on disability, and this is on the subject of listening to your guest.
I had a very good point in taking the government out of all of these agencies because my dealings... I'm on Social Security and I currently cannot get help with my daily medication because I make too much money.
And what they're telling me is they're telling me that the people... You mean you make too much money by virtue of the Social Security you get?
Right.
Per month.
I make $604 a month.
So I'm not entitled to medical coupons.
I get $41 in food stamps a month and if I do decide to get a job, if I make more than $200 a month, they take away my benefits.
So what I'm saying here is I got into a big dispute with the welfare department because they were telling me that basically the people that are on welfare Get medical coupons, need it more than I do because I make more money, but in fact, I pay rent.
Whereas the people on welfare get housing, right?
So they get their housing paid for, they get their electricity paid for, they get hundreds of dollars of food stamps a month.
I pay that out of my pocket.
Well, they're telling me that I have a spend-down program, which basically every three months I have to pay a deductible of $350.
Alright, listen dear, we're going to have to end it.
I'm sorry, the clock is a clock.
I know, I was just going to comment on that.
Listen, the show is over, so call back tomorrow.
Say goodnight America.
Goodnight America, and God bless.
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