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July 21, 2020 - Jim Fetzer
01:57:15
The Conspiracy Guy/The Fetz Presents (19 July 2020) with Kevin Barrett
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We're out there, Kevin. - Okay.
Okay, well, hello to all of our fans.
Yes, yes, yes.
This is Jim Fetzer, The Conspiracy Guy, where today's show is a combination of The Conspiracy Guy and The Fence Presents, because I have a special guest today, which I normally do not for The Conspiracy Guy, but his content and the subject we're discussing is so important that it seems to me everyone interested in any of these issues
Needs to be familiar with these particular matters, dimensions of issues of politics, religion and morality.
My guest, Kevin Barrett, and I go back many years.
We first met in Chicago in 2006 at a 9-11 conference, and we've been close collaborators and friends ever since.
We've done many projects that were enduring.
Together, including a show called The Dynamic Duo on Genesis that ran about a year and a half until Kevin was running for Congress and couldn't both be on the air and campaign at the same time.
We subsequently did False Flight Weekly News together.
We have done many other projects, lectures, conferences together where I have featured Kevin as a speaker.
Or a moderator, including the London conference at Friends House on debunking the War on Terror and the Vancouver hearings.
That was in 2010 and the Vancouver hearings in 2012.
We agree on a lot of issues, but there are others where we disagree sometimes very intensely.
So, we have had occasional strong disagreements, even flare-ups, including on the air.
I don't anticipate that to happen.
But I want to show it hasn't affected our enduring relationship.
Now, I wanted Kevin here, especially because he's a convert to Islam, and he knows a great deal about the three great Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
And where I'm particularly interested in getting a handle on how religion affects morality and politics, just to offer one illustration, the Talmud, which is one source of Judaism of one type, where Kevin is infinitely more expert than I on these subjects, but where I'll make the point in an elementary way,
Asserts a combination of Jewish superiority and entitlement to the lands of Palestine, which are dubious, but the key point being that the superiority of the Jews is so great that the other races are described as inferior.
to the Jews as humans generally are superior to the animals, and that the other races exist only to serve the Jews.
Now, mind you, I'm not attributing this as a view that all Jews hold in common, but it's a view derivative of the Talmud in one of its varieties that clearly shows how religion and morality could be related, because on my understanding, where I'm going to invite Kevin to expand at length, Slavery is immoral if any action is immoral.
So if the other races are supposed to be subservient to the Jews who serve them as their masters because of their inferiority, that's clearly a connection between religion and morality of enormous significance and obviously would have political ramifications.
Where we could talk about politics as something like Social morality writ large but with selective enforcement of certain principles about how persons are supposed to conduct themselves in relation to other persons which have the force of law.
They are enforced by the state.
And there are penalties attached to those violations in the United States.
Of course, the Constitution tells us that we're entitled to life, liberty, and property, and only subject to deprival on the basis of due process of law.
But that's obviously not been the case historically, universally, what have you.
Kevin, with that said, and as an introductor, I want to welcome you to the show.
I'm simply delighted to have you here tonight.
Well, thanks.
Hey, Jim, it's good to be back.
And, of course, I don't fully agree with your take on a couple of those things.
One, the notion of Jewish superiority that you described, and indeed in parts of the Talmud, is very real.
But that is not really the prime driving force of Zionism by itself.
Because actually, the true Torah Jews, or Neturei Karta, today represent this Orthodox Jewish, very Talmudic approach, which actually was the majoritarian approach in Orthodox Judaism prior to 1948, and to a certain degree prior to the 1960s even.
Before the establishment of Israel, the vast majority of Orthodox Jews were strongly against going back to Palestine, unless, of course, God picked them up and carried them there.
But they didn't believe that they should even lift one little finger to get themselves to Palestine.
So, you can't really blame Zionism on the Talmud, per se.
And likewise, let's also emphasize that the Talmud is a huge book of conversation among esteemed rabbis.
And some of what these rabbis say is utterly insane and evil, and a lot of it is really good.
So, and Jews don't see the Talmud as the Word of God.
They just see it as the Word of a bunch of rabbis.
And they argue about it.
So, with that said, other than that, much of what you said I would agree with.
But I would also question whether the kind of morality that you described, secular morality, really has any foundation.
Because if there's no God, or there's no metaphysical reason to be moral, then when human groups set up their moral codes, their secular moral codes, They're just asking to be broken, because each individual can say, I'll be better off if I break the moral code myself, and if I do it in such a way that nobody catches me and I get away with it, and I'm good on the outside but evil on the inside, I'll have the best of both worlds.
People will think I'm wonderful.
And I'll also be rich and powerful, because I cheated to get there.
This is the philosophy, of course, of Leo Strauss, the dean of neoconservatism, who saw quite accurately that, as Dostoevsky said, if there's no God, everything is permitted.
And in a godless world where everything is permitted, the psychopath is the most reasonable man.
Well, it's very interesting you make all those points, Kevin.
I mean, number one, as I explained, I was only using this as an illustration that some Versions or interpretation of the Talmud hold that view to illustrate how religion could impact on morality and politics, and I don't have any problem with your qualifications.
But also, of course, as an agnostic, but also as a person devoted to the principles of morality, I reject the necessity for God to make morality significant in human life.
I believe the philosophical analysis in which I engaged many years ago and have only addressed in part in various of my publications, which I've long since meant to commit to a formal record, Would have it that, you know, you do the right because it is right and not for any benefit or gain.
I reject utilitarianism in both its limited and classic forms or limited utilitarianism would calculate The goodness of an action by the benefits that are derived to a specific or special class, of which Talmudic Jews might be an example, but so could capitalist bankers, you know, and others who extort everyone else to benefit themselves.
Plus classic utilitarianism which says you've got to take the losses to other people into account so that you should only undertake those actions that will maximize, well in Mill's version, happiness for everyone.
I don't think that's defensible either because, you know, roughly we could address the example of the mob mentality which derives greater satisfaction from lynching a couple of blacks at the time than any other alternative Of course, if action would derive in that it's manifestly unjust to the blacks who are, among other points, not being treated with respect, which I take to be the fundamental principle of morality.
So I recognize religious belief, including belief in the afterlife, as a motive for being moral.
But it most certainly doesn't define the nature of morality per se.
And indeed, you have various groups and varieties of religion that believe in an afterlife, but which may disagree nevertheless on how we ought to conduct ourselves toward our fellow man.
So we could begin anywhere, but I'm really pleased with everything you've said so far and welcome.
You know, we're going to have the opportunity for an expansive conversation, which pleases me greatly.
Okay, well, you know, a good place to start might be to point out that universal monotheism takes up sort of where the Jewish version leaves off, in a way.
I think you're right in pointing out that a problem in many Jewish interpretations of their scriptures is this kind of Jewish superiority or chosenness.
And that does show up in different ways in the dominant Jewish interpretations of their scriptures and in Jewish practice.
And it even rubs off on the post-theistic, today's atheist or agnostic people who consider themselves Jews by culture, but not by religion.
Some of them still have a bit of a kind of an entitlement or a superiority complex going.
And that does show in Zionism as well.
Zionism, of course, in some ways is a secular project, but that very secularism that created Zionism is itself a form of messianic millenarian utopianism.
that there was a, and we can trace this back to Shabtai's V, the false messiah of 1666, a very interesting year for such a person to overthrow all traditional morality and declare himself the messiah and say that from now on the tablets of the law have been broken, a very interesting year for such a person to overthrow all traditional morality and declare himself the messiah and say that from now on the tablets of the law have
And there's been this strain of millenarianism that said throw out the law, throw out the revelation.
If we can just throw out our religion, then everybody will live happily ever after, screwing each other's wives in the case of the Danmei, the crypto-Jewish followers of the false messiah, Shabtai Zvi.
So the very secularism that you espouse is the product of these millenarian messianic movements in the past that believe that by getting rid of religious law, they would get to paradise.
So it's one of the ironies.
Secular materialist humanism is a religion, and in some cases a very fundamentalist religion, every bit as dogmatic and fanatical as the most fanatical traditional religion.
So maybe a place to start here would be to talk about how the Jewish traditional religion was modified to become universalist.
And so when we talk about universal monotheism, usually we mean Islam and Christianity, because Judaism is not a universal monotheism.
It's for one particular group alone.
You know, the people who define themselves as Jews, defined as people born of a Jewish mother who go through a very extensive conversion ritual.
Whereas Christianity and Islam put out moral precepts that apply to everybody and basically invite everybody to live by those precepts.
Well, let me just add a few words before we proceed.
If that just means non-theism, of course.
I'm agnostic, so I neither believe that God exists nor I believe that God does not exist.
That's based on what's known as the ethics of belief, advanced by the British philosopher William Clifford, who said, always and everywhere you should never believe anything for which you lack sufficient evidence.
Since the existence of God as well as the non-existence of God are most non-amenable to prove, which is why, of course, there are articles of faith, I decline to embrace articles of faith either theistic or non-theistic.
That, however, doesn't seem to me To be other than a reflection on my standards of rationality as opposed to those of others who accept articles of belief that if they adhered to my standard, Clifford's standard, really, they would not.
And it seems to me that, you know, the analysis in which I embark looks at classic cases of immoral conduct and classic cases of moral conduct and seeks to discern Which among many theories of morality, where I've addressed like 10, can account for those as it were pre-analytic or pre-theoretical classifications.
Murder, robbery, kidnapping, rape being obvious examples of actions that virtually throughout human society have all been regarded as immoral.
Versus, you know, kindness, charity, speaking the truth, honesty, all historically viewed as virtuous or good moral actions.
And the question becomes, is there a theory that can account for that pre-analytic classification while shedding light on controversial cases?
Such as the morality of abortion, for example, which is a particularly sticky wicket in this day and time, and perhaps other cases we could contemplate.
And it has, based upon my analysis, I'm not recounting that here now, but that the third This version of Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative of always treating other persons as ends, as intrinsically valuable in themselves and never merely, merely as means, explains the cases far more adequately than any alternative.
Now, among, for example, I mean, obviously, murder, robbery, kidnapping, and rape are all cases of using other persons merely as means.
And when you are honest and truthful and charitable and kind and so forth, you're clearly being respectful of other persons, where if you wanted a single simple slogan of the nature of morality, Aretha got it right.
R-E-S-P-E-C-T.
She was talking about relationships with her boyfriend or men, but I mean, it's generally applicable across the board where Employers and employees can have moral or immoral relationships if the employer is objecting his employees to excessive working conditions, unsafe
If an employee is ripping off the boss, getting paid for hours by having someone check in for him when he didn't perform the work, stealing from the store and so forth, those would be examples of unethical conduct by an employee.
But so long as employers and employees are treating one another with respect, where the employer Is providing safe working conditions, reasonable hours, and a decent wage.
And the employee is, you know, being responsible and performing the work for which he's paid and not stealing from the boss or committing other acts.
A means relationship where persons are using other persons as means prevail all the time.
When you were on the faculty, in a way, your students were a means.
For you to make an income as an instructor, and you were a means for them to learn and benefit from your scholarship and wisdom, and that was a mutually respectful means-means relationship.
Provided, of course, they were fulfilling their obligations as students, for example, not cheating on exams, you know, and you are responsible, yours, in properly grading their exams and subjecting them to suitable standards of evaluation.
You see where it goes from there.
Now, I would maintain that doing the right is inherently justifiable on its own and, you know, would deny that hypocrisy is a suitable substitute.
Yes, yes, I agree with Strauss.
You're talking about someone who would feign Being a moral person is actually grossly immoral for the very reason that I would espouse to whip.
He's actually interested in using or exploiting other persons to promote his political agenda.
So I think this question of motivation gets fairly subtle.
It doesn't have to be the payoff for acting morally.
is money, recognition, reward.
It has often been observed, I think correctly, that doing right is its own reward.
You do right because it's right and not for other reasons.
This is where the religions offer a motivation for those who may not be of such a character as to be disposed to do the right because it is right and therefore are or may be motivated or at least inclined more to do the right because they expect a reward in the eternal afterlife.
I mean, you know, I recognize that.
This is just as Marx observed that religion was the opiate of the masses, where the masters, in his mind the capitalists, could exploit the working class For their own benefit, by maintaining in men the false belief of a reward in the afterlife.
Take it from there, Kevin.
This is just, you know, preliminary thoughts.
Oh, let me add one more.
I think it's important.
Two points.
One about Judaism and Christianity, and then one about Islam, as I have learned from you.
I had the head of the department, when I was hired as a full professor with tenure at Duluth, on the Duluth campus, the University of Minnesota, Lorne Lomaski, who's a Jewish and a bit of a scholar of Judaism, described to me in a simple way one of the contrasts between Christianity and Judaism.
He said, Judaism has a lot of restrictions on food, but basically no restrictions on sex.
Christianity has a lot of restrictions on sex, but basically no restrictions on food.
Now, maybe less so today than what we might take to be modern variants or not, we could obviously debate about that, where past standards of what was considered to be moral conduct among Christians may have deteriorated considerably.
But I was fascinated to learn in relation to Islam That consumption of alcohol is forbidden, as is sex outside of marriage, which I recall saying to you on one or more occasion, that that was a reason I thought, you know, college guys would be unenthusiastic about converting to Islam.
And of course also equally unenthusiastic about Judaism and Christianity, because I don't know if your Jewish professor friend mentioned that one of the commandments is, thou shalt not commit adultery.
And the Christians are supposed to follow that too.
You know, not married to you.
I mean, that's not the same as fornication.
I mean, you know, having sex outside of marriage is a very common pastime in American culture among college students.
I'm not sure, Judy, I'm not sure how the rabbis talked about that in the Talmud.
I think they had widely different views of it, actually.
Well, I'm talking about an ordinary Christian understanding of the Ten Commandments, yeah.
Right, right.
Thou shalt not commit adultery is not equivalent to thou shalt not have sex outside of marriage, on my understanding, and I think that of most Americans.
But go ahead, Steve.
Right.
Well, you know, that might be actually related to a sort of matriarchal aspect of Judaism.
I had Claire Caw, actually I was on her show, talking about this.
And, you know, she wants to bring secular Koranism to the world.
She thinks the whole world should follow Sharia law.
And specifically, what she thinks is the most important part that needs to be followed is the 99 lashes for adultery, or rather for sex outside of marriage, for fornication.
And her reason, no, no, Claire, I think Kawha, I forget how to pronounce it, K-A-K-L-A-R-K-A-W-K.
But her reasoning is that patriarchy, the rule by fathers, essentially valorizes and values the role of fathers.
So if men want to be respected, then they have to take on the role of father.
What is a father?
A father is someone who is responsible for caring for his family, for his children, and presumably for their mothers.
And essentially, anthropologists, including some very interesting current thinkers like people like Strauss and Howe with their generational theory,
I have noticed that the biggest challenge for all cultures is to transform males, especially young males who are over brimming with testosterone and very, very high energy, energy that tends towards rape and pillage, to transform them into responsible beings.
And to do that, typically, patriarchy, and indeed most cultures are one form or another of patriarchy.
I believe one thing, an estimate by anthropologists I recall seeing years ago when I studied these things in university was that about over 90% of cultures are polygamous, meaning men can have more than one wife, but not the reverse.
And then perhaps 5% or 6% of cultures are monogamous.
And the culture we grew up in, you know, the West, is a culture that grew out of monogamy and Christianity.
And then a tiny fraction, a couple of percent at most would be polyandrous, where a woman could have more than one.
So why is it that way?
Well, because that if children are going to have a heavy investment in, in their preparation for life and heavy investment by very strong testosterone-charged muscular men in protecting them and preparing them to take on their adult roles in life, those men generally need to be assured that the children are theirs.
Everybody knows who the mother is for a child, but it's not so obvious who the father is.
That's one reason why the Jews have this sort of matriarchal setup where if you're born to a Jewish mother, you're Jewish, but not a Jewish father because who knows who the father was, right?
But what Claire points out is that the reason that most cultures have very, very strict taboos on situations where children's fathers are going to be undetermined is because those children aren't going to have much fatherly investment.
You know, male humans aren't quite as bad as the grizzly bears who kill and eat every cub that they didn't father.
They can smell whether they fathered it or not.
And if they didn't father it, they kill it and eat it.
And that's why female grizzlies have their hands full trying to fend off the males.
Men are all not quite that bad, but they tend in that direction.
And so if you don't have a cultural system set up to make sure that the men know who their children are, then children won't have that male protection and investment.
And that's why 98 point whatever percent, 99 percent of all human cultures have a marriage set up that prevents women from having more than one sexual partner.
And that woman's sexual partner is the husband, who may have more than one wife, because you'll still know who the father is no matter how many wives there are.
And this is the basis of human culture.
They'll rape and pillage testosterone-charged energy to do social good and to take care of the weak, the women and the children.
And so Claire notices that Western culture is going to hell in the proverbial handbasket because of the lack of fathers.
There are no strong fathers left in this culture.
And that's the product of the sexual revolution, the pill, the breakdown in monogamy.
The previous family structure that the West had while it was growing and getting stronger and when it was a rising culture has disappeared.
And now we're in an extremely decadent culture where there are problems in the sexual relationships.
The children are not cared for.
And interestingly, it may be very some people will call us racist for noticing this.
But this is the reason why crime rates in the African-American community are off the charts.
You know, the crime rates in almost all other ethnic communities are pretty much about the same.
There are major racial differences in crime rates at most Sociologists attribute to socio-economic differences, but where there also appear to be genetic factors at work, where the crime rate among black Americans is overwhelmingly greater, if you compare four The most recent study I showed compared Asians, whites, Native Americans, and blacks.
And Asians are the most law-abiding by far.
Whites not too far behind them.
Native Americans apparently in part because of a genetic Incapacity to deal with alcohol.
Wind up committing a large number of crimes with blacks compared to those other three groups are off the chart.
Jim O' And Jim, that is because about 70% of Black children today are born out of wedlock.
And so it's become a matriarchy, as Claire Kuhn says.
It's like the whole West, only worse.
And that's the product of a deliberate attack on the black family by the establishment that Daniel Patrick Moynihan tried to stop from destroying the black family in the early 1960s when it was just getting going.
Before that, the crime rate in the African-American community was much, much lower.
But once they succeeded in destroying the black family by foisting these modern, enlightened, secular values on the black community, and they're still doing it by, you know, forcing drag queens into the black community and holding them up as role models and all of this kind of war on traditional morality in the black community, they've succeeded in destroying the black family.
And the result is this The crime, the drugs, the gangster mentality, all of these terrible problems in the black community are precisely coming out of that.
And that's why the Nation of Islam, which adheres to very strict Islamic morality, including of course that sexual morality I was talking about so you know who your kids are, and all kids have a father, They're doing great!
The Nation of Islam is prospering.
These people are some of the, you know, their scholars are the best intellectuals in the country, which is why they're being run out of town on a rail, why Minister Farrakhan is being attacked all the time by the criminal usual suspects who destroyed the black family.
And so this is a perfect illustration of Claire's thesis.
But Kevin, while I would Generally agree with everything you're saying here and certainly on the sociobiological analysis of the importance of paternity.
I'm most interested in taking advantage of your knowledge of these three great religions for their ramifications regarding morality on the one hand and politics on the other.
Let me give you an illustration.
Judaism is obviously consistent with capitalism and with making lots and lots of money, usury.
You know, the compound interest has been described as the greatest evil ever designed by the hand of man.
But Jews don't have a problem with usury.
On the other hand, Muslims eschew usury.
The few countries in the world that have withstood the Rothschild banking empire have been Muslim nations where they couldn't get a foothold, where they want to control their currency and make lots of money.
Now, that's the kind of thing I'm most interested in because it's the kind of thing that My audience and indeed most of the world really does not understand.
So I would love for you to elaborate on this.
Sure.
Yeah, I'd love to, Jim.
You know, I was thinking about this because, you know, we just we had a little a little email flame war going there where I was annoyed that you were calling Barack Obama a Muslim.
And part of the reason I was annoyed, it wasn't maybe it wasn't really entirely your fault, because as I see it, the propaganda that was generated, somebody scripted all this propaganda, making Obama out to be supposedly some kind of crypto Muslim out to impose Sharia law on America.
This propaganda was written by the same people who scripted the propaganda set piece on September 11th, 2001.
And the purpose of both propaganda operations scripted by precisely the same people was to make people hate Islam.
Why is that?
Well, because these people are the international banksters who are building a one-world empire based on compound interest, based on usury.
And as you say, Islam Unlike Judaism, and to a significant extent, unlike Christianity, unfortunately, has hung on to its basic teaching on usury.
And it has to, because it's right there in the Quran, in black and white, very clear.
There's no way you can fudge it or interpret it away.
You're stuck.
Any lending of interest is one of the worst imaginable crimes and it's, you know, it's compared to things that are so horrible I wouldn't even want to say them on the air.
So I think this is why, this is one of the key reasons why we've seen this all-out propaganda war on Islam that has probably, if not hundreds of billions or trillions of dollars perhaps, have been spent on this propaganda war.
Including the 9-11 operation, including all of the stuff coming out on Fox and Breitbart, which was made in Israel, by the way.
The whole, you know, Trump world is just suffused with anti-Islam propaganda manufactured by these people.
And one of the main reasons for that propaganda is precisely to try to prevent the Islamic awakening from picking up ground and gaining steam like it was before 9-11.
Because if it gets big enough, Well, as we both agree, 9-11 wasn't committed by 19 Islamic terrorists who commandeered four planes under the control of a guy off at a cave in Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden was in fact our man in Afghanistan.
He was instrumental in getting Stinger missiles into the hands of the Mujahideen.
They used to shoot down Soviet Helicopters and planes and drive them out.
He was an official, an officer actually, of the CIA, Colonel Tim Osman.
He was visited by an official of the agency at the hospital in Dubai shortly before his death on 15 December 2001, where he was buried in an unmarked grave in accordance with Muslim tradition.
There were local obituaries.
Both Fox and CNN on 26 December published reports that Osama bin Laden was dead.
David Ray Griffin has published a whole book about it, Osama Bin Laden Dead or Alive, but you and I both, I think, agree wholeheartedly that Osama had nothing to do with it, and that this was a script that originated in Israel, I believe,
Ehud Barak and Bibi Netanyahu are the principal masterminds behind 9-11 seeking to devise a plot that would justify the United States entering the Middle East to take out the modern Arab states that served as a counterbalance to Israel's domination of the entire region and eventually to confront the Persian nation of Iran.
It hasn't played out that way, but not for lack of trying.
The intervention of Russia and Iran on behalf of Syria, where Syria's president, most Americans to this day, Kevin, do not know is a democratically elected president of Syria, who enjoys the support of 80% of the Syrian people, so we cannot be there to bring democracy to Syria, which is already a democracy,
But the intervention of Russia and Iran helped to defeat the horde, including ISIS, which, as you also know, was created by the United States by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and John Brennan in 2012, to be a terrorist army, to rape, to loot, to pillage, to murder, to try to bring pressure on the Assad government and eventually to be used against Iran as well.
And of course, you and I both Have profound respect for Iran, which may be the most peace loving nation in the world, having not launched a war of aggression against any other state since 1775.
Would that were true of the United States?
I would hasten to add, however, Kevin, Trump may not, I have condemned him repeatedly for Designating Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, absurd.
Claiming the Golan Heights are a part of Israel when the rest of the world recognized it as Israeli-occupied Syrian territory.
for defunding the UN Refugee Organization that would assist Palestinian and other refugees, for even redefining anti-Semitism by executive order to include any criticism of the actions of the government of Israel, a blatant violation of the First Amendment.
On the other hand, he did withdraw from the Iran Agreement, which I deplore, I've spoken out against again and again and again, but He hasn't gone to war.
If you look at the last six presidents, every one of them had four or five wars, but not this guy.
Do you count the coronavirus attack on China and Iran as a war?
Do you count murdering Soleimani as a war?
The U.S.
wasn't responsible for those.
Soleimani was a Saudi observer.
Oh, Soleimani, I was seeing it at Khashoggi.
Oh, this attack on Soleimani, I took great offense to, Kevin.
I've written several blogs and published about it.
It could be called an act of war.
The only reason that we didn't end up in a big-time war was extreme restraint on the part of Iran, but the odds, when he ordered that assassination, the odds were at least 50-50 that this was going to be leading to an all-out war.
Kevin, I agree.
That was a blunder.
That was an egregious blunder, and I regard it as a despicable act.
And I'm not quite sure what you mean about the coronavirus, because that appears to be a Fauci thing, that they, you know, generated this, Bill Gates.
That would be interesting, but let's not go there, just for the sake of tonight's conversation.
I mean, I've done the whole show.
Okay, well, let's take it back to Iran.
Oh, the coronavirus, sure.
Go back to Iran.
Yeah, Iran is a relatively peace-loving nation, and the reason it's been so restrained, especially under these incredible provocations, is that it's the Islamic Republic, and it is trying to respect Islamic teachings, and one of them, and it's repeated throughout the Quran, is don't commit aggression that God doesn't love aggressors.
the concept of aggression is underlined.
And now, of course, that has been respected in the breach as much as the observance throughout history.
Nominally Muslim rulers in many countries, just like nominally Christian ones and other faiths, have committed aggression.
It's happened.
But it's very, very clear and straightforward in the Koran that it's wrong and it's prohibited.
And so that's certainly one of the things.
That's exactly on point.
That's just what I'm looking for.
You know, major aspects of these religions that make a significant impact on politics.
So I like that very much.
And we both admire Iran.
We've both been to Iran.
You and I traveled to Iran together.
We've both been interviewed frequently by Press TV, the Iranian news service.
I'm a huge fan of Iran.
I do not like the idea.
For me, it's a bottom line issue.
I was really pissed.
When he took out Soleimani, this is a great man, and he had been beneficial to bringing peace and stability to the Middle East, and it was an absolute atrocity for him to have been taken out, also violating the sovereignty of Iraq at the same time.
I mean, this should never have happened.
I couldn't agree more.
On the other hand, I don't want us to be too distracted by some issues where I think we'd agree they were wrong, because I want to focus on these crucial points about how the religions impact.
Your point here about in Islam, That war is objectionable.
No, no, no.
Aggression.
Yeah, yeah.
No, no.
Elaborate.
You have to fight the aggressors.
If there's an aggressor who comes and attacks you, you are required to defend yourself.
And I like the fact that in Islam, usury is issued.
And for Judaism, of course, it's the opposite.
Israel may or may not actually conduct itself in accordance with Jewish principles.
I'd appreciate your contemplation of that relationship.
But in declaring itself to be a Jewish state rather than a democratic state, it became an apartheid state where Palestinians aren't clearly second-class citizens.
And I don't know that they stand morally in any position higher than did South Africa as a black-white apartheid state, although now here it is between the Jews and the Palestinians.
Your thoughts?
Yeah, well, again, the State of Israel has exaggerated this Jewish aspect of chosenness, interpreted as making Jews somehow first-class citizens and non-Jews as second- or third-class citizens.
And that's really unfortunate.
But, of course, that's not the only interpretation of Judaism.
We're starting to see, among some American Jews, a bit of a backlash.
There's always been the anti-Zionist Jews of Neturei Karta.
There have been some left-wing Jews who've been opposed to Zionism.
But now more sort of mainstream American Jews are starting to speak out and say that this apartheid aspect of Israel is wrong.
And they're starting to recognize that the so-called two-state solution, which has always been just a ruse and a trap, is dead.
And that the future is going to be one state, maybe a binational state, in which everyone's equal.
So there are Jews who embrace a kind of universal morality.
Spinoza was one of the first who got in trouble with his community for doing that.
So we shouldn't paint with too broad a brush.
But, you know, getting back to sort of the core teachings of religions, one of the things that drew me to Islam and keeps me in Islam is this very clear and straightforward way of dealing with morality.
And it's no accident that the Islamic Republic of Iran, which is probably the only country on earth today that is essentially organized around trying to follow Islam, albeit one particular interpretation of Islam.
But it's really the only one.
Turkey is sort of moving a little bit in that direction.
And, you know, there's a horrible, hypocritical, warped, deviant spinoff of Islam, Wahhabism, over in Saudi Arabia.
And a lot of Islamic, Muslim majority countries have a certain amount of Islam written into their approach, their laws and so on.
But Iran is the only one that's really gone all the way and is trying to base itself on Islam.
That was the Islamic revolution of Khomeini that set it up that way.
So a lot of the things that you and I respect about Islamic Iran says, such as its brave support for the Palestinians, even at tremendous cost, they know that they could be doing much better materially.
Life would be much easier for them if they caved into the Zionists the way all the other countries in the region have, but they refuse.
They would rather live a more difficult and painful life and do the right thing.
And that comes out of their Islamic nature.
And, Jim, I do think that one of the problems with any kind of system, if you don't have a strong grounding in some form of metaphysical basis for your morality, It's pretty easy to start cutting corners and start being overly pragmatic.
Machiavelli noted that people in leadership positions, the princes of the world, actually end up having to sin, having to lie and cheat and steal and basically behave the way Strauss wants everybody, or at least he wants his followers who figured it out, to behave in order to get to those high positions.
Because if you treat people as means rather than ends in themselves, which as you say is wrong, and I agree with that, it works better in climbing the social hierarchy.
If you have, you know, not every time, but if you take, you know, two people, both highly intelligent, you know, both ambitious, and one of them restricts himself to doing the right thing at all times, and then the other one doesn't, Guess which one rises to the top of the power pyramid nine out of ten times?
Ted Shackley, the famous CIA, he may have been involved in killing Kennedy, but he's definitely a drug runner and a slime ball.
I think it was Shackley who made this very acerbic remark about Jimmy Carter, who of course was taken down by the George Bush wing of the CIA for being too idealistic, and Ted Shackley said You know, the thing about Jimmy Carter, can you believe it?
He actually believes in doing the right thing and letting the chips fall where they may.
He cackled as if it was just, how could anybody possibly be that stupid?
Yeah, that is the inherent advantage of the bad guys over the good guys.
The bad guys are willing to employ means, methods, techniques, lying, cheating, blackmail, extortion, murder.
One reason we have a country like Iran where they're not doing that quite as much as a lot of other countries is precisely because it's the Islamic Republic, because they have a very rich and complex, it's not a simplistic Yeah, I like that, Kevin.
and half of the virgins and the whoreys.
Too bad, and you go to hell and you burn.
That's at the most simple, basic, most surface level for the not-such-bright people.
But there's a very rich metaphysical tradition woven into that, and that infuses the culture, and it gives people a reason to do the right thing.
Yeah, I like that, Kevin.
Now, just to pursue, though, the simpler version, for a Muslim, you must die.
On behalf of the prophet to ascend to heaven and have 72 virgins.
Am I wrong?
You're wrong.
Tell us about the Islamic conceptions of heaven and hell.
Tell us about that.
Okay, yeah.
No, you said you must die for the Prophet to get to heaven.
No, no, no.
There's nothing like that anywhere.
Far from it, because of course most people didn't die.
The very few martyrs, the shuhada, are indeed held to have a specially honored position in paradise, sure.
But that's not the only way to get to paradise, or necessarily not the only way to get to a high station in paradise.
And we should also keep in mind the Qur'an itself tells us that paradise and hellfire are metaphors.
It actually says that.
They're emphal, metaphors.
Or, you know, symbolic images.
So keep that in mind.
And, you know, people can interpret that in whatever way they want.
But I've studied other religions as well, and studied the varieties of religious experience, as William James calls them.
And I've also studied the science of parapsychology, which has demonstrated, beyond any reasonable doubt, that consciousness has a very strange relationship with the material world.
That is, that it's possible for a person's consciousness to leave their bodies, travel around, see things far away.
It's possible for consciousness to move material objects around directly by thinking about them, by projecting force from the consciousness.
It's possible for consciousnesses to exchange information in telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance.
So the consciousness, what we call in scientific culture the consciousness, is not a material phenomenon.
It's something that is in the material world, but not of it.
And so all religions have, one way or another, told us that our soul, or immortal spirit, or whatever words they use, is going to be there even after our bodies die and indeed they leave our bodies while we sleep and while we dream and so the fate of our consciousness soul spirit whatever you want to call it has meant many religions say that it has something to do with what we've done in the world Tibetan Buddhists
for example have a picture of heaven and hell that's actually very similar to islam's in certain respects and they you know they just say it's real this is what you experience you know timothy leary read this and he said wow this is the kind of thing that people experience on lsd trips when they leave their bodies and see something much greater than the ordinary material world.
So the Tibetan Buddhists whisper in your ear while you're dying to make sure that you know that the horrific hellfire visions that you're witnessing while you die, if you're a normal person who hasn't managed to overcome their desiring ego, what in Islam we call the nusra amrabisu, the ego that if you're a normal person who hasn't managed to overcome their desiring ego, what in Islam we call the nusra amrabisu, the ego that desires evil or the desiring ego, if you haven't gotten some detachment, some non-attachment from that in your life, and you haven't been good and submitted to God, as and
So the Tibetan Buddhists have a master who whispers in your ear as you're dying saying, you see this hellfire that you're burning in, this horrible hellish monster that's devouring you, that's just your own appetite that you didn't subdue while you were alive.
And they're hoping that they can convey that non-attachment to you before you've fully left your body and gone off into eternity, where if you burn in hellfire and get devoured by monsters for eternity, it's not going to be very pleasant.
So, there's a metaphysical reality to this, and that's what all religions are talking about, if they're authentic religions.
Authentic religions are the record of a transmission of truth about these matters that are ordinarily in the world of the Raib, the unseen world, the world that we can't measure with our senses and with scientific instruments.
And yet, it's absolutely real, and in some cases, really more real than the material world.
Truthful communications about this larger dimension, larger reality, have come to people in cultures throughout all of history.
And the people that bring that kind of revelation to a community and then it gets enshrined in that community are prophets.
And in Islam we believe that there have been countless prophets coming to all communities One would assume that the Buddha, Lao Tzu, and people like that were probably prophets to their communities, and that these prophetic messages then guide the community.
And both in terms of sort of the more prosaic kind of morality that you were discussing and in terms of more profound aspects of why it is that acting properly according to that morality will lead you to have a peaceful soul.
And that peaceful soul will allow you to enter paradise when you die.
That, you know, that God will say, you know, welcome to my garden.
And or as the Tibetan Buddhists would say, you won't be harassed by these demonic images, this LSD bad trip kind of stuff, the hellfire burning you to death for eternity.
You won't experience that because you have let go of the part of yourself that is dominant and craving and full of anger and full of greed, full of hatred and so on and so forth.
So religions are both about that prosaic morality of treating other people as ends, not as means.
And then also, the reason for that morality, there's a deeper sense in which that kind of morality isn't just something that some philosopher worked out by drawing logic diagrams on a chalkboard.
That morality actually has everything to do with the dimension of reality that you are going to rise to, hopefully, or hopefully not fall into.
Well, bear in mind, Kevin, that I'm skeptical about an awful lot of the things you've just said, and it's not for lack of research on artificial intelligence or the nature of cognition or the nature of mentality.
Books on all of the above.
I've developed and pursued the theory of signs of the great American philosopher Charles S. Peirce, which is the foundation for a theory of minds, where what it is to have a mind is to be able to use signs, and because signs come in different classifications and types, there can be minds of different classification and types, where human minds are far more versatile in the range of kinds of signs they can use
and other forms of life, but where you can find a progression through evolution from simpler forms of mentality to more complex, up to the most sophisticated human mentality, but where consciousness involves the ability to use signs of a certain kind, and occurs, cognition but where consciousness involves the ability to use signs of a certain kind, and occurs, cognition is a result of having both consciousness or that ability to use signs of a certain kind, and the presence of signs of a certain kind that brings about a
and the presence of signs of a certain kind that brings about a causal interaction that yields cognition, perception, recognition, understanding.
We could go into that in great detail.
What I'm saying here is the bottom line is in my own research and investigation, I have found no good reason to adopt many of the views you were describing there.
I don't object to other persons adopting them, but I haven't felt The compulsion to believe.
And again, I revert to William Clifford's Ethics of Beliefs.
But my point is more like this.
Let's look at these different religions.
What is the afterlife like?
I mean, you alluded to the virgins.
Is that then part or not part of an Islamic conception of the afterlife?
What is heaven and what is hell if you live a good life according to Islamic law?
And I want to revert to then what that good life would come to and contrast it with a Jewish or Christian parallels, if you would.
Yeah, that's a really good question.
So, the Jews actually are not very oriented towards the afterlife.
And this features in the book from Loran Guyanoa, From Yahweh to Zion.
I translated this.
The author, Loran Guyanoa, is a French historian.
And I think it's the best book available on the Jewish question.
If you want to get into all of the controversial areas about Judaism, you can't find a better guide than Laurent Guillenot in From Yahweh to Zion.
And he points out that the Jewish tradition basically sees the after, well, much of it just doesn't even, they don't even deal with the afterlife.
They focused entirely, focused on this world.
And the kind of eternal life that is offered is essentially one's progeny.
So the tribe of Israel, the descendants of Jacob, who then was named Israel after struggling with God, become this tribal Jewish community.
And they, you know, well, hey, God promised him he would have thousands of children spread out like the stars and so on.
And so for Jews, the only real immortality is through your progeny.
And that's one reason they're very attached to this intergenerational project of having successful tribal progeny down through the generations.
And for Christians and Muslims, on the other hand, the afterlife is very important.
You know, unlike for Jews who have seen, you know, to the extent there is any afterlife in classical Judaism, it's shi'ul, which is a word that describes a place that's just kind of cold and damp and dark.
It's basically just being in the ground forever, it sounds like.
Not much of an afterlife there.
But the Christians and Muslims both have held out these visions ...of paradise and hellfire.
And the Quran is really the strongest source of this, and in some ways for Christians as well as for Muslims.
Most Christians don't know it, but the most memorable descriptions of the afterlife in all of Christian literature, which, of course, is the Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, borrowed heavily from Islamic literature in its descriptions of hell, purgatory, and paradise.
Specifically, the kind of literature that Dante borrowed from, and some would say even plagiarized, although it's certainly brilliant plagiarism, consisted of the stories of the Isra and Miraj literature.
Now, the Isra and Miraj literature describes the Prophet Muhammad, peace upon him, ascending to heaven, traveling from Arabia to Jerusalem in a miraculous manner at night, and then making this night journey upward from the rock,
where the Dome of the Rock and the Meschil Uqsa currently stands, where the Dome of the Rock and the Meschil Uqsa currently stands, and going right up to paradise by way of passing through these different levels of paradise and meeting previous prophets, including Jesus, you know, basically all of them, Moses, Jesus, and So those descriptions became very elaborate in Islamic literature.
And likewise, the Isra'il Miraj literature brought in descriptions of hellfire, which are also based on Quranic descriptions.
And so, that very rich literature, very imaginative and descriptive literature, became what Dante apparently must have had a library full of, because he took it and With sheer genius, he adopted it for his Christian vision of hell, fire, purgatory, and paradise.
So really, Christians can thank or blame the Muslims for much of what they have in their tradition concerning these visions of the afterlife.
So what are they?
Well, basically, the key source document for this is the Quran.
As I recall, the Injil, or the Christian Gospels, don't have, there aren't a whole lot of vivid descriptions of the afterlife there, and certainly there aren't in the Hebrew Bible, but in the Quran there are.
And these descriptions, as the Quran says, they're Amthal, so we're being told that they're metaphors.
The reality is apparently much greater than the description, but we shouldn't take it 100% literally.
That's not going to stop some Muslims from taking it 100% literally, but But it's right there, saying that they're Amthal, and so these descriptions essentially tell us that those who do good works, who have heart knowledge, or sometimes it's translated as belief, those who have belief or heart knowledge, and those who do good works, who do good things, the Amilu-Salihati,
They're the ones who are saved and destined for paradise.
And then there are other descriptions as well describing the companions of the right hand and the companions of the left hand as another way of sorting out the sheep and the goats, the people of hellfire versus the people of paradise.
And so the descriptions of these two are often, you know, they're very intense.
And the Hellfire descriptions can be very, very awful with, you know, eternal torments of various kinds.
And the descriptions of Paradise are this essentially a Just a pleasure garden of beauty beyond the imagination with the most beautiful companions, the most beautiful vegetation, the most delicious and beautiful food.
Just sheer exquisite beauty and the higher form of pleasure, the highest form of pleasure imaginable.
And then that experience for eternity.
There are descriptions of the mansions of paradise, beautiful dwelling places as well.
So essentially these descriptions are giving us sort of a metaphor for beauty and exquisite goodness and joy and so on in the most intense possible way.
And then on the other side, in the descriptions of hellfire, giving us descriptions of the most horrific torments and suffering.
And we're told that both of them are, well, if not eternal, they certainly would be close to it.
And there's an argument among the Muslim interpreters and scholars about whether these states are in fact eternal or not, because the Quran says that everybody goes back to God ultimately.
And so people like Ibn al-Arabi have said that that means everybody goes back to God, even the worst sinners who go down to the lowest level of hellfire and suffer for a very, very long time in the very worst torment.
Ultimately, that burns away their sins and they go back to God, too, which is the supreme triumph, of course, is ultimately being with God.
So that's my capsule description of paradise and hellfire.
Well, let me pursue that just a bit.
The only time in my life I was engaged with organized religion was in junior high and high school.
I was an acolyte, I sang in the church choir, I became a member of the Young People's Fellowship, president of the Young People's Fellowship, gave a sermon on Youth Sunday, was a delegate to the 14th World Convention on Christian Education held in Tokyo, Japan.
But all that, I found certain aspects of it puzzling.
When they talked about the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, it made me wonder, are we talking about one God or three?
I had that problem, too.
That's why I came to Islam.
Yeah, well, it was puzzling to me.
Your depiction is far more, as it were, sensual than anything I ever envisioned in those years when I was active, which had a much more rarefied quality of, you know, whatever was in the afterlife.
I mean, you were, you know, it was eternal, but I got sort of a purity about it that seems, and very non-earthly, certainly, The idea of sensations was remote from any conception I thereby derived, though my experience was extremely limited, Kevin.
What intrigues me is that when you get into the idea of the 72 virgins, for example, I mean, you know, that just seems very, very different.
I mean, I can't say it would be less appealing.
It's just totally different categorically.
And tell me, How do the virgins factor into all of this?
Right.
Well, the word for this is like the huridin, the huris, which is... that's not the word for virgin.
So that's not a good translation.
The Huris are described as the most beautiful companions.
And it's part of this image of a beautiful garden, with just surrounded with the most, you know, exquisitely beautiful and wondrous things.
And so it's, So the beautiful companions—and they're a beautiful companion of both sexes, by the way.
There's a verse describing these beautiful boys who, I believe, bring the cups of the paradisical wine.
One of the reasons we avoid drinking alcohol here on Earth is the description that the wine of paradise is so much better.
It doesn't—you know, there's no hanging over and no wrong kind Go taste your most expensive wine on earth.
Go to the Rothschild mansion and take a taste of the best wine that's ever existed and that compared to your Mad Dog 2020 and then you know imagine multiplying that by a zillion fold and then you get the idea of what the wine of paradise would be like compared to even Rothschild's wine on earth.
And so again, these are all metaphors.
And the metaphor of the Huris, again, who are not virgins, but they're pure.
They're pure, is the way they're described.
These pure and beautiful beings who are companions.
It doesn't get into, like, sexual descriptions or anything.
There's no sexual description in the Quran at all about this.
Being in a beautiful pleasure garden with beautiful people, companions, is really what it's about.
And so again, I think this is a metaphor, a metaphor for sort of what's the best thing that you can imagine in this life?
Well, multiply it by a zillion fold, and that's paradise.
Now Dante certainly gave graphic depictions of heaven and hell, you know, as you've given us a thumbnail sketch.
And they're very like Is there any kind of physical interaction between persons in heaven or in hell?
on earth.
I mean, you know, tortures, racks, all that kind of stuff and pleasures and so forth and so forth.
Is there any kind of physical interaction between persons in heaven or in hell?
I mean, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that there are actual punishments and pleasures that are experienced or inflicted in each of those domains of totally opposite character, of course.
I mean, how real are these experiences supposed to be?
Well, I think they're, in a sense, more real than our experiences here on Earth, because the Quran says that the next world is better and more lasting.
And I guess better in the sense that we would think of better would apply more to paradise than to hellfire.
But it's all kind of metaphysical cosmology of the Quranic revelation, which actually fits pretty well in a lot of ways with Neoplatonism and with other aspects of what's sometimes been called the perennial philosophy.
That is, based on reports of the mystics throughout all the ages, there are certain kinds of statements about ultimate reality that keep cropping up over and over and over and over and over in a whole lot of wisdom discourses of various kinds.
So ultimately, the next world is more real than this world.
But, these descriptions are just metaphors.
That is, they don't really do justice to the actual thing that's being talked about.
And this is very basic to the Quranic discourse as well.
You know, you've heard the expression, Allahu Akbar, God is greater.
Sometimes it's translated as, God is greatest, because in Arabic, there isn't that distinction between the comparative and the superlative.
So, Allahu Akbar, God is greater.
Well, greater than what?
Greater than everything.
That's where it becomes superlative, but also greater than the most accurate possible description we could ever imagine of God.
That the reality that we're talking about here is something that just, you know, completely beggars description.
It's ineffable.
And the same is true to perhaps a lesser extent of these descriptions of paradise and hellfire.
That is that if you end up in paradise, what you'll really be experiencing is something that's only been suggested by these gorgeous descriptions in the Quran.
The reality is that those descriptions tell us they're all or they're all.
The reality has got to be something different and probably like even more real.
It's like, you know, how do I explain this?
I guess we have to go back to the mystics.
The mystics tell us, and these are mystics from all traditions, they're authentic mystics who have had very similar experiences of ultimate reality coming out of all different religious and philosophical traditions, and they have very similar reports.
And one of the things they all say is that this vision that they've had of how things really are, which is really different from how things look when we're in our ordinary state of consciousness, That's actually more real.
In other words, when they come back to, you know, oh, here I am sitting in my chair with my desk in front of me and my house and all this stuff and, you know, I'm at this moment in time and I've got plans, all of this stuff, that's all like, you know, that's just like a wisp of a dream.
There's something fundamentally unreal about that because what they saw when they were in that state of mystical ecstasy, that's reality.
That's the real thing.
And indeed, the Quran does insist on this, that we're living in a world that's not as real as the realms that are closer to God, probably including the afterlife.
And Neoplatonic cosmology, as well as other versions of the perennial philosophy, basically agree with this.
They all kind of have God or the source of everything as being ultimate reality.
And then as what we might call creation of the cosmos emanates from God or the Godhead as the Christians say, it descends through these different levels and becomes progressively less and less real.
And so you have the realm of the angels, the beings of light that are closest to God, sort of revolving around this absolute oneness of the origin, which is God.
And then as you get further away, you get to the sort of fiery realm of the djinn.
And then you go a little further away into a state of even less reality than that.
And now you're in this kind of damp and cold place of material reality that we live in.
So we're living in an unreality and the Quran tells us that while we live, we dream.
And when we die, we wake up to the real reality.
It appears to me, Kevin, that the afterlife is very vivid and significant within Islam.
That it's a relatively scant significance in Judaism and Christianity is somewhere in between.
Certainly, I've never heard any Christian depicted of anything remotely akin to, you know, your Very detailed conception here.
I find it all fascinating.
Let me step back and ask this kind of question.
Go ahead.
Go ahead.
Okay.
Traditional Christianity, real, authentic traditional Christianity, is actually more otherworldly than Islam is.
Islam advocates a balance between this world and the next, and classical Christianity is much more oriented only towards the next life.
Go back and read your medieval literature.
Well, yeah, maybe I'm just thinking from a more oriental, Ordinary point of view.
Let me ask you this.
Would gays, lesbians, bisexuals have equal opportunity to enter heaven in Islam, Christianity and Judaism?
Well, you're going to get me in trouble here, Jim.
So, I would say in probably all of the above, not really.
I mean, and one of the key places to go would be the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.
And all three traditions use that story to say that these cities of the plain, Sodom and Gomorrah, were destroyed by God and or God's angels because they were given over to this type of sin.
And so that's something that essentially authentic traditional Judaism, Islam, and Christianity basically agree about.
Now, today we're living in a world dominated by this new religion of secular humanism, which, as I said, is a messianic, millenarian, utopian spin-off of these monotheistic religions.
It comes out of this belief that if we just destroy the traditional religions, everything will be in paradise.
And so that belief has led to the establishment of this religion that dominates the modern world today, which says, basically, do what thou wilt will be the whole of the law, as Aleister Crowley puts it, or life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, as the Founding Fathers put it.
And those two things are almost identical when you get right down to it.
The Marquis de Sade saw that.
So, in any case, long story short here, no, in no authentic monotheistic religious tradition, Judaism, Christianity, or Islam, is homosexuality considered anything other than a terrible sin.
And that's very, very clear in Quran with its passages about Sodom.
And so, today, anybody who says that they're a Muslim or a Christian or a Jew, but they're tolerant, they support gay marriage and this sort of thing, that person is not a Muslim, Christian, or a Jew in any sense that anybody would have ever recognized throughout the history of those religions.
That person is, in fact, a follower of this modern religion of sinism, individualism, and pursuit of one's own gratification and That's very interesting, Kevin.
I mean, I would have thought, you know, for example, Christians in the New Testament, forgiveness, law of compassion, forgiving people, especially if it is the case that your sexual orientation is a genetic predisposition that you really can't do a lot about it.
You might expect Christians at least to be more forgiving, and potentially tolerant and accepting of gays and lesbians and bisexuals than Muslims.
I mean, I certainly take what you're saying to be authentic in relation to Islam.
If my friend Lauren Lomansky was correct in saying Judaism, you know, has all kinds of prescriptions on food but not on sex, I would think Judaism would be tolerant of gays, lesbians, and bisexuals too.
But you're implying that's not the case.
Please do elaborate.
Sure.
Yeah, based on my reading of these religions, I think I think the vast majority of the people, you know, the authorities in these religions have always argued that homosexuality is a grave sin.
Now, wait a minute.
You were right, though, that we would never say it's impossible for a person who's committed this or that sin, or even gone so far as to identify with a particular sin, making some sin the cornerstone of their identity.
Like, hey, I'm a murderer!
Or, hey, I'm a drinker.
I'm a drinker of a forbidden drug.
I'm an addict to a forbidden drug.
Or, I'm a covetous person.
I'm a coveto-sexual or something.
Or, I'm a, you know, I covet my neighbor's wife.
So making a sin the cornerstone of your identity, that sounds really pretty crazy under any traditional religious view of things.
But the sin itself, that is these actual sexual acts, It's certainly, nobody in any of these religions would say that God couldn't forgive them.
God can forgive any sins if He wants to.
In Islam, the first two characteristics of God, the first two tangible characteristics embodied by names of God are the merciful, all-merciful, all-compassionate, Ar-Rahman, Ar-Rahim.
And that suggests that God's mercy is very essential to God's nature.
We do, just like in Christianity, there is that emphasis on forgiveness, you know, on the merciful gods, there is also in Islam.
Equally so, I believe.
But, so it's not that we're saying that no, you know, no homosexual or no thief or whatever could ever go to heaven, but that doesn't mean that stealing or buggering are sins.
Let me turn more in a political direction.
If we take a kind of a simplified model of communism, socialism, capitalism, communism, no private property, basically the state controls the means of production, socialism, I'm thinking of this more in the sense of corporatism, a la Mussolini, a merger of big business with big government, but we could introduce various variations.
Capitalism, lots of private ownership, profit-motivated housing.
I'm wondering how the religions stack up in relation to those three.
Admittedly, grossly oversimplified.
You can introduce whatever subtleties you think are appropriate here.
But it seems to me right off the bat that given that Islam is Jews' usury, Well, Judaism embraces it, that Judaism and capitalism are far more in harmony than is capitalism and Islam.
Am I mistaken?
No, I think you're right.
And I think Karl Marx would agree with you.
Karl Marx, even though we may not fully agree with his millenarian messianic philosophy in all of its details, he was a very shrewd observer of history and of his own times.
And I'm sure you've probably read what Karl Marx had to say about Jews and money.
He said Jews had made money their god.
And so there has been that tendency, whereas in Islam, We are warned against piling up wealth.
There's Surat al-Takathur, Al-Hakum al-Takathur, Hatazurtum al-Maqabir.
You just pile up wealth until you visit the tomb, and then you will know.
Yes, then you will know.
And what you'll know is that you really screwed up.
You spent your life piling up wealth, you screwed up.
So in Islam, you're really supposed to give away anything you have beyond what you need.
But I think we should also Say not only is you know that that teaching of not piling up wealth and of course the absolute really strict intense ban on usury in Islam, but there's also a tendency to a cultural tendency to not form corporations, but rather to engage in individual sole proprietorships and
And indeed, the whole notion of a corporation is culturally foreign to us because in Islam, we go straight to God.
There is, as Bernard, the famous Jewish M.I.C.
orientalist, said correctly, in Islam, there's no church and there's no state.
That is, in Islam, the law is a law that all of us are following because of We're doing it because it's right, and because God told us to.
99% of it has no human enforcement whatsoever.
The Sharia is not enforced by humans, most of it.
I'm obliged by Sharia to pray five times a day, but nobody's going to arrest me if I don't.
And that's been true throughout all of Islamic history, with very few exceptions.
I think we need to expand on that.
Tell us more about Sharia law.
There are a lot of Americans who are worried that Sharia law is being imposed on the United States, but most, I think, have no idea what that would even mean.
Could you elaborate on the nature of Sharia law?
I think what you said in Islam, there's no church and there's no state.
That's absolutely fascinating, and I think Profound about Islam.
Could you just elaborate then on Sharia law?
Well, sure, but before I get there, let me just make the point I was making, which is that corporations grow naturally out of Christianity, because Christianity does have a church, you know, the organization ...the bureaucracy with the Pope at the head, the bishops and so forth, and that church has a life of its own.
So you imagine a corporate entity in the form of the church, or your local church or whatever, and the corporation kind of grows out of that.
That's where we get our modern notion of the corporation, where in Islam there's no such thing, and it indeed would be considered kind of wrong to have some kind of, you know, group that is, you know, goes...
In Islam, we have to go straight to God.
Go through rabbis.
We don't go through priests.
We don't go through popes.
We go straight to God.
Yes, we can ask the best scholars we can find for interpretations of things, but ultimately, we're on our own with God.
We're going straight to God.
So, you don't have a church in the sense of a corporate body, and for that reason, culturally, the world of Islam has been very slow to adopt corporations.
It's still a world of lots of sole proprietorships for the most part.
Everybody in Islamic cultures wants to be in a sole proprietorship.
Doesn't want to be working for some big corporate body.
And this notion that there could be corporate personhood, that there's this corporation, a totally imaginary entity that exists like a person does, it's imaginary.
It doesn't exist.
There's no such thing.
But in the Christian culture, people have gotten used to this kind of notion.
So they have corporations.
If Islam ruled the world, there wouldn't be any corporations.
And in fact, the whole idea, what is a corporation?
It's essentially a way of getting out of individual responsibility.
That's what limited liability means.
A limited liability corporation means your assets aren't on the line with this group that you're doing things in.
So whatever you do when you're in that group, you're not responsible for it.
And that is profoundly wrong.
In Islam, we're responsible for everything, and our fate in the afterlife depends on exactly what we did.
We're going to face perfect, absolute justice for what we did.
And, of course, in Christianity you won't, because all you have to do is say, Jesus died for my sins, and you get a free ticket to paradise.
So, again, one of the ways that Islam is much more profoundly rational, sensible, and healthy than its rival religions.
So let's now get to Sharia.
Sharia... I have one question before we turn the page.
Does that mean in Islam even small companies of workers working together is somehow inappropriate or improper?
I mean, we have mega corporations like Amazon and Costco and Walmart and we used to have Sears and Roebuck and Macy's and Penny's and General Motors and Ford and all that, Boeing, McDonnell Douglas.
Is there something somehow non-Islamic about those companies by virtue of being corporations?
Well, culturally, it's all in Islam.
It's all individuals contracting with other individuals.
So the notion that there's some imaginary entity called X corporation is, I mean, it's gotten into the culture in Islamic countries now.
But it's not really, you know, it's not a native thing from Islamic cultures.
So, So, like, if you work for, you know, like Joe Schmo builds up a successful business at the local souk selling, you know, pot That's pans and, and, uh, ends up with a whole, a little extra money.
And so he hired you to go get him some, whatever else, uh, you know, the next train station to take a caravan to Damascus and get some stuff and bring it back and stuff.
You're working for Joe.
You know, you're not like part of, uh, Joe Schmo incorporated or, or some other name, some, you know, general Jonas incorporated.
No, you're just working for Joe.
And so everything is done on the basis of individuals contracting with individuals, which is what's really going on in the world.
Corporations don't exist.
They're just an insane hallucination.
We've invented this notion that there's such a thing as Apple computers.
There's no such thing.
It's just a bunch of people that get together to organize other people to put stuff together into computers and sell them.
That's all it is.
It's people.
Well, don't you think it has to do with Liability, responsibility, legal obligation, you know, commercial exchanges, returning defective products, giving warranties on your products.
Isn't this coronavirus thing Terrible, terrible from the point of view of Islam because it's wiping out the middle class.
It's wiping out small businesses throughout the country.
David Icke was really the first, I think, to put his finger on it right off the bat.
That would be the effect.
That is being the effect.
It seems to me that what you have been saying makes Islam far more Compatible and supportive of small businesses, maybe family businesses, big corporations, regardless of their enterprise.
Am I wrong?
No, you're absolutely right.
And yeah, you're right on in all of that.
So let's move on to Sharia, because that's so misunderstood.
Now, the reason that everybody's panicking about Sharia, not everybody, but the people who are panicking about Sharia in America, are basically unsophisticated People who don't have much of a knowledge base who are being subjected to the same kind of Zionist propaganda that we got on 9-11.
You know, it's a mind control operation.
They want you to be afraid of the Muslims.
That's why they blew up the Twin Towers and told you that Muslims did it.
You know, that's why they have spent billions and billions of dollars every year pumping out all of this crazy stuff about how scary, scary, scary Muslims are.
And of course, there are reasons why they're doing this, because number one, they don't want Muslims to put an end to the usury system that's being used right now to create this new world order or one world government.
So what is Sharia really, as opposed to this scary image that they put out?
People are going to have their heads and hands chopped off and this and that.
Well, no, I had an interesting conversation with David Friedman, who is Milton Friedman's even more radical libertarian son.
And David said that Islam is the closest that any human beings have ever gotten to creating a truly libertarian society because it's a legal system.
That is primarily based on God.
That is, the enforcement mechanism isn't there other than God.
You're gonna get your just desserts when you face the final judgment, and that's why you do the right thing and follow the Sharia.
So, as I said, 99% of Sharia is not enforced by humans.
I have to pray five times a day, and I have to do various other things, I have to fast for Ramadan, and so on and so forth, and there's of course a lot more.
That stuff is not going to be ever enforced by other people except informally.
So yeah, maybe, you know, my family will remind me to pray.
If they see that I'm going to miss a prayer, they'll tap me on the shoulder and remind me.
So, and this is the informal way that most of Sharia actually is enforced to the extent that there is any enforcement by any other people.
So that's the most important thing to keep in mind about it.
The second really important thing to keep in mind is that essentially none or very little of it Would ever apply to anybody who's not Muslim.
And so if you look at the way that it was actually applied in real life, and of course, reality is always a lot more messy than theory.
The typical kind of Muslim ruled lands would have people, they would have Jews, they would have Christians, they might have some Zoroastrians, they might have some Hindus or Buddhists or Najians or whatever they have.
Those people would have their own community, and they would be expected to have their own laws and their own rules, and they would follow their own rules.
So throughout the history of Islam, most of the great Islamic cities would have a Christian quarter, maybe multiple Christian quarters, because there are all these different sects of Christianity.
So there'd be the Armenian Christian quarter here, and then there'd be maybe a little Catholic quarter over there, and there'd be a Nestorian, which is pretty close to Islam quarter over here.
There'd be these different kinds of Christians, and each one would have their own neighborhood, and then each one would basically create their own law and enforce their own law on their own people.
And only when there was like a threat to the larger social order would...
Would the Muslim ruler who sort of dominated the Muslim city or society have any forces of order step in to restore that order?
So it's essentially a vision of people ruling themselves informally in the most, you know, in a form of devolution of power to the lower level, starting with the individual in their relationship with God.
That's where 99.9% of it really is in the first place.
And then the family helps the individual follow the Sharia or the path, the straight, wide path.
And then the larger community might help out.
And only in rare instances would this ever be enforced by any real enforcement mechanism.
And again, it's a pluralistic thing.
So if there were ever, like if the United States, God willing, turned into a Muslim country, and that's not going to happen anytime soon, let's be realistic here.
barring the most extreme kind of miracle.
But if that happened, like, well, let's say people wake up and realize that Islam is monotheism 1.3, and they start converting in droves.
And let's imagine this were to happen.
So at some future date, America becomes majority Muslim, and Sharia law becomes the dominant law.
How are the non-Muslims going to deal with that?
Well, they're going to have their own rules.
They're going to be living in their own communities with their own rules.
And so, even though the Muslims might not let each other drink alcohol, the Christians are perfectly welcome to drink alcohol, and they do!
Just like throughout all of Islamic history, in the Muslim-majority lands, there have always been these Christian quarters of Christians who were perfectly free to drink alcohol, and they did!
And they might get in a little trouble sometimes if they were serving Muslims in their bars and things like that.
There's always that kind of issue in these kinds of societies.
So people shouldn't worry so much about Sharia, because number one, it ain't going to happen in my lifetime, barring the most extreme kind of miracle.
Number two, even if it did, 99% of it isn't even enforceable by anybody, even for Muslims.
And then number three, if you're not a Muslim, You don't have to follow things like don't drink alcohol or this or that or the other.
You follow your own rules.
If you're a Catholic or a Christian, you follow your own Christian community's rules, etc., etc.
Yeah, but that's just fascinating.
That's really just fascinating.
Now, tell me, how would The behavior of Americans as Muslims differ from their behavior now.
I mean, you made the nice point about non-enforcement, but what would be the behavior, the expectations, the differences in expected behavior if one were conforming to Sharia law rather than not?
Well, you know, one way you could get a sense of it would be to go down to your local African-American neighborhoods and hang out with people in the Nation of Islam and other Muslims, and then hang out with people who are not Muslim in those same neighborhoods.
Frankly, I think that comparison would grossly favor the Muslims.
Okay, right off the bat I can see they wouldn't be drinking, they wouldn't be carousing, they wouldn't be indulging with hookers, they probably wouldn't be smoking pot, shooting heroin, smoking crack.
Am I right on all the above for openers?
Yeah, I mean basically there would be more stable families, lower crime rates, and lower rates of other negative social indicators.
There's a doctor in India named Dr. Javed Jamil who wrote a book called Muslims Most Civilized But Not Enough.
In which he went through vast amounts of statistics and compared Muslim and non-Muslim communities on these negative social indicators of all these things he considered negative, most of which you and I would too, of crime and suicide and violent crime and drug addiction.
And, you know, disease and children born out of wedlock, he included.
And some people might not agree with that.
But anyway, all these things he thought were negative social indicators.
And what he found was that, overall, the Muslim societies are doing significantly better than the non-Muslim ones on pretty much across this whole broad range of social indicators.
And so I think if Americans came to Islam, what we would see would be It might not be quite as extreme as the contrast between the people in the black, poor neighborhood who are not Muslim versus the ones who are, and especially who are in the more organized group, the Nation of Islam, but it would be like that.
People would be more responsible, with more stable families, more peaceful in heart, less given to all kinds of unfortunate behavior and experiences.
I've been impressed with the Nation of Islam, Kevin.
I have.
And I think the points you've made in praising its members and its leader, Louis Farrakhan, are well-founded.
Let me ask this.
Is there a critique of the Constitution, per se, from an Islamic point of view?
Or is the Constitution sufficiently broad and general that Muslims can survive and thrive in the United States and be perfectly compatible or comfortable with the Constitution as the framework.
Or, as some activists are asserting, we have to tear the system down and rebuild it.
It's very fuzzy what they really have in mind, but something totally different.
It's really a question of reform versus revolution.
We seem to have a lot of actual revolutionaries out there.
Would there be any reason for Muslims to be revolutionary about reforming the American government?
I mean, we all know that malfeasance, corruption, and so forth are unworthy and need to be exposed.
I mean, in principle, in terms of the Organization of the state as having three branches of government, the executive, the legislative, the judiciary, and all that.
Having an electoral college, having periodic elections, having representative government.
Is all that perfectly compatible with Islam or not?
Well, that's a very interesting question.
In the context of today's kind of revolutionary movements coming out of the woke generation and the George Floyd protests and things like that, I think probably most Muslims would actually tend towards wanting to sort of preserve the tradition and the Constitution, and they would look a bit askance at this kind of You know, it verges on a kind of, you know, nihilism and this frenzy of crazy, like, destruction of statues.
Yeah, sure, the Prophet Muhammad, peace upon him, did destroy the statues in the Kaaba, which were these idols that people were sacrificing to, but I don't think, I haven't seen any Muslims ever wanting to destroy any statues here in the United States.
That's actually a different demographic that's doing that.
In terms of compatibility of the Constitution with Islam and with Muslims in the United States, I think that most Muslims in the United States look around the world and, you know, at least until very recent times, they thought, you know, this American Constitution is working pretty well, they thought, you know, this American Constitution is working pretty well, especially its guarantee of freedom of This notion that grew out of the Enlightenment that the government should encourage all religion
The government isn't neutral in the sense of being neutral between faith and faithlessness, between religion and irreligion or atheism.
Not at all.
The Founding Fathers were very clear in their preference for religion.
and their belief that the state should encourage it.
But they were very strongly opposed, and of course, Tom Payne is the exception, but the rest of them.
So they were very strongly opposed to a state church or to any kind of government favoritism towards any particular religion.
So our freedom of religion enshrined in the First Amendment has always been interpreted correctly as meaning the government should be essentially encouraging all religions equally.
The They all get that, you know, 501c3 tax write-off for their churches and so on.
They all have the right to have schools and we even just had a great historical wrong corrected with the Catholic schools now being open for state aid.
So this notion that the government of the United States is founded on religious liberty and other kinds of liberty is Allowing different communities to pursue their vision of the good life under God is actually pretty compatible with Islam, probably actually more compatible than most of the governments that have ever existed in Muslim lands.
And that's really how most Muslims in America see it, and have always seen it.
If anything, I think they may have been a little too Pollyanna-ish about the way the American system really works.
But that ideal of that freedom of religion in a multi-confessional society where all religion is encouraged, that's an ideal that generally is seen as very, very positive for Muslims.
One reason a lot of Muslims want to come here and have But, that said, the basic principle of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as the be-all and end-all of life, Muslims would question.
That is, individual happiness, without guidance, is likely to devolve into hedonism and egoism.
and pursuit of power and pleasure and worldly things.
And so Muslims would probably be the first to say that the founding father's vision of the good society won't happen unless there's a really strong religious impulse in the people that countervails these degenerate tendencies in the egotism of this pursuit of individual happiness as the be all and end all of life.
Well, that's really interesting, Kevin.
Let me ask you a broader question about the United States.
It is the case that in some areas of the country, Little Havana, you could be born, live a full life, and never speak a word of English.
We have other enclaves.
In Minneapolis, there's an enclave.
Ilhan Omar, a representative, where there are very strong cultural affinities.
I'm inclined to believe that one of the unifying features of a country is we all speak the same language, so we can all communicate and cooperate to attain common goals.
Do you think that's a good idea or bad?
Hmm.
I think there certainly should be some kind of common language so that people who need to communicate with each other can.
But I don't really believe that the system of European nationalism with a really big territory dominated by a single language that is usually based on the dialect of the capital is necessarily the way things have to be or should be.
You know, this idea that we have that a nation, a country, is a place where everybody speaks the same language, this came to us only 150 years ago or so.
Benedict Anderson, I think, writes about this.
The historical process was that the reason there's such a thing as the French language today for the nation of France is because, I mean, nobody thought that way 200, 250 years ago, but then A couple hundred years ago, the Parisian dialect from Paris, where all the political power was, went out and stomped on everybody everywhere else in France where they spoke something really quite radically different and imposed the Paris dialect on people in the provinces.
And then they sent armies of schoolteachers to teach everybody how to read and write in that Paris dialect.
And pretty soon the Paris dialect became the national language of France.
And the same happened for the London dialect in England and other countries as well.
So we have this idea today, because we're part of that culture, that there should be sort of one language per nation.
And I don't know.
I mean, I think that historically, and in many other places in the world, there are multiple languages.
In many parts of West Africa, for example, it's normal for people to speak four, five, six languages.
And I don't know why Americans have to stick with this extreme monolingualism.
National language that everyone ought to speak English, not that they cannot also speak other languages.
That's all I meant as a as a unifying feature, just as I would think.
All American citizens ought to be familiar with American history and, you know, civics, the basics of the constitutional system and government and so forth.
I presume you would be inclined to agree with that, even if you think maybe not necessary.
We all speak English.
I don't know.
Yeah, no, I don't think it's so much of a problem, though.
I think it's been exaggerated, the extent to which immigrant communities today are completely breaking away from English.
I know there were some efforts to force them to do that, or to encourage them to do that.
Ron Unz actually was involved in an effort in California to stop bilingual education, because What was happening in California for a while in the 80s and maybe into the 90s was that they had this bilingual education system so that the Hispanic kids would be taught in Spanish in the schools rather than English.
And it seemed that that was actually not having very good results.
But there was a kind of a mindless, liberal utopian belief that somehow it would be racist to not teach these kids in Spanish and have this bilingual education.
And I think Ron was involved in stopping that, which was probably the right thing.
So, yeah, from a pragmatic viewpoint, I would agree with you that, I mean, obviously, pretty much everybody who comes to this country would have to be pretty crazy not to want to learn English.
They're crazy, or certainly, or lazy, I guess.
And, of course, most of them are learning English at one pace or another.
But I don't know if it's such a huge problem compared to in the past.
And I think that this is another point Ron Unz has made, that the immigration problem has been grossly exaggerated, that a lot of the reasons people have been brainwashed into fearing immigrants, it turns out, on closer inspection, are basically lies.
You know, the notion that Hispanic immigrants have high crime rates turns out that's just not true, that, you know, Muslims are terrorists.
That's complete nonsense.
And actually, if we look at where all of this craziness is going on now and with these George Floyd protests going, turning into riots and things like that, it's in it's in white cities.
It's in the whitest cities in the country where they're having the problems like Seattle and Portland and Minneapolis and in the cities that are majority non-white, like, you know, 80 percent Hispanic Los Angeles.
And Ron runs points out Palo Alto and so on.
These majority immigrant places are not having this problem.
So I think that, you know, Ron's point, which he has recently forcefully made to a whole bunch of, you know, alt-right people, that the alt-right has made a huge mistake in the world.
In making this anti-immigrant thing a huge centerpiece of their platform, they should dial that way down, give up all of the lies and the really bad arguments and the kind of racist, you know, baiting and all of this crap that's been going on in the alt-right.
Stick with the good arguments, like we need to limit immigration to slow demographic change so it's a bit more reasonable, okay?
And to keep bargaining power for workers.
Yes, those are good reasons for limiting immigration.
Throw out all this racist garbage about the Muslim terrorists and the Hispanic criminals.
Those are actually not true.
Stick with the true arguments, you know, which are much more low-key, and then come up with a reasonable approach.
And if you want to get into the race stuff, talk about, you know, that's not really related to the immigrant stuff.
The race issues are black and white.
You know, these are Americans, not immigrants.
Well, you know, it's interesting, Kevin, that...
Black Americans seem to be very appreciative of the President's efforts to improve their economic situation, one dimension of which has been to constrain immigration to take away the lowest-wage jobs, which have actually been rising at the highest rate, so that at a Rasmussen poll in December, shortly before this CV phenomenon hit us,
Rasmussen had 40% of black likely voters supporting Donald Trump.
Really?
Yes.
A more recent poll has shown that staying relatively steady at 37%.
And as you well know, the Democrats, if they were to lose half of those percentages, would Have a virtually impossible time to defeat him.
My own opinion is a whole lot of what we're seeing going on here, including these extended lockdowns by Democrat mayors and governors are to draw out this catastrophe for the economy in the hope that it's going to be held against Trump.
When my opinion is the American people's attitude will be that the best man to rebuild the American economy is one who gave us the most robust economy and soaring stock market in our history.
That it's not going to work.
But it won't be for lack of trying.
The other aspect about the immigration I have had been troubled by is back in 2015, Jerry Brown passed a motor voter law in California, so that when you obtain your driver's license, you are automatically registered to vote, which sounds fine, except in California, illegal Immigrants are allowed to obtain driver's license and they were thereby certified to vote.
And I have no doubt that gave, you know, quite an additional number of votes for the Democratic Party improperly, in my opinion.
I'd invite your comments on either of those.
But I'm just very pleased to have had you here tonight, my friend.
We go back a long way.
And this is the kind of conversation I was hoping we would have tonight.
Well, thanks, Jim.
Yeah, it's been a very interesting conversation.
As far as the motor voters in California, I don't think Trump is going to win California or even come remotely close to it.
Oh, sure.
California's a lost cause.
Yeah, regardless.
Well, Newsom is shutting down everything.
Bars, cafes, gymnasiums.
I mean, it's totally, in my opinion, Totally lunatic.
But then I spent a huge amount studying the coronavirus and the exaggerated numbers and the fallacies of ambiguity about the increasing tests and deaths are actually going down.
I mean, the rate For children, for example, Kevin, you're more likely to die from being struck by lightning than to die from coronavirus if you're under 17.
Actually, children's death rates have gone down.
This is one of the mysteries.
And you mentioned that.
I wrote an article for American Free Press a couple of weeks ago about the fact that overall death rates are probably the best metric we have for figuring out what, if anything, is going on with COVID.
And what they show is a big spike in deaths in April, in and around April, the end of March and beginning of May and the month of April, big spike of overall deaths.
So, yeah, probably there was, you know, what we see is COVID hitting Chicago, New York, etc.
at that time.
But since then, it looks like the death rate has fallen.
down to a normal death rate, what we would expect with or without Corona.
And that we don't know.
You know, I haven't managed to find statistics for June and the first part of July.
I think you can't get them.
You know, they come in like three weeks later or whatever.
But keep an eye on those statistics, the overall death rate.
And I'm kind of suspicious because the official line now is that the death rates are still low, even though the caseload is high.
But the deaths are going up.
They're supposedly going to go up because of the larger number of cases.
Well, let's wait and see.
I mean, they should if what they're telling us about COVID is the truth.
But there's still that mystery of how those death rates went all the way back down to normal in May, even though there were still supposedly a lot of corona cases.
Well, as you're probably aware, they actually haven't been able to isolate the so-called SARS-CoV-19 virus.
And if they haven't been able to isolate the virus, they can't possibly produce a vaccine.
Vaccines have been stunningly Incapable of dealing with respiratory diseases anyway.
The ones we've had in the past have been very, very damaging.
For example, the H1N1 vaccine caused brain damage.
I mean, that was one of its principal effects.
And these past viruses and contaminations have been much larger, but weren't treated with a political Focus.
It's very clear to me this is a political pandemic and not a medical emergency and that they're going all out to get Trump out of office.
Frankly, I don't believe it's going to succeed, but by God, are they doing it with great energy and effort.
I think it's even bigger than that, Jim.
I think maybe getting Trump out might be part of it.
But I think that it's a larger thing.
I was reading this book by Curtis Ball called My Exploited Father-in-Law, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
And so Curtis Ball was son-in-law of Roosevelt.
And in his book, he describes the machinations of the big international banking cabal, the Zionist banksters who created the World Wars, orchestrated the World Wars, orchestrated the Great Depression of 1929.
Those are the same people basically, or at least a wing of them, probably behind 9-11.
The many economic crunches, 2008.
They create wars and economic crunches so they can get everybody into more debt at compound interest.
And of course, they also buy up distressed assets at pennies on the dollar every time they create an economic crisis.
So I think those people are undoubtedly the people behind COVID.
It's part of a larger historical plan.
And I think there may very well be a fairly moderately dangerous virus that they created in a lab And I think it was probably a U.S.
lab and they attacked China and Iran with it.
And some people thought this was being done on behalf of the U.S., but ultimately it was the same people who created the world wars that have created this.
And I think they, you know, they're the ones who just took in six to seven trillion dollars in quantitative easing, biggest heist in world history.
And now they've got all the small businesses out of business and the big ones have bought up market share.
So I think it's pretty obvious the kind of people who are behind this.
Very good.
This is the greatest wealth transfer in the history of the nation.
It will turn out.
There's no doubt about it.
Kevin, I'm just delighted that you, like others I have featured on this program, Scott Bennett and Catherine Horton, for example, are going to be among my speakers at the question Everything 2020 Conference in Austin on the 7th and the 8th of November.
I just want the audience to know that if they wanted to meet you up close and personal, they have an opportunity in Austin, and they can learn more about it if they go to my blog, jamesfetzer.org, and just do a search on Question Everything 2020.
Meanwhile, Kevin, please tell us about your radio show, Truth Jihad, your books, and the like.
Listeners can learn more about your research and efforts to get out the truth.
Well, they can find most of it by way of truthjihad.com.
And you can follow those links to see my articles and videos, YouTube channel.
Somehow they haven't taken down my YouTube channel yet, but we'll see how long that lasts, the way things are going.
And I also, I write for various places, Veterans Today, the UN's Review, which is a very interesting alternative publication, maybe the kind of number one most read one for good reason.
And I also write for Crescent International, which is the best Muslim public affairs magazine.
And also American Free Press, which is kind of the last real free speech newspaper in America.
So I've been blessed with the opportunity to write for some great outlets.
Oh, you have, Kevin.
And let me just compliment you especially.
Your article about my trial, the Posner v. Fetzer Sandy Hook trial, is the best I've ever read.
You captured the spirit of it exactly.
And that Unz review is sensational.
UNZ.
I recommend it highly.
It may have no peers, Kevin.
It is so outstanding.
The intellectual caliber is so high.
And it's very impressive that you're a contributor there.
Well, thanks, Jim.
I appreciate that.
Yeah, and I appreciate your courage in pursuing the truth as you see it with absolutely no holds barred.
There are very few people like that left these days.
Well Kevin, you're a great guy and I'm very glad to count you as a friend and an old friend and a colleague in arms.
I look forward to seeing you in Austin, no doubt before then.
Meanwhile, this is Jim Fetzer, the Conspiracy Guy.
This has been a special edition of the Conspiracy Guy that overlaps with the Fetz Presents by having one and only one featured speaker as opposed to my elaborating at great length On some specific issue to which we shall return next week.
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