That's that handsome, charming Walter E. Williams.
And look, folks, there are a couple of other items that we need to talk about.
One, I think it's kind of important for our nation, and that's the Duke University lacrosse case.
And it turns out now, after having been charged with rape, three Duke lacrosse players haven't been charged with rape.
The rape charges have been dropped.
And it turns out that Nyphong, he's the attorney, the attorney, I guess attorney general, or his prosecutor, Michael Nophong, district attorney in Durham.
He found out, well, there's no DNA evidence.
And matter of fact, it's no evidence at all that those lacrosse players had much to do with the girl anyway.
And it turns out that she probably was not raped by the lacrosse players.
And first, Nyphong said that they raped her.
And then he said, well, since there's no DNA evidence there, well, they might have been using condoms.
And given our technology today, you can detect DNA.
If I shake your hand, there's DNA evidence on your hand from me.
And so the guys might have been using a whole body condom.
Anyway, he's being, I guess, brought up on charges by the bar for improper conduct, improper conduct like calling the young men hooligans.
He violated the ethic rules because calling somebody a hooligan is likely to heighten public condemnation of the accused.
But here's the issue.
Why was this guy doing it?
Now, Nafong is a white guy, and he was running for election, and he needed the black vote.
And he figured that if he would charge these guys, these Duke La Crosse players, of raping this black woman, that he would get the black vote.
And indeed, he did get elected to office with a considerable amount of the black vote.
He's running for re-election.
And I think it's part of a process that's going on in the United States now where people are using race for a number of nefarious reasons.
I don't think that he should be facing, I don't think that this guy Napong should be facing ethic complaints.
I think that he should be facing firing from his job.
And I believe that the defense lawyers for the Duke lacrosse players ought to bring some kind of civil suit against the guy for a whole lot of money.
And maybe he'll wind up in debtors' prison.
There's another issue that's on the table because the Democrats now have control of the Congress.
And I think they're going to address the rights of terrorists.
That is, they're going to revisit, according to this article, one of the most contentious national security issues, deciding what legal rights must be protected for detainees held in the war on terrorism.
Well, how much rights do they have?
How many rights do they have?
Now, a lot of people say, well, there's Geneva Convention.
Look, folks, Geneva Convention applies to men in uniform.
It requires it applies to soldiers in uniform, and they have to get decent treatment if they're captured.
It does not apply to terrorists or saboteurs.
Now, think about this.
I believe during World War II, a Nazi submarine landed, I believe it was, eight saboteurs off the coast of Florida and I believe Long Island as well.
They were captured.
And President Roosevelt convened a military tribunal.
And I believe most of them, if not all of them, were shot.
That's what you do to terrorists or saboteurs.
They're not in military uniform, and they don't have any blessings of the Geneva Convention.
And so, and you know, there's another thing on this whole terrorism thing, and that is we, we, we, the world kind of, there's kind of an underlying respect for terrorism in some places.
But look, terrorism, terrorists exclusively target civilians.
Now, in our war on terror, or the Western country's war on terror, we're not targeting civilians, although there might be civilians killed or injured when we're trying to attack terrorists, but we're not specifically targeting them.
And what really got in my crawl was during the Israeli war in Lebanon, a newscaster was talking to a head or senior official in Hezbollah, and he was saying, talking about all the civilian deaths caused by the Israeli attack.
And the news person said that it didn't even ask him, well, you're dressed up as civilian and you're engaging in a war against Israel.
I thought that was rather remarkable.
But it seems like a lot of people say, well, we've got to treat these people nicely, as if if we show the terrorists more humanity, that the terrorists would show us more humanity.
And I don't believe that.
So that might be one of the issues that's coming up in 2007 that I think Americans should be well aware of.
Now, if a person is not guilty of terrorism, then by no means, I think, should he be punished.
But people who we catch involved in terrorism, I think that they should be punished.
And I think the people at Gitmo are living a little bit too long, in my opinion.
But there's another issue that's in the news, and that has to do with the former Senator John Edwards.
He's going to open his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.
And he's claiming an edge over the field of other possible nominees such as Hillary.
And how do you say this guy, Obama?
My brother from Illinois, he might throw his hat in the ring as well.
But Edwards says that he wants to develop a universal health care plan.
And I don't know whether he's talking about the Canadian plan that we're just talking about the last half hour where people have to wait so long.
And matter of fact, one test, folks, so far as when somebody talks about the Canadian plan, ask them this question.
Go to cities like Detroit, Buffalo, Minneapolis, Seattle, and go to the hospitals in those cities.
And you'll see many, many Canadian patients.
But if you go to the other side of the border, you see few or no American patients.
Now, ask yourself the question: if the Canadian health care system is so good, how come Canadians are rushing to the United States for treatment in emergency treatment?
And the caller last hour, I forget what, maybe it's from Ontario.
Yeah.
Anyway, I advise him to go to my website, and I just recently put up a little click about this Canadian who wanted brain surgery and the trauma that he had to go through in order to get brain surgery.
I believe he ultimately came to the United States.
Now, Edwards says that he's also good on global warming.
Now, last year, remember all those hurricanes that hit us last year, and people were blaming it on Bush.
Bush was causing the hurricanes, and it had to do with global warming.
And former Senator John Edwards might have the same opinion about hurricanes.
But remember the predictions they were making about hurricanes this year?
They're saying global warming is going to cause more hurricanes and more trauma in the weather, weather trauma.
Well, I don't think there was a single major hurricane that hit the United States this year.
So what do you think about the predictions of climatologists when they can't get it right this year?
Why should we have any confidence in their getting it right 100 years, 50 years from now?
I don't know.
Maybe there's a simple answer to the question, and maybe a climatologist can call us and tell us why.
And then one final idea that Edwards, he says that he's pretty good at dealing with an issue such as poverty in the United States.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, I have a cure for poverty.
And it is a cure that your grandmother or my grandmother could have given.
It's almost a guarantee that you won't be poor.
Now, here's what you do.
You graduate from high school.
You don't have children until you're married.
You stay married and work at any kind of a job.
If you do those four things, you won't be poor.
Now, if you look at the Bureau of Census statistics on people who have that characteristic, I believe the number is something between 6 and 9 percent are poor.
And so these are some sensible things, sensible measures not to be poor, because most people who are poor are those people who have had children without the blessing of marriage.
They dropped out of high school, they refused to take work, and they engage in criminal activity.
And so if you avoid doing those things, you will not be poor.
We'll be back with your calls after this.
We're back.
Walter Williams sitting in for Russian.
You could be on with us by calling 800-1-800-282-2882.
And we've been pushing back the frontiers of ignorance.
And let's now go to the phones and welcome Michael from Redding, Pennsylvania.
Hello.
Hello, Michael.
Thank you for taking my call.
During your opening monologue, you said that the government controls the release of currency.
And my understanding was that the Federal Reserve does that.
And are they not a private bank?
Well, there's a big argument about that, but they have governmental powers.
Exactly.
But they issue stock that's owned by commercial banks.
Yeah.
So what's your point?
Well, I thought that that was supposed to be reserved to the Treasury Department.
According to the Constitution, yes.
Well, and so what Congress has done is delegated some of its power to authority to the Federal Reserve.
Now, personally, if you want my opinion, I think we ought to get rid of the Federal Reserve Bank.
What do you think?
Thank you.
Or at best, as my late colleague Milton Friedman said, replace the Federal Reserve with a computer that will keep the money supply somewhere around related to our productivity growth rate.
And so he would say that you need to only increase the money supply by 2.5%, 3% a year, depending on our productivity growth.
Okay, that was going to be my next question.
But in general, I would repeal the Federal Reserve Act.
And keep in mind, if you look at all the justification for the first, if you look back, look at the congressional record and look at the justification for the Federal Reserve Act, it was to promote solvency in banks to prevent bank failures and also to create price stability.
And it turns out if you just do a simple before and after study, it turns out that there were more bank failures after the Federal Reserve Act and less price stability after the Federal Reserve Act.
The first thing in their Constitution is to prevent inflation.
Yeah, well, that's price stability, yeah.
Right.
So inflation since whenever they came in like 1912 or something.
Yeah.
What's inflation since then?
Well, no, the inflation rate, as I said earlier, price stability has been lower after the Federal Reserve Act than before the Federal Reserve Act.
And one of the, see, my point of view, and a lot of people will disagree with me, but I have a number of colleagues that will agree with me.
I think that there should be private money.
That is, why should the government have a monopoly on money?
That is, if I had it my way, I would eliminate all legal tender laws.
And that is, for example, I would do two things.
Eliminate all legal tender laws.
And then, second, I would eliminate all taxes on gold and silver so that we can write contracts in gold and silver.
Let people decide what should be the money.
And we had private banking before the Federal Reserve Act.
What do you think of that?
I'm not as familiar with that as I don't know.
Well, I strongly recommend some of the writings of a former colleague of mine is George Selchin.
He's done a lot of publishing in the field of private banking.
Any questions?
Have you read a book called The Creature from Jekyll Island by Mr. Griffin?
I've just thumbed through it, and I think it's a worthwhile book from my view of it.
But thanks for calling in.
Folks, we don't have enough time to go forward before the break.
But I want to whet your appetite.
Maybe I won't even get into it until the next hour, but I want you to stay tuned.
New York and some other cities are going to enact laws saying that restaurants can't put trans fat in our food.
That is, we're controlling the restaurants.
And in Chicago, the city council passed a law saying that they can't serve Fra Gras.
Now, Fra Gras has a lot of fat in it, but I think that the reason why they don't want to serve Fra Gras is that they don't like the way that Fra Gras is made.
They say it's cruelty to animals, it's cruelty to ducks.
Now, why has all this stuff happened?
You know, talking to restaurants doing this and restaurants doing that.
Well, if the government can tell a restaurant owner not to permit smoking in the restaurant, well, the government can tell him to do many things in his restaurant.
Now, the smoking Nazis are a result of this, and I'm going to give you more evidence of that in the next hour.
So stay tuned.
Walter Williams sitting in Varush, and you can be on with us by calling 800-282-2882.
And a little update, folks, from Fox News.
They have a little crawler going across the screen.
And it says that Saddam Hussein's lawyers say that he will be going to the Hanglands Noose smiling.
Well, wait till the noose hits him.
By the way, speaking of the whole issue in Iraq, people will say, well, we're losing the war in Iraq.
I think that's nonsense.
I think that our American military fought the most brilliant battle in bringing down the regime of Saddam Hussein.
Both the 1991 and the 2003 war will go down history as some of the most successful wars.
Now, the problem that our troops are having now is with the occupation.
And I think a lot of the problem with the occupation has to do with the rules of engagement and maybe how we fought the war.
That is, we fought the war in a very, very clean fashion.
That is, we minimized civilian casualties.
We did not do like we did in World War II.
And we didn't have any occupation.
We didn't have many occupation problems at all in Japan and Germany.
And the reason why is that we just completely demoralized the people.
That is through strategic bombing and just wasting the cities of Germany and Japan.
They just had no fight left in them.
And so that's maybe a lesson that we can learn from World War II.
And there's another issue that bothers me, and I should have brought this up a little bit earlier.
And I think that we are losing some of our willingness to defend ourselves.
That is the West in general.
To defend ourselves.
I believe that we are in a culture war.
And I believe that we're not responding to these petty tyrants the way that we should respond to the petty tyrants.
I wrote a column several months ago.
It brought a little bit of controversy.
And I said, you know, with the whole Iran issue and its development of nuclear weapons.
And here's Iran says that it wants to wipe Israel off the face of the map and they're making all kinds of threats.
Well, folks, do you realize that the United States military possesses 18 Ohio-class submarines?
That's in addition to all the other stuff that we have.
18 Ohio-class submarines.
Now, an Ohio-class submarine carries 24 ballistic missiles.
And on each of those ballistic missiles, it has eight independently targeted nuclear warheads.
Now, in terms of dealing with Iran, I would just tell these people, look, we're going to try to find out where your facilities are for making this nuclear equipment.
We're not going to send a single soldier over there.
We're going to let the Ohio-class submarines do it.
And I think that that would be a credible threat.
And that is, we have the means to defend ourselves.
The West has the means to defend itself against people who want to take over, but it lacks the willingness.
And I think that our future generations are going to regret the spinelessness of the current generation.
Now, don't get me wrong, folks.
I think war is an abomination.
But in many cases, not going to war is worse.
And we can kind of think back during the 1930s when Hitler was violating the Versailles Treaty.
You're making weapons that he should not have made.
And in 1934, 1935, when he was rearming, France alone could have defeated him.
But the West, in terms of appeasement, appeasing Hitler, allowed him to gain the kind of strength that led to 50 or 60 million people being killed in World War II.
And so we have to ask this question, if we had preemptively attacked Germany during the 30s, we might have saved tens of millions of lives.
And so all the peacemongers that were saying that we should not fight, we should appease Hitler, shouldn't they feel somewhat guilty about these millions of lives that were lost in World War II that could have been spared had the West had the guts to say,
Hitler, you're violating the Versailles Treaty and we're going to do something about it.
I think those people, they ought to be condemned, those people who did not want to stop Hitler.
And I think it's, you know, and when you're looking at history, it's improper to make analogies.
Iran is not where Germany was during the 30s.
But if we allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons, I think it's going to be, I think it's going to be a rough time for the West, particularly and also the Middle East.
But ladies and gentlemen, this is a problem that's going to affect future generations.
But for politicians today, all they're looking at is two years down the line or four years down the line when they stand for a re-election.
So they don't care what's in the long-run interest of the United States.
They care what's in their short-run interests.
And I think tragically, that's going to mean tragedy for the United States and also the West.
But let's take a phone call from Bill from Chicago.
Welcome to the show, Bill.
Hi, good afternoon.
I just heard you say before about how the Canadians come down here for their health care because, well, your logic was ours must be better than theirs if they're coming down here.
And I was just wondering.
Well, it's available.
They don't have to wait.
Well, I was just wondering, what does it say when citizens from this country are going over to the Far East, especially India, to get their operations?
Oh, yeah.
And many go because it's cheaper.
And then also, some people go because they want a kidney or a liver or a lung, and they want to buy one.
And where the sale of organs in the United States is illegal, but the sale of organs in India, I don't know whether it's legal or illegal, but it gets done.
Well, I've never heard of that.
Oh, yeah.
How much do they go for?
Pardon me?
How much do they sell them for?
I don't know, but I think that we ought to be able to, I think they're selling a one's organs in the United States, I think, ought to be legal.
I mean, if you ask the question, whose kidneys are mine?
I mean, who do my kidneys belong to?
Now, if you say that George Bush or the United States owns my kidneys, well, I don't have the right to sell them.
But if I might ask you, Carla, who do they belong to?
It would be the individual's kidneys.
No one else can take them forward.
So what's the test?
What's the true test of whether you own something?
Well, the true test of whether you own something is whether you can sell it.
That is, I own my car, and the proof that I own my car is that I can sell my car.
Or I have a tie on, and the proof that I own this tie is that I can sell the tie.
So would you also be in favor of prostitution?
Oh, yes.
What about legalized drugs and get the government to get all the money from that instead of the criminals?
I would, look, anybody who's, wait a minute, wait a minute, yeah.
Since we own ourselves, I think you have the right to do damage to yourself.
And I think that using drugs, heroin, cocaine, and marijuana, I think that it does damage to you.
But I think that the person, if he owns himself, he has the right to do damage.
Now, what the laws do, the drug laws we have in our country, we force people who are dead cent on destroying their own lives, let's say through the use of cocaine or heroin, destroying their own lives, we're forcing them to destroy somebody else's, some innocent person's life in the process of destroying their own life.
And so through gunfire and drug wars and activities like that.
And then we also encourage, by drugs being illegal, we encourage the corruption of officials.
That is the only way so much cocaine and heroin can get into the United States is through corrupting officials.
And so here's my question.
My question is, if a person wants to destroy his own life, should we require, should we have a system that forces him to destroy others' lives in the process?
Why not just allow him to destroy his own life?
But see, so far, going back to your original question about selling organs, look, if we could sell organs, I think that we'd have more organs available.
That is, people, you know, I have two good working kidneys.
I could sell one.
Or, alternatively, I can just imagine.
I was telling my doctor this because he's against selling organs.
I was telling him, I said that I could just imagine when I'm dying or when I'm almost dead, I'm brain dead or whatever.
And a doctor says, ask my daughter, can we harvest your father's organs?
And my daughter might say, no, you can't take anything from my father's body.
I want him to be buried just like he came here.
But imagine a doctor saying to my daughter, we'll give you $20,000 for his kidneys.
We'll give you $10,000 for his livers.
I can just see my daughter say, cut away.
Do you want his eyes too?
And so what that would do, that would increase the supply of organs.
That's the wonder of the market.
We'll be back with your calls after this.
We're back, pushing back the frontiers of ignorance, and you can be on with us by calling 1-800-2-800-282-2882.
And let's go to the phones and welcome Bob from Wilkesboro, Pennsylvania.
Welcome, Bob.
Good afternoon.
Thank you for taking my call, Dr. Williams.
I have an economic question, and I thought you'd be probably one of the best people to answer it.
It's been in the back of my mind for years now.
Is there ever a situation where a company or an industry trying to drive down its labor costs and takes the manufacturing offshore, but actually in the end reduces the demand for their end product?
Well, I don't know of any particular cases.
I know that some companies, I think Microsoft, had many, many call centers in India, and I believe that they brought them back to the United States because they were not satisfied with the performance that they were getting from the call centers overseas.
Well, I'll give you an example that's bothered me.
Boeing Airlines, they manufacture airplanes, but their end product is not airplanes, it is passenger miles.
And if they build planes in China and don't pay the people enough to buy tickets, or the Chinese government restricts the travel of those people versus building the planes in America where the employees can afford to travel, is there really a factor there that they haven't taken into account when they go for the movie?
No, look, I think businesses, they're out for profits.
They want to make money.
And they're going to do the kind of things that will earn them the money.
And so I would think that Boeing would never open up an airplane factory in China.
Matter of fact, China just doesn't even have the technology.
Matter of fact, they were building a plane some years ago, and the plane is so heavy it wouldn't take off.
Well, Boeing has talked about it, though.
Well, they can talk, but I'd like to see people put their money where their mouth is.
And so, but the whole offshoring, I think it's, or outsourcing, what people call, I think it's much ado about nothing.
That is, I think that a business is most efficient if it can produce for consumers goods at the lowest possible price.
And I believe that they help their investors also by producing goods at the lowest possible cost.
We're all richer.
And I wrote a column about this some time ago when people are complaining about offshoring and importing and international trade deficits.
And I pointed out that if we were to become self-sufficient in everything, we would be a much poorer nation.
We'll be back with your calls after this.
Just a couple more minutes, and we're going to go right to the phone and welcome Terry from Sacramento, California, Walkman.
Hey, wow, I made it.
To the point.
Yeah, I agree with you that a person's body is, you know, it's up to the person to take care of their own, to do what they think their own body.
However, we should not be the ones to have to clean up behind them, i.e., if they have to go to the hospital for injury or when they do damage, they go in the hospital for a care and stuff like that.
And, you know, you know what I'm saying on that?
Yeah, yeah, you're right.
You're saying that one person should not be able to live at the expense of another person.
That's correct.
That is right.
That is, they have to bear the responsibility, give people freedom, and at the same time, they have to bear their own personal responsibility.
And, you know, for most of our history, we have not had Medicare or all these health care programs, and there's no evidence of people dying in the streets because they weren't getting medical treatment, stepping over dead bodies in the street, not in the United States.
And before, well, medical care was not as expensive, and then there was the charity.
I believe, by the way, as I said in the first hour, I think that charity is the best way to help our fellow man.
And private charity is far more efficient than government charity because let's say a person goes to a doctor or to a hospital that's providing private charity and the person is really messing up, coming back with the same problem.
The guy's going to, maybe they're going to get fed up with him and say, Well, look, I'm not going to treat you this time stupid.
And that will convey a message to other people.
That is, if they know that one person is held to account for his actions, then maybe other people will begin to account for their actions.
But if you tell people, look, no matter what you do, no matter how irresponsible you are, we're going to make Walter Williams pick up the tab and through the agents of Congress.
Now, if you tell people that, they'll always be that way.
I mean, we are becoming a nation of wimps.
We're afraid to tell people: look, as my mother used to tell me, if you make your bed hard, you're going to lie in it.
Or else sometimes she told me, you're going to stew in your own juice.
And that made me a little more accountable.
But maybe it might seem cruel, but it's the best thing my mother could have done.