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June 7, 2010 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:33
June 7, 2010, Monday, Hour #2
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Well, well, thank you very much, uh Johnny Donovan.
Yes, I'm trying to convince my fellow Americans on the moral superiority of personal liberty and its main ingredient is limited government as our founders envision.
And I am so happy to welcome to the show uh Rand Paul and he just won the senatorial primary from uh Kentucky.
And uh welcome the show.
Good to be with you, Professor.
And your your your dad and I, we've been friends for years.
Yeah, and it's funny I was just telling your producer, I met you back in nineteen seventy-eight, and I'll never forget your speech because you were standing up before the interns, the high school students and the college students on the hill, and you said if you want to conserve resources, someone needs to own them because you never see a shortage of cows and you never see a shortage of timber because we replenish them because someone owns them.
That is absolutely right.
And I think that's a that's a lesson for the world to learn.
That is uh private property rights uh produces miracles, and we are a rich nation.
We became a rich nation through rigorous enforcement and adherence to the ideas of uh private property.
Absolutely, and I think we should not apologize for profit, not apologize for property, and really acknowledge to the people that it's the most humanitarian system out there.
You remember when uh the Soviets used to try to do the propaganda film showing that we had bad parts of our cities where the windows were broken, but it backfired on them because in the video they showed that most of the people with broken windows had colored television set.
And uh even the poorest in our country were much richer than the middle class in Russia.
Uh that that is absolutely right.
And one r rather interesting story that Milton Friedman uh tells, and I might have the the figures uh uh uh forgotten a little bit, but he said that in Russia they allow the farmers to have a little plot of land behind their house, and uh uh maybe a half acre, and they can grow stuff on.
And he was pointing out that thirty-nine percent of the agricultural output of Russia comes from this three percent of land that's privately owned by the farmers.
And uh and matter of fact, a very interesting story from China, uh Mao Sedung, he was vis he was visiting the countryside, and he was commenting, you know, the Chinese farmers could have uh maybe two pigs or two cows, two sheep for themselves and raise the rest for the uh for the co for the nation.
But he is commenting on how the far how the uh privately owned pigs were fatter than the government owned pigs.
People are taking better care of them.
But anyway, now some of the questions I'd like to ask you a couple of questions.
Look, one of the things that uh Milton Friedman used to always say, well, we didn't get we didn't get here to where we are overnight, and we're not gonna get out overnight.
And so one of the questions I I would uh a lead-off question for you is how do we get Washington back to where the founders envisioned.
Need to obey the rules.
You know, initially and for maybe a hundred and fifty years or so, we did obey the Constitution fairly strictly, but we've gotten way away from that in the last sixty or seventy years.
So I think we also need some new rules.
We need to obey the old rules, which was the Constitution.
But I'm for some new rules that I think will reform Washington.
I think we should limit all of their terms, and I think we should force them to balance the budget by law.
You know, thirty-two states have to balance the budget by law.
In my state in Kentucky, we're suffering through a recession like every other state, but we're nothing like California because we're forced to balance our budget and we make tough decisions and we don't spend money we don't have.
And I think that's a really simple philosophy, but that is so unknown in Washington.
If you talk about balancing the budget, what passes for bold in Washington is balancing it in like 10 years, 15 years, 50 years.
Nobody's really talking about balancing it.
And and you know, uh and I matter of fact, let me let me just throw this out.
Uh I'm not very enthusiastic about a balanced budget at the federal level, and the reason why is because they they can just justify tax increases.
Now, uh Milton Friedman and and I and and Bob Bork and and Niscannon, a whole bunch of very, very eminent scholars back in nineteen seventy-eight, uh, we had a blue ribbon uh panel, and we wrote a spending limitation amendment to the United States cons uh Constitution that was actually shepherded through the Senate by uh by Dick Luger, uh, Senator Luger in nineteen eighty-two, and it actually passed the Senate, but it did not pass the House.
And I would favor that.
And I think Colorado has something like that where their spending can't go up beyond uh population growth plus inflation.
Yeah.
And so I think limits on spending are even better.
Yeah.
But I really think that uh, you know, for example, I'm gonna do something if I'm elected that no one's done in years.
I'm gonna introduce my own budget that's balanced in the first year, and we'll look at it and we'll have a debate over it.
And if filibuster be necessary to make them pay attention to the debate over a balanced budget, I think a good week's time would be well spent to have the whole country talk about what's going to happen to us if we become Greece, what's going to happen to us if the debt bomb that is ticking uh in the United States comes to fruition.
And we're very and we're moving in the direction of Greece as opposed to away from it, because I believe the uh the debt for Greece is something like a hundred and eighty percent of its GDP, and ours is approaching a hundred percent of the GDP, I think or roughly around it's our GDP is thirteen trilli uh fourteen trillion and the debt is around thirteen trillion.
Yeah, and it's there's a certain inevitability coming unless we make some tough decisions, and there's all these problems that we have, the demographic problems of how do you fund Social Security and Medicare, given that we have less young people and more older people, and I think the people what the Tea Party movement shows is that people are waking up and even when they attack me on this and say, Oh, you're gonna do this and this, I say we just can't keep borrowing to do it.
Oh, that's you're absolutely right.
And I and I I think that one of the good things, if if there's anything good that can be said about the Democratic control of the House, the uh the Senate, and the White House is that these people have become so brazen and so and and so contemptuous of the Constitution that the American people, for the first time in my life that they're talking about the Constitution.
There's a Tea Party movement.
They're on all kinds of radio stations, talk shows they're talking about the Constitution and how Congress is exceeding its constitutional authority.
Yeah, and people are talking about a bill where they would actually have to enumerate where they get the powers.
You know, each bill would have to show where the Constitution says that Congress can do that, and we were actually having that debate at the state levels.
You know, we're trying to get our attorney generals to file suit over the health care bill, because you know, where does it say that you have a you know a right somehow that you can be the federal government has the power to force you to buy an insurance product.
Yeah.
And and that that enumerated powers act, I I don't know whether you're familiar with it, but it's uh Congressman uh John Shadeg of uh Arizona.
He wrote uh he's he's been in Congress since 1995.
I don't know whether he still is, but he but each new session of Congress he he uh he wrote the enumerated he he uh introduced the enumerated powers act.
I'm sorry, a little mouth dry.
He he and he introduced the enumerated powers act.
And if the enumerated powers act were passed, it would require Congress, as you say, to I specifically point to a place in the United States Constitution that gives them authority.
Right.
And we need to have a debate in our country over the Commerce Clause.
I tell people in my speeches that if my shoes were made in Tennessee, they can regulate my walking in Kentucky, and that is really too expansive of a definition or an understanding of the Commerce Clause.
And by the way, the when the founders put the Commerce Clause in there, I believe that most of them wanted there not to be any tariffs between the states.
They want uh free trade among the states.
Absolutely.
And that's the one thing we uh really could actually use as far as selling of insurance.
We have state restrictions on selling of insurance from other states, and really under the founder's definition, the commerce clause would come into play to say the federal government should get rid of these restrictions on where we sell health insurance.
You're absolutely right.
And matter of fact, it would make it more competitive and would reduce the uh cost of uh health insurance.
But the health insurance lobby, they spend millions of millions of dollars in Washington.
Well, I've got some ideas for campaign finance Reform.
I think McCain Feingold was a mistake.
You know, I had a taxpayer group and they wouldn't let me advertise within sixty days of the election.
I think that's a real restriction of political speech.
But what I would do is to every federal contract, if you sign a federal contract and we pay you, the taxpayer pays you a million dollars, I'd put a clause in the contract that you voluntarily accept that you won't lobby or give contributions.
Because I think it galls the American people that taxpayer money is paid to contractors who take that taxpayer money and then immediately lobby for more money.
That's that's absolutely right.
And now you're you say that you're trying to get the attorney general of Kentucky to bring suit regarding the uh Obamacare.
We're not having a whole lot of luck.
He's my opponent in the election also.
Oh, I see.
Uh and you're talking about this fellow Conway.
Right.
And the interesting thing was his response on national TV when we asked him to sue over the constitutionality, he said, Well, I've read the Constitution, and where in it does it say that you have a right not to have insurance.
And I said, Jack, have you read the Ninth and Tenth Amendment?
All the rights aren't listed there, but if they're not listed or the powers not given, it's left to the states and the people respectively.
But the point is, uh, Mr. Paul, is that the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, they mean absolutely nothing today.
But you know, the interesting thing is there's a resurgence in the Tea Party movement of talk about the Ninth and Tenth Amendment, and there are Tenth Amendment groups around there and people talking about it the state government, and I predict because there's such a shortage of money, there's a lot of mandates that come from Washington without any funds,
that the state governments and those in the states are going to be much more adversarial and much more uh believers in the Tenth Amendment again, that you may see a rise in this Tenth Amendment movement that may be part of the Tea Party movement as well.
Well, can you hang on for another few minutes?
Sure.
We want to go make some money.
We'll be back with your calls after this.
We're back, ladies and gentlemen, and we're on with Mr. or Dr. Rand Paul.
Before we be I have a qu I I want to preface my next question to you with uh just two very, very short quotes, both of them from James Madison.
And here's uh James Madison's speech in the House of Representatives uh July January 10th, 1794.
He said, quote, the government of the United States is a definite government confined to specific objects.
It is not like state governments whose powers are more general.
Charity is no part of the legislative duty of government.
Now, also, in 1794, Congress appropriated fifteen thousand dollars to help some French refugees.
James Madison stood on the floor of the House I rate and he said, with this one sentence, I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article in the Constitution, which granted a right to Congress of expending on the objects of benevolence the money of their constituents.
Now, if you look at the federal budget, two-thirds to three quarters is for the objects of benevolence.
Now, my question is since we're so far away from the visions of the great founders of our nation.
Uh how do you think we can ever get back?
We can do you think we can ever recover a limited government again, and if so, how can we do it?
Well, I think I'd look at it in the sense that if we don't do something, what is the disaster that looms ahead for us if the deficit overcomes us as a country?
What if interest rates go to 15 percent and we have to pay this enormous debt with much higher interest rates?
I think the interest will consume all of the budget.
Even right now, the interest consumes nearly 400 billion.
We spend more in interest than we do in roads.
And so I tell people you just can't keep doing it at the same level.
But you could freeze government pay, you could freeze government hiring, you could look at across the board cuts, and I think you have to look at cutting federal spending.
You have to look, you know, uh Christopher Edwards from uh Cato has done a book on downsizing government, and he says he'd you do a multi-step test for every program.
Can you eliminate it?
Can you downsize it?
Could you privatize it, or can you do nothing to it?
But you have to do that across the board to all spending.
Yeah.
But then I think you have to have some rules, and that's why I'm big on having a rule that just says you have to balance a budget.
But I would do it only through cutting spending.
I think our taxes are already plenty high enough.
But if you talk to people in the Tea Party, they'll tell you the debt is their worry.
They're concerned about the future of our country under this enormous burden of debt.
Yeah, and and I I think that people are not paying a lot of attention to the future of our country.
That is if you ask the question, if you look at the Rome, you look at uh Spain, you look at uh France and England, these were at one time great, great nations, and they went down the tubes for precisely what we're doing.
You know, their their economic hero is John Maynard Keynes, but you know, you remember what Keynes said.
He said he was asked about the long run.
What happens in the long run?
He says in the long run we'll be dead.
But that doesn't show much consideration for your kids or your grandkids or for the future of your country.
And unfortunately, that's what the policymakers in Washington say, in the long run we'll be dead, but I win the next election by bringing you home the bacon.
And you know, and I think that's where the incentive structure is.
That is that is we're facing an unfunded liability, according to who is ever estimates uh that you look at, the conservative ones is like a hundred and five trillion dollars unfunded liability of Medicare, uh Medicaid, uh prescription drugs, and Social Security.
It's no way that we're going to ever, ever, ever be able to pay all of that.
And so there has to be a collapse.
But see, it's not going to come tomorrow.
It's not going to come next year, but it's going to come in 2040, 2050.
But here's the problem.
The people who are benefiting from these programs, they're going to be dead by 2050.
And the Congressmen, they're going to be dead too.
And so any Congressman, it this is part of the tragedy.
Any politician who makes efforts now to try to stop something that's going to be disastrous in 2030 or 2040, he's not going to be very successful.
Well, the interesting thing is, though, is I think the public has become smarter on these issues.
For thirty years, the Liberals in our country attacked conservatives and said, Oh, they're going to cut off your Social Security or your Medicare.
These were the typical Metascare ads that they always run in every election.
Well, they ran these against me in the primary, saying I was going to raise the age on Social Security, and we still won by twenty-four points because I think people know that there's a problem.
And what I do is I just stand up and say, I don't want to do this.
I don't want to change eligibility.
And if I do it, well if I'm part of the solution, it will be in the distant future.
We might have to wait five years or ten years to change things.
But I acknowledge that the system is broken, and if we just keep borrowing, we could destroy the entire system.
Then there would be no Social Security, no Medicare, and no government, because we will be drowning in this sea of debt or destroy the currency in the process.
And and I think I I I think you're absolutely right in in that.
I think but we have to convince the American people.
I guess shared sacrifice.
Shared sacrifice in saying that, look, we're all going to take a cut in what we're getting from the government.
Or or actually maybe a better is the spending limitation.
See, right now, uh different lobby groups can come to Washington and Congress can be friends with all of them.
But if they face a spending limitation, then they have to trade off one against the other.
That is, they just can't give everybody.
And it really works.
Like in Kentucky, our state legislature is not without debate.
We have great contention, but they're stuck.
They just have to reduce some spending because they have to balance their budget, so So I say that we'll never elect enough trustworthy people in Washington.
The system will only change if you enforce either the Constitution or if you come up with a rule that just tells them at the end of the year you've got to make difficult decisions.
They don't make difficult decisions because they get elected and they get more PAC money by giving out more goodies.
And so they'll continue to do that as long as they think they can get away with it, but it's destroying the country.
You're absolutely right.
And I think that uh as a tip to you, I don't know whether you've read the uh the appendix to free to choose.
That was Milton Friedman's uh book and the and in the uh appendix he gives what he uh offered uh what we offered as the spending limitation amendment to the United States con Congress, and I think that we uh said eighteen percent of the GDP.
As a matter of fact, I was telling him uh about uh ten percent of the GDP, and the people say, well, what Walter, why ten percent?
Well, I said if ten percent is good enough for the Baptist Church, it ought to be good enough for Congress, in my opinion.
And your listeners ought to know that right now what it's around twenty-eight percent.
That is absolutely right.
Look, look, Rand, I wish you the best, and uh thanks for coming on the show and and enlightening us, and I I wish you the best for the sake of our nation.
Thank you, Dr. Williams.
It's very good to meet you again.
Thank you.
Thank you very much and gentlemen, that was Rand Paul.
He's the uh Republican hopeful for the U.S. Senate from Kentucky, and we can talk about some of his ideas next segment.
We're back, ladies and gentlemen, and that was Rand Paul, the um fellow who's running from for Dr. Rand Paul, the fellow who's running for the United States Senate from Kentucky.
I forgot to uh compliment him and his fellow Kentuckians on some of the most wonderful barbecue that I've ever eaten on a trip out there.
I think it was either in Paducah or Louisville.
Anyway, great barbecue.
Anyway, I think that uh we're we're really um I think Rand Paul has put his finger on it.
That is, we have to do something now if we're going to save our country, and it's going to take a sacrifice from all of us that is to cut spending.
That is, we're going to have to take a little bit less from the federal trough.
It's kind of interesting column written by George Will, and it's related.
It's in the Washington Post, and it's called The Danger of Government with Unlimited Power.
And in there he he quotes uh idea from William, I think Vogue Vogelli Vogel Vogally, he's the contributing editor of the Claremont Review of Books in his new book, Never Enough, America's Limitless Welfare State.
Anyway, he says the essence of progressivism, that's what the Liberals now call themselves, is the essence of it is a lack of a limiting principle.
That is, there's in the eyes of the Progressives, there is no limit on what the federal government can do.
They can do just about anything.
And this is what Obama might mean, and his and others in his administration might mean by positive rights.
That is, they recognize that the Constitution is a document of negative rights.
And they say, no, no, no.
There are some positive rights.
That is, you have a right to housing, you have the right to food, you have a right to a job.
These are all positive rights.
And that requires a large and growing uh government.
And really, f uh FDR, he just followed the ideas of Woodrow Wilson.
Woodrow Wilson was the first president to make a broad attack on the values of the founding fathers.
That is, he was the first president to hold the ideas of the founders of our great great nations in contempt.
And FDR just was a follower of the Wilson administration, and our current president and other presidents as well, including Republican presidents, have just followed FDR in the growing of the federal government.
And as the Federal Government gets bigger and bigger, we have fewer and fewer freedoms.
And Rand Paul, he's gonna try to do something about that, and I wish him for the sake of our children, I wish him good luck.
Let's uh take a phone call, and you can be on with us by calling 800-282-2882, and let's welcome Catherine from Missoula, Montana.
Well, hi.
Hi.
How are you?
Okay.
Okay.
So um one of the things that uh I had wanted to say to Dr. Paul and and to you also is that since people are um inherently selfish and self-centered and they will always vote in their own self-interest.
I'm wondering, I I have not heard anything about this, but I've been thinking it for a while.
What is the possibility of actually limiting the voting franchise to people who are paying the bills?
You're saying that if you get subsidies, you're co you're not you're not going to vote.
Yeah.
Okay.
You know, because there are the people who are getting subsidies, the people who are getting welfare, the people who are working for the government, are the ones who are voting uh for the expansion of government.
If you go to Washington, DC and talk to anybody who works for the government or any of the intellectuals who um you know people all the think takes and everything else, um, they're all quite in favor of the growth of the federal government.
You're right.
You're you're absolutely right.
And and you know, one of the big problems that's shown by the uh tax foundation, and you can check it out uh in there based in Washington, they point out closely fifty percent of taxpayers have no federal income tax liability.
That legally legally so that what they do, they create a natural spending constituency for big spending politicians because if you're not paying federal taxes, what do you care about federal taxes?
What do you care about tax cuts?
You're not paying any.
That's right.
And matter of fact, what I what I wrote in the column and people uh a couple people are upset about it, I was suggesting that every Americ and I like to run it by you, Catherine, every American should have at least one vote in the national elections, and uh and you should have one additional vote for each twenty thousand dollars you pay in federal income taxes.
What do you think about that?
Um well I'm not sure.
It sounds like uh it sounds complicated.
It sounds more complicated than just limiting the franchise to those who vote.
I mean who those who pay taxes.
Well, the well, I'm talking about the principle of it.
Yeah, well the principle of principle of it is pretty good.
I mean that is it you know, for example, I do not have a right to vote on anything that Ford Motor Company does because I don't have any shares in the country uh in the company.
I don't have I don't have a financial stake in the company.
So if I don't have a financial stake in the company, why should I have any say-so about the decisions made about the country uh about the company?
Now I feel the same thing about the government.
That is you ought to have a financial stake in our country.
Yes.
In order to have a say so.
I I definitely agree with that.
Well I'm glad you agree because probably a whole lot of other people do not agree with me.
So but anyway, Catherine, thanks a lot for calling in.
Let's go to Russell in Cleveland, Tennessee.
Welcome to the show.
Hello, Mr. Williams.
Hi.
How are you today?
Well, the world's wrong and I'm right.
Well, thank the Lord somebody, all right.
Listen, my friend, I listened to you for the last uh period of time today, and I've enjoyed most of the comments.
I'm uh very concerned though about an issue regarding social security that seems to be lost in the mix.
Uh theoretically, uh the founding fathers may not agree with Social Security, but uh you know we have it just the same.
I'm seventy-seven years old.
Uh my wife had cancer for nine and a half years, she left me here three years ago.
Uh I cost me about a million and a half dollars, and I'm down now to where I am living on social security.
Uh now the fo uh founding fathers did good by America, and our politicians about thirty years ago took all the trust funds from Social Security and spent them.
Well, the it never was trust fund the trust fund, it wasn't any money there, it was just IOUs.
But but listen, look listen to this.
Now, it turns out according to conservative estimates, it turns out that if the average worker, the person making the average pay, put the same amount of money into social security into a private retirement program throughout his life that he had put in Social Security that the average couple would be able to retire off of forty-eight thousand dollars a year and leave a quarter of a million dollars to their own children, to their uh to their heirs.
And so that says that Social Security is a bad deal.
Yet the the return is very, very low.
And matter of fact, now I believe the return couldn't be more than one percent for the people entering the labor force.
And so, and then the next question you'd have to ask, and I'm gonna let you go after this.
The next question that you have to ask people is we were a nation from 1787 until 1935.
And we did not have Social Security.
How in the world did we make it?
We made it okay.
That is, young people took care of their parents, and parents died in the homes of their of their children.
Now parents, a lot of parents die in little green rooms.
We made it without Social Security.
We'll be back after this.
Walt Williams here filling in, and you can be on with us by calling 800-282-2882.
And uh before we go back to the phones, the fellow was talking about Social Security.
What do you think about this, ladies and gentlemen?
That a person who retires on Social Security, he draws out within three or four years all that he ever put into Social Security.
And keep in mind that at one time the Social Security tax a year was like $60 or $70 for a long time.
It was even less than that for uh in the during the 40s.
Okay, so the person who retires in 1980, he draws out every single penny that he put into Social Security in a matter of three or four years.
Now, the person entering the labor force in 1980, in order to break even with what he puts into Social Security, he will have to live until he's in his 90s.
Maybe I think I'd forget the number, but it could be like 92 or 93.
He'll have to and he's going to die before he the average person is going to die before they break even with Social Security.
For black Americans is even worse.
That is, the life expectancy for black Americans, not now at birth, but uh years ago, the life expectancy is 65 years old.
When do you draw it start drawing your Social Security?
Well, it's 65.
Well, a lot of black men, they're dead by that time.
Social Security is a bad deal.
But we have it, so what are we going to do about it?
I'm not sure uh what to do.
You know, I we've been talking about some of these uh government issues uh most of the program, but there's something else that I'd like to just throw out so you just think about it.
When your little children come home from school crying about you should try to get greener because the polar bear is sitting in on to have a picture of the polar bear on the ice flow, and he's gonna drown.
This cute little cuddly little polar bear.
Well, you know, in Canada the the polar bear has been used by global warming uh uh promoters to put a little cuddly face, because you know, everybody likes a polar bear, but you know, but actually, in in uh uh the truth of the matter, polar bears are some vicious animals.
They kill human beings.
But anyway, the CBC, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the CBC News reported, this is in Cal Thomas's column.
It's written in the um examiner, the Washington Examiner, and it's called Sinking Climate Change, June 3rd.
Anyway, CBC News reported that the polar bear's designation as a species of special concern has been suspended, while the government reviews the polar bear status and decides whether to renew its classification or change it.
Well, actually, the story the polar bear, there are more polar bears in the northern in in North America than there were in 1950.
The polar bears are just thriving.
And so are the other animals.
They're just thriving.
But these animal rights wackos and the and the environmental uh radicals, they've just painted pictures and they've indoctrinated your children in elementary school showing them pictures of the dying, drowning uh polar bear.
There's another story came out about the the Arctic ice cap in the North Pole.
And in the expedition last year to the North Pole discovered that the ice is a hundred percent thicker than expected.
And so these people telling us that global warming is melting, the ice and New York's gonna be underwater, or New Jersey is going to be underwater.
These people are just lying to us in this whole global warming charade.
And you know the reason why they're pushing global warming?
Because we the government can control every aspect of our lives in the name of saving the planet.
This is why the people are having a hissy fit at the climate gate and all these stories coming out about the lies and the and the misuse of data and the fraud associated with global warming.
These people see global warming as their chance to control us.
And now it's turning out to be a big lie.
Let's uh let's take a break and then we'll come back and we'll talk to uh uh Mac.
Let's uh return to the phones and uh the uh first up is Ken.
Welcome to the show, Ken.
Hi, Mr. Williams, how are you?
Well, thank you.
Uh uh I I was um talking and uh I think one of the one of the big things that uh kind of dovetails on what you were talking about earlier is that uh um whenever I want to explain some things uh to people about what republic versus democracy is, um, you know, it comes with a story about uh well, what if there were no taxes at all?
You know, what if uh it all took uh a foothold and there were absolutely no taxes whatsoever?
What would we have to do as a society?
Well, you know, we'd have to get salespeople markers for schools, you know, and they would have to go out to the community and they have to have to people and they would have to you know say, hey, can you spare two percent out of your check every week?
Or so on and so forth, you know, and I can't tell you how many times as a single guy I live somewhere and I have no idea where my money is going for the school, I have no interest in it whatsoever.
And therefore I'm separate.
So so there's really a question that comes up.
Uh, if a person does not have his kid in the school, why should he be forced to pay uh taxes for somebody else's kid?
Exactly.
So I think a lot of this has uh uh taxes and and governmental bureaucracy and interference has really led to a a dividing of people, you know, and and I think it it's gonna start showing in a lot of different ways.
I think a lot of charities are gonna be starting to uh start to suffer the more that we have to give to the government so less we're gonna be able to afford to help out people that our neighbors and our people in our community.
That's right.
That's absolutely right.
Uh thanks for calling in.
But the the kind of problems that we're facing today, they were anticipated by Alexis de Tocqueville.
And and and he wrote he's the fellow who came from France to do a study on U.S. prisons, and he went back to France uh talking about uh this country America.
And he and he wrote this book, A Democracy in America.
And he said that what sort of despotism do democratic nations like ours have to fear.
And he said that it would be more extensive, the kind of despotism it'd be more extensive and more mild.
It would degrade men without tormenting them, you know, like with shackles, guns and stuff like this.
And he said that the kind of despotism it seeks to keep us in perpetual childhood.
Now that was a really insight, and this is coming from 1840.
And what is the federal government doing?
It's keeping us as children.
It's saying that that we know what's better for you.
We know how much salt you should have in your diet.
We know whether you should wear a helmet when you're riding a bike.
We know whether you should uh strap, uh you know, put seat belts on when you drive.
We know that you need to have health insurance.
They're treating us like children, and this is exactly what Alexis Tockville talked about.
And I find that amazing for him to be able to anticipate what a despotic government could come in the United States.
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