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Feb. 19, 2016 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
23:31
3209 The Liberalization of America | Phyllis Schlafly and Stefan Molyneux
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Hi everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Main Radio.
Hope you're doing well.
Very pleased to have back, for the third time, Mrs.
Phyllis Schlafly.
Now, she is a conservative lawyer.
She's the founder and president of the Eagle Forum and author or editor of over 20 books, including A Choice, Not an Echo, Who Killed the American Family and The Supremacist, The Tyranny of Judges and How to Stop It, and, of course, many more.
Her monthly newsletter called the Phyllis Schlafly Report is now in its 47th year.
She is the hale and hearty age of 91 years old, and you can find more of her information and writing at eagleforum.org.
One of my favorite stories about Phyllis Lafley is that she wrote a lot about military and She was criticized roundly and perhaps baselessly for not being a lawyer.
So while the mother of six children, she just went out and became a lawyer.
She also fought the leftist agenda in the pushback against the Equal Rights Amendment and virtually single-handedly killed that constitutional amendment.
A really formidable and intelligent lady.
I look forward to our conversation with Mrs.
Phyllis Schlafly.
So, thanks so much for taking the time, Mr.
Schlafly.
What does it mean for the conservative movement, the passing of Justice Scalia?
It is a tremendous event because he was the most distinguished man on the court, knew the law better than anybody else, and believed in interpreting the Constitution the way it was written.
He discounted all of this talk by the liberals That we have a living constitution that they can rewrite according to their own views as the years go on.
And it is a document of words, and it is what has enabled our country to have the best prosperity and the best freedom of any country in the world.
It seems strange to me what they call originalism or the idea that you would look at the context of the Constitution at the time it was written.
I can't think of any other contract that people are so eager to, quote, reinterpret after the fact according to the whims of the moment.
That wouldn't seem to me to be any kind of contract at all.
Well, you're absolutely right, and that's what the liberals do all the time.
They're trying to put new meanings into words.
And try to say that something is constitutional when it isn't.
And then, of course, Obama basically ignores the Constitution and does what he wants to do with what he calls executive action.
And most of us think a great deal of what he does is not constitutional.
It also seems to me that the liberal side or the Democrat side of the American political spectrum seem to be having their, I don't know, finger on the scale, so to speak, in that they don't seem to want to take their ideas to the American population for any kind of popular vote.
What they seem to want to do is pursue judicial activism and also stack the deck with Democrat-friendly immigrants.
Is that your impression, too?
Yes, it certainly is.
And that's why immigration is a...
It's maybe the number one issue in our country today.
They're bringing in all these people from other countries who have no idea of what our Constitution is, no idea of limited government.
They think they should rely on the government to do everything.
And they come over here and they get on all kinds of money aid, and they don't seem to learn what our Constitution is all about.
So we want to stick to the Constitution the way it was written and what it meant when it was written.
And if you could help my listeners and watchers understand what is meant by the phrase, it's bandied about a lot but usually without much explanation, judicial activism or making the law rather than interpreting the law.
Well, that's the theory of the liberals, that the Constitution is a living document, and it can be interpreted freely by later Supreme Court justices and give new meaning to some of the words.
And we don't believe in that at all.
We believe in the Constitution the way it was written.
It's a wonderful document.
It's a source of our enormous prosperity and freedom.
And if other countries want to have what we have, they should follow our lead and not try to invade with their numbers of people and come illegally to vote in our country.
industry.
I wonder also the degree to which having the fear of Trump in the Republican leadership at the moment, because it seems to me that the Republican base certainly want the Republicans to push back on any new nominee to the Supreme Court by Obama.
I also get the feeling that without Trump in the wings, they might actually fold.
Some of the rhinos might fold for this, but with the fear of Trump behind them, it seems that they might have some kind of spine to stand up to an appointment before the end of Obama's term.
Well, there are a group of people, mostly rich donors, who are now called the establishment, whom I used to call the kingmakers.
And they successfully nominated one Republican loser after another.
And we don't want the one they want to choose.
And they are absolutely dead sense against Trump.
Because they think he won't take orders from them.
He's not dependent on their money.
He has his own money.
And so I think it's very important that the grassroots speak up and get the nominee they want.
Now, they're talking about now, it may be a convention when nobody will arrive with 51% of the vote.
And if nobody arrives with 51% of the vote, That means, I think, after one ballot, the delegates will be free to vote whoever they want.
And I hope that it's going to be a grassroots chosen nominee and not somebody who's chosen by the big donors.
Because they've given us a bunch of losers.
Well, I guess it wins for them in terms of the number of or the amount of cheap labor that the big business interests can get out of the Republicans' massive desire to extend the H-1B visas, the visa program and immigration as a whole.
Well, you put your finger on the reason what they're doing.
The big donors are doing it because they want the cheap labor coming in.
And the cheap labor is even in the H-1B visas.
Because if you talk to any guy who's gotten an engineering degree but isn't able to get a job, you see the result of that.
And they bring in the foreigners and they simply pay them lower wages and they think that's a neat system.
But we don't want that.
America grew great because we've had a great growing middle class And families, we're strong, and that's what we want to have.
But we can't have it when we have these big donors and so-called kingmakers telling us who to nominate.
Well, and I think the argument could strongly be made that one of the reasons that the labor is so cheap is not just because they come from countries with lower wage expectations, but because the medical, welfare, social, educational costs are shouldered by the U.S. taxpayers rather than having to be included in the wages that would have to be paid to people coming in by big business.
You're absolutely right.
You're absolutely right.
And it's an outrageous system.
And we don't We don't want to have the biggest percentage of our people dependent on handouts from the government.
That's not the way America was built.
And it's unfortunate that now a tremendous percentage of our population is dependent on that check they get from the government every month.
What is it in Trump's platform, and I know that you have been very pro-Trump, obviously, recently.
What is it in Trump's platform that the Republican political class is not recognizing, the connection that Trump has with the grassroots Republicans?
Well, I think that it's clear that Trump is his own man.
He's not taking orders from the kingmakers.
He's doing what he thinks is the right thing, and he's trying to make America great again, and that really resonates with the middle class in our country.
It resonates with people who want jobs and think the immigrants are taking our jobs, and they are indeed.
If you're a guy just coming out of school, you need an entry-level job, and that's what...
We can't let them do it because that's just destroying our country.
And I think in particular among the lower wage members of the American society or people who are having a tough time getting a job in an increasingly automated world, I'm thinking in particular that Trump seems to have great appeal among American citizen blacks and Hispanics because by keeping out the cheap labor, he's going to open up a lot of opportunities for those who are having a tougher time these days getting onto the lower rung of the economic ladder.
Yes, but don't forget that Trump said he's going to send the illegals back to where they came from.
And I want to tell you, I've been writing a monthly newsletter for many, many years, and my current one, which is going in the mail in the next few days, has a picture from the newspapers, I think it was 1954, when Eisenhower said, Sent back millions of illegals.
You know, they say it's impossible to ship them back.
Well, this picture shows them loading the illegals in the 1950s onto a train.
And that's the way they sent them back.
That was the year of trains, if you can remember back that far.
And it's terribly important that we not let all these people come in who take jobs from Americans.
When our kids get out of college or get out of high school, they need an entry-level job.
And that's what the illegals and the immigrants are taking away from us.
Well, and you've made the case recently that America, since 1965, has taken, what, 59 million immigrants in, largely, of course, from non-European countries.
And this has become what many people have grown up with.
I was born in 1966, so this is kind of what I grew up with, was mass third-world immigration into Western countries.
But prior to that, it very much wasn't the case for at least a half-century and even before that.
I wonder if you could help people understand why What it was like before Kennedy's Bill of 65?
Well, we had a very homogeneous population.
Everybody speaks English, and that's essential.
When you become a citizen of America, you promise to learn and speak English, and that's terribly important.
It's a unifying condition.
What they're doing to our country now is so bad, all you have to do is look at Germany.
Now, I thought the Germans were tough, but the Germans decided, Andrea Merkel decided she was going to let all these Syrians in, and nobody has the capability of vetting them to find out if they're criminals or not.
And they've come in, and the thing that's so shocking about a lot of these criminals is that not only are they criminals, but they go after very young girls.
I'm talking about 10, 11, 12 year old girls.
You know, you can imagine an American guy being attracted by some attractive woman, but Americans don't go after 10 and 11 year old kids.
Yeah, it is what is going on in Europe.
I mean, I could almost imagine the next wave of immigration might be Christian Europeans fleeing the disaster escape that is shaping up in Europe.
Well, they're trying to keep the Christians from getting here.
And the Christians are certainly a lot of refugees.
However, we've got to watch out.
We've got to vet everybody.
You know, the Boston bombers came in claiming they were refugees from persecution, and that wasn't true at all.
After they got here, they made several trips back to their home country, and nobody bothered them.
Right.
Now, I don't know if you've been following the cases that Justice Scalia, had he lived, would have been adjudicating or judging.
I wonder if you could talk, if you've followed this, about some of the key cases that you think might go a different way should a more liberal judge be placed on the Supreme Court.
Well, Obama's idea of judges is that they will follow the left-wing party line.
And he's appointed now more than 300 judges to the federal judiciary.
And a lot of those will become law because the Supreme Court won't take a review of them.
And that's very, very unfortunate and very dangerous.
And we need to make sure that we have a good, solid Supreme Court and federal courts who follow the Constitution Right, right.
And when you talk about the kingmakers, most people, of course, when they follow U.S. politics, they see the candidates, but they don't see the party machinery, sort of the wizard behind the curtain.
And I know that you first wrote about the kingmakers way back in 1964 in A Choice on an Echo.
Yeah, what is it that people need to see that I think Trump is kind of revealing by doing daring things like pointing out how stacked the audience is in the debates with party donors and donors to candidates.
Who are the kingmakers and what is it that Trump is revealing through his march across the conservative landscape?
Well, the kingmakers have poured a lot of money into this campaign because I know it's the most important election of our lifetime.
It's really a danger, and we need to make sure the grassroots can pick their own candidate.
That's what democracy is all about.
That's what it meant when the Constitution said, government of the people and by the people.
And so it's very necessary that everybody be involved.
I'm urging all of our Eagle Forum members and everybody I know who cares about the future of our country to...
To be part of the process in getting yourself elected a delegate to the Republican National Convention so that you can have your voice.
They all think now, all the speculation is there's going to be a wide open convention when nobody will arrive with 51% of the vote.
I don't know.
I'm not a predictor.
But at any rate...
We have to be ready for all eventualities, and Eagle Forum has a guy named Ed Martin, our new president of Eagle Forum, who has studied the rules and will help guide you to make the legal choice of what to do, because there will be all kinds of procedural motions.
You know, I can remember the convention when the key...
One key vote was in the Credentials Committee, and they got the governor of California, who had the largest delegation, to throw his entire delegation's vote to Eisenhower, as opposed to Bob Taft, whom the grassroots were for.
And the result was they bribed him, and he got paid off with the first appointment to the Supreme Court.
And that's how he got to be on the court.
But we don't want anything like that.
We want the people, the grassroots, to pick the candidate they want, and they do not want one who is beholden to the kingmakers.
And you've talked, I think, about the danger of the Paul Ryan-Marco Rubio combination, should Marco Rubio ascend to the presidency.
What do you find particularly dangerous about that duo with regards to immigration in particular?
Well, I was the first one to endorse Marco Rubio.
I flew down to Florida to stand with him and endorse him when he ran for the Senate.
But he has betrayed most of what I thought I was voting for.
And there's no question about that.
And he signed up with that Gang of Eight, which was calling for amnesty for basically anybody who wanted to come in.
And so I'm so disappointed in Marco Rubio because I think he betrayed everything that That I stuck my neck out and voted for when he was first running for the Senate.
I think we have to elect somebody who's a definite voice of the grassroots, and that's what I think about Trump.
And also about Cruz.
And we want to make sure that somebody who's the voice of the people is nominated for president because I'm hoping that the country will not elect Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders, that they will elect a Republican candidate.
And I can't for the life of me.
I had sort of drifted away from the political process just because it seemed so preordained.
I guess I had sort of sensed the whiff of the kingmakers behind the throne.
But Trump has sort of drawn me back into reengaging and being reinterested in the American political process.
And I think, Mrs.
Schlafly, like I literally cannot think of a precedent in American history where somebody with this kind of name recognition, with this kind of experience and expertise and star power and recognizability and wealth to be able to self-fund as well as the commitment to do so.
Am I missing some...
Has this happened before in American politics in even as close a scale as Donald Trump?
Well, no, I think Trump is a...
A guy of his own making, and I don't think there's ever been everybody just like him.
However, I will remind you that when I worked for Ronald Reagan before he was finally nominated in 1980, he went through a lot of dissection by grassroots who thought he was not conservative We're good
worst divorce bill in the history of our country.
He had signed an abortion bill, and a lot of people thought he was not a real conservative, and some of us were supporting Phil Crane, who you probably don't even remember him, who we thought was a real conservative.
But at any rate, we finally got Reagan nominated, and it was a great thing, and he turned out to be the best president we had in the 20th century.
And I think we can do that again if the grassroots will stand together and not be dissuaded by some of these attacks on Trump or Cruz.
All right.
Now, I know we're tied on time, so I just wanted to give you the opportunity, Mrs.
Schlafly, to communicate to the listeners, to the folks, why is this election so important and what should they really be planning to do over this election season?
Well, I think this is the most important election of our lifetime because we need to decide whether we're going to go along with Obama fundamentally transforming America.
As he said, he wanted to do.
And he has made a fundamental transformation in many ways.
He has issued so many executive actions that we think are plainly unconstitutional and which his friends on the court have not called unconstitutional.
And so I feel that this election, which will control not only the president's presidency, the president's branch of government, but also the court branch of the government, because we have a vacancy that needs to be filled. because we have a vacancy that needs to be filled.
And I'm urging all Republicans not to confirm anybody at the present time.
I think we should wait for the next president.
We just don't need to have a nominee right now.
So I urge the American people to accept the idea that we'll just have eight judges for the rest of this year, and then we'll have an election and we'll bring our country back to the right path.
All right.
Well, thank you very much, Mrs.
Lafley.
You can always go on my website, eagleforum.org, for more information.
Thank you, and have a good day.
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