Transcript of my conversation with Scott Horton 10/19/2023

(0:22 - 0:41)

Hey everybody and welcome to another episode of Knocked Conscious. Today I had the honor and privilege of speaking with Scott Horton of antiwar.com and the Libertarian Institute. It was a really interesting hour.

I hope you enjoy it. Here it is. Scott, welcome.

Thank you so much for joining Knocked Conscious. Happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

(0:42 - 0:54)

Thank you. I was actually just in Austin between the 30th of September and the 3rd of October and I didn't really come across where you were. I came across your conversation with Williamson, and I found out you were in Austin, so I wish I would have connected earlier.

(0:59 - 2:56)

So I'd like to approach our conversation slightly differently because we only have an hour. All we're doing is telling people that they're wrong because we're giving them evidence that, you know, to the contrary of what they're being told, right? I'd love to know how you got to where you got because I think the human part of us is getting lost in our fight to stop what's going on. Well, I mean, look, there's an old saying, I don't know if Malcolm X coined it first or what, that if you stand for nothing, you'll fall for anything.

And I think that there's another take on that, which is if you stand for anything, then you'll start to notice that things around here ain't quite right. And that the thing they said before doesn't match up with the thing they said now. And, you know, frankly, it's also just like a matter of kind of where you see yourself in society.

Like if you are very much like dressing for success and getting the latest car that all of the right people are driving this year and this kind of thing, like you're not going to want to know a lot of things that take you outside of where you want to fit, you know. But if you're already a skater or you're already a drunk or you're already a musician or you're already whatever, I don't know, something where or in fact, it depends on who you consider to be the dominant power in society. Right.

Because you can be a right winger and be like extremely anti establishment in a way to write. Like we saw that, you know, somewhere in the Obama years. Like I kind of grew up in the Clinton years where the right wing was the anti establishment, anti government force, you know, at least sort of.

So you and I are I think you and I are like three or four years apart. I'm only forty nine. So, yeah, this is why I think you and I have a lot of connection to that, because I think we actually have a European history, too.

(2:56 - 3:31)

So I was wondering if we could go through that. But I wanted you to finish on that for sure. Yeah.

Well, just, you know, and look, I'm from Austin, Texas, which means that like half the people around me are liberals and half of them are conservatives. And in fact, I grew up kind of right on the border of Travis and Williamson County. And so like I could have grown up to be horrible on everything, but instead I grew up to be good on everything.

So that's basically all. I'm not impressed by a bunch of liars and killers. And I I guess for a while I was a conspiracy nut, which was a great kind of inoculation, whether all that stuff panned out or not.

(3:31 - 5:49)

So it was a great inoculation against believing in the beneficial power of the American empire, whether to people overseas or to people here at home. I mean, I learned a lot of stuff from the left about Vietnam and the CIA coups in Iran and Guatemala and that kind of thing. But then I learned a lot about, you know, kind of a right wing anti-war take and a right wing anti-international establishment take from like the more conspiracy right, like the John Birchers and the John Birchers to boil their theory down.

In the end, it's all about creating a world government. And so as a step toward that, you have to destroy America. You have to bring America down to be only as powerful as everybody else.

Otherwise it doesn't work. And so from that point of view, the empire itself, even though we're corralling all these other states into the global system, at the end of the day, it's also treason. It's also a great plan to sabotage America by spending us into bankruptcy, driving us into the ground.

So this kind of world government will take its place. Now, I don't really think that that's true anymore. Like I did, you know, 25 years ago.

But it still remains that that's how to destroy America. The only other way to do it would be with some fantastic germ weapon or H-bombs. Right.

In which case, like nobody wants to do that. You know, there's blowback from that. So the only other way to destroy America is through empire.

And the reason that conspiracy appealed to me when I was younger because it was because the idea was I already knew that all empires fall and all empires kill themselves. And if you want to, you know, save your civilization, you would be weak. Yeah.

Unlike Bush meant when he said it, you would be prudent, Bush senior, that is, you would be prudent and not go and blow your whole wad on adventures. Instead, you would be conservative and try to husband your resources, cash that peace dividend, build up your capital base and protect your own society, you know, your Bill of Rights and all these things. So so I I saw the empire as an evil Illuminati plot to destroy America.

(5:49 - 7:30)

Now I see it as a plot by a bunch of people who destroy their own empire the same way every other empire destroys itself by being taken over by a bunch of self-interested goons who have no morality whatsoever, no business sense whatsoever, and drive the damn thing into the ground. And so you see, when I was younger, it was like I'm so young and I know that empire is suicide. So then that means that all the people who are in charge, this must be deliberate, right? Like this is them putting the gun to our head on on purpose.

But now that wasn't right. It's just because they're pieces of shit, you know, right? No. And then Bush got elected and took us to war.

And I was piling around with Justin Raimondo and the guys at antiwar dot com who knew everything about what the hell was going on. And so and that was obviously the most important thing. I agree with the old right libertarians who say that, you know, Garrett Gourette would say that.

In an empire, foreign policy dominates domestic policy, it rules everything. We can't get rid of the FBI, we can't get rid of the CIA, we can't get rid of homeland security, we can't have really have the Bill of Rights. Don't you know there's a war on? And so they get away with tapping our phones.

We all know they're reading all our emails. Hell, all Snowden did, and I know he wasn't trying to do this, but in a sense, all he did was just get us all used to the damn idea in a way. And like nothing got rolled back at all.

Barely right. Like two percent got really they're telling us outright every time they're doing it now. They're telling us they're letting KJP fumble her way through a conference telling or some press conference telling us all the craziness that they're doing.

(7:30 - 9:02)

It's unbelievable. It is. Oh, sorry.

Just to wrap it up. Empire is murder, suicide, all this stuff about like USA number one. It's history.

It's like history. It is. It's the same.

And even, you know, like if you take yourself out of the argument, like what if we were just talking about like 500 years from now, the rise of Brazil's world empire? Like how far do you think they should push it? Like what is their real GDP anyway? You know, how much of Africa can they bite off and chew or should they maybe not? You know what I mean? Maybe not. These are fair questions to ask. Maybe we should have a collaborative, you know, collaborative effort.

Right. For one. Yeah.

There you go. It'll be. Yeah.

The American Brazilian alliance is committing atrocities all over Angola. The ABA. So did you always have these these these opinions? Because I came from war.

I came. I'm a first generation American. So both of my parents were born in Germany.

My dad was born in 1940. My mom in 1944. You can imagine the time of Germany that was my brother.

My dad had a brother, a sibling die. They were walking from Hamburg to Berlin to avoid the bombs. The whole family, one of them died on the way.

My mom, my grandma, my mom, my father on my mom's side fought as a soldier. And after it was over, that became East Germany. So he went from fascism to communism.

(9:03 - 9:51)

My mom brought over some pamphlet with a girlfriend. My grandfather ripped it up in front of her and the girl reported him and they escaped East Germany in 1953. I did a podcast with my mom about it.

The story is just unbelievable. That is. I am truly part of the American.

I am truly part of the American greatness that we are. And I grew up patriotic and nationalist because of that, you know, going from fascism to communism to West Berlin, which was physically in East Berlin. Still, we still were stuck.

They weren't going anywhere. You still had to fly out somehow. A person, my grandfather wrote someone on a periodical in Philadelphia, a barber, some German guy, completely unknown, sponsored the whole family, brought him over.

(9:52 - 10:41)

My father came on his own, joined the army right away, joined the army. And, you know, he thought it would be the quickest way to nationalization. So he didn't know much English.

We are talking 59. So what are we talking? 15 years after the war, after my German fathers and mothers killed the Jewish people. And here is a Jewish guy in my dad's platoon translating the sergeant's English into Yiddish.

So my dad can kind of understand what he's saying. If that's not humanity. I don't know what it is, so.

So I was patriotic, grow up crazy, patriotic Iraq. I had I was in the Boy Scouts. I was an Eagle Scout, right? We made T-shirts.

We sold them. Saddam. Hey, Saddam, this scuds for you.

It was off of Iraq or one. Yeah. Iraq 190.

(10:42 - 10:57)

I just started driving. OK, me too. Look, so my parents are, you know, centrist Democrats, right? They're nobody radical at all.

And I don't know. They felt very strongly about Iraq or one either way. But I loved it because I was a 15 year old boy and I'm.

(10:58 - 11:56)

And like, yeah, I just want to see shit explode, man. I'm sorry for cussing. I just want to know this is a completely open forum for you.

So I want you to say this is for you to express. I am a free speech. Yeah, look, I don't mind saying it all.

I I wasn't raised to believe in Ronald Reagan and George Bush. I knew that Ronald Reagan was a dope pusher. I knew how bad I knew that it was really bad that he was selling missiles to Iran while he was back in Iraq against Iran.

I didn't know all about it. But even as like an 11 year old, I was like, man, these guys are some backstabbing, crazy missile selling secret policy having dudes, you know, I knew that much about them. And and I don't I still don't.

I'll never remember how I first learned that the Republicans were the biggest cocaine suppliers on the planet and obviously, more importantly, in the United States and selling it to the inner cities in South and up. All the poor black people launch a massive war on drugs against the people that they are the supply. I mean, Matt, just think about this from an economic point of view.

(11:56 - 15:08)

You take an isolated ghetto South L.A., you. Increase the supply of black market drugs by 100 jillion percent, while at the same time still keeping it completely illegal and raising the consequences in the name of somehow trying to eradicate it, raising the prison sentences way up. So now you have huge amounts of risk here on the part of everyone involved in the in the game, therefore huge premiums on every bit of the trade back and forth.

The whole thing's a black market. So immediately the already the preexisting crips and bloods become cocaine cartels at war with each other over street by street territory control. And then you have the LAPD who trained the Marines on counterinsurgency for from their previous wars against blacks.

I don't know. In the 20th century, the Marines came back from Vietnam and taught it to the LAPD again for use against the blacks of South L.A. for being involved in this entire trap that the Republicans had rigged for them, which is also, you know, to me, a great experiment and responsibility. Right.

Because like if you're a crip and you shoot some guy, then like you're guilty of murder, bro. Tough. At the same time, these people have no power.

And the central freaking intelligence agency waging a dirty war in Nicaragua or, in other words, the most powerful people in the history of all of everything are the ones bringing all the drugs in. And the same government that controls that CIA nominally is keeping it illegal and forbidding them from trading in any of this stuff. And when and then they're rocking it up and smoking it because they never been happy in their life because they live in the damn ghetto anyway.

So everybody is just this is the most miserable situation you could imagine. And and and think of the cynicism about the Republicans going, well, we think the price is worth it, whatever. And, you know, there were people got accused at the time.

Falsely accused, in fact, the great reporter Gary Webb, who broke the story, was falsely accused of saying this was all a plot to destroy the blacks. But that wasn't true. And he never said that.

What he did say was they didn't give a damn about the blacks of South L.A. at all. And if all of them died, they didn't give a damn. They didn't give.

There was nothing you could have done to make them care about those people at all. You're telling me we can get rid of some cocaine and have some money to buy some guns to kill some commies. Let's do it.

No more second thought about it, period. And that's the truth of it. And maybe that's even worse.

You know, like in a way, their level of disdain for their own people that they are sworn to protect, you know. And so and and and Biden's the one Biden's the one who spearheaded the prison, the prison increase for crack. Of course, this is a record.

(15:09 - 17:44)

The drugs had a week, had a week sentence. And and the really cheap, shitty drugs had the worst sentences. Imagine.

Oh, but so Iraq war one. So look, I was already the kind of guy who knew that Reagan was the kind of guy who would sell cocaine to a poor person and then lock him in jail. So I know that even as a kid, 11, 12, 13, 14 years old, I already knew that.

So then when Iraq war one happened, it's not that I was loyal to the state or to George W. George H.W. Bush, who is no Ronald Reagan anyway. Right. It was just I like explosions and I don't care about Iraqis.

Why would I care about them? And the thing is, I like telling that and focusing on that because the truth is I see all the time my 15 year old self in my 45 year old peers. Now I do constantly like this. That's what I'm trying to get to.

Right. This is the point. This is a humanity that people all you all people hear from you is you just eviscerating them and you have to write.

You have to fight fire with fire. But this humanity that you're sharing with me right now is something that I want to get from you so we can share that part to help people open their mind. I see what you mean.

OK, so. So here's what really cured me. OK, there was this beautiful girl named Justine.

I think I heard she died or something. Anyway, she was a senior at my high school and when I was a freshman and she was just the most beautiful girl with the dark red hair. And I just I still remember just absolutely beautiful girl.

And I don't know what neighborhood she was from or what, man. But she went off about Iraq War one and how you would have to be the damnedest fool to believe in that thing. And it was like, what can I say? She's the most beautiful girl in my high school.

And she was like three years older than me. And I was listening. And it was sort of just like, you know what I mean? Like it just kind of deflated, like whatever, like, oh, I liked that or whatever, like, oh, that's stupid.

And then. Not long after that, probably probably relatively immediately after that was I saw George Carlin jamming in New York. And this is from what, February or March of 92.

So it's one year later. And the whole thing begins with him completely eviscerating the Republicans for their phony war and damning his own Madison Square Garden audience for believing in it all. Like he makes them all cheer for the war first before he tells them.

Right. Carlin's one of the absolute greatest. And the further he got along in his career, he figured that out.

(17:44 - 19:35)

Well, and so in that same that same one, he always said jam in New York was his favorite one in that same in that same one. The end. Well, OK, the beginning is against the Republicans for the war.

The middle is how we're all the same and including he talks about going on the airlines and that's sort of a subsection about how we're all the same. You ever look at your watch, but you don't know what time it is and you look at your watch again and you still don't know the time. And so we ask you, hey, what time is it? You know, I don't know.

And like all those. Right. Right.

Yeah. He he had this brilliance of being able to separate us and then bring us all together and then hit us again. Yeah.

And then at the end, he crucifies the liberals in their Volvo's with their Earth Day and the recycling and all their pretensions of caring about the planet and Earth Day and all this. And what he's really doing is he's really kind of being more of a commie leftist here, attacking the left from the left. But didn't necessarily sound like that to me at the time.

It just sounds to me almost like he was in the center, like more of a libertarian type like because he's not just a comedian. He's a free thinker, regardless. It's not just like I mean, if you say centrist, that usually calls someone somebody like Biden, who's for every horrible thing.

Here's Carlin against every horrible thing. And as a 15 year old, I think I still was not 16 yet or maybe I was 16 then. Yeah, it might have been.

This was a permission slip to me. Right. This is a hall pass.

They're like, look, for someone who's a kid who's interested in politics, you're supposed to choose a side. Are you with the right wing Christians or are you with the labor union people or like whatever you're supposed to throw in with this? Yeah. And so Carlin is saying, oh, my God, don't tell me you're stupid enough to fall for that.

Like before I ever had a chance to try. Right. Before I even had a chance to be dumb enough to fall for it, he let me know that that would be a real stupid thing to do.

(19:36 - 24:05)

And like so that just protected me, really. That was my inoculation from ever like kind of having to feel like an identity that I share with the dominant powers around. You know what I mean? I never am going to be that.

I'll pile around with right wing militia guys and I'll pile around with left wing earth earth first, you know, gay communist environmentalists or whatever and all that as long as they don't have power, as long as they're regular schmucks like me, I like them. Right. And we should all be against the power, the real big business, corporate elite and the state that they control that controls them and us.

Right. Like that's what it's really all about is the the combine. Right.

Read your keys. Right. Big business, big government at war.

The American empire at home and abroad. That's the enemy, not each other. And so I've always kind of been like that since the early 90s.

And so I'm very lucky. I don't I really am very kind of causal determinism about my belief in free will. Like I really have an entire list of all that.

And I left out a ton. I got an entire list of massive influences on me growing up that I feel like, you know what? Other people just didn't have that. Like, I don't remember specific examples anymore of like the very first ones.

But I know that when I was a kid, I met veterans who had been to Vietnam, who told me, let me tell you about the army, OK? They're liars. They're killing. They don't care about you.

They're right. Like, whoa, boy, gotcha. Now, I mean, tell that to a 10 year old.

Right. Like, how am I supposed to fall for this now? Right. When I had a guy who went to war and back and told me that the army lied, they didn't care about him at all.

They hated him as much as they hated Charlie over there, apparently. So, oh, no, but they're going to respect me if I join up. Right.

You know what I mean? They don't mean it. They're scum. They are the officers there.

And this is why I love David Hackworth was an influence on me in the 90s because David Hackworth was the most decorated officer in Vietnam. And he was it would remind you of communism if you misunderstood. He was fighting a class war for the enlisted men against the officers.

Right. The officers, they're the government. The enlisted men.

Well, they're the people of the country. They're peasants. Yeah.

Yeah. And the officers hate them and despise them and don't care about them at all. And if it wasn't for Hackworth out here sticking up for the little guy, they would have mop gear that doesn't work.

They'd have rifles that don't fire and on and on and on because that's the way the officers feel about the enlisted men. And that's a right wing guy talking anti-government stuff in Democrat times. Right.

In the Bill Clinton 90s. Rumsfeld Army, you have Obama. I'm sorry.

Go to war with the army. You have that Rumsfeld. Yeah, that kind of thing.

But also more like remember, Obama wanted to invade Syria in 13 and the right wing was like, no, we're not following Barack Obama into battle. Forget that. Why would we do that? We're not taking Trump vaccine.

Right. Right. Yeah, exactly.

Liberals in the Trump vaccines. Exactly. Exactly.

Hypocrisy. Scott, I can't. I tweet something on your son about hypocrisy run amok.

We should just have a website, hypocrisy run amok dot com and just post all shit over and over. You know, what happens, though, is people learn that like, hey, wait a minute. You know, I saw a guy this morning on my Twitter.

We were someone asked me about was it this bad during Iraq or two? And I'm like, oh, my God, you wouldn't believe. Yeah, that's what I responded to. Yeah.

And then I saw someone responded to that and said, oh, hell, what was it? Now I lost my train of thought. I'm sorry. No, it's OK.

Iraq, Iraq, war two. And when you get that back, let's circle back on that. But can we go back to the 15 year old and the 45 year old? Because I think this is the point.

Yeah. To your point, we're seeing not the causality of the war. We don't know what war does.

We don't physically directly experience it, but we love the explosions. I remember watching those pictures of the black and white bunker busters going in the target and they were beautiful, beautiful. I actually enlisted.

I couldn't get in. I went through the three hour physical on my legs, like three quarters of an inch shorter than the other, and I failed the physical at the end. I was going to do GI Bill.

(24:05 - 24:31)

I went to Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. I was a conservative, what you would call Republican. Sixteen, I think I just said no or 18, 16 or 18 this year.

So I was wrong. And I hope I need to tell people I was wrong so other people can say they were wrong and be OK. Right.

And you are right in so much of it. And I don't want to say all because I don't know all the story. Right.

(24:31 - 24:59)

But you are so right in so much. We need to figure out how people can, you know, accept being wrong and turning to the right. Yes, you're you're totally right about that.

Listen, man, I studied social psychology for one semester in junior college. And so I know that that's the key to everything. And it really is, man.

I just have this experience over and over and I suck at it. By the way, I'm not a PR guy and I like I like you, though. But we need people like you.

(24:59 - 27:27)

We need that. Well, we need other people, too. Like I just can't do public relations.

I'm just going to only be myself. That's all I can do. But I do understand not that I like I'm a practitioner of it, but I understand well.

The way people and just how you phrase it, people have to feel like it's OK now to change their mind, like take all the Karens from covid. Right. Like now that it's been a couple of years, if you could say to them, maybe just in small groups or even one at a time, hey, listen, now that it's been a couple of years.

The thing is, like, it's not really your fault because they lied to you about a lot. I mean, they said all these things that turned out not to be true. So no wonder you got caught up in it.

Right. Like maybe you could get them to say, OK, maybe I really was wrong about that, but it's their fault. Yeah, you're right, because they lied to me and they like I accidentally fell for it.

But the only, you know, kind of thing, give them an out, at least give them a little bit of an out. It took Republicans a very long time to get over Iraq or two. I mean, they nominated McCain and Romney instead of Ron Paul because they couldn't get over Iraq or two.

But then what happened? What happened, dude? It wasn't information. It wasn't even the ISIS war of the Obama years that did it. That's not what it was to Iraq or three.

It was Donald Trump. Well, OK, Iraq or three had something to do with it. But it was Donald Trump got up there and he can only speak in the world's greatest hyperbole.

So he says going to the Middle East was the worst thing any president ever did. Well, not even Iraq or two, but just all of it. And he goes, and anybody who believed in it also was a damn fool.

And you all love me now instead. And he made them choose, right? Like they had to choose. Wait a minute.

Well, he's while he's still love Iraq or two or I'm me from tomorrow. And now I love Donald Trump instead of Iraq or two. And they chose the latter.

They chose to change their mind about Iraq so that they could agree with their new right wing hero who disdained Iraq. And, of course, he had to because he had to hang it around Jeb's neck that his brother had done this to us. So he had a real political reason.

(27:28 - 27:35)

Plus his connection with the Saudis. Let us not kid ourselves. His connection with the Saudis is highly concerning more than anything.

(27:35 - 28:32)

Oh, who? Trump? Yeah. Oh, sure. More than any of the other shit that they are calling him out on.

No one is talking about his Saudi relationship where 19 of them from 9-11, right, were Saudi citizens, were they not? Well, look that. Oh, Donald Trump inherited that policy. That is U.S. policy.

Now, his son, his son in law went over there and cashed in on some shit. But like, I don't I don't know that Donald Trump's. So a continuation of that.

I'm sorry. Is it more of a continuation than of the same policy? We're just OK. Yeah, I think so.

I mean, the worst thing he did as far as Saudi was he helped them wage war against Yemen for four years. But that was right. He inherited from Obama, who had already been fighting it for two years by the time that Trump was in here inherited it to, you know, in 2017.

So it was horrible and he should be held accountable for it. It was essentially. I think.

(28:33 - 29:12)

A rock or two was probably as destructive and Obama's dirty war in Syria was maybe nearly as destructive, but the war in Yemen, even though America was only so-called supporting it rather than directly fighting it, was a deliberate war of genocide against the civilian population of the country fought by Saudi and UAE and their al-Qaeda allies on the ground in such a way that America does not do or at least hasn't done. I mean, in Iraq or one, they did bomb the water works and the electricity. But I don't think they really did in the rest of these wars.

(29:13 - 33:21)

And the way that they did it in Yemen, it was just systematic to completely obliterate the civilian infrastructure of the country to starve the population of the country, to murder the civilians of the country like en masse. And so and again, that was Barack Obama who started that in 2015. But Trump continued it the whole time.

And it's at least equivalent to the sin of Iraq or two. I mean, it's as bad as anything America has done in the last 20 years. I don't get much information on Syria and Yemen.

I just know it's awful, just an abomination. It's all in enough already. Yeah.

I understand we're building a base in Syria now or something. We got bases in Syria. If they have their way.

That's right. So let me ask you this then. Let's go vaccine then.

Just because you talk war all the time. Let's talk manufacturing consent. Let's do it.

Right. Because they're lying to us about everything. That's not everything, but a lot.

Right. Most of it. Right.

At least twisting it. So vaccine comes out. What's your initial thought? On the vaccine? Yeah.

What was your initial thing when that just first hits? This thing comes out, everybody's scared. March 20, 2020. Well, the germ itself, my attitude basically revolves around my wife.

I mean, first of all, as far as any public policy, I'm completely anti-government. I don't believe that the CDC or the NIH or any of those things should even exist at all, much less be able to tell anyone what to do at all as far as any of that goes. Same for the governors and all their supposed emergency powers and all that.

In my own life, I got a wife with lupus, which means her immune system is so retarded, you would not believe it. It is just ridiculous. When she gets sick, she gets really sick.

And so my idea, which I'm not sure how much I regret this now, it ended up working out OK. My idea was I want to wait till this evolves into something more virulent and less, I mean, pardon me, more transmissible. Right.

And less virulent. Which I know is how it works, that eventually within a year or so, this will be the Hong Kong flu and it'll be less than it is now, whatever. So that was basically my take was to try to protect her.

And then when the vaccine came out, I've always had vaccines like when I was a little kid and I know like I don't trust them at all. Right. But at the same time, I know that everybody is going to have some bad side effect except me.

I'm good luck, boy. None of this ever happens to me. So I don't care.

And at least the way they pushed it at first was if you got the shot, even if you get sick, you'll be much less likely to spread it, which is in fact what happened. I got I got only the first two. I didn't keep getting them after that.

But after I got the first two, the first thing I did was start traveling again. And immediately I got sick. This stupid kid came and coughed right in my damn face.

And it was like five hundred trillion viruses right in my mouth and nose like, you know, I mean, yeah, like it was like a spittle. They coughed right in my face like you couldn't make it up if it was doing this. Are you kidding me right now? So but then in fact, what happened was I got I barely got it.

I got like an itch behind the nose and I did not get the wife sick. I guess if I had to go back, what I would do is when my friend Chris, the cab driver, got sick, I would have gone straight to his house and just got it and inoculated myself with that right at the beginning. And then that way I'd be free to go travel around and do whatever the hell and not have to waste so much time.

Because it's funny, because I more or less stayed around the house, not like on total lockdown. I'm more or less stayed around the house for that first year so as to not get the germ and not give it to the old lady. I'm not saying lockdowns work for the populace.

No, but this is for your community though. You don't get exposed to other people, you won't get it, right? But then the joke is Tom Woods, he didn't stay home for one day. He traveled the whole world, right, for the whole year and he got it about six weeks after I did.

(33:21 - 35:29)

But then again, it kicked his ass and he had to go to the hospital. So I don't know. It's all a trade-off.

Well, it's really interesting because I did not. And once again, me asking you this question builds a bigger picture of who you are. Because I think, to be honest, if I were to see your Twitter feed, I think you'd be misunderstood.

So you're, you vaccinated. You are this libertarian anti-government whatever, who vaccinated? You made a sane choice for yourself with the information that you had at the time that you felt was right. That tells me that we can work with people who come from good faith like you do, right? This is what's most important is that humanity between us, that we can help convince or change a mind or just get them to open, you know? Well, look, I mean, everybody's got to be henpecked by somebody, right? My hen has lupus.

So I was looking out for her. I never recommended, you know, other people go get it and all of that. And I'm proud to say that even though I was writing my book about the Middle East at the time, that I was publishing real great writers at the Libertarian Institute, like Laurie Calhoun and Wilton Alston and others, who they didn't believe a word of the propaganda about this thing the whole time and debunked it in real time.

And in fact, you might see behind me there, you can see it somewhere back there. I guess my chair's blocking it. Bulls-Erin, is that enough already? No, the red one down there.

That's Laurie Calhoun's book. It's called Questioning the COVID Company Line. And we published it at the Institute.

And it's just a collection of all her essays that we published at the Institute from, I think, late spring 2020, all the way through. It just shows that she was right about everything. And she didn't believe a bit of it.

She debunked every bit of it. She was right about everything. And we're about to publish Tom Wood's new book called Diary of a Psychosis, where he also shows just it's his collection of his essays that he had sent out over all those, you know, two and a half, three years, just debunking all of this stuff about their claims, about the lockdowns, about the masks, about the vaccines, and all of those things.

(35:30 - 35:38)

I'd love to have a conversation at some point with them at some point. Tell me about the Libertarian Institute. You know, fill me in.

(35:39 - 36:16)

Yeah, well, so we started in 2016. It was me and William Norman Grigg, who had formerly been with the John Birch Society, but really had become, you know, the libertarian movement's greatest expert on local police abuse. And he's just a heroic guy, really loved him.

And we were great friends for many years. And it was me and him and Sheldon Richmond, who had been formerly at the Foundation for Economic Education, and then the Future Freedom Foundation. And so the three of us kind of came together to create the thing.

(36:16 - 38:17)

And it's ended up growing now. And unfortunately, Will Grigg died only about six months later. I got to pay him one time, I think.

But, you know, we've carried on since then. And we've, you know, really grown. We've got, again, Sheldon Richmond, and we now have, you know, our big shots.

We have Jim Bovard, who is probably the most accomplished and published libertarian writer and author. He's published a grip of books. And he's written for all the most important newspapers in America for decades.

The great Jim Bovard is our senior fellow. And Lori Calhoun, she was formerly at the Independent Institute. She's now with us.

She wrote a bunch of great books, including We Kill Because We Can, all about the drone wars. And she's a real scholar. I mean, she's like a serious heavyweight intellectual.

And then we have Kyle Anzalone and Keith Knight and Conor Freeman and Patrick McFarlane. And this is like, these are the young bucks. They're all like right around 27, 28 years old.

All of them libertarians, hell, and work like dogs all day long, writing great articles and doing podcasts and all these great things. Tommy Salmons is a good friend of mine who does another podcast there. And then we publish my books, Fool's Erin and Enough Already.

And The Great Ron Paul, which is a collection of my interviews of The Great Ron Paul. And Hotter Than the Sun, Time to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, was a collection of interviews that I've done about nuclear weapons over the last decades. And then Sheldon Richman's books, Coming to Palestine, which I highly encourage people to read if they want to understand about Israel-Palestine, and What Social Animals Owe to Each Other, which is an excellent libertarian primer.

It's a takeoff on William Graham Sumner, who wrote an essay 120 years ago called What Social Classes Owe to Each Other. And so this is called What Social Animals Owe to Each Other as Individuals. That sounds amazing.

(38:18 - 38:21)

It's so good, man. It's the best. I'm going to have to check that out.

(38:21 - 39:17)

You'll love it. You'll love it. And then we got, Keith Knight wrote this thing or edited a book that's a collection of all the best libertarian anarchists.

And he's publishing a new book called Domestic Imperialism, Nine Reasons I Left Progressivism, which is just fantastic. We just published Joe Solis Mullen's book, The Fake China Threat and Its Very Real Danger. Yes.

I saw that one. Our two biggest guys, our two biggest and best guys, Jim Bovard and Tom Woods are both putting out books. As I said, Tom's is called Diary of a Psychosis.

And Jim Bovard had written back in 1994, Lost Rights, The Destruction of American Liberty. Now we're publishing Last Rights, The Death of American Liberty by Jim, which is going to just be absolutely great. And so, yeah, that's the Institute, man.

I'm real proud of everybody there. We're doing lots of really great work. Congratulations.

(39:19 - 39:30)

Yeah, congratulations. That's the point. This is for you to share all this stuff to whoever might listen to this, because I just love the ideas and everything.

(39:30 - 40:01)

Could we shift to a couple of things? Obviously, there's stuff going on currently. I would like to close on that. But this is my next thing I'd love to ask you about.

Nikki Haley. I can't with this woman. I just cannot.

I cannot with her. If Trump gets removed from one of the ballots in one of the states or two of the states, she's the she's the front runner. What the hell is going on here? She ain't going to last, man.

(40:02 - 40:10)

Please. She not. Please help me.

Please. Because this woman is vile, evil. I cannot stress.

(40:10 - 40:24)

Where are Republicans heads that they can tolerate this? I mean, they told Mike Pompeo, beat it, pal. Well, she's exactly like him. She's Hillary with an R next to her name.

(40:25 - 41:07)

I can't. So but, you know, I don't necessarily believe those polls either, man. Right.

Haley is not pretty. She's not warm. She's not appealing of a character.

And I think I think they're pushing her. That's the point, though. That's why that's the concern is that it's like option B because of a bank is too independent, even even if he can get in line or believes in war with Mexico.

Yeah. All right. So, Nicky, she's off.

Thank you for making me feel better. I think I can put her in the rearview mirror and let her just be. And look, after all, look, I'm not I'm not speaking for myself here.

I'm speaking for American Republican voters, particularly myself. She's a woman and she's an Indian. And they wouldn't vote for Mitt Romney.

(41:07 - 41:51)

They stayed home for Mitt Romney by huge percentages because that's the wrong kind of Protestant dude. And they're like, I'm not saying that's my point of view. I'm saying it's theirs.

And it's once again, that's a lot of data. You know, looking at data and analyzing it and then providing a point doesn't make you anything. Yeah.

But you know what? I mean, as you know, we live in this incredibly like postmodernist deconstructionist age where everything is taken to be a lie and meant to be secret code for something else and whatever. So I just try to like explain in a way that people understand, like when they're like, I'm sorry, I forgot who coined this phrase. Somebody said this to me recently about people aggressively misunderstanding.

(41:52 - 46:13)

I think it was I think it was Eric Gares from antiwar.com was like people aggressively misunderstand. And in fact, oh, you know what it was? I think he was telling me that like for all our points that we make at antiwar.com and the rest that. What we really should be telling people is that America has the reverse Midas touch and that if you like Israel and want the best for Israel, you should want to stop supporting Israel immediately.

Look at what happens when Joe Biden does things. I mean, you just mentioned about his role in the drug wars and the crime wars and all that. Previously, he's also been in on every bad decision made in American foreign policy this whole time.

And rock and domestic to go to education and everything. Right. Education.

He he opens the door for student debt and then he he fronts the bill to make it that you can't that you have to live with. It's a burden that you you die with. You do not you cannot absolve that debt.

He literally took both sides of that. Yeah, he he's what he's suing the state of New Jersey to keep some immigration prison open. They don't want it anymore.

And he's suing the state to try to keep it open. It's like we clearly see you're in line with big, big. What's it? Wish him on your worst enemy.

You know what I mean? Actually, I'm not on my worst enemy because they do a really good number. Yeah. Like if you really hate your worst enemy, you might, you know.

But yeah. And I think because this is the thing that I guess Eric's point was, since everyone will only aggressively misunderstand everything that we say, deconstruct every word, every syllable, we might as well just stick to like the most important thing that like America destroys everything it touches. If you want to support X, Y, Z movement, your first thing you should do is urge non-interventionism on the part of the United States on that issue.

And I'm not being cute either. Like, that's right. That's really right.

You want to say Iraqi people, you really think they're better off now? Remember when people used to say, well, I think the Iraqi people are way better off now. Yeah. People don't say that anymore, do they? I think Afghanistan's saying it right now.

They're starving. Yeah, they're dying. And they're ruled by the Islamic Republic of Iran, which is just an auxiliary, I mean, of Iraq, which is just an auxiliary of the Ayatollah's regime next door, basically.

And that was America that did that for them. And look, we go Libya, we can go everywhere. Look at the rise of all of the stuff in Libya after Qaddafi.

I mean, the truth is he was a stabilizing force, regardless of what he is or who he is. That area, he was trying to break away from that. He was trying to break away from America.

And then he gave in, he copulated, didn't he? He gave up the nuclear weapons and then bayonet up the X. He didn't quite really have a nuclear program to give up. He had some equipment that he bought off the black market that he traded up. He didn't really have the expertise to make nukes.

I'm sure. I'm certain of that, obviously. You're right.

I mean, importantly, the important point is in 2003, Bush invited him in from the cold and said, you help us kill al-Qaeda guys and you got a deal. And so he did. He was the first guy to put out an interpol warrant for bin Laden in ninety six.

And, you know, the Brits were still using the Libyan Islamic fighting group to try to murder him. And, you know, but then when Bush invaded Iraq, he needed to be able to claim that there was some good result of this. So by letting Qaddafi in from the cold, he said, ah, see, Iraq scared him into giving it giving into us, which wasn't really true.

He'd been begging to come in from the cold since at least 1996, as Gary Hart wrote in The New York Times magazine that he was in Athens when Qaddafi sent a guy to approach him to say, please let us come back in from the cold in ninety six. But Gary Hart, the presidential candidate. Yes.

The former senator. Right. Right.

He wrote that in The New York Times magazine once upon a time. So anyway. It was a PR from the cold.

(46:13 - 48:08)

Right. And then Obama stabbed him in the back seven years later and overthrew him and all based on a total lie. You know, when when Bush launched the Kosovo army, when Bill Clinton launched the Kosovo war, he claimed that the Serbs had murdered one hundred thousand Albanian civilians, men, women and children, line them up and massacred them.

We have to stop the genocide. Total lie. Total lie.

One hundred thousand. Try two thousand, three thousand and then shut the F off and get away with me with this crap. This is no worse than no, no less worse than Saddam Hussein's atomic bomb program in 2003.

Are you kidding me? What a lie. We'll get this Obama in eleven. He doesn't even lie that we got one hundred thousand bodies.

He says, get this. If Qaddafi gets to Benghazi, he's going to murder every last man, woman and child in Benghazi. Seven hundred thousand people.

And I'll ask you, Americans, imagine the city of Charlotte, North Carolina, and every single person in that city being lined up and exterminated by Muammar Qaddafi. That's what's going to happen to Benghazi if we don't stop him. Oh, man, come on.

And you know what? Like he announced this in a speech from Brazil. He didn't even have to come home. He didn't pretend to ought to consult the Congress in any way.

Are you kidding me with this? That's how they launched the war, which, by the way, as long as I'm complaining about like the form of the launching. When Obama switched sides in the Yemen war in 2015, all we got, we didn't even get a press conference from Brazil, man. All we got was a press release from State Department spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan.

(48:09 - 48:23)

Oh, America switched side in the war in Yemen. We're now committing genocide against the Shiites because that's what Saudi Arabia wants. Press release from the State Department spokeswoman.

(48:23 - 49:59)

That was the only authority ever invoked was, I guess Obama feels like it. So on that point, why are journalists today helping the state? I mean, what the fuck is going on when the guy says Ukraine is suffering heavy losses? The journalists correct him. You mean Russia, right? Oh, yes.

Ukraine is suffering heavy losses. They correct him again. And he's like, oh, yeah, Russia is suffering heavy losses.

The same guy, the second hand guy, that moron, that guy who just stands up there, the one that Max Blumenthal eviscerated a couple of days ago. Oh, I guess people don't know about this memo. I guess people didn't get the memo that you can't just stomp on us and actually use your freedom of speech and freedom of the press to expose the corruption.

And no one else is listening, Scott. And that's the thing is like we're yelling at clouds and I need it to absorb somewhere else so that other people can like I put my arms around him so we can do it together. You know what I mean? Yeah.

Well, look, I mean, like I say, it is all social psychology. So figure out who you need to influence the most and how to talk to him. I mean, that's it.

I mean, I think the invention of the antiwar right, although it's kind of been sabotaged by the recent doings in Israel, Palestine and all that, there is a strong current of anti interventionism, thanks to Ron Paul and Donald Trump on the right. And quite frankly, over the long term anyway. The war party cannot consist of all a bunch of weak liberals who are no good in a fight anyway.

(50:00 - 51:13)

Right. You need the American right to support your war or you can't have one. And so I think that's where the battle really is to be fought.

And you see the liberal support wars like in Kosovo and Libya and in Ukraine. But their hearts not really in it. And none of them can win a fistfight, much less a military engagement.

Right. None of them have been in the service. None of them.

You know, it's all it's a game to them. But the thing is. And they can get away with some.

They can get away with launching robot wars. They can get away. I just saw an article.

I literally do you think. Wait, wait. Do you think that Joe Biden can put American Marines on the ground in the Middle East right now? I don't think he can because he needs the American right and the American right don't want to follow Joe Biden into battle.

They just don't believe in him. They don't believe in the American empire as run by this schmuck. And like, thank God for that.

You know, like he's he's LBJ to Obama's JFK. Right. Obama had some charisma and things like this.

Joe Biden ain't so good. Thank God for that. That like on on a public relations level, this guy is just not believable.

(51:14 - 52:41)

You know, if you saw this clip yesterday, it's actually he's trying to say something thoughtful and decent. He was talking about visiting with these Israelis and consoling them. And of course, he our team.

Are you talking about the their team thing? I don't know exactly, but he was on the plane, I think. And he's talking to reporters and he's explaining why he stayed so long. He always turns it around and talks about himself.

I also have lost people. Right. And he's very crass about it because he's such an idiot.

He's Joe Biden. However, there's still some truth in this that and he has certainly he's been he's received positive feedback for this in enough circumstances that this is a thing of his now that he does deliberately, that when people go through something horrible and he goes and visits them in a role as a politician, he gets all personal and says, listen, my wife and daughter were killed. My son died of cancer.

And I know what you're going through and I feel very bad for you. So he was trying to explain to the camera, to the press why he hung around and talked to these people was because it's actually like a decent thing to say, he says, because when not that you can relate exactly, but when people meet someone who's gone through something similar and they can see that you are at least still on your feet, that that gives them a little bit of hope that there's some kind of future on the other side of the worst grief here, you know, that kind of thing. That's what he's kind of trying to say.

(52:41 - 55:31)

Yeah. Well, I know it wasn't Corvette and Kat either. Like, get the hell out of here with that one.

I mean, I don't know what he said to them, but the thing is, he literally said, I almost lost my wife, Kat and my and my Corvette in a fire. No, no, no, no, no. I'm talking about yesterday.

No, I know. I'm just talking about like, but that's it's the way he says it. That makes him just sound so dumb at that.

So in so many ways, OK, he can't relate correctly. You know what I mean? Yeah. And that's more or less what I'm getting to here is that he didn't bring up his car, his car.

OK. Yeah. Right.

And he has he has suffered loss. He has lost what he said was actually decent and thoughtful. The point is that he was speaking so softly and so slowly.

He looked and sounded even 10 years older than he is. And if you weren't willing to be charitable at all. Like you wouldn't even understand him, you would just laugh at him and disdain him and go, I can't believe this senile old coup is in charge at all.

And that's when he's saying something that's actually decent and thoughtful for the first time in a long time. That didn't include some bullshit about his Corvette. That didn't include some bullshit, some tiny fire in his kitchen.

It was actually just listen. People need to know that there's life after grief. Right.

Like this is a decent thing. But that's a that is a decent message. Yes.

He's just spread so thin now. He's so old and so tired and so pathetic. And like you can see Blinken standing behind him just dying.

Please stop talking, Mr. President, and retire to the back of the picture of the two of them looking behind him at each other like him and Kirby. And I'm like, oh, yeah, I mean, that's your point. Thank you.

He has compassion. He is a human being, too. Right.

The guy has made a shit ton of mistakes. A lot of them. He still is human, right? I mean, we are on this spinning rock that's going around the sun.

We got to get through this together somehow. Can we just do it without killing each other? Maybe. Well, and all I'm just saying is like that's his best day.

That's probably the nicest thing he ever said. And still, he comes off like he's completely ridiculous and competent. Everything slurs now.

Because of who he is and how he is. It's just he's such a bum, you know, and everybody can tell. And this is the kind of thing that really matters in politics, which is going to be very interesting to see in the next little while here, how this all plays out, because.

You know, just race and sex and hair color and age, these are things that are just on the face of everything. You can't take them away. You can't.

(55:31 - 56:33)

You know, you and me might have all these sophisticated opinions about the Middle East here and Eastern Europe there and whatever. But your next door neighbor and his next door neighbor and his next door neighbor all the way down the block. We all know that Joe Biden is old, dude, very old.

And he speaks like a kook. A lot of times it doesn't make sense. Even as I said, on his best day, he still sounds like he's about to fall over.

Right. Like he's just spent. He's done.

And my auntie knows it. She doesn't have to know any other thing, but she knows this. She's old as hell and he's older than her.

Right. That's just true, dude. And so that's the kind of thing that like no amount of political spinsmanship can make up for.

And it's the kind of thing that I think at this point is just a death knell. And Donald Trump is old, but Donald Trump is not nearly as tired as a force as Biden. He has more spry than 40 year olds running around.

(56:33 - 58:50)

Like, let's not I mean, the guy the guy shoots up like crazy stuff, but he is definitely awake and alive. And he is also very old, too. And that's a huge drawback for him.

But just like on a relative basis between the two of them, man. And then I just love it that Kamala Harris, everyone agrees, cannot do it. She's not qualified, cannot.

And then so they got to find a way to make her step down, even though, boy, is that not PC to do to the first supposedly sort of black vice president, female lady in that spot. Right. And then who do they got? Every other Democrat governor and senator is just complete scum.

And you got Gavin Newsom. They talk about his hair, but he's the guy who drove California into the ground under under covid. I mean, he they lost a congressman because like more than half a million people met loss of the population of the land of Milkenany.

Are you kidding me? Like that guy cannot win the presidency. And then you got Donald Trump's going to be running from jail. I saw today his lawyer, Sidney Powell, flip.

Oh, man. Like, I think he I honestly think he could win from jail, dude. He should.

It would be beautiful. It's happened. There was somebody who did run from prison, if I remember correctly, before the 30s or 20s.

So, yeah, there's precedent for it. Eugene Debs ran for president from jail. Yeah.

And why was he in jail for urging people to dodge the draft in World War One? Woodrow Wilson locked him up. Scott, I honestly I could talk for years, days, months, whatever. It's you've given me an hour.

You've been so gracious with me. If you need to go, please do. If you want to keep going.

I have a very tight schedule today. I know you do. You're always I'll reach out to your person and hopefully we can get together again.

I am so grateful. If you have any closing pieces, feel free to share any other information you'd like to share. Thank you again.

OK, sure. Yeah. Thank you for having me.

All my shows are at Scott Horton dot org. I've got a great group of guys at antiwar dot com and at the Libertarian Institute and including if you just find my name. On the front page at antiwar dot com, I have an article about the Hamas attack and it's called It's All About Provoking a Reaction.

(58:51 - 59:22)

And you can read about that and then follow me on Twitter at Scott Horton Show. If you're out in L.A., I'm on Thursday afternoons at two thirty on KPFK ninety point seven FM and read my books. Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, which has finally ended.

Thank goodness. And Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism. And stick around because I will be publishing Provoked, how Washington started the new Cold War with Russia and the catastrophe in Ukraine.

(59:23 - 59:30)

Cool. Thank you so much. And I understand you're going to be on Tim Pool on the 26th, 27th.

(59:30 - 59:48)

Right. 27th. I will be.

So I'll plug that for it as well, because I follow that. I think you two are going to have a very interesting conversation because I think he's very measured. I've been on there one time before.

Between the two of you, like in this weird way, it's like how, where, you know, trying to position our. Yeah. Great.

(59:48 - 1:01:05)

Right before I talk to you, Mark, I just did an interview with Jack Posevic. Oh, did you? Wow. That went really well.

So awesome. You know, I'm going to put this up probably today. I mean, I'm going to just cut it and post it.

Thank you, Scott. Thank you so much for your time. I'm really grateful.

If you know of anyone else who would like to talk with me, like I said, I'm I'm not anyone yet, but I'm getting there. I'm I'm Bill. I'm here to share and get people out, you know, aware of my recommendation there.

And this is just the way I've always done. I go by the article. You wrote this.

I want to talk to you about that. And then, you know, everybody you're inviting, they want to talk to you because you're like they're like, oh, you want to talk to me about the thing I wrote and then they want to give you their time. And it's a mutually beneficial thing.

You get to learn a lot. They get to spread the word about the thing that they worked hard on. And it works great.

Beautiful thing. Thank you again. You are more than gracious with your time.

And that's what it's all about. Everyone, please follow Scott. Scott is amazing persons at Scott Horton Show.

Yes. On Twitter, whatever it is. So thank you.

Thank you again, everyone. Take care. Scott, say goodbye.

Thank you again. Thank you. Thank you.