WEBVTT 00:10.770 --> 00:14.670 Welcome to episode 2 of Liberty Report Extra. 00:15.650 --> 00:21.190 This is an extra Liberty Report where I'm going to be speaking to a number of people 00:21.190 --> 00:26.130 about a number of ideas that I think are interesting, that I think you'll find interesting, that 00:26.130 --> 00:31.530 don't necessarily fit in with the format of the usual and normal Ron Paul Liberty Report. 00:32.170 --> 00:37.990 You'll remember last week I spoke with Caleb Malpin, an interesting writer and intellectual. 00:38.330 --> 00:43.090 Well this week I'm also speaking with someone I consider a very interesting writer and intellectual 00:43.510 --> 00:53.130 and also like Caleb, non-controversy, but I'm talking about Michael Recton-Wald, a fascinating 00:53.130 --> 00:58.270 guy I first got to know Michael at a Mises Institute conference a few years ago over 00:58.270 --> 01:04.730 here in Lake Jackson and we've kept in touch and I've kept a monitor of what he's been 01:04.730 --> 01:06.630 up to and he's done a couple of interesting things. 01:06.630 --> 01:10.910 So Michael, welcome to the program, welcome to the Liberty Report Extra. 01:11.590 --> 01:13.450 Good to be here Daniel, thanks for having me. 01:13.630 --> 01:14.690 It's good to have you here. 01:15.190 --> 01:20.110 Well let us know a little bit about yourself for people that may not know you as well 01:20.110 --> 01:20.710 as I do. 01:22.290 --> 01:27.550 Yeah sure, so you know as is pretty well known I was a professor at NYU for 11 years 01:28.150 --> 01:34.710 and before that at Duke and Carnegie Mellon, Case Western Reserve University. 01:35.510 --> 01:42.670 I retired officially from NYU in 2019 after there was some controversy regarding 01:42.670 --> 01:50.010 wokeness and the ideological police there and so since then I've been writing books 01:50.010 --> 01:52.350 and doing speaking engagements. 01:53.110 --> 01:57.570 I ran for president as a libertarian on the Libertarian Party. 01:57.690 --> 01:59.110 I tried to win the nomination. 01:59.810 --> 02:08.370 That was foiled, but I've been basically back at teaching, I can't say where 02:09.330 --> 02:10.810 because they'll come from me. 02:11.050 --> 02:16.930 So I am teaching again in a university and running as a pack, the ex-designist America pack. 02:17.190 --> 02:18.410 So you're teaching underground. 02:21.150 --> 02:26.530 What's interesting Michael, I mean you talked about it a lot in your presentation 02:26.530 --> 02:31.570 for the Mises conference a few years ago but you know you've made a real journey from 02:32.090 --> 02:38.430 the intellectual left and then you went through sort of the conservative right 02:38.430 --> 02:40.910 and now you're sort of off on another plane. 02:41.430 --> 02:45.610 I mean it's interesting for me because I sort of came from a similar milieu. 02:46.470 --> 02:51.250 You had a BA in English, I think you earned a few years before me. 02:51.290 --> 02:56.050 I got mine from UC Berkeley in 1988 and so we probably were in sort of 02:56.050 --> 03:01.610 the same general intellectual ferment at the time studying English literature 03:02.330 --> 03:10.370 with the prevailing schools of literary analysis that were a theory that was going on exactly 03:10.370 --> 03:15.130 at the time and I think you were probably more political. 03:15.670 --> 03:16.710 I was more punk rock. 03:17.070 --> 03:24.530 I guess my rebellion at Berkeley was to become sort of a right-wing punk rock guy. 03:25.150 --> 03:31.350 That's what I'm saying but I mean always a rebel but walk us a little bit about 03:31.350 --> 03:34.950 what that milieu was like and how it affected you and how you came out of it. 03:35.510 --> 03:42.190 Sure so I do recount all this very very thoroughly in my book Spring Come for Snowflakes, 03:43.570 --> 03:46.350 Social Justice and its Post-Modern Parentage. 03:46.910 --> 03:51.790 Yeah so I was an undergrad as you said in English literature and then I went into 03:51.790 --> 03:57.610 advertising for like nine years and I did pretty well in that but I got burned out. 03:57.890 --> 04:05.270 It was disgustingly repetitive and boring in a way although it was very good. 04:05.530 --> 04:06.910 It was very remunerative. 04:07.670 --> 04:12.110 I decided to go back to graduate school and I went to undergrad. 04:12.270 --> 04:19.710 I finished in 83 by 93 as you probably can very well remember there was a major 04:19.710 --> 04:25.990 change that happened in the institutions of higher education and particularly in English 04:25.990 --> 04:35.070 departments which started to and had by the 90s very well and completely incorporated into 04:35.070 --> 04:43.630 the curriculum what is known as broadly theory, literary and cultural studies, 04:43.750 --> 04:45.170 literary and cultural theory. 04:45.710 --> 04:53.390 I became very immersed in theory, inclusive of of course Marxist theory and there are many 04:53.890 --> 05:03.690 versions thereof and post-modern theory, feminism, post-structuralism, post this, post that. 05:06.090 --> 05:13.590 And I became pretty indoctrinated in a way I would say I was never completely I was always 05:13.590 --> 05:18.730 pretty independently pretty independent thinker even as a Marxist. 05:18.950 --> 05:22.730 I became a Marxist and wrote and this was not what I taught. 05:22.810 --> 05:24.970 I didn't teach Marxism in the university. 05:25.070 --> 05:30.090 I was not proselytizing from the lectern as it were. 05:30.510 --> 05:37.550 I taught English studies as I taught my specialty is actually 19th century science and culture. 05:38.730 --> 05:45.110 So that's what I wrote my dissertation and I had two books, three books on that area in that area 05:45.950 --> 05:49.290 and one was just published in fact in December 2025. 05:50.490 --> 05:58.870 So I still do this stuff but from a different standpoint of course I had you know pretty much 05:58.870 --> 06:09.730 imbibed much of the premises and conclusions of Marxism and you know with a post-modernist twist 06:09.730 --> 06:14.450 as it were kind of a post-modern post-modern inflection on it. 06:15.130 --> 06:20.690 And then you know and I started becoming very disenchanted with the university 06:21.340 --> 06:31.690 in the mid 10s 2015 2016 when the developments there were very foreboding as I saw it. 06:32.800 --> 06:36.350 There was basically a policing of opinion going on. 06:36.470 --> 06:44.650 It started to ramp up interestingly as Donald Trump emerged as a presidential candidate 06:45.370 --> 06:50.730 against Hillary Clinton that seems like the campuses went into a total hysteria. 06:51.470 --> 06:57.530 And anything that sounded at all remotely like Trump or criticisms of social justice sorts, 06:58.910 --> 07:04.010 you know political correctness as it were was deemed you know right-wing and extremist. 07:04.550 --> 07:08.430 So I made these critiques and the student newspaper had interviewed me 07:08.430 --> 07:18.870 as I had started this Twitter account called anti-pcnyupro and I called myself the Deplorming 07:20.650 --> 07:27.130 Professor and you know mostly out of you know shock value frankly it wasn't like a real 07:27.130 --> 07:31.970 adhesion to Trump but I'd like to stick it to the Hillary Clinton people because I found her to 07:31.970 --> 07:42.190 be utterly disgusting and I still do. So that caused you know a fallout for me at the university 07:43.130 --> 07:50.510 and it wasn't you know it was almost instantaneous that I became at least a civil libertarian when 07:50.510 --> 07:57.090 I recognized that without individual rights particularly the right of free speech and 07:57.090 --> 08:02.790 supposed academic freedom on a campus which was it's a total misnomer there is no such thing. 08:04.650 --> 08:10.970 I found myself you know totally divorcing the whole last in fact I renounced the 08:10.970 --> 08:16.210 left all of it at once looting Marxist because I thought that I didn't want anything to do 08:16.210 --> 08:24.090 with these people they were utterly censorious and you know what I saw as a budding totalitarians 08:24.090 --> 08:32.770 frankly. Yes absolutely. I mean I recognized that I went back to grad school in 91 and I was 08:32.770 --> 08:38.010 at the time doing international relations but it was the same thing I mean it was just assumed 08:38.010 --> 08:43.070 that you were an adherent to all of the theories you know post-colonialism and all of these 08:43.070 --> 08:49.130 sorts of things and if you were if you happen to not agree with that if you happen to dare 08:49.130 --> 08:55.250 think about realism for example in world affairs which I've come to reject for a number of reasons 08:55.250 --> 09:01.370 but you kept it quiet you kept it quiet and that's another thing that I was living in San Francisco 09:01.370 --> 09:05.950 at the time and that's the other thing about living in San Francisco in the early 90s if you were 09:05.950 --> 09:12.330 not if you did not buy into their indoctrination you kept your mouth shut because the open mind 09:12.330 --> 09:17.150 was only open in one direction that's actually why I left San Francisco in the middle of my 09:17.150 --> 09:22.330 fee of my master's thesis because I couldn't take it anymore. Yeah it's very tough to take I saw 09:22.890 --> 09:28.550 graduate students when I was coming through as a graduate student at Ph.D. program in particular 09:28.550 --> 09:34.370 Carnegie Mellon I saw students literally thrown out of the program for being what they call 09:34.370 --> 09:41.330 Bright Lane if we're wanting to write about say property rights through lock-in ideas and 09:41.330 --> 09:47.830 things like that they were dismissed and basically said no nobody wants to work with you you know as 09:47.830 --> 09:54.230 a as a dissertation advisor so you you're gonna have to leave I've seen this I saw this numerous 09:54.230 --> 10:03.190 times and then at NYU on hiring committees I saw as straight white males particularly were 10:03.190 --> 10:09.030 put in one pile and then just you know basically discarded unless they could find somebody from 10:09.030 --> 10:17.750 the other pile they would not go back to the white male pile I saw blatant discrimination and the 10:18.470 --> 10:25.130 use of identity as a means to squelch thought and to squelch expression from other people 10:25.850 --> 10:32.170 this what I call you know sort of their cry bullies this is kind of like snowflakes so 10:32.670 --> 10:38.350 colitarianism yeah but it's more vicious I mean a snowflake it as a word it's such a dainty little 10:38.350 --> 10:43.590 thing it's actually a very vicious thing it's a it's a throat to the knife kind of thing you 10:43.590 --> 10:47.610 know and I remember in grad school there were a couple and you would find them through the 10:47.610 --> 10:52.750 underground you know but I went with one of the other students we would pass around 10:52.750 --> 10:58.190 national view like pornography like under the table you know I mean it was it was that 10:58.190 --> 11:02.890 bad you could not let anyone see you read and of course now I think national review is discussing 11:02.890 --> 11:09.130 but my friend actually ironically at the time he read national review and I forget the he was also 11:09.130 --> 11:14.390 at the Chomsky so he really was interested in the whole perspective but the Chomsky stuff was 11:14.390 --> 11:19.350 fine you could have it on your desk but the national review got to put her to the desk yeah 11:19.350 --> 11:25.710 I call them snowflake totalitarians because they mobilize their so-called fragility in order 11:25.710 --> 11:32.970 to squelch you're right true that's good that's a good image that's a gage well let's let's go into 11:32.970 --> 11:38.530 the LP stuff because that was that was an interesting was an interesting choice that you made we don't 11:38.530 --> 11:43.450 have to go into all the details of it because I do want to get to the main reason we're talking 11:43.450 --> 11:49.730 which is now your new life as a lobbyist which is interesting but I just I'm wondering I mean 11:49.730 --> 11:55.930 what was your biggest takeaway from the 24-ray so you are as I understand as if I recall you had 11:55.930 --> 12:00.650 not been involved in politics you hadn't learned for office before and boom you jumped in off the deep 12:00.650 --> 12:07.290 end what's your yeah I jumped in says I was asked by the Mises caucus to run by Michael Heiss and 12:08.270 --> 12:15.170 I deliberated it and you know naturally not thinking of all the possible downsides to the 12:15.170 --> 12:27.250 whole thing but it was an interesting experience and I found that the LP you know ended up to me to 12:27.250 --> 12:33.270 be very disappointing in the sense that it resembles or at least they're trying to be like the major 12:33.270 --> 12:41.990 parties in many ways in terms of you know I think was ledger domain in the final tally and 12:41.990 --> 12:51.250 the final voting there was a lot of illegal from the standpoint of the LP's own rules activity going on 12:51.250 --> 12:57.650 plus I think there was some Trump interloping into the whole thing he did come to the convention 12:57.650 --> 13:02.250 and I believe his people also have something to do with what the final results because 13:03.590 --> 13:08.910 they didn't want anybody that was deemed anything like so-called right wing running 13:08.910 --> 13:16.510 and as a libertarian they did they wanted to foreclose any possibility yeah losing votes to the 13:16.510 --> 13:21.290 libertarian party they wanted the naked guys that show up naked at the events right both 13:23.470 --> 13:29.270 yeah yeah so I'm sorry go ahead I interrupted you yeah they courted the libertarian party as you 13:29.270 --> 13:35.190 know Trump spoke at the convention I had a mishap there which was I won't go into but I didn't 13:35.190 --> 13:39.650 know I was taking a hundred milligrams of THC I thought I was sitting out games 13:41.910 --> 13:47.710 so called gummy gate and you know that took a while to live down for me frankly it wounded me 13:47.710 --> 13:55.470 psychically because uh frankly that's just not who I am and I was uh I was very disturbed by the 13:55.470 --> 14:02.110 whole thing um but I don't think that was finally the last the real thing because even 14:02.110 --> 14:08.210 even after that I won the first five rounds of voting as you know they used the runoff thing where 14:08.210 --> 14:15.690 you have to reach 50 percent yeah I won five times but I lost it in the end so uh because of the 14:16.170 --> 14:21.370 one of the candidates threw his support to the other guy the second uh the guy that was 14:21.370 --> 14:27.070 second place all the way through that ended my run I mean there was a lot of power politics 14:27.070 --> 14:34.490 in the LP thing that year I mean uh and I think a lot of people uh uh they regret but a lot of 14:34.490 --> 14:40.490 people are also angry about how they were uh many people got behind Trump but I mean Trump is no 14:40.490 --> 14:44.750 dummy I you know I think obviously every day I think more and more that he's evil but he's 14:44.750 --> 14:49.130 no dummy and I think people and he also there there have been libertarians or libertarian 14:49.130 --> 14:55.030 oriented people uh certainly in his first administration I knew some of them uh they're 14:55.030 --> 15:01.530 not there now uh but they were trying to gently from the inside you know push toward this which 15:01.530 --> 15:06.990 is an admirable thing to do and but they were pushing this and they and I and I think they 15:06.990 --> 15:13.910 did understand this is a body of voters that in terms of electoral politics everything else 15:13.910 --> 15:20.750 stripped aside may not be uh something as as relevant it may not be a threat but when you 15:20.750 --> 15:26.750 look at this in terms of swing votes if you look at uh libertarians who are not going naked to the 15:26.750 --> 15:32.070 convention um you have a block of voters here and if you can tap into that if you can tap into 15:32.070 --> 15:36.830 people who are interested in Monpaul uh that's going to be some votes that you need in critical 15:36.830 --> 15:40.630 places so I think they certainly knew what they were doing when they courted these votes 15:41.230 --> 15:46.270 yeah absolutely and I don't I don't fault the the party for wanting to try to 15:47.370 --> 15:54.470 become you know to sort of infiltrate as it were the the Republican party and the Trump campaign to 15:54.470 --> 16:02.750 push them towards libertarian ideas they did get Ross Albrecht reed that is very notable yeah um I 16:02.750 --> 16:07.810 said that many times that that is something that is an accomplishment of uh Angela McCartle that 16:07.810 --> 16:13.910 should stand in history I think absolutely she gets so yeah she deserves a great deal of credit 16:13.910 --> 16:20.510 for that and although I don't think Ross ever gave it to her frankly publicly but uh I think she 16:20.510 --> 16:25.270 deserves a great deal of credit for that but I think the whole thing was you know we don't we 16:25.270 --> 16:32.230 I think a lot of people didn't know just the extent to which Trump was compromised shall we say 16:32.230 --> 16:40.190 and yeah the extent to which he was a dissembler a con artist you know uh you know I think the 16:40.190 --> 16:46.170 whole MAGA thing as it turns out was perhaps the largest con bait and switch routine ever played 16:46.170 --> 16:52.250 on the American political uh political scenario yeah books will definitely be written about in 16:52.250 --> 16:58.050 the future that's for sure I think no question about it um but you know we talked about the 16:58.050 --> 17:04.570 sort of intellectual totalitarianism uh when it comes to uh you know when it comes to the 17:04.570 --> 17:10.350 university and academia but you know the other them kind of the main reason I'd like to talk to you 17:10.350 --> 17:17.310 today is that same kind of intellectual totalitarianism but in the political realm and I'm talking 17:17.310 --> 17:24.550 really about the role of APAC the American Israel uh political action committee uh in our 17:24.550 --> 17:29.490 political life you know this is something that I dealt with on Capitol Hill uh for a decade 17:29.490 --> 17:34.830 plus when I worked with Dr. Paul um things were very different then people understood 17:34.830 --> 17:41.190 that when it came to foreign policy uh APAC had a pretty strong stranglehold on things you know and 17:41.190 --> 17:46.070 I went to many briefings Dr. Paul was on the international relations committee we went to 17:46.070 --> 17:51.290 many briefings on bills uh in any time the bill was mentioned any time a bill was up for 17:51.290 --> 17:55.870 discussion staff would have a meeting if it was about the Middle East we would be assured 17:55.870 --> 18:00.710 by the senior staff the committee staff that this legislation was APAC approved 18:00.710 --> 18:04.230 and so of course all the other staffers were happy because they didn't have to read the bill 18:04.230 --> 18:09.790 and who it had a pre-approval people knew that things were being drafted by APAC uh it was 18:09.790 --> 18:15.590 it was something that was understood but it was also something that with a few exceptions 18:15.590 --> 18:20.810 and I'm thinking of people like Jim trafficant uh and there were a few others uh it just 18:20.810 --> 18:26.890 wasn't mentioned certainly not in public at the time and I'm talking about the early 2000s 18:27.510 --> 18:31.090 of course we can go back to they dare to speak out and that's a whole different conversation 18:31.730 --> 18:36.450 but I'm talking about my experience there now behind closed doors for example when we had 18:37.010 --> 18:40.450 the private lunches in Dr. Paul's office a lot of members would complain about it 18:40.450 --> 18:45.310 they didn't like it they didn't like to stranglehold uh but a lot of them were afraid to do 18:45.310 --> 18:51.990 anything about it so so that is what it felt like then at the time but also but none of the 18:51.990 --> 18:57.490 world has changed and a lot of the things that were not said are being said so walk us through 18:57.490 --> 19:02.450 this sort of uh intellectual transformation on your part and how you came to found this 19:02.450 --> 19:08.930 anti-zionist political action committee yeah thank you um so I want to make it very clear that 19:08.930 --> 19:15.190 this anti-zionist political action committee the whole thing really does extend from 19:16.030 --> 19:24.110 my political outlook as a libertarian uh and that is to say I am a non-interventionist I 19:24.110 --> 19:29.130 don't believe that the United States should be intervening in other wars and causing wars 19:29.130 --> 19:34.750 and initiating wars especially especially at the behest of other countries like Israel 19:35.550 --> 19:41.070 and you know I'm largely anti-statist I think the state should be reduced as much as possible 19:41.870 --> 19:48.690 and um to see the state hijacked by this other entity you know by this one influence 19:49.310 --> 19:57.210 APAT and there are 500 other organizations yes not detailed in Grant uh Grant Smith's book 19:57.210 --> 20:03.590 Big Israel yeah he's great yeah he's very good and he shows how the you know so-called tax 20:03.590 --> 20:10.730 deductible charity organizations actually funnel all this money into propaganda and west bank settlements 20:11.270 --> 20:17.730 and things like this I just couldn't stand by and then with the with the genocide ongoing and 20:17.730 --> 20:24.630 feeling utterly frustrated and having some audience largely accrued through you know my writings but 20:24.630 --> 20:29.970 also then the part uh the the campaign I said that I'm in a position to actually try to do 20:29.970 --> 20:37.150 something and I couldn't sit back and just watch um or just tweet or podcast and things like this I 20:37.150 --> 20:43.890 there had to be some action and I thought what we need is an anti-designist party but then I know 20:43.890 --> 20:51.230 left you know from my experience with the LP and everything that you see you know you can't 20:51.230 --> 20:56.570 even get on a ballot in a lot of cases and uh you know RFK Jr couldn't even get off on a 20:56.570 --> 21:02.270 ballot and then he couldn't get off the ballot they tried uh so they played the game as you know very 21:02.270 --> 21:07.990 well the deck is totally stacked by these uh uniparty operatives they've got the state under 21:07.990 --> 21:13.910 their control so they can eliminate third party candidates easily they block them out through all 21:13.910 --> 21:21.190 kinds of mains petitions and so you know like entrance fees and everything else 21:21.790 --> 21:26.590 exclusions from debates everything you can imagine so as you very well know all the 21:27.910 --> 21:33.490 but I thought then well what is one way to do something and I thought what about a pack because 21:33.490 --> 21:39.190 a pack can fund any candidate regardless of party especially if it's a non-connected pack 21:39.190 --> 21:45.390 which we are as a pack is non-connected or unconnected to any party or candidate so we 21:45.390 --> 21:52.750 can support anybody then I thought the interesting thing about the anti-zionist movement is that I 21:52.750 --> 21:58.870 believe it's largely done in good faith but I think they have a lot of mistaken premises 21:59.490 --> 22:04.750 for the most part that that is mostly coming from the left and progressives they think that 22:04.750 --> 22:12.150 they can win by getting democrats to be republicans yeah even anti-zionist democrats 22:12.150 --> 22:18.850 have to be republicans but the real bulwark of zionism as you very well know is the right wing 22:18.850 --> 22:25.710 it's the republican party so they have to be defeated from venice and that's why we backed a 22:25.710 --> 22:31.950 lot of republican candidates who are running against well-known zionists like for example 22:31.950 --> 22:40.670 randy fine in florida oh yeah we're supporting his primary competitor and baker who is you 22:40.670 --> 22:45.110 running to defeat him and this is going to be a republican district it doesn't matter 22:45.830 --> 22:52.870 who wins whoever wins the republican nomination will be winning that seat so this is the approach 22:52.870 --> 23:00.610 we that I've been taking is that how do we insert ourselves and start to get a shall we say an 23:00.610 --> 23:08.910 anti-zionist a coalition nerveiac in congress so that they become disruptive and that disruption 23:08.910 --> 23:16.370 becomes known and that becomes part part and parcel of our political discourse I wanted to 23:16.370 --> 23:25.210 make anti-zionism he analyzed in a in our country and make zionism be uh the anathema that it should be 23:25.790 --> 23:31.730 and um to talk about what we mean by zionism because that's a big that's a question that 23:31.730 --> 23:36.430 always comes up what do you mean by zionism yeah and I the jews are right till a state 23:36.430 --> 23:40.790 or they don't want to be able to have any philosophy they want to have is what I what I had believed 23:40.790 --> 23:46.130 you know zionist that's your philosophy you're welcome to it you know absolutely but here's the 23:46.130 --> 23:52.390 thing where we draw the line is that and I've defined zionism for our purposes as the you 23:52.390 --> 23:58.190 know as the black male and bribery of the political class and the extortion of taxpayers 23:58.190 --> 24:06.990 for the benefit of Israel that's it yeah well so that's what we oppose the purchase of our political 24:06.990 --> 24:14.150 class you know it's interesting because um just a few years ago uh if you would say something 24:14.150 --> 24:19.010 here's a headline we this was we did a show last week on the liberty report and this is a headline 24:19.010 --> 24:24.390 that we that we both noticed um Trump says he will make a mutual decision with Netanyahu 24:24.390 --> 24:31.350 on when to win the and when to end the iran war now if you had said maybe 10 even 10 years ago 24:31.350 --> 24:37.630 maybe fewer that will Israel seems to be driving our foreign policy you would be you would be 24:37.630 --> 24:43.030 accused of many many terrible things but now it's absolutely normalized no no i'm not going to go 24:43.030 --> 24:48.530 to congress i'm going to go ahead and go to the head of this foreign country and we'll decide 24:48.530 --> 24:53.870 together when we should end this war i mean it's it's it's a pretty radical transformation 24:54.650 --> 25:01.110 yeah and you saw you know members of the administration like rubio coming out and saying the reason we 25:01.110 --> 25:06.990 attacked Iran is because we knew israel was going to attack them and maybe we would retaliate against 25:06.990 --> 25:12.710 up yeah so we're being led you know the tail is wagging the dog very hard as it were 25:12.710 --> 25:17.230 whereas a pro-american uh secretary of state with someone like maybe like uh 25:17.230 --> 25:22.410 james baker would have said okay but guess what not another penny guys and you're on your own 25:22.950 --> 25:27.650 exactly that would have sent the message uh and there hasn't been anything go ahead i'm sorry 25:28.330 --> 25:33.130 yeah that's all it is we just want to cut off the funding uh cut off the funding to this 25:33.130 --> 25:38.810 criminal uh enterprise now i don't care what you think about israel i think rotting us to 25:38.810 --> 25:45.710 pay for their uh military adventures and imperialist ambitions is completely 25:46.570 --> 25:53.070 uh contradictory to u.s interests in terms of american citizens anyway yeah i mean i think the 25:53.070 --> 25:58.790 um fits the m i c the military industrial contractors but it doesn't benefit uh it 25:58.790 --> 26:03.510 doesn't benefit the american people yeah absolutely and i think you know i mean the world changed 26:03.510 --> 26:09.970 in october 7th hamas military operation against israel and i think it um the reaction of israel 26:09.970 --> 26:15.150 radicalized a lot of people um you know i had i had i had come to become critical 26:15.150 --> 26:20.610 because i was dealing with middle i was very pro-israel in the 90s trust me very pro-israel 26:20.610 --> 26:26.730 i was happy when nevin yahoo was elected uh you know this and that um but as i as i progressed 26:26.730 --> 26:32.730 on the hill i met with rachel corey's family and in fact i refused to meet with her family at first 26:32.730 --> 26:38.950 because i didn't want to get involved in any of that not my problem not our problem um but i 26:38.950 --> 26:43.270 finally did meet with them and i finally i started coming to understand that there is an unhealthy 26:43.270 --> 26:49.390 relationship here uh and it's uh it's you know sucking the future away at least from us economically 26:49.390 --> 26:56.770 and morally and really the october 7th incident the reaction to it was radicalizing i think to a 26:56.770 --> 27:01.170 lot of people that particularly i mean certainly me as a parent when i saw all of these kids 27:01.170 --> 27:06.770 being slaughtered in gaza i myself and i know many many other people became much more radicalized 27:06.770 --> 27:12.930 and much more angry uh not only in israel for doing this but for at the united states government 27:12.930 --> 27:17.670 i'm more angry with our government for facilitating and forgiving them the money if you know the 27:17.670 --> 27:23.710 guy's a dope addict uh and you hand him the syringe well you're you're as guilty as he is yes 27:23.710 --> 27:29.570 they're enabling and they're complicit and the international law says that in effect if you 27:29.570 --> 27:35.610 enable and fund known crimes against humanity then you are similarly guilty and i think 27:35.610 --> 27:42.910 our whole congress minus a few exceptions are guilty and all the senate for the most part also 27:44.570 --> 27:50.970 and uh but you know even from that standpoint we we wanted to make it very clear that while 27:51.610 --> 27:58.590 we think it would be to the benefit of the whole world should the united state the couple 27:58.590 --> 28:05.290 from israel and which supporting their crimes against humanity and belligerence across the 28:05.290 --> 28:12.630 middle east that it would also benefit the united states citizens it it's it's good for the world and 28:12.630 --> 28:19.110 it's good for us yeah and uh interestingly enough you know kind of america first nationalism is 28:19.110 --> 28:23.630 actually better for the world as large yeah in that in that respect you know and one one could 28:23.630 --> 28:28.190 argue um that if you are affectionate toward israel i think it's certainly better for israel 28:28.190 --> 28:34.130 israel is in is in a psychotic state right now and partly is because the us has been that 28:34.130 --> 28:39.430 pusher handing them a new syringe over and over whatever you guys do i got your back it's like a 28:39.430 --> 28:43.870 kid who keeps stealing from the store and you keep covering for him he's going to steal bigger and 28:43.870 --> 28:49.210 bigger things and that's what happened and what's happened and i would rather obviously have zero 28:49.210 --> 28:54.110 intervention zero you know dealing other than trade but the fact of the matter is we've kept 28:54.110 --> 28:59.250 supporting and back stopping this bad behavior to the point where not only are they hated in 28:59.250 --> 29:05.770 their neighborhood they're hated universally the we were basically it's us and modi in india the only 29:05.770 --> 29:11.970 two countries now uh who who are so so no country should want to be in a position where you are 29:11.970 --> 29:17.370 universally hated that is not a good place to be no it's not good and i think it's bad for the 29:17.370 --> 29:22.450 jewish people not only the israelis but also jewish people around the world because of 29:22.450 --> 29:28.930 israel's conflation of anti zionism with anti semitism and that is definitely a strategic 29:29.730 --> 29:38.290 ploy on their part to make all criticism of israel off limits uh with the proviso that if you do 29:38.290 --> 29:43.910 criticize them you'll be called an anti semi and of course i have already been called this i'm 29:43.910 --> 29:51.010 surprised michael but also the conflation with with uh jewish identity and zionism because we 29:51.010 --> 29:56.990 we both know many people of jewish background who are the most ardent anti zionists and some of them 29:56.990 --> 30:05.390 are our good friends uh and so sure and finkle stein uh eramate many yeah yeah i mean these are great 30:05.390 --> 30:10.750 the most strident and articulate anti zionists are actually jewish and they're being put it out 30:10.750 --> 30:17.110 there's of course organizations like the voice of rabbi this uh these acidic jews that are largely 30:17.110 --> 30:24.070 anti zionists yes and they they bemoaned this this conflation and they see it as 30:24.070 --> 30:30.690 endangering them yeah they don't want to be identified with bad actors who would yeah absolutely well 30:30.690 --> 30:36.010 we're going to have to close out here michael i appreciate the great conversation let people 30:36.010 --> 30:41.950 know if they're interested in as a pack or or you or your work let people know where they can 30:41.950 --> 30:51.150 find you absolutely so as a pack website is az a dash pat dot com that's az a dash pat dot com 30:51.150 --> 30:58.010 or just search as a pack az a pac on google we still come up they haven't well should i 30:58.010 --> 31:06.030 surprised but and and my own work is largely on my sub stack now it's called rect r e k t on 31:06.030 --> 31:11.450 sub stack so if you just search for sub stack rect r e k t you'll see my rigid most of my 31:11.450 --> 31:17.150 new original writings and then uh there is my other website michael rectinwall dot com where all my 31:17.150 --> 31:24.230 folks and a great majority of my essays and appearances and media coverage is sweet is there 31:24.230 --> 31:29.910 okay great well michael thanks so much for taking the time to talk to liberty report extra 31:29.910 --> 31:34.970 today and i also want to thank the viewers for tuning in uh please come back to the next episode 31:34.970 --> 31:36.230 of liberty report extra