OpEdNews - Page 7 of Article: Transcript of Podcast Interview with Paul Craig Roberts

Rob Kall:
We've got to keep fighting.

Paul Craig Roberts:
Well ".

Rob Kall:
Give me a moment to read this. I'm just going to do a station ID. This is the Rob Kall "Bottom Up" Radio Show, WNJC 1360 AM.

I'm going to call this guy "Pete" for now. I'll tell you his real name later.

"Pete was a well-bred man of a gentle and insinuating behavior, ready to help and assist the poor, whose cause he pretended to espouse. He was wise and moderate to his enemies, a most artful and accomplished dissembler. He was in every way virtuous, except in his inordinate ambition. His ambition gave him the appearance of possessing qualities which he really wanted. He seemed the most zealous champion for equality among the citizens, while he was actually aiming at the entire subversion of freedom. He declared loudly against all innovations while he was actually meditating a change. The giddy multitude, caught by these appearances, were zealous in seconding his views, and without examining his motives were driving headlong into tyranny and destruction."

What I am reading from is the history of Greece. It wasn't "Pete," it was Pisistratus. I found an original (edition) of a history of Greece printed around 1771, that Jefferson read, and wrote about in letters. This book describes how greedy individuals literally worked to destroy democracy. We know, now, that they were successful. So, you talk about what we need to do is defend and respect and venerate the Constitution as a way to deal with government. We need more details, Paul! What else do we need to do? How do we do it?

Paul Craig Roberts:
I think it would have to come from the law schools. The law schools would have to change the way they train the legal profession. They would have to bring it back to the Constitution, so that people would be imbued with respect and awe of the Constitution, and it would form the basis of their professional practice. That, then, would make it difficult for corrupt federal prosecutors and corrupt federal judges, because THERE would be outcries and legal maneuverings against them. It would then spread wider throughout the education system, and it would come back to what we used to have when we had an independent people aware of the Constitution, aware of their rights, very jealous to defend their rights, and realize that they have to also defend the rights of others, because if the rights can be taken away from one man, they can be taken away from all.

Rob Kall:
Amen.

Paul Craig Roberts:
That's the way it used to be here, but that's been lost from a variety of ways, some of which we mentioned earlier.

Rob Kall:
That's a long-term plan. Is there anything we can do in a shorter term, that people listening to this radio show can do?

Paul Craig Roberts:
Recently, in Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia, there was a revolution. They threw the government out.
click here

If they can do it ". and it was a very oppressive government, and it had military out in the streets shooting people down in the street. Nevertheless the people persisted and threw it out. So if it wasn't some sort of CIA organized coup [laughs] then the only other thing I can think of is revolution.

Rob Kall:
Does that make you a terrorist?

Paul Craig Roberts: [laughs]
Well, you asked what could be done, and I just answered the question. I didn't advocate it. So I don't know if it makes me a terrorist or not. But it would make Thomas Jefferson one. Of course, you know, the Bolsheviks were all arrested and tortured and given a show trial by Stalin, so I think that if we had had a Stalin early in our career, he would have arrested Thomas Jefferson and George Washington. So, it's just hard to know.

Rob Kall:
Well, we did, didn't we? Didn't Adams try to ". what was that term, for ...

Paul Craig Roberts:
He had the Alien and Sedition Act.

Rob Kall:
He was arresting people for sedition if they complained.

Paul Craig Roberts:
Well, he wanted to. I don't know how far it got. They did get that overturned. But you see, today we have that back. They don't call it that, but that's what we have. Notice recently the head of Homeland Security said that the threat now is Americans. We have to focus on the domestic terrorist threat, on Americans. And they arrested some blonde, blue-eyed woman, remember? So, they are already moving. First you start off with somebody that's easy to demonize, that's different, the Muslims. Dark-skinned Muslims. They blew up the World Trade Center, so everybody gets down on them and we can take away all their rights. Once you do that, you can start on the others, and they have. As I said, they've now got a blonde, blue-eyed female domestic American terrorist, and so you and I may be next, Rob. You assume you have the right to have your site and your show, and at some point the government will decide that you don't have that right.

Rob Kall:
And I've got a guy calling for revolution! Geez!

Paul Craig Roberts:
[laughs] Well, as I said, you asked what could be done, and I said that the only thing that could be done other than the long-term approach of restoring respect for the Constitution and restoring the authority of the Constitution would be to do what the people in Kyrgyzstan did a week or so ago. They just threw the government out, and not through votes, because what we've learned here is votes don't change anything. What did Obama change?

Rob Kall:
In Oklahoma, they are saying they want to create a state militia to defend the Constitution. What do you think of that?

Paul Craig Roberts:
Well, that's their right. That's their absolute, total right. They have the right to do that. My own view is that the founding fathers relied on the Second Amendment, so that people could protect themselves from the government. But that's from the days when the weapons in the hands of the citizenry and weapons in the hands of the government's army were the same. Of course today no citizen is permitted to have anything like the weapons the military has. Even though people have guns, they are essentially unarmed. The militia would have no ability to withstand an assault from the federal government. There's no way it could have anything like the weapons, or the communications and the spy photos. Today no matter how many guns people have, they may be protected against other individuals, or bands of ruffians and gangs, but they do not have any way to protect themselves from a federal military force. The prospect of revolution is certainly diminished given the disparity in the armaments between the state and the people.

Rob Kall:
Well, if we look at other nations and I'm not advocating for this, I'm just looking and discussing it they don't do it with one group of people facing off against another. They use asymmetric warfare. They use explosions. They use suicide bombers. That's the way the revolutions are being fought all over the world, it seems. They are called "terrorists," but they are also revolutionaries.

Paul Craig Roberts:
Well, I think you can resist an occupation in that way, the way the Palestinians resist the Israeli Occupation, or the way Hezbollah resisted the Israeli Occupation of Southern Lebanon, and the way the Iraqis resisted the American Occupation of Iraq. But I don't know how that would work against your own government, where there is no foreign occupation. It's just ... you're all the same entity. And of course, too, it depends on the barbarity of the government. Some governments would be willing simply to wipe out entire cities. Others might step down before going that far. I can't imagine Bush-Rove-Cheney neo-cons like Wolfowitz or Billy Kristol saying, "We mustn't kill everybody in Seattle because they are resisting us." They probably would say, "Let's kill them all."

Rob Kall:
Now, you keep saying "Billy Kristol." There is an entertainer by that name. You mean William Kristol, who is a publisher, right?

Paul Craig Roberts:
I mean the neo-con son of Irving Kristol. The Weekly Standard guy.
He's the one who said, "What's the use of nuclear weapons if you can't use them?"

Rob Kall:
It's insanity.

Paul Craig Roberts:
We have Cass Sunstein, a Harvard law professor who went into the Obama administration. He said, "Hey look, we have to infiltrate the 9/11 Truth movement with federal agents, so that we can get them involved in things that we can arrest them for."

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