Government And Media Corruption Is A Symptom Of Our Moral Decay

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – Think about it, our federal government we complain mightily about, our state governments we complain mightily about, they are the largest public display of what we do together.  No longer are the acts of what we do together the acts of peace, human felicity and what have you.  Now they are the acts of abject corruption.  They are demonstrated and seen and shown in our legislatures.  Is that a symptom of legislative system or is that a symptom of moral decay and the moral system losing its way, losing its ground, losing its meaning, losing its importance, losing its authority? Check out today’s transcript for the rest…

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  AG, what did you think about the last caller?  I tried to bring this up in as gentle and gentlemanly of a fashion, because I do not seek to offend, last week when I said something to the effect: You better watch crossing those bayonets together with your buddies and ginning up for and aspiring for a shooting war to start with the other side.  You better lay off the romanticism about that.  There is nothing romantic about that.  Yet it seems as though, [mocking] “If that’s what we gotta do, that’s what we gotta do.”  The idea that because they’re violent to us we have to be violent to them, to me, is part of the problem.

Remember, it is the true conservative, the tradcon, the paleocon, the old Edmund Burke, Jeffersonian conservative, that conservative tradition that provides you with the calmness and the reasoned deliberation on these great issues, these great machinations in our history, to resolutely discuss these in a solemn manner.  Reason your way through it using history as the guide.  If the history is a violent history — if you redid the War of Northern Aggression, 1861-1865, the cost in human lives today would be somewhere on the order of 9 million dead.  That’s an awful lot of bodies to bury.  That is an awful lot of bloodshed to contemplate.  Everything you say, everything you do, ought to be done with an eye toward peaceful resolution.  If you’re going to advocate separation, you’re going to do it peacefully and lay out the reasons.  As Jefferson says in the Declaration of Independence, “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires them to declare the reasons which impel them to the separation,” then they list the charges: here’s what it is you’re doing that makes this necessary.

It’s that kind of thoughtfulness that you’d like to see in your leaders, not crossing of the bayonets, not building of the arms and armament.  I understand [mocking] “You gotta show ‘em you’re serious.”  I think you show them you’re serious by rejecting the claims of you states’ legislatures, like we currently do not do, and telling your state legislature: If you don’t go back into that legislature and do what ought to be done to protect the people of this state from that menacing creature on the Potomac River, some of us are going to run against you and we’re going to go in that legislature and do it.  Folks, at the end of the day, it’s all about money.  It is all about the transfer of wealth.  That is why this is the most corrupt, I think, system of government in the history of the Earth.  Andrew, did you happen to catch or see any of the press clippings of something Jackie Chan said a couple weeks ago, about how the United States was the most corrupt?

AG:  No, I have not seen that.

Mike:  You may want to Google it and see if you can find it.  I only saw it in passing.  Of course, the American exceptionalists jump on it.  He’s talking about our government being the largest example of what it is that the people do collectively.  Think about it, our federal government we complain mightily about, our state governments we complain mightily about, they are the largest public display of what we do together.  No longer are the acts of what we do together the acts of peace, human felicity and what have you.  Now they are the acts of abject corruption.  They are demonstrated and seen and shown in our legislatures.  Is that a symptom of legislative system or is that a symptom of moral decay and the moral system losing its way, losing its ground, losing its meaning, losing its importance, losing its authority?

AG:  I see the Jackie Chan quotes.  I don’t think he’s wrong.

Mike:  That’s the point I’m making.  I don’t think he’s wrong either.

AG:  He was on a Chinese talk show and says, citing a lot of people across the world will say China is full of corruption, “If you talk about corruption, does the entire rest of the world – does America have no corruption?…America has the most corruption in the world!”  I immediately go back to last year.  There was a 60 Minutes piece discussing members of Congress and having basically insider stock tips.  It is so obvious that it looks like corruption to the rest of this country, the citizens of the United States, when our members of Congress are getting stock insider tips and refuse to comment on it or change that law.  The 60 Minutes piece, they tried asking Nancy Pelosi about these insider tips her husband was benefitting off of.  She wouldn’t address it at all.  Your former mayor was indicted this past weekend.

Mike:  Yes, Ray Nagin.

AG:  It’s across party lines.  It’s not left or right.  We’ve seen it in both parties numerous times.  It’s pathetic that some of the brightest and best that are supposed to be serving in public office fall victim to corruption.  It stings to hear this come from overseas, but it’s not far off that the truth hurts a little.

Mike:  I want to give you another example of corruption and how it is that it works its way through the revolving door of patronage, and why it’s never going to end under the current system.  Did you happen to catch the video they had on ABCNews.com over the weekend, maybe Friday, with Diane Sawyer?  Some whistleblower had ratted out this defense contractor over in Afghanistan.  The people that were over there in Afghanistan were supposed to be running this operation and training Afghani police and what have you.  They were spending their days drunk and stoned.

AG:  I have not seen that one.

Mike:  It’s like a $38 billion Pentagon contract.  Of course, the company says [mocking] “We took care of that.  That was a bunch of bad apples.”  Okay, let’s talk about corruption for a moment.  When I talk about the revolving door, this is what I mean.  We must have this ginormous leviathan with all its tentacles creeping out all over this continent and all across the world.  We must have the largest defense department, or the largest offense department, in the history of the known universe.  We must have troops spread hither and yon.  We must have all of these agencies, all these outposts, all these deployments.  These are all adjuncts.  These are all connected to the State, to the central authority. They do not exist unless the central authority sends them hither and yon.

On the one hand, we have the expansion of the State.  The example I’m giving is of the military-industrial complex.  This is a threat to your liberty, even though it’s presented as a preservation.  It’s a threat to your liberty.  You have the threat to your liberties, but we at ABC News, even though we helped bring about the enlargement of the State to the point it is today, we got you covered.  Brian Ross, ABC News, don’t worry.  Brian Ross has got you covered.  He’s going to give you all the inside reporting you want.  The whistleblowers will go to ABC or CBS or NBC or Fox or whatever the case may be.  Now you see that hand washing the other.  We’ll wink and nod at you.  We’ll do what’s necessary to expand the State.  When you guys screw up, though, we get to cover it and we get to pretend like we’re righteous, that we’re indignant.  We’re righteously indignant over these outrages.  We’ve got reporters standing by to report on all the corruption.  It’s a nice scheme if you can get away with it.

That example is just one.  It happens every single day.  Every time you turn that tube on and they are droning on about the latest collusion story, Congress, state legislature, Mayor Nagin or whatever, it is all cut of the same cloth.  Big media benefits from big government, end of story.  Big business benefits from big government, end of story.  Ladies and gentlemen, we are big as any big has ever been.  Put that in your pipe and smoke it.  Your obsession of sending new members to the House of Representin’, as long as the representation is at the level it is and is out of scale, is an idle misspending of time and it is a waste.

End Mike Church Show Transcript