Interview-Kevin Gutzman: War With Iran & James Madison's View Of In God We Trust

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EXCLUSIVE-Mike Church Show Audio & Transcript

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:There are two things that came up on yesterdays program, before I get to a phone call, Kevin, that I wanted to address.  In you and Tom Woodss book, you have a chapter in there about now, correct me, because I dont know the name of the act, so Im going to guess, and then you can fix it.  Something about the Sedition Act, somewhere around 1915 or so, where if you opposed Mr. President Wilsons draft, you were arrested and imprisoned and then brought up on charges of sedition or something to that order.

And a caller yesterday, when I said, Okay, when you neocons get your way, and we have to invade Iran, which is what theyre trying to bring about today, where are you going to get the bodies to put into the uniforms because they do not exist currently enlisted?  And then I read the latest report from the Army Inspector General himself that says we dont have enough bodies to fight the wars that we have.  So I said, Well, youre going to have a draft.  And I said, A draft is unconstitutional.

Of course the phone lines melted, calling me a heretic, calling me a lunatic, saying I dont know what the hell Im talking about, of course the draft is legal, weve always had a draft.  And I said, No, we havent.  Just goes all the way back to sometime in the 1814 or 1815 era, when Mr. Madison, I think, or somebody in the Congress attempted it.  Wasnt it Daniel Webster that said, No, you cant do this, no.  So working our way backwards from the Sedition Act and the draft to the origins of the draft, constitutional in your opinion, yes or no?

Kevin Gutzman:  Well, theres a whole chapter on the draft in Who Killed the Constitution.  Of course its unconstitutional.  In fact, there was no draft in the Revolution.  There was no federal draft.  There was no federal draft in the War of 1812.  There was no federal draft in the Mexican War.  And so you can guess when the draft began, which is of course with President Lincoln.

Mike:  President Lincoln.  Shocker.Kevin:  And I was actually yesterday in my undergraduate American Constitutional History class discussing the Lincoln administration.  And I pointed out to my students that, you know, he suspended the writ of habeas corpus, and then the Chief Justice issued a writ and said, You cant do that, and the President said, Well, are all the laws but one to fall to the ground that that one may survive?

And I said this was President Lincolns general attitude about freedom of speech and about having free elections and about writ of habeas corpus.  And the thing about establishing all these precedents in the Lincoln administration is that, ever since, all of his successors have said, well, look, Lincoln did it.  So President Bush was constantly saying Lincoln did it.  Now Obamas constantly saying Lincoln did it.

And what this has come to mean is that there is essentially no limit on the power, the war power that presidents claim to have.  President Obama claimed that he had a right to launch a non-defensive war in Libya without Congresss authorization.  And this is a first.  But he could say, well, look, Lincoln launched a war without Congresss authorization.  So the point is that most of the current situation were used to, that the President and the federal government claim unlimited war power, starts with the Lincoln administration.

In other words, none of the Founding Fathers believed that the federal government had a power to draft anybody.  They didnt intend for it to have a power to draft anybody, and they never exercised the power for it to draft anybody.  Which is not to say that the states couldnt draft people.  Of course, in the colonial period and after, every able-bodied man of military age was a member of the militia.  But of course nowadays we dont have a state militia really anymore.  So whoever was calling in and saying, Well, weve always had this, was incorrect.  And if the implication was that it was constitutional, that was incorrect, too.  And I, again, suggest  that your callers who were saying this pick up a copy of Who Killed the Constitution? and read the chapter on the draft.

Mike:  Well, okay.  So, now, lets bring this forward to today.  And as I said, as I told you people, now, the next phone call I got from another DeceptiCon rattling a saber about the threat posed to us from the Iranians, who are conspiring to murder everyone on Earth with widespread droppings of nuclear bombs across the as far as you can see.  Spin a globe and just stop it with a finger.  Just spin it and put your finger down, and the Iranians are ginning to kill those people.  Doesnt matter where your finger lands.  Just drop your finger on a spinning globe, and the Iranians are ginning to kill those people.  And then, Well, what would you and your genius buddies, you and Gutzman and Woods, what would you do if we had to fight a war and we cant have a draft, genius?

And I said, well, that does not mean that the state legislatures cant conscript people because of course they can.  And the state legislatures could then say, look, were basically reconstituting our militia or our National Guard, whatever you want to call it, and we will make them at the disposal of the Commander in Chief should he need them to execute his constitutional duty to provide for the common defense.  Now, yes or no, is that a proper exercise of authority under the U.S. Constitution?  And isnt that how it is supposed to work?

Kevin:  Well, in his first inaugural address in 1801, Thomas Jefferson said people were wrong to claim that Americas government was weak.  You know, Europeans were saying the American government is weak.  Look, they dont have a big army.  They dont have a big navy.  They dont have high taxes.  And Jefferson said, no, theyre exactly wrong.  Americas government is strong because its the only one which, if it were threatened, people would fly to the colors to defend.

But the problem that the people who are apparently calling you have is that the military adventures theyre contemplating have nothing to do with defending our country.  So, no, people would not run to the colors to defend, I dont know, Jordan or Kuwait.  So youre going to have to have some other way of forcing people into the military, if thats what you intend to do.  Nobodys going to say Im going to throw down my devotion to my college experience because I want to go join this neocon effort to beat back the threatening hordes of Persians.  In fact, of course, the other ridiculous thing about all this is that Iran hasnt attacked anybody in 2,500 years.  I mean, the idea that the Iranians want to expand their empire across the Middle East i
s just such an absurdity that…

Mike:  Have you read and seriously, this is a big issue these days, going to come up tomorrow night in this debate.  Have you read what these people write about this?  I mean, have you read about the impending Islamic threat and that anyone that doesnt see it, were all a bunch of namby-pamby, head stuck in the sand, trying to get our neighbors killed types?  Have you read what these people, I mean, you have to have seen some of this; right?

Kevin:  Yes, I have.

Mike:  Okay.

Kevin:  Actually Ive been this has been going on for nearly 10 years now.  In fact, I remember having an email exchange with the notable neocon editorial writer Michael Ledeen approximately 10 years ago in which he was saying something about the need to use military force against Iran.  Again, this is nearly 10 years ago.  And I said, Well, the problem youre going to have, of course, is that the American people wont support it.  You know, I think that one part of being conservative is that you only do things that are prudent.  And its imprudent to launch a war against Iran that the American people are just not going to support.  Eventually the country will have to back out, and itll be a failure like, oh, I dont know, our Afghan foray?  Thats going to be a failure because eventually the Americans are just not going to support it.  Weve already seen that.

So its imprudent.  Its not conservative to be launching a military enterprise that ultimately there wont be popular support to see through to the end.  Whatever kind of justification these people can come up with for their bombing of the day, they just cant come up with any sound statesmanly explanation of how it will work out well.  And for that reason, even if it were constitutional to raise an army the way they have in mind, it still would be a bad idea.

End Mike Church Show Transcript

TheKingDude

Host of the Mike Church Show on The Veritas Radio Network's CRUSADE Channel & Founder of the Veritas Radio Network. Formerly, of Sirius/XM's Patriot channel 125. The show began in March of 2003 exclusively on Sirius and remains "the longest running radio talk show in satellite radio history".

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