The End of Separation of Church and State

With the annual Fourth of July celebrations. Now behind us, there is yet another day of reckoning to contend with a day that might well summarize the hostile tides of discontent that are now wash across our nation. Just over a week from now on July 14, we will hit the anniversary of a lesser known event than our nation's day of independence. It was on July 14 back in 2015. You see that the now infamous clarion call to make America great again became an official service mark registered with the United States patent and trademark office.

After then, candidate for president donald J trump adopted it as his campaign slogan. Now it's a matter of debate. I suggest when it was in our country's history that America was so wonderfully great to merit a return to that time or when exactly this relic of greatness came to be lost. Although fast forward to two today and one might be inclined to romanticize the gilded age that came before. These four words gushed out of that loud mouth, an orange stained charlatan of chaos, you know, back to the days when a president wearing a tan suit was perceived as an embarrassment to our country.

Yet in those times of general recalcitrance, when women were still retaining their bodily autonomy, when taxpayers weren't forced to bear the cost of funding bigoted schools run by narrow minded religious zealots, When school prayer wasn't yet a tool for indoctrination at the 50 yard line under the Friday night lights and back when actual progress in social equality was advancing in a more forwardly direction. those days are now far behind us. The long and exhaustive struggle to regain this, lost shimmer of somewhat greatness have yet to even fully begin as we now to have caused any clearer timeline as our reference to make America great again, you see, given the turbulent upheavals in our social, economical and political norms, The still raging trauma of a deadly pandemic that saw over a million Americans dead and left our economy's in shambles, the fictitious uprising of January six that continues to preoccupy our daily lives and the appointment of three new radical extremists on our nation's highest court, which has upended decades and in some cases centuries of jurisprudence.

If there's one thing the majority of americans can likely agree upon, it's that America is most certainly much less great in these current days. For some though, and albeit fragmented minority with faulty logic and ignorant reading of history. The America of Today on this July 5th 2022 is precisely the vision of american greatness that they have been longing for for a triumphant few. Their orange skin pouring ready leisure suit wearing a human has finally managed to build something of value though like everything else about him, his claim of ownership to this change is somewhat overinflated.

Now, as I said, this faction of americans represents a fringe minority and we might well view them as an unworthy distraction, if not for the fact that despite being vastly outnumbered, this ragtag bunch of radicals, well they're winning and the losses we have racked up or anything. But inconsequential in our previous episode of of America, where we dove into the nuanced issues surrounding abortion, I ingest welcomed my viewers and listeners to these new theocratic states of America are sarcastic quip at our Supreme Court's apparent thirst for religious rule over democracy.

Unless I will be accused of not knowing what a theocracy is. Let me be clear, I am well aware that a theocracy is a form of government that is ruled by the Divine Proxies of God under whatever religious doctrines happen to be in season at that given place and time. So true. While America is not literally at least as of yet a theocracy. If the Supreme Court's recent rulings are any indication of what is to come, Well, we're certainly a nation on the cusp of becoming a true theocracy.

And no, this is not hyperbole. I'm being quite literal and factual in my submission and it all circles back to this fringe minority That makes up around 30% of the American electorate before I proceed in identifying this almighty group. Spoiler alert, it's the christian, right. I want to quickly review just a few of the recent rulings handed down by the United States Supreme Court that should be concerning to the american people now I'm going to skip past the overturning of roe v wade. Seeing as how it's the Court ruling most covered by the mainstream press and already widely known last month, the Supreme Court of the United States also ruled on Kennedy versus Brenton school district, a case where a public school football coach was suspended for publicly praying in the center field after the conclusion of each game and inviting others to join in on the activity, joseph Kennedy was not refused the right to his beliefs, nor was he told that he cannot conduct a prayer session on school grounds.

He was only asked to do so in a more private and secluded manner so that students would not feel a new pressure to participate in the prayer from their pairs school staff and the spectator in public Kennedy of course continued to make his postgame pro a widely publicized event despite warnings to take things down just just a notch and it was us disciplined by the school board. On June 27, 2022, the Supreme Court sided with a former public high school football coach. Now for many decades, the Supreme Court has actually ruled against preying on public grounds.

But with our new rising theocratic government here too, is yet another tradition lost to a radical court. There is no desire to be constrained by former president on june 21st 2000 and 22 the Carson verse making case was settled to decide that in the state of maine school vouchers can now be used to pay for tuition at religious sites of education. Once again, this ruling goes against the long standing precedent of separating church and state, because state governments can now be required to fund very religious institutions that contribute no taxes of their own into the general pool.

On the plus side, this ruling might maybe come in handy as it means foreign doctrine and all those unwanted tykes soon to be produced by the Supreme Court's new forced birth provision. And what could be more american than taxpayers footing the bill for public institutions that openly discriminate and hate the most marginalized members of our communities, kicking gays, lesbians and transgender people to the back of the bus. Or I guess in this case off the bus. Well, that's just a new tradition to be borrowed from our past.

On June 23, 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States made a second amendment ruling in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association. The Kevin de Bruin. This case examined the constitutionality of the 1911 Sullivan Act. A New York State law that requires people who apply for concealed weapons permit to show proper cause meaning a reason why they should, you know, feel the need to be armed. The court ruled in favor of new york State Rifle and pistol association, deciding that new york's law was unconstitutional on the grounds that the public possession of pistols Is of course a right granted to citizens under the 2nd Amendment.

The court feels that concealed weapons should be allowed on a why not basis rather than a why should it basis? In other words, as long as there is no reason to withhold a concealed weapon permit, such as I don't know, I failed mental health background check or inclusion on the no fly list. Then the permit should be automatically granted. This decision is certain to imperil efforts, efforts to impose new gun control measures bent to stymie the epidemic of mass shootings and gun violence sweeping across our nation, such as the mass shooting that occurred yesterday.

But it might also be again useful in our soon to be theocratic states of America in case that's non christian heathen step out of favor by the intolerant minority seeking to rule over us. And finally, there is Shin vs Ramirez, which on May 23, saw the reversal of a prior United States Supreme Court decision allowing death row inmate David Ramirez, to petition for the right to present new evidence of innocence on the grounds that he received ineffective post conviction council. Again, this new ruling goes against precedent set back in 2012, stating that federal courts can indeed intervene if a prisoner receives bad counsel after being convicted as well as before.

Well, the Skoda six have demonstrated an un barring concern for the innocent lives of the unborn. In this decision, the Supreme Court has now fully enshrined into case law Scalia is 1993 claim that potential innocence doesn't necessarily stop the state from executing someone. In other words, once you're outside the womb, the pro life position yells to the need for judicial expediency. Also, I suspect one might in the future lose the right to I don't know convert to Christianity after being sentenced to death for worshiping the wrong deity.

But you know, who knows the christian right? They might have grown more, you know, christ like with age maybe. Okay, light sarcasm aside the concerns over a pen and theocracy are not entirely without merit for the 30% of the American electorate that comprises the Christian right? I keep alluding to this is precisely the vision of America that they are battling to bring us. And as I said, it is a work that they are winning. With much political stealth and nuclear precision, precision, precision. It is a war that dates back to the 1970s, gaining much political momentum under the presidency of Ronald Reagan.

And that kept shrugging along until its grand reformer in christ descended down from the escalator of Tower divinity to have golden adoration showered upon him. Well, many are surprised that a group of self professed christians would so easily embrace. You know, let's say charitably a less than stereotypical christian character like donald trump a more nuanced analysis of the religious right and its historical arc reveals a less religious tender than people might come to expect. In the most comprehensive research study to date sociologist of religion Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Samuel Perry found that the so called religious right has its roots and what might be better defined as christian nationalism.

Where the religion is more centered around a skew doctrine of american exceptionalism. There's more culturally focused in mining two large statistical studies of social cultural attitudes and belief systems. And then following up on those survey respondents with one on one interviews and site observations. Whitehead. Whitehead and Perry came upon a more practical definition of the religious right, characterizing it as a cultural framework built around a hodgepodge of myths, traditions, symbols, value systems, historical narratives and all of which I idealize and advocate a fusion of Christianity with american civic life.

So in this regard, a better term for the religious right would be christian nationalist elaborating on their conclusion, Whitehead and Perry right back, christian nationalism paradoxically holds America as sacred in God's sight while viewing the country's future as tennis and bleak. It val arises conquest in America's name and bloodshed in this defense. It idolizes relations marked by clear whether they're metaphorical or physical boundaries and hierarchies, both in the private and public realms. It baptizes authoritarian rule. It justifies the preservation of order with with religious violence rather that be carried out by the police state against deserving mostly minority criminals or by border agents against presumptively dangerous.

Again, minority immigrants or by the infamous citizen, good guy with guns against the rampaging lunatics or the bad guys with guns. And it also glorifies the patriarchal heterosexual family as not only God's biblical standard, but the very cornerstone of all thriving civilizations. End quote In a follow up study by the same researchers, over 16,000 religious right respondents were asked to write their attitudes towards six statements on a scale of strongly agree to strongly disagree. The six statements are as follows. The federal government should declare the United States a christian nation.

The federal government should advocate christian values. Three, the federal government should enforce strict separation of church and state. The federal government should allow the display of religious symbols in public spaces. The success of the United States is part of God's plan. The federal government should allow prayer in public schools. The findings overall indicated that slightly more than half around 52% of the participants agreed with all or most of these statements among the true believers defined as those who want to spread christian nationalist ideas. Over half, 55% identified as evangelical Protestants vs 19% of Catholics, 11% of mainline Protestants and 10% of black Protestants.

Now, obviously more is at work here than just merely religious affiliation as Whitehead and perry summarized the christian entity of christian nationalism represents something more than religion. It includes assumptions of nativism, white supremacy patriarchy and heteronormative Itty along with the divine sanction for authoritarian control and militarism. It is as ethnic and political as it is religious understood in this light, christian nationalism contends that America has been and should always be distinctively christian from top to bottom and its self identity interpretations of history. What? Yes. And then that was a description of christian nationalism in mind.

Let's flash back to January six for just a moment, it unpacked some of the symbolism that was on display during the attack on the capitol. Among the crowds were numerous flags and signs with jesus saves and bolted across them and other christian symbols, probably during blatantly racist symbols. In the senate chamber, Jacob chance lee sat in the vice president's chair and prayed at length throat a bullhorn, thanking, quote, a divine omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent creator God for filling this chamber with patriots that love you and that love christ to exercise our rights to allow us to send a message to all the tyrants, the communists and the globalists that this is our nation, not theirs end, quote white supremacists dressed in t shirts displaying a red crusader cross were also present throughout that dark day, time and again, the most deeply irrational and violent impulses of christian nationalism, Ron full display fueled with ample degrees of rage, paranoia and apocalyptic forever as historian, christian cobb's muse writes in her book, jesus and john wayne quote today.

What it means to be a conservative conservative evangelical is as much about culture as it is about theology. The evangelical political resurgence of the 1970s, coalesced around a potent mix of family values, politics, but family values always intertwined with ideas about sex, power, race, a nation. The reassertion of white patriarchy was central to the new family values politics. And by the end of the 1970s, the defense of Patriarchal power had emerged as an evangelical Lee distinctive. And while christian nationalists might represent only a fragmented minority of the american electorate, they are a well funded, hyper organized, powerfully aligned and politically influential coalition.

Christian nationalists have their sights set on hijacking the federal and state governments believing they are restoring America back to its christian birthright. They reject pluralism and refused to see themselves as coexisting alongside those with opposing views, christian nationalist view the rising tide of diversity and tolerance as a visceral loss of their cultural dominance of form of persecution, from which they must rise up against creating of course, an atmosphere of rage, resentment and unhinged paranoia. That is quite susceptible to conspiracy theories and only further insights, calls for violence.

It is an attempt to rewrite the history of our nation in accordance with their theory of american exceptionalism, which is what we see reference when the political right rails against public schools that corrupt our Children with lessons on critical race theory and non heterosexual gender norms. A recent proposal submitted to the texas state board of Education is considering curriculum changes after texas passed a law about a year ago allowing them to get this eliminate topics from students from schools that makes students feel discomfort. Among the most recent proposals is a call to rewrite textbooks for second graders that would remove the term slavery and replace it with involuntary relocation end, quote comical as these efforts might be.

They extend far beyond the culture wars we see playing out in the states, christian nationalists have acquired little, have acquired literal power throughout the federal government, Gaining access to our nation's most powerful institutions from the federal judiciary, the military, mainstream media and even within the ranks of Fortune 500 companies and they have used this access to bring their faith and misguided conceptions of America to bear on the top leadership of our governing institutions. Christian nationalists have spent the last 30 plus years building and strengthening an army of organizations focused on transforming the cultural mainstream.

It has allowed evangelicals from different sectors of society to join together and influence major institutions like Congress in the White House in the world of business. Evangelical executives has focused their energies on building corporate cultures that are not only amenable to people of faith, but exclusive to them. Evangelicals have been particularly focused on higher education, trending up an army of young people to join the ranks of the future leaders in the christian nationalist movement by taking up locations not just within the church, but at Goldman Sachs, the Supreme Court, the State department, the military and a very mainstream of our political systems with the express goal of utilizing those positions towards entrenching and politicizing their faith and excluding anyone outside their dogmatic views.

It is only when you understand the magnitude of the religious rights infiltration of almost every powerful or influential organization in America, that's the threat of an actual theocracy emerging emerging from this manufactured chaos of our present era. It becomes more plausible. We can agree with them or despise them but to reject them as unworthy of careful monitoring is just lazy and extremely risky. The religious right won't go away if we just simply ignore them. In fact ignoring them only furthers their efforts and that my friends is the last word up front.

I'm sean ST hard and you're watching crusade America. Stay tuned. We've got a very interesting show ahead as we continue this conversation about christian nationalism, Crusade America tends to focus a great deal of attention on the rise of christian nationalism with future episodes dedicated to various employees and mechanisms by which they are acquiring and wielding power. I want to be very clear here. This is not meant to denigrate religion and while as an atheist, I may have a clear bias in this regard. I want to stress that I have no issue with religion and I of course respect the importance of faith as a sociocultural cornerstone.

It is the vein of theocratic and religious extremism that perverts religion into a militant force that deserves all of our condemnation. America is and always has been a secular nation where religious freedoms are protected under the pretense of freedom from religion, which is a fundamental principle for ensuring tolerance across all religious denominations and faiths. For this reason, I want to begin our series of expositions on the rise of christian nationalism by focusing on the importance of the separation of church and state. Our guest today is someone I've been very excited to introduce.

His name is Barry Lynn. He served as the legislative counsel for both the Washington office of the United Church of christ and the american civil liberties union. Lynn is an ordained minister in the United Church of christ and a member of the Supreme Court Bar. He began a 25 year stint as executive director of Americans, United for separation of church and state back in 1992. Lynn is the only american ever likely to have won a Free speech award from the Playboy Foundation and a Medal of Freedom award from the franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Foundation for protecting our freedom to worship.

You've also seen him on the David Feldman show. He decided his own radio show. Uh and he's gonna be joining us in just a few seconds. We'll be right back America right later, others. Mhm. And welcome back joining us now is my good friend, the reverend barry W. Lynn, I am so, so excited to have you joining us. Thank you so much. It's wonderful to be here. I want people to understand that you are actually one of the unsung heroes in America. And I really mean that um you have defended what some might call the unscrupulous.

Um for instance, I and I want to talk about the playboy and pornography for just a moment because I think it's very important. Um can you, can you just kind of share a little bit of history for those that may not be familiar? Sure. I came to Washington after teaching school in boston and south boston at a catholic high school, very progressive, needless to say very progressive. One of the few progressive catholic high schools, I came to Washington to work on kind of the detritus of the Vietnam war.

I had failed my own medical physical when I went for the army physical. And therefore I felt obligated though to keep up a kind of a drumbeat for justice for those people who chose to serve veterans and those who chose directly to resist it by going to another country or hiding in the shadows of the United States. And I did that and shortly thereafter I started to work for the american civil liberties union. I do remember when the director at that time, Ira Glasser, about whom a documentary was made last year?

He said, are you, would you be comfortable or working on the abortion issue? Because I was a minister. And so many of the ministers at that time were developing followings primarily because they were anti reproductive choice. And of course I said to Ira, I'd be I'm quite happy to do that. And in fact, my interest in separation of church and state did not come from prayer in school, although I was subjected to that. My jewish friends were subjected to that my atheist friends in high school subjected to it.

But it was in college when I was talking to a friend of mine about going on the spring break, I said, where are you going to go? And he said London, I said that sounds like fun. He said, well it won't be fun. I said why? And he said, because my woman friend at the time and I are going there to obtain an abortion. I had marched with Dr King. I had been a staunch opponent since high school of the Vietnam war and I didn't understand the clout that churches had at that time, frankly was mainly the roman catholic church.

They had so much control over the legislatures of places like new york and massachusetts. You could not obtain a safe legal abortion anywhere in the United States. So I worked with the judson Memorial Church in Greenwich village and arranged some information about how to get them connected to abortion providers in England, that was the centerpiece of my transformation and I after working for the A. C. L. U. For a while, I was given the opportunity to run americans United for separation of church and state. That was an organization that had been started back in 1951, primarily and ironically by members of the clergy at that time, there was the beginnings of the kind of christian right that you've been describing.

But there was mainly this deep concern that the most powerful religious institution of the time, the roman catholic church was getting undue influence over the direction of the country. And in its beginnings there were some things that frequently the case with nonprofits, things you kind of wish you could erase from your history. There was a lot of anti catholic bigotry at the time and some of what americans United was about was fomenting that same thing. But by the time those early days were over, when Jack Kennedy was running as a catholic for president, his brother ted Kennedy came to one of our meetings and said if it hadn't been for americans United saying you cannot vote against someone based on his or her religion.

He said, I'm not sure my brother would have been elected president and at that time you could fill up to thousands of seats in major auditoriums around the country with activists interested in the separation of church and state. If you did that now you might get 500 people. But the truth is in most places until very recently, people thought this was a principle established. Maybe there were some nit picking of the edges, but it was secure. Now, of course, we know, particularly from the last Supreme Court session.

It is far from secure. It is eroding very, very quickly. So those are the three things working on peace, working at the blue, where as you mentioned, I did a lot of work to destroy something called the Meese Commission, which is a commission studying pornography under the auspices originally of Attorney General William french smith. And then Ed Meese took over and it's been known with high degree of dishonor as the Meese Commission. Most of its recommendations went nowhere. But when people are too satisfied that they can go and find their favorite corn on the internet, remember the Supreme Court will take an interest in that and will be much more willing to agree to censorship whether it's a sexual material or any anything else that a majority of people in the state don't like I'm doing that too.

What was that? We're already sort of seeing that as well already. We are. I mean, it's you know, it's a I'm doing this thing at the kurt Vonnegut Museum and library later in july, It's called, it's a 2-hour program called everybody doesn't like something, why not ban everything? There are people, you know, Alan Dershowitz before he became further and further into the depths of weird constitutionalism. We used to talk a lot, We did some television shows together. And one thing he was known to say, which I do think is a good idea.

He said, if you really want to prove that you're a First amendment purist then be exposed to the thing you hate the most and try to defend it. And I think First amendment people who have the best or they think they're pure in heart when it comes to it. Then you find some things that they don't like. There were efforts in the Senate for example, to do things like a guarantee that if a political candidate had someone make an adverse comment about his or her opponent, that person would be given free television time.

And I would like to think I've never run for office, I've never had any interest in doing that. But I'd like to think that if I did my principal point would be not just some good things I'm in favor of, but I want to be very, very directly opposed to the principles and the positions of my opponent that would come across to some as negative advertising. And of course negative advertising has blossomed, blossomed with these kind of cancers on the body politics, like political action committees. 5 27 organizations, even these spin offs of charities, charities are constructed as five oh one C three organizations in the tax code, but there's a sister way to do that C four's and even those, ostensibly none of these are supposed to coordinate with the actual campaigns of people running for office.

But they always do. And in fact, during one of the more recent cycles, I remember always watching CNN and they had some guy from a pac supporting one candidate and the host just said something like, well, I know you can't coordinate them, but I'm sure they're watching so that this whole thing, I think if you're a charity, you ought to do charitable things. If you're a political organization, you ought to do political things and then you can do anything you want. Churches, on the other hand, are not supposed to, charities are not supposed to endorse or oppose or support or oppose any candidates for any public office.

And you can see that that is really nonsense, that it wasn't taken seriously, even by Bill Clinton, even by Barack Obama and certainly not by joe biden instead of saying and bringing test cases saying you have crossed the line, you've done something. These are not things on the fringes. These are things like churches that put up, this is a recent Senate election. They put up a senator and said this person believes in life and then they had a smiling baby and then they had this person doesn't and a really terrible photograph of a Democratic opponent.

So if I were to give some advice about what you should do with political ads, you should just ignore them. Don't pay any attention, even if you like the information, make sure that you as a citizen and you as a potential voter have an informed basis made up by your own research. Instead of listening to the crap that is produced by republicans, democrats and rarely independence. It was a party, a little bit of history, but just I have played this game to where they've used religion sort of as this political football.

And I mean, and yet, and I think democrats, the Democratic Party is kind of literally stunned. We're actually here at this point, but I don't think they fully the um, I just lost a little bit of what you said at the end there. But during the john Kerry effort to become president, he actually had an assistant, an aide who said that to the new york times one day that she was urging democrats to de emphasize the phrase separation of church and state, separation of church and state was an idea that was so powerful Back in the 40s and 50s.

People understood what it meant. Now, People are confused and nobody, I can't think of a single politician in the last 20 years who's campaigned with a present with a statement that says, we are going to defend the separation of church and state. Now they might say it privately. I don't take much from private promises from would be politicians. I really don't, I'm more interested in what they're willing to say publicly, what is separation of church and state, because there's arguments right now saying wishin. Um, and they were making reference to a letter written by thomas jefferson. Right?

So it's really the establishment clause that we're talking about separation of church and state is where did that term kind of come from? It does come from that letter that Jefferson wrote to the, to a congregation in Connecticut, but it means something a little more than that. It means that there should be a decent distance between the institutions of government and the institutions of religion and the free exercise clause, which has occasional value. Let's say you want to be a firefighter for a long time. If you were a Sikh of the Sikh faith, uh, you couldn't wear a turban and be a firefighter in most states.

And there were ostensible reasons like, well, your turban might catch on fire. Well, you know, that's, that's why firefighters often have helmets. There were prisoners who could not grow a beard. If there were a muslim prisoner and they felt that they needed to grow a beard. Prison officials would say you can't do that because you could hide contraband in the beard. I mean, outside of those characters from Duck Dynasty, with those really long beards or the band members of Zz top, you cannot hide a weapon in a beard.

I mean, but this is the kind of nonsense that was being promoted. So I do think there was justification for saying the free exercise of religion does mean something. The problem is now, it doesn't just mean sikhs can have turbans, prisoners can have beards. Now, it means Well, in the last two weeks, football coaches can pray with their students right on the 50 yard line after a game. That is not the free exercise of religion. Now, some people may say, well, who's harmed if a football coach wants to say a prayer, how would you respond to that?

Because I mean, a lot of people think, yeah, this is a relevant issue. Yeah, it's, um, I think it goes back when I was in high school, there was still, I went to high school and pennsylvania. So there was both bible reading and um, prayer every day. And I asked one of my jewish friends once, I said, aren't you uncomfortable with this? And he said, yeah, but he said, what am I going to do about it? And so the other thing about whenever politicians get close to religion, they do tend to corrupt it.

And I remember so vividly, Although I was 74 years old, what it was like to be called upon to read these bible verses to the class in high school, there were a couple of favorite verses because I was a pretty staunch sunday school attendee at the time. So I took it somewhat seriously, but I tried to read from the christian old testament because I knew that there was for jews and for a lot of other people there was no new testament, but people would read from a passage in the book of proverbs that uses the word breasts, because how else in the high school can a student go breasts and then or read the gats?

You know, this effort in the early part of the so called new testament to explain how people got along. So that adam and eve to get this and that goes on for a long time. But I think people didn't take it seriously. I think some of us may have not spend a lot of time listening because it's a really good time just to make hand signals to your friends or perhaps even even for me, look at somebody who had a crush on and go, wow, she's beautiful, That is not what religion should be all about.

And I was really, really offended by that. As I said, it wasn't the single thing that took me into. But I think the other thing about prayer, if you do it, jesus, by the way says don't pray in public, this is very clear, jesus says, if you want to be listened to by God go into a closet, go into a room by yourself, explain what you would like and then God might respond affirmatively, but this character judge Kennedy in Bremerton Washington, Wanted to do this in a very public spectacle way.

He wanted to go out on the 50 yard line and pray and that the harm there is not just that it might seem strange to people who were not christians of his kind, but that a lot of people, a lot of parents would report and filed affidavits where they'd say their son came home and said if I don't join the coach in the middle of the field, I am not going to be allowed to play. I was just talking to a guy in massachusetts the other day. He was on the wrestling team of the high school and he said we knew that if we didn't go along with a christian prayer and he was not a christian, we might not get to wrestle.

So I mean these are very real. And the a word that I've tried to keep using more and more is evil. There are people with evil intentions and those people with evil intentions are really happy to couch it in any other way. I did hear donald trump once at a campaign rally literally in a, at a religious right gathering, which they used to go to all the time. And he was, it was inconceivable to me that he had any idea what the christian faith was all about because as is said sometimes biblically by their fruits, you shall know them if you're going to mock people with disabilities.

If you're going to grab women non consensually guess what? You have just demonstrated that you don't give much of a hoot about Christianity when he was Yeah, the whole bible, it's held upside down. That's that's always a Q two. But the thing about he was obsessed with a couple of things in that speech including how he would make sure that more people said merry christmas as if the President Commander in chief. I mean I I did dozens, maybe 100 television shows about the so called war on christmas.

There was no war on christmas. There was they would consider it a war on christmas if you're on the religious right by anything that they didn't get to do. So if they didn't get to put up a nativity scene right in City Hall, that was a war against christmas and we had a lot of victories about that when I was at americans united and even before that at the A. C. L. U. But there was no war on christmas and people used to say, well why do you do?

I used to go on Fox a lot Fox News channel and it's an embarrassment. I mean it's it's literally when I was on it and doing it, there are only two other liberals, robert Reich and Ellie Smeal who runs runs the feminist majority and I there are only three liberals that would ever go on the Fox News channel repeatedly and when I had a guy who was one of the bookers at Fox News channel and he said that I'm quitting getting another job. I want to take you to lunch.

And he told me this interesting story. He said, I said, yeah, I don't get really invited much to be on Fox. And he said, you want to know why? I said sure, he said, because americans united for separation of church and state is a big organization and you're very articulate. And so what we were told the book is somebody you find on the internet who, you know, has no organization and is not going to know where to look in the camera. But I think that one of the things that happen is with the media these days is no matter how much time they spend, they don't get much to the point on something like the Kennedy case involving the prayer at the football game.

One of the difficulties with having a segment of most segments are 66 to 7 minutes long, the court doesn't even agree on the facts. If you look at the dissent in that case, where they say this is clearly a violation of the separation of church and state. You think, and of course, one of the dissenting judges put a couple of photographs in her dissent that depicted This coach and dozens of players surrounding him at the 50 yard line. And yet if you look at the entirety of the majority opinion, the six people, majority opinion, you would think that the only thing he did was give a private affirmation to God at the end of a game, which I think in fact what I understand, I mean, I wasn't at americans United was our case, but I get when I retired, it was taken over by other people, but in a good way.

And I don't think anybody would have had brought a lawsuit if the only thing the guy had done as a coach was go and say a prayer on the sidelines or maybe even on the football field. But it was this idea of inviting other people inviting with of course, that possibility that if you don't accept the invitation, you're not gonna get any birthday cake or in this case, you're not going to play at all high school football. Even if you didn't say that outright, That pressure that one might feel is very real.

Even if that wouldn't have been the case, right? Even if the football coach would have been like, okay, well, I'm tolerant of that and I understand it's how that person feels, and that's what a lot of people don't understand, is that there is that pressure that exists. Yeah, I mean it and it's very real. It's um, it is not something trivial. I mean, I I got it. I used to get in a little trouble because I frankly, um, I'm not, I'm not a huge proponent of removing the phrase in God we trust from the money.

Now, people should know, we didn't have it at the beginning of currency in the United States, it appeared on the two cent piece after the Civil War and then by congressional action was required to be printed on every coin and every bill back in the anti communist fifties, when I guess the assumption was Those calm, you see in God, we trust on that $5 bill, they're gonna get scared and run away. I mean the absurd, the absurdity and I used to say, and in God we trust on the coins is kind of a fraud because um when you think about what money is used for bribing public officials hiring somebody who, you know, is a sex traffic prostitute.

This is the same thing that you used with that. So I just found it absurd to believe that this was somehow necessary or important for the very promotion of the faith of Christianity. That's ridiculous. Yeah. And what if there's a let's say that somebody is jewish or muslim too? And you see these memes on facebook to like, well jeez, what this means is that the church of satan can now say prayers on the or Muslims and that will really, and and that does kind of go back to that point.

This is one of the justices, I think it was maybe it was Kennedy in this case remarked that this would teach kids tolerance, but that's kind of the opposite of what Yeah, it's um, hey, it is, I think safe to say with the possible exception in recent years of justice Sotomayor and justice Kagan, I was never sure Justice Bryer really fully understood what separation of church and state was all about. There's a point where the passion is important and one of the reasons as you described in monologue that the christian right has gotten as powerful politically as it is, is because people ignored them.

They thought these people are crackpots, we don't have to worry about them. But you do when Eleanor Roosevelt who was a friend of the first, the founder of Americans United is she? And he used to have meetings and go to the White House and talk to her. She was a very strong proponent of separation of church and state. She she was against prayer in schools. She wrote a thing for the most popular magazine of the time, reader's digest explaining why this is not a good idea. She opposed the idea of paying private religious schools to educate Children.

She said that she and franklin had sent their own kids to private schools, but it was, she said unthinkable that we would expect somebody else to help pay for that. Now we've kind of come full circle on that issue as well because just days before the Kennedy decision we've been talking about, here comes another decision out of the state of maine. A lot of moose is there, but not so many high schools. If you're in a congressional, in a the school district that doesn't have a high school, you've got two options.

You can either arrange with some neighboring school district to have the young people go to those alternative public schools or you can just say we'll subsidize private schools. But the state of Maine did understand separation of church and state and they said, now the one thing we're not going to do is subsidize those private religious schools that actually say were teaching along the lines of our particular religion. So you could you could be affiliated with the Methodist church, but you couldn't say, by the way, we're teaching history based on the history of Methodism or the presbyterian doctrine of well, the Supreme Court, just get away with that just two weeks ago and said, no, you have to.

Now there, he said, well, what's the problem with that? Some people say problem with that is you're paying for somebody else's religious education. And some of these schools were bitterly anti muslim. For example, they said, right in the materials. And one of the few things I'm going to say that that's nice about religious right is that if you listen to them, they're often very honest, not always, but if you look at their materials, they say we believe Christianity is the only religion worth promoting. We we want our students to learn how to combat islam.

I mean one of them was that blunt about it and don't get me started on people who are trans or the Back in 2002 when they first started to put a dent in this idea that you don't give money to private religious schools. It was in the state of Ohio and in the state of Ohio at the time they had very strong anti discrimination laws about who can or cannot be allowed to be in a school when they said well religious school but you'd have to apply the same statutes of non discrimination.

Um That was I mean I remember doing a lot of shows that night saying well remember you can only get this money because you're always looking for some vaguely golden police in the middle of something and and it's at least they have to a baby nondiscrimination laws of Ohio. Now you don't have to do that anymore. You can discriminate and still get the money. That is a terrible duplex of ideas. And that's one of my biggest problem without ruling is because there are schools that have basically they've expelled students who even express L. G. B. T. Q. Identities or even have an interest that they're identifying as that as you said Muslims, other religions I come from maine Um I was born and raised until I was 18 and then I left like you said too many mousses.

Yeah there I was fortunate I lived in Bangor. So there is a public school of public high school and there were a couple of middle schools and so forth. But yeah there are a lot of different areas in Maine where they do not have a school. My stepsister um actually lived in a district and she and here's a strange thing, she actually went to a religious school paid for, so I'm not sure how that worked, but it just it was unthinkable even back then, I mean I know that my step sister who I said she went through a baptist school, they had people that I mean it wasn't as as welcomed as it is today, but there were people that were gay in that school that were you know um and it just seems like it was back when I was a kid, it just even seemed like it was unthinkable that you would expel the student that that um and yet today it just seems like, I mean we've seen that with the case somewhat back with the baker that wouldn't make a cake for a right.

Um I mean this seems to be where there this faction of the religious right has decided that religious freedom means we have the right to basically expel people that we don't agree with. Yeah and it's in a sense it's you brought up the cake, the masterpiece bakery case, I would I try to avoid going to bakers to claim their works are masterpieces, but I guess he was trying to somehow convince you that I'm more of one of those tasty cake crimp it kind of guys, but but this year they've already, the Supreme Court has already agreed to hear a very similar case where a gay person has asked for the creation of a website and the web design company, the head of this thing said I were not designing any website that promotes gay people.

So she's gone to the Supreme Court, they agreed to take the case if four members of the court agreed to take a case out of the nine, it's taken almost uniformly because the website creator lost in the lower court. They want to overturn it. They don't hear cases where they want to affirm a wisdom of some federal appeals court. And I think, I mean, okay, is I see no hope that that gay person will ever be granted the demand no matter what the state was are a lot of states in colorado.

one of the things that that was interesting about that case, it kind of hinged on a very narrow determination. I don't think it's going, you're not going to see it. They talked about the way in which regulations and the statute requiring um I kind of non not supporting religious people not doing what they were supposed to do because they said that a civil rights commission in the State of Colorado had actually, during the deliberations. This is the central point during the deliberations. One guy said, you know, we can't just open this door because religion has been used in the past for all kinds of nefarious things to justify anything.

And the majority of the Supreme Court. That's shocking. That's called truth. It's called truth. It's why there were jewish um Uh students going to college under these very rigid, we will only admit 6%, Jews all these things. This is part of our sober, terrible history of the United States. And for somebody to acknowledge that is simply telling the truth, but they focused on that one sentence and the masterpiece baker is now presumably master piecing cakes for only bible believing christians the but this other case doesn't have that.

I don't think the facts are going to have that kind of a sentence. And as a consequence, I I suspect that that will be another breach, another breach. And what we thought was serious and clear First Amendment doctrine that the First Amendment does not negate the civil rights laws of the state or of the country. Yeah. And period, and I'm somewhat ashamed of this. Yeah. When this kind of first started to to come about this, even went back before the master piece based masterpiece cake shop where I just became very hostile towards religion, right?

Because I mean, I received against and I want to really was watching you on the David Feldman Show and I really recommend people watch or listen to the David Feldman show. Um that sort of woke me up a little bit because it was like, wait a minute, I'm not going to let this fringe minority taint my view of religion. Um and I really want to thank you and tom weber as well um for that, because and and watching you and I'm gonna I forgot the name again, I'm sorry, but he was you did an interview on the David Feldman who who actually had changed his position on abortion, rob shank, rob shank.

I thought that was in incredible interview. Um so you've really inspired me on this, and and and I really want to thank you, and it was shocking to me to to learn that. Mr who was religious, we like even go after defending pornography, right? I remember your interview on the David Filmon show where you were talking about um meeting a lot of these, you know, porn stars and talking and just really humanizing them. That to me is what Christianity is about, right? I mean, it's about jesus, was not did not go around, you know, dismissing people.

Um and it's just serious to me how this has been, and I think a lot of it too is that it's not so much about religion, it is about this idea of american exceptionalism. This idea that America is a christian nation and that we somehow, I mean it really is a lot about the culture. Um the problem is that even though this is a fringe minority, they are winning. And part of the reason they're winning is because they understand how to use power. The I think it's Liberty University jerry Falwell correct who they've got schools that their entire mission of these schools is to produce lawyers on the Supreme Court or the different federal benches.

And we're sort of and the Heritage Foundation is part of that as well as part of that attempt to sort of elevate through just right. What do you think? Do you think it's going to be easy to to to overturn the overturning of roe v wade and and combat some of these rulings or do you just think it's going to get get worse because with the Supreme Court and play the way it is, it's quite fearful. I think some big changes need to come. I think that I don't know about you but I get 15 emails a day demanding that I send money for some kind of response to roe versus wade.

And I know the leadership of all these organizations, I have deep respect for them. But when somebody says I don't have much money who should I give it to? I say give it to abortion providers give it to the D. C. Abortion, the access project. I don't know if you saw my interview with a young woman from the kind of got me involved in in the D. C. And and there's a women's reproductive project out in Los Angeles that they will provide abortion services. They will get you the money if you need to come to California to obtain an abortion, they're there to help you because that is a way that individual people can feel like they have done something if you give money to the Democratic Women's Caucus, whatever that is, who knows where that's gonna go?

I want to help the people that need the help. And then I want people to strategize in a serious way about what in the hell to do about the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court is not going to get any better. In fact it's going to get worse Because no matter what happens, it's a 6-3 rigid minority of conservatives. I mean, the only reason that john roberts occasionally votes right is because he does have and many people have said there's a kind of institutional interest in the court not losing the credibility that it used to have.

And you have to we have to expand the size of the court. The one thing that americans united that I wish I had done was spend more time on these structural changes. That is we have to get more people on the court. And even a year ago there were still people who would and were progressives who when I bring this up, they would say yeah, but that's a terrible idea because then when the republicans back in power then they'll expand it some more. That's okay by me.

Let's worry about that when it comes. Let's worry about what is here. What is here is a runaway court, a court that doesn't care about precedent. It lies its members of all lies. Stari decisis this idea that once you decide a major case that ought to be the framework in which you were. So all the trump appointees lied about it. And people forget that Clarence thomas. I remember sitting there watching his confirmation here. He didn't just say something vague about starry decisive. He said when asked about abortion.

I really haven't given that much thought who in the right mind or off mind or in any mind didn't know about roe versus wade. That's a lie. And so people get there all upset. Did he did he violate Anita Hill's rights? And did he harass her? And what did he do with you to get rent porn? And the other that's trivial. What's important was did did he lie? And of course I think he lied about Anita Hill but to go back to Joe biden because I only mentioned him once.

But I mean he sat there during the confirmation hearings, having evidence. And I strongly suggest people read a book called Strange Justice about the confirmation hearing of Clarence thomas, joe biden had documents from two other women that were going to testify specifically to the pattern. Oh, Clarence thomas's interaction with them as employees in other situations. And biden just sat on it. He just sat on it. It was a very close call. And if you look at the latest documentary on Anita Hill and you look at what the judiciary committee looked like at the time of the Clarence thomas hearings.

It was all white men for Dianne Feinstein was in the Senate but she wasn't on the committee at the time. It was just a bunch of white guys talking to an african american guys and when Clarence thomas talked about, I don't want this to become an electronic lynching everybody's people squirming at that they don't want to, they don't want to be looked at as electronic lynchers, but they never really probed. And this is a problem that we have consistently with the democratic leadership and I know you're pretty tough on them and with good reason there is a there's kind of because we know, I mean you mentioned what biden did in the past and then of course last week he announces he's going to appoint to a trial court in Kentucky.

This character, I think Campbell is his name, who is anti choice. I mean he was going to announce that the day the roe versus wade decision overturned was overturned but he waited a couple of days and it leaked out in the papers in Kentucky. He should repudiate that, why would you possibly do that make a deal with? Mitch McConnell mitch McConnell is an anti institutionally, he doesn't care anything about the Senate of the United States, he cares about making policy decisions that he can live with. Exactly.

It is, it is infuriating well in the same thing with You know, Nancy Pelosi, I got those emails from her all the time, Hey I need $5 or $15 you know, to protect Roe V wade. Um I'd love to say to her well maybe you should have thought about that before endorsing Henry Cuellar and opening your arms. I mean it just seems absurd to me that the party says, hey we stand for abortion rights and yet Nancy Pelosi is making statements back in 2015. We should really pro life and against abortion and hey, but in what really infuriated me was that immediately after the Supreme Court struck down Roe V wade literally minutes almost as if they knew and they were prepared for this is when the flood of emails came asking for money and to me I thought and safe I've gone on facebook too and I've said the same thing that you said on facebook like do not donate to democrats donate to organizations or groups that are going to help women get abortions.

I mean abortion is now illegal in 13 states, yep, there's organizations, these women get to the abortion providers that they need to. And of course these things that joe biden could do, he could open up federal lands for abortion clinics. He won't do that. Um sean he doesn't even try. I mean there, I understand that there is a legal question about whether he could open the land. There's also native american lands could they, could they be used under what circumstances? These are interesting issues. But when I hear Kamala Harris say, well we looked at that, but we're not going to open federal lands and so I would never suggest never send money to democrats.

But I would say they have to guarantee that they're going to do some right things. I'm happy that there are a lot of opportunities. Um, I don't know if you listen to john Fugelsang show on XM Sirius, but I do that once a month. There's reason to believe in places like pennsylvania, even in Ohio that there are going to be actual democrats who can take out in those cases, both republican senators Are retiring, but those are open seats and they're a little easier to deal with. But even in very contentious ones like Iowa where Chuck Grassley has been senator for like 10,000 years.

I think I gotta walk to school and there were still dinosaurs there, but he's not very popular anymore. And so you've got several candidates there, They haven't had the primary yet who might take him out, you just need to not have. Everything comes down to what joe mansion and Kirsten cinema think is what the Democratic Party ought to be. You have to be able and you also have to be able to break these filibuster rules. Um and I was I was not originally convinced of that because when I worked at the A. C. L. U. For example, I used to work with liberal senators who really understood filibuster rules and who their colleagues knew really understood that.

I remember once there was a First Amendment issue yeah, before the Senate in a tax bill, just days before christmas. And of course you never want to get get members of the Senate to miss christmas. So and Lowell Weicker, who was then a Republican in Connecticut went on to become the independent. The governor of Connecticut calls me on the phone, he says barry, I don't think you're watching this. And no, I'm not watching C span on a tax bill. He said, well, there's something in here. I think that the bridge is the First Amendment.

So he reads it to me and I go, no senator that you're good to catch that because that that really has a serious First Amendment implication gangs up the phone goes back onto the Senate floor and announces to the presiding officer, Mr president, I have just consulted with counsel. I believe there is a problem in this paragraph and he cites the paragraph and he said now we could talk about this for three more days because he was really good at the rules of Philip or he said we could just take it out a nanosecond later.

They take it out. So I was a little bit and during the post Vietnam stuff there was also some good there even moderate to liberal republicans and sometimes you would use them for the sake of trying to get the filibuster rules to work in the defense of some otherwise endangered group of people. But I I quickly lost that sense. And I think now it's very clear to me that the filibuster has no good purposes. It's never going to be used for any good purposes. What we needed the votes as democrats to make sure that nothing gets past.

That is terrible why I live most of the time in the District of Columbia we have at least as many people as two states. We have no senator. We have one Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton who is a wonderful person but she doesn't get to vote except in committee. Why are we disenfranchised? Why? So I think the litmus test for Senate candidates. Will you abolish the filibuster? If so will you add more seats to the Supreme Court and when you go along with D. C. Representation statehood so that we can get the representation that we deserve. Yeah. Absolutely.

And Supreme Court. My caveat would be that the Supreme Court needs to they say it's not political it's always been a political body. I mean, which is why we see when a democrat is not, you know, gets to nominate someone to the Supreme Court. They choose a liberal conservatives, they choose a conservative. What I would like to see is I would like to see B. T. Q. On the Supreme Court. I want to see more diversity. Never mind, you know, political, but I want to see the Supreme Court and Congress too, for that matter, be more representative of America the diverse country that we are.

I mean, what about a muslim on the Supreme Court? Right. I just I politicized and I agree with you about there is some hope and with the democrats, with some democrats in the Democratic Party. I guess my thing coming from a sort of sociological perspective is that it seems as though they're not addressing the structural and systemic causes. Um I mean, when I see racism, when I see even with the religious right, for the most part, this more as symptoms of a much deeper problem connected problems like the economy.

And yeah, all of these things that it seems like nobody wants to address that. And I've been arguing since roe v wade got overturned that this isn't even about abortion release, not even about the Supreme Court in court, but it's we can't just focus on abortion because you're not going to even if they win them in terms of democrats, they win them in terms and they codify roe v wade. I don't see that as a solution. If they're not willing to tackle the court. I've yet to hear other than AOC and a few members of the squad address that.

I mean, they're promising to over to codify roe V wade talking about again, the deeper issues. And that's what I find most frustrating is that they're not willing to even talk about the fact that there is deeper systemic issues at play here that go way beyond just abortion. And I think that the right wing kind of gets that a lot too. Well they do. I mean, you know, we progress is have a lot of trouble coming up with messages that fit on bumper stickers and the good news is they shouldn't need to do that because they should want more time to explain what is so terribly wrong, wealth inequality, the way we treat the elderly, the way race works and religious discrimination works in this country ought to be addressed in order for the congress though, to take those things seriously.

They have to be asked by the media to take things seriously. I mean, I've had television on for the last two days since the horrible shooting in Illinois yesterday. Where do you where do you find people who will talk about the systemic question. They let people come on. I watched an interview on CNN with Governor Hutchinson from Arkansas? And he was talking about these new plans to do mental health work. And what does that mean? What does it mean? And how do you avoid with these so called red flag laws?

The fact that you're more likely in a lot of states to red flag people of color, that's going to happen if we know that. And these predictions of psychiatrists, it's kind of like prison recidivism. It's very difficult. You talk too serious people. They go, we can't predict whether someone is going to go out and become a burglar again. We don't have the tools to do that. So though, but that requires more than the kind of trivial. When I was doing a lot of television, I was asked to be on because I knew stuff.

I knew a lot about the military discharge system. I knew a lot about pornography. I knew a lot about the First amendment, a new church state, but now they just have people who just are so called experts on everything and trust me in six minutes, you can be an expert on anything. You can just sit there and repeat some talking point that you got from your favorite right or left wing magazine and you can sound that guy really knows what he's talking, why she's brilliant. That's what is so corrupt about it.

When I was first when CNN just got started, I had been in Washington a couple of years and they had this remarkable show on most of their shows. Didn't start in Washington. They emanated from Atlanta and you'd have to fly down to Atlanta to be on shows. And so somebody called me, You want to talk about women in the military or I think that was that sensible purpose of it. And I was editing a military law magazine at the time and I said sure I'll do this.

So I went down, I flew down there. The other two people, one was the woman who ran something called the Committee for a Free Afghanistan and the other was Phyllis schlafly anti R. A support. We did the whole show, an entire hour on women and the military and military justice. An entire hour. You couldn't get an entire hour if you were, I don't know, pop star. It was unthinkable. And even MSNBC when it started, I used to do a show that had Ron Reagan, you know the good Ron Reagan, the son of Ronald Reagan and a woman named Monica Crowley and they would actually go over there and do a show and they give you two segments.

I remember being on with franklin Graham once, it was two whole segment to 6. 5 minutes segments. Unheard of. Now it's one segment we get rid of you. Oh by the way, let's go to the same person who used to be a cop somewhere and will get his view and police activity in this case, no connection to the issue, no knowledge except what you used to do. That's not the way to educate. And it's not the way to force people to actually know what they're talking about. It is so easy to get political figures to just say nothing and then get thank thank you senator.

And I know that pressure because we used to I used to do radio shows at the end of the day and it was a big deal to get a senator. So you didn't want to start off by saying? So senator, I heard you kicked your dog last night. Is that true? We don't wanna you don't wanna piss people off directly. But on the other hand, if you have a relationship, you should not allow them to get away with just saying nothing and then hoping I got my six minutes, How did I do?

Oh, you did great. Because Sycophant is um is not something that we ought to recommend for the future. Well, the mainstream media though, the whole problem is that it's become just, it's an establishment, right? It's almost an empire in itself. And so media, I mean, one of the things that I love about the David Feldman Show is the diversity of views that he welcomes on there and I like that he challenges himself to, I mean, and I've seen David change his views on things by just because he's had guests on that that have kind of challenged him.

And that's that's what we need. We need to have more conversation. And the what really gets me too, is when the media says that their, to me that's just dishonest. There's no such thing as unbiased, Be honest about your position if you're conservative. I mean, like, come on Fox News, I mean, just acknowledge that your conservative, I mean, just be honest and upfront about that, because it otherwise it's just not only just dishonest, but it's misleading to the narratives that there is just disingenuous. But the mainstream media, unfortunately, I mean, you've got basically politicians.

Now, if you look at MSNBC, um I mean, a lot of those are former political operatives. You see a lot of I mean, like national security experts are from the C. I. A. Or N. S. A. You're not getting informed opinions, you're getting manufactured as non chomsky consent. That's right. And that's what scares me and they're not. And the way and again, the way the media is reported on and here's the thing too. It's become if you criticize the religious right, you're seen as being bigoted, you're seen as attacking religion, the mainstream media has Kind of put blinders on in that respect.

When they talk about January six, for instance, About the fact that there was a lot of Christian nationalism on display on January six. I mean, they're talking about Trump supporters and their insurrectionists and so forth. But people need to understand that this faction of the religious right, that that is a real threat. They're not only being ignored, but it's a there's this atmosphere of fear around even talking about them, right? Very true, very true. The, you know, the closest thing um, and only getting this detail, but when I was Five years or so into being at Americans, United where it was for 25 years.

But um, I was, I started doing a radio show on Fridays with Oliver North. And so MSNBC comes up to him and says we'd like you to have their version of crossfire, the famous thing that was on CNN and we don't know who we're going to pair you with. So what we got three people were thinking of barry Lynn because you do radio with him and paul Begala, who is of course a nice moderate corporate democrat. And I think maybe the third guy was E. J. Dionne from the Washington post.

So I did a couple of tryouts and they seem to be going very well, I get a call from the vice president of NBC one morning who says, you know, we really liked your interaction with North on television. But he said, I have one question to ask and I think I know the answer, but think about it for a second here is the question Clinton was in office. He said we want to make sure that the person on the opposite side of north will agree with the Clinton administration every single night on every issue.

I said, you know, I'm not that guy. He said, well, I thought so, but he said, you just you're out of the running. And what was interesting is Fox News at the time had something with Sean Hannity and a fellow named Alan combs and very, very bright longstanding radio host. And when during one of the clinton incursions into eastern europe, they both said he's wrong. I remember calling Alan up and I said, Alan, I was great. You know, last night you just said, look, I like Clinton, I don't like his warmongering and even if you're on the same side, but clearly on MSNBC, I would never have been allowed to be on the other side.

And then by the way, there aren't two sides. That's another ridiculous thing that presents the liberal side and the conservative side. And there aren't any sides in the middle, but there should be and there are and there are articulate people who say on some issues, you take energy policy. I mean, there are a few people who go, you know, I'm not sure we should just discount nuclear power and other people don't know, it's horrible think Chernobyl, but there are things to talk about, but when's the last time on any program?

Except possibly on Feldman's show. You ever hear a discussion of what do we do for the need of power? We're not gonna we're not gonna stop putting on lights, we're not going to go back to candles. But what do you do? How serious? I haven't heard a discussion about biofuel. I haven't heard a discussion about what it's going to take to turn the solar in five years and I do, I mean I'd rather go to the movies, but I do watch a lot of television and I it's always on the news stuff, but there's not much news.

The media decides what the important issues are, the media decides who to put on and the structure of it is a structure right now. That makes it so easy for politicians to go on those shows. Act like they've said something I'm so sick of when you ask some of these senators. Well, what about Amy coney Barrett? You know, she she was terrible. I mean, you'd have to be an idiot not to know that she had signed onto an advertisement before her confirmation that said abortion is a barbaric practice.

What do you need to know about what she's gonna think about abortion if she said in writing it's a barbaric practice. And well, I think and then then you get to some of these super liberals senators, I took to the floor and I gave a great speech and then I went on MSNBC and I gave a great speech. That is bullshit. That is not enough. You have to be prepared to fight. You have to be prepared to go there and do whatever is necessary? Do the kind of Lowell Weicker stuff scare the other side make it clear you are not going to put up with this, You're not going to, if you don't want to take pac money, then don't take pac money, but don't change your mind.

As unfortunately Elizabeth Warren did and say, well everybody's taking it, I'm gonna take it. Not corporate, but everybody's gotta pack now. I don't think, you know, not yet. But I hear that everybody has it, they're easy to set up. You can and you don't have to really discuss in much detail what you do with that money you just collected. We learned that again from trump collecting hundreds of millions of dollars for purposes that are very unclear. What does he do with. And but you you have to take these aggressive positions, you have to look at the structure.

You have to break the structure if necessary in order to get things done or we're never going to get any if we don't, if you don't make DCs state, you don't add some justices to the court, we will lose everything and we will lose the green new deal. Oh yeah, that's done. I mean E. P. A can't regulate pollution now. So I mean there's nothing uh all of these ideas about what to do with roe versus wade? I mean, should there be a federal statute? Well, what if the federal statute is challenged as being unconstitutional?

Do you think, do you think that the author of the, you know, Sam Alito would go, well, I know said send it back to the states, I didn't really mean that, you know, these people lie, that we know they lie and to get back to this is the thing that bothers me. We need in the same way that I suggest people give money to the organizations that provide. I want people to know if they are criminalizing abortion against a woman or a doctor. If you sit on a jury in one of those cases, just nullify it.

There's a doctrine that's not practice. Judges don't talk about it, but it's right in the heart of english common law. If you're on a jury and you sit there and you go, well, this is this is, yeah, judges don't even ask about it because they don't want you to even know that such a doctrine exists, but you say I've heard the facts and I've listened to the law. You get into the jury room and you go, you know, it sounds like crap to me, this shouldn't even be a crime.

You can hang juries and this is what happened toward the end of the Vietnam war with draft resistance cases, A lot of the juries just were hung because people like what, why are we still prosecuting people in obscenity cases? There are almost no obscenity cases unless there are Children involved, which, you know, is it's a good thing to prosecute, but it's because jurors, they think They put, you know, Debbie does Dallas part 75 and they go, all right, we just stream that the other night, add a little spice that we're not going to send somebody to jail for five years for distributing that film.

So the people end up having more power in more circumstances than I think we give the people credit for. You don't have to convince everybody that making it a crime for a doctor to provide to a woman an abortion To know that you have power to prevent that doctor from being sentenced? Some of these sentences are 10 and 15 years in theory, just learn what it is and know about it. And I guess these days in the judicial system, you just lie about anything. We know that because of those three justices in their opinion.

If a judge actually says, will you listen to the law and the facts and apply that? Yeah, tell the truth. But and I hate I hate feeling like this. I hate generalizing. But in these states where we're talking about is it, and I know that the media likes to do this. They like to black and white. Like, well everybody in those states support this. But what are the chances, I mean, how, how much of a majority in these states do you think that the religious right has that could because I just I don't know, we don't know at this point.

I mean, I want to have faith in fellow citizens. I want to believe that even people that are anti abortion, like we're not going to send a doctor to prison politicization that we see in this country and the radicalization in these states. Do you think that there are people that would oppose these or or because it seems like it's this culture world, like let's own the Libs or, you know, vice versa. Um Ralph Reed, ralph Reed, who was kind of the creator of the christian coalition. Mhm.

Used to say I would rather have control over most of the school boards in this country, then elect the president and he did what progressives forget that you start you have to have a bench when you think about somebody asked me yesterday, well, if biden doesn't run and she knows I'm not a fan of Kamala Harris, who would you who would you run? And I'm thinking, well, we don't have much of a bench and and the people, some of the CNN correspondents who are in state legislatures and then they decided that maybe they lost or they decided they could make more money on CNN Anderson, you can't you cannot give that up.

You have to look at everybody, you have to care who's the sheriff that's running? I mean, I'm in massachusetts now and there there's some upcoming local races if I lived here. If I was a voter here, you'd better believe I'd figure out who these people are because I want to know sometimes the telltale signs, like if somebody has a yard sign and also one of those flags that are blue, black and white, defend the police flag, I'm going to be very skeptical about whoever that person is endorsing because that seems wrong.

If you don't research, if you don't know who these candidates are, if you don't consider something, I never considered running for public office, um, because I wanted to work in a different way. So people would say, what do you do? And I work against the government, which government, any government until there is pure. I remember Pat Buchanan asked me once, why didn't you ever work for President? I said because I never found one moral enough to get my support, which is just a smartass answer. But in some ways it was true.

You have you cannot ignore what's going on at the local level. If you do, then you end up with state legislatures who want and will probably be given more power By the Supreme Court in two years. You have to know who these people are. You have to work to elect them. You can't just assume that if the president is a good woman or man that will fix everything because it won't because it won't. And I just uh, the progressive movement in my experience, sadly does not does not stay late enough.

I can't tell you how many meetings I'd be at whether these right wingers and once a handful of left, does it go home to watch television? You're right wingers that stay there and work all the time, stay longer and win because they're there and they're noisier. Absolutely, and and that's exactly how this minority this religious right has game power is they've they've realized you have to have played the long game and they started at the local level. I mean, you've got started with sheriffs, as you said, they've taken over.

Um and everybody else has just been focused on the L. G. You know, we need a woman president. Let's let's just go with Hillary. I mean, it's so much focused on the federal level and I get that people are busy with their lives, they're distracted and it's very difficult to be informed about who these politicians are, especially at the lower levels. So we've got this easy system. Well, I'm a democrat, D there you go, oh, I'm a Republican are the and that's part of the problem with party politics, especially a two party system.

Well, one party system, really, but um and, you know, you're absolutely right, we do need more people running for local office, because that's really, I think, and it took me a while to realize this, but I think that's really where the true power lies at the local level. It really, it starts there and sometimes it ends there. I mean, I'm a big fan of Jamie Raskin's. I used to be one of his constituents. He was a friend before then, but he is an example of a person.

He starts he ran for office in Maryland and the state legislature, He won that a couple of times, then there's an opportunity to go to Congress. And if you listen to him as opposed to most of the people that I've been griping about, he actually knows stuff. He was a law professor and he was also a great communicator. That is to say he could actually talk to students and convince them about what the law was and where he thought it was wrong and where it ought to be.

So you need people when you listen to the people on the fringes of the Republican party, like Lauren Colbert and goes, er and okay, former judge from texas, Louie Gohmert, you listen to them and they go, well, he was a former judge, what? That's really goldman Gohmert. Louie Gohmert, he was a federal judge in texas, and now he's in Congress and he's he's just stupid, but but then you take the next you look at the list. I mean, I've been out of the direct lobbying business for three years.

There are people who are republicans who show up on these talk shows and I've never even heard of them. That's because they don't do anything, I want people to do something. I'd almost rather have somebody who says, you know, I've been in the house for six years and uh, this is what I'm gonna do. Even if I don't agree with it, at least I know that they're not simply checking the box and going to kevin McCarthy, how do I vote on this? You know, those days ought to be gone forever.

Democrats and republicans, they've got to think for themselves. But if you have the leadership of a nancy Pelosi, it really matters. If you, if you really think Jessica Cisneros is the reason she supports Henry Cuellar is she's assuming that there's some slight chance that the house may stay Democratic and she's going to need every single vote, Jessica cisneros probably wouldn't support nancy Pelosi as speaker. So there are these and so they are outside outsized members of Congress, um, who ought to be more responsible. If they're going to lead a party, then they ought to know what the party should stand for and it shouldn't stand for.

Everybody has an opinion on abortion, it doesn't matter what yours are you gonna vote for me, Henry? I'm supporting you. Those people, those people in leadership ought to be leaders. They ought to be people who are able to look at what is happening, what the problem is and come up with clever ideas that are workable. And if they're not workable, try it, this country used to try things now we don't try a damn thing. We just we're locked into this pattern where we decide well there's this alternative and that alternative, we don't think to use that cliche out of the box, The smallest, the biggest boxes are the boxes around the capital because people do groupthink, they very rarely do independent thinking and they have a lot of staff, it's like, you know the people on the Supreme Court do not write those opinions.

They have a huge number of clerks every year who write the opinions for them and then they try to convince us that it's really, really they're so smart, you know being a lawyer, I think I can say this, it doesn't take you don't really have to be that smart to be a lawyer. A lot of lawyering is just simple, you can almost go their their internet sites where you can go write a will, you know to I mean yeah it's boilerplate stuff. Even in major appellate cases, there's a lot of boilerplate stuff, you don't have to be a genius.

And with the demonstration of that is people like Clarence thomas uh mm cavanaugh amy coney barrett, do we think those are the best people. I remember when Clarence thomas was nominated, the president came out and said this is the best person, we had the best person in the whole world is Clarence thomas, you've got to be kidding as I used to debate him when he's on the equal employment opportunity commission. And I thought where did where did this guy come from? And then soon he went all the way to the Supreme Court.

Yeah and it's worked out well for him as it has. And for the religious right the religious right is in total control of the United States Supreme Court. When people say what does it mean that you know it's lost its credibility. It means it's so obviously wrong that it shouldn't be allowed to get away with it. That's what it means. It's not one decision. What we've seen in the last months of the latest time is that one horrendous decision right after another. You can have guns on the new york subway system.

They're passing a law that says you can't maybe they just did. But that too will be challenged. In fact there's a challenge in Washington D. C. Which has a lot of regulations appropriately against carrying weapons. Um Some guy challenging his right because the metro in Washington, it's always it's a little more fun frankly than new york's. But even do you really want to go, yeah there is an opinion. We don't have time to talk about it. But you look at that gun decision. The gun decisions written by Clarence thomas.

He says the only two reasons you would have to want to conceal carry is because you're a criminal plotting a crime or you just want it for self protection. There's another reason if you have a concealed handgun and somebody cut you off road rage. You go to the gun, you point the gun then maybe that guy has a gun to there's a shootout on a side street in the middle of Washington, D. C. They it is as if the Supreme Court justices do not live on this in this world, on this planet or in this country because it is a naivete about the writing.

I'm sure it's tempered slightly by the fact that some of their law clerks are youngish people. But I've lost all faith in the United States Supreme Court. I would not have ever wanted to bring cases like we brought up the A. C. L. U. Or americans United to this court. I wouldn't. Yeah. And and and that's again that goes back to our, what we were discussing earlier unless democrats are serious about reforming court. Nothing that they I don't care about codifying roe v way it will be challenged.

Um And that's what's just again, so frustrating is that they don't either they're completely incompetent and they don't understand this or they're complicit. I don't really see, you know, it's just disgusting. Yeah. I mean the one thing about the senate races that gives me some sense of optimism is that the these very hot button issues we've been talking about are ones that Senate candidates who are democrats could talk could say meaningful things about and that there might be enough ticked off people in the state of Ohio for example, to go, I often vote for republicans, but this democrat says we're not arresting women for having an abortion.

We're not, maybe I'll vote for her. A lot of women can't excuse me. A lot of women candidates running this time too. Think well, before we wrap up, do you, how confident are you? Because it seems as though I'm seeing a lot of people that are even with the abortion ruling there, there there's almost like a backlash against the Democratic Party. Do you think the democrats would come out ahead in the midterms? Because I'm not confident that I think the house is lost. But I think the Senate and individual races, you know, tip o'neill speaker of the House at all.

Politics is local and in some ways I think that's true because I think if you look at what's going on in Georgia, for example, when you have pastor Warnicke who was elected in a special election, has to run now for a full term running against a man who I think in all candor it is the dumbest human being I have ever seen run for the United States Senate herschel? Yeah, I mean, I mean I said this on the show the other night host said what, but maybe it's just brain damage from concussions.

Well it is maybe it is. But this is, this is stupidity without it never ceases it. Every two days. He says something so weird and, and the polling numbers for Warnock are going way up in the last week or week and a half. That doesn't mean he's gonna win, but it does mean that, that that seat, which I think everybody thought would be lost. You know, it's not going to be lost in pennsylvania notwithstanding john Fetterman stroke. Maybe he should have been a little more candid about that, but he's still way ahead of dr Oz. It's just a charlatan.

I think people in pens and Fetterman is way ahead, way ahead, meaning I think if you're not ahead by five points, you're not gonna win. It was a demo. But yeah, I mean, but I think there, and I think as I said, I'm up in massachusetts for a couple of weeks and a lot of ads for Maggie Hassan who's running for re election as a democrat in new Hampshire and you know, she's, I thought she was probably a goner. But then the governor of New Hampshire governor, Sununu, I think most people thought he was his father, johnson, but they didn't remember why they knew him.

Um, but he decides not to run. And so now she has, I think a real chance of holding on. So you have to hold on to some of these, you have to gain a couple more. So this is not, you don't need a blue wave. You don't need a tsunami of democrats. You just need to be careful about the last couple of weeks is when people make decisions about who to vote for, Who's got a reliable chance of winning so that you can get to a number of 50 that does not include senator cinema or senator joe Manchin.

So yes, that I have guarded optimism because you can't be in despair. You can't literally go, it's all hopeless because if you do that, you contribute to an attitude of national suicide and you deserve what happens to you. You can't give it up. You walk around, you walk, it is possible in most states still to cast a ballot by mail and the other side is making it very hard to do that. But you know, if you have to, if you have to take a half a day off of work, if you don't have a ride, there are places now that will give you rides.

I wish a company. I mean, I wish that nonprofit would literally say all we're doing with your money is hiring busses and we are going to go to neighborhoods on Election Day and pick people up who want to vote well in some states that that have done that they've made that illegal. Yes, Well at least one has or they think they have, I mean that's just the, the christian right has been doing the bussing thing there against bussing of course integrate schools, but they're fine with bussing people from church right out to vote at the so they know what they're doing, they really do.

They always played this long game as you mentioned. Um, we we ought to be progressives ought to be planned at least, you know, a longer game that we've been doing. But you know, they're good people. There are the people who do change their mind. As you mentioned with Pastor Schenck. Um that was a great interview by the way that I loved that interview. Yeah, I I knew that he was moving more in the direction of of Progressivism, but I didn't know that it would be that far.

That was quite a surprise to me. Yeah. And then he apologized to you, which I just thought it was just I was very moved by that. I mean I just I didn't exactly think I was the person who needed to apologize to. But um, there are those people, but then there are the people I think of. My father. My father was a republicans an entire life when he got severe Parkinson's for years, he couldn't get out of the house. Nobody came to see him including people from the local pennsylvania Republican party and then one day he just says, you know, yes, you couldn't speak very republicans, abortion, not their business.

I mean I'm sure he was personally against abortion, but um, he just didn't think the government had that right to encroach on a decision made by a woman to have one. And I think those are people that are still out there, they still call themselves republicans. And and on our side I think we have to look at some of the things that just don't work. I mean we've all had um bad ideas sometimes they get implemented and they turn out to be really bad ideas and we ought to instead of just trying to desperately save some program that we think we love.

You need to say this isn't working, let's try something else. And then the public ideally would say you're right, it's wrong, let's think of something else. And really come up with a creative program. Creative compromises. Exactly. I was involved with one on a church state issues or wrapped us up. They wanted to pass a bill to allow christian clubs to meet in public schools and I said you know this is a terrible idea. So I went to the A. C. L. U. Leadership at the time I said why don't we just try to make this a student rights bill and say not just religion clubs of any kind about any culture or political issue.

And the head of the A. C. L. U. At the time Ira Glasser said that's great think of what we could have done with that during the Vietnam war. So working with Lowell Weicker again we've got him to change the bill. Is this big two Hour session with another senator? Senator finally said, okay, let's make it. That's why there's so many gay straight student alliance is all over the United States because of that bill and the right wingers who kind of went along with it in the beginning, who wrote them in their right wing magazines.

I wonder if we made a mistake in passing that bill. We got our christian clubs, the gay people got there. It's too, and this is why you are really an unsung hero because so many of the things that we have come to take for granted you have been a part of you've you've defended. So on behalf of everyone, I want to thank you for all of the work that you've done and the work that you continue to do. I appreciate it. And really do you really, I've been so nervous interviewing you because um you know, literally seeing you on the day of filming show and it's just you you are an inspiration to me and you've you've really in my eyes and my heart on so many issues.

Um, we don't get enough of you on the David Fellman. So you've got an hour though. Still need a little bit more. We need you to do more interviews too on the David Letterman show because the people that you've been interviewing lately. I mean, we need to hear those voices actually, it's been postponed because they had an illness in his family. But I have one coming up next week where I'm talking to a draft resistor from the jimmy carter reinstitution of selective service. And the First amendment lawyer who handled a lot of obscenity cases.

And the question I want to address to both of them is why do we have laws on the books? Criminal statutes that could come crashing down on a person if we're not going to enforce them and draft registration is unenforced obscenity laws, as I mentioned earlier, virtually not. And force if you pass the time when the culture needs these prosecutions, why don't we just take the laws off the books? That's my little libertarian tinge. I agree. Because some of those laws do get applied occasionally. Um, and a lot of times it's, you know, it's it's in unjust ways.

I mean, we we do need and again, I agree we need a lot of compromise. I mean, I love that. Again, I don't have a problem with christian groups in schools, but I like the way that you frame that is it should be open to everyone. Exactly. So on people other than the David Filmon show. Working people learn more about you and listen to your show? You said you had a show on Sirius. I do john Fugelsang show on XM, the progressive Network usually once a once a month.

And I think the easiest thing to for people to find that they want a little about history in line is to go to www dot barry w Lynn dot com my website and um it talks about other things I'm doing. Sometimes I do um still do some public appearances, but and I am almost finished. I'm we're doing yet another edit of my memoir which is called paid to piss people off and people go, where did that come from? A high school student came up to me at a party when he lived in Maryland and he said, mr lin, I want to do what you do when I grow up.

I said, what do you think I do? He said, I think you get paid to piss people off. And I did say, well sometimes you have to get their attention before you can make real change, but it's been fun to write it and I hope that will be out. Well, I'm I'm talking to one publisher about the possibility of getting it out in before the holidays, the december holidays, but I don't know about that. Well, see, I've enjoyed this very much. Me too, thank you so much.

Um and stay out of trouble, as David Feldman would say, and only good trouble. Only good trouble mary Lynn, thank you very much. We will be back. We will see you next Tuesday 2:00. This has been crusade of America. Thank you

With the annual four July celebrations. Now behind us, there is yet another day of reckoning to contend with a day that might well summarize the hostile tides of discontent that are now wash across our nation. Just over a week from now on July 14, we will hit the anniversary of a lesser known event than our nation's day of independence. It was on July 14 back in 2015. You see that the now infamous clarion call to make America great again became an official service mark registered with the United States patent and trademark office.

After then, candidate for president donald J trump adopted it as his campaign slogan. Now it's a matter of debate. I suggest when it was in our country's history that America was so wonderfully great to merit a return to that time or when exactly this relic of greatness came to be lost. Although fast forward to two today and one might be inclined to romanticize the gilded age that came before. These four words gushed out of that loud mouth, an orange stained charlatan of chaos, you know, back to the days when a president wearing a tan suit was perceived as an embarrassment to our country.

Yet in those times of general recalcitrance, when women were still retaining their bodily autonomy, when taxpayers weren't forced to bear the cost of funding bigoted schools run by narrow minded religious zealots, When school prayer wasn't yet a tool for indoctrination at the 50 yard line under the Friday night lights and back when actual progress in social equality was advancing in a more forwardly direction. those days are now far behind us. The long and exhaustive struggle to regain this, lost shimmer of somewhat greatness have yet to even fully begin as we now to have caused any clearer timeline as our reference to make America great again, you see, given the turbulent upheavals in our social, economical and political norms, The still raging trauma of a deadly pandemic that saw over a million Americans dead and left our economy's in shambles, the fictitious uprising of January six that continues to preoccupy our daily lives and the appointment of three new radical extremists on our nation's highest court, which has upended decades and in some cases centuries of jurisprudence.

If there's one thing the majority of americans can likely agree upon, it's that America is most certainly much less great in these current days. For some though, and albeit fragmented minority with faulty logic and ignorant reading of history. The America of Today on this July 5th 2022 is precisely the vision of american greatness that they have been longing for for a triumphant few. Their orange skin pouring ready leisure suit wearing a human has finally managed to build something of value though like everything else about him, his claim of ownership to this change is somewhat overinflated.

Now, as I said, this faction of americans represents a fringe minority and we might well view them as an unworthy distraction, if not for the fact that despite being vastly outnumbered, this ragtag bunch of radicals, well they're winning and the losses we have racked up or anything. But inconsequential in our previous episode of of America, where we dove into the nuanced issues surrounding abortion, I ingest welcomed my viewers and listeners to these new theocratic states of America are sarcastic quip at our Supreme Court's apparent thirst for religious rule over democracy.

Unless I will be accused of not knowing what a theocracy is. Let me be clear, I am well aware that a theocracy is a form of government that is ruled by the Divine Proxies of God under whatever religious doctrines happen to be in season at that given place and time. So true. While America is not literally at least as of yet a theocracy. If the Supreme Court's recent rulings are any indication of what is to come, Well, we're certainly a nation on the cusp of becoming a true theocracy.

And no, this is not hyperbole. I'm being quite literal and factual in my submission and it all circles back to this fringe minority That makes up around 30% of the American electorate before I proceed in identifying this almighty group. Spoiler alert, it's the christian, right. I want to quickly review just a few of the recent rulings handed down by the United States Supreme Court that should be concerning to the american people now I'm going to skip past the overturning of roe v wade. Seeing as how it's the Court ruling most covered by the mainstream press and already widely known last month, the Supreme Court of the United States also ruled on Kennedy versus Brenton school district, a case where a public school football coach was suspended for publicly praying in the center field after the conclusion of each game and inviting others to join in on the activity, joseph Kennedy was not refused the right to his beliefs, nor was he told that he cannot conduct a prayer session on school grounds.

He was only asked to do so in a more private and secluded manner so that students would not feel a new pressure to participate in the prayer from their pairs school staff and the spectator in public Kennedy of course continued to make his postgame pro a widely publicized event despite warnings to take things down just just a notch and it was us disciplined by the school board. On June 27, 2022, the Supreme Court sided with a former public high school football coach. Now for many decades, the Supreme Court has actually ruled against preying on public grounds.

But with our new rising theocratic government here too, is yet another tradition lost to a radical court. There is no desire to be constrained by former president on june 21st 2000 and 22 the Carson verse making case was settled to decide that in the state of maine school vouchers can now be used to pay for tuition at religious sites of education. Once again, this ruling goes against the long standing precedent of separating church and state, because state governments can now be required to fund very religious institutions that contribute no taxes of their own into the general pool.

On the plus side, this ruling might maybe come in handy as it means foreign doctrine and all those unwanted tykes soon to be produced by the Supreme Court's new forced birth provision. And what could be more american than taxpayers footing the bill for public institutions that openly discriminate and hate the most marginalized members of our communities, kicking gays, lesbians and transgender people to the back of the bus. Or I guess in this case off the bus. Well, that's just a new tradition to be borrowed from our past.

On June 23, 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States made a second amendment ruling in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association. The Kevin de Bruin. This case examined the constitutionality of the 1911 Sullivan Act. A New York State law that requires people who apply for concealed weapons permit to show proper cause meaning a reason why they should, you know, feel the need to be armed. The court ruled in favor of new york State Rifle and pistol association, deciding that new york's law was unconstitutional on the grounds that the public possession of pistols Is of course a right granted to citizens under the 2nd Amendment.

The court feels that concealed weapons should be allowed on a why not basis rather than a why should it basis? In other words, as long as there is no reason to withhold a concealed weapon permit, such as I don't know, I failed mental health background check or inclusion on the no fly list. Then the permit should be automatically granted. This decision is certain to imperil efforts, efforts to impose new gun control measures bent to stymie the epidemic of mass shootings and gun violence sweeping across our nation, such as the mass shooting that occurred yesterday.

But it might also be again useful in our soon to be theocratic states of America in case that's non christian heathen step out of favor by the intolerant minority seeking to rule over us. And finally, there is Shin vs Ramirez, which on May 23, saw the reversal of a prior United States Supreme Court decision allowing death row inmate David Ramirez, to petition for the right to present new evidence of innocence on the grounds that he received ineffective post conviction council. Again, this new ruling goes against precedent set back in 2012, stating that federal courts can indeed intervene if a prisoner receives bad counsel after being convicted as well as before.

Well, the Skoda six have demonstrated an un barring concern for the innocent lives of the unborn. In this decision, the Supreme Court has now fully enshrined into case law Scalia is 1993 claim that potential innocence doesn't necessarily stop the state from executing someone. In other words, once you're outside the womb, the pro life position yells to the need for judicial expediency. Also, I suspect one might in the future lose the right to I don't know convert to Christianity after being sentenced to death for worshiping the wrong deity.

But you know, who knows the christian right? They might have grown more, you know, christ like with age maybe. Okay, light sarcasm aside the concerns over a pen and theocracy are not entirely without merit for the 30% of the American electorate that comprises the Christian right? I keep alluding to this is precisely the vision of America that they are battling to bring us. And as I said, it is a work that they are winning. With much political stealth and nuclear precision, precision, precision. It is a war that dates back to the 1970s, gaining much political momentum under the presidency of Ronald Reagan.

And that kept shrugging along until its grand reformer in christ descended down from the escalator of Tower divinity to have golden adoration showered upon him. Well, many are surprised that a group of self professed christians would so easily embrace. You know, let's say charitably a less than stereotypical christian character like donald trump a more nuanced analysis of the religious right and its historical arc reveals a less religious tender than people might come to expect. In the most comprehensive research study to date sociologist of religion Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Samuel Perry found that the so called religious right has its roots and what might be better defined as christian nationalism.

Where the religion is more centered around a skew doctrine of american exceptionalism. There's more culturally focused in mining two large statistical studies of social cultural attitudes and belief systems. And then following up on those survey respondents with one on one interviews and site observations. Whitehead. Whitehead and Perry came upon a more practical definition of the religious right, characterizing it as a cultural framework built around a hodgepodge of myths, traditions, symbols, value systems, historical narratives and all of which I idealize and advocate a fusion of Christianity with american civic life.

So in this regard, a better term for the religious right would be christian nationalist elaborating on their conclusion, Whitehead and Perry right back, christian nationalism paradoxically holds America as sacred in God's sight while viewing the country's future as tennis and bleak. It val arises conquest in America's name and bloodshed in this defense. It idolizes relations marked by clear whether they're metaphorical or physical boundaries and hierarchies, both in the private and public realms. It baptizes authoritarian rule. It justifies the preservation of order with with religious violence rather that be carried out by the police state against deserving mostly minority criminals or by border agents against presumptively dangerous.

Again, minority immigrants or by the infamous citizen, good guy with guns against the rampaging lunatics or the bad guys with guns. And it also glorifies the patriarchal heterosexual family as not only God's biblical standard, but the very cornerstone of all thriving civilizations. End quote In a follow up study by the same researchers, over 16,000 religious right respondents were asked to write their attitudes towards six statements on a scale of strongly agree to strongly disagree. The six statements are as follows. The federal government should declare the United States a christian nation.

The federal government should advocate christian values. Three, the federal government should enforce strict separation of church and state. The federal government should allow the display of religious symbols in public spaces. The success of the United States is part of God's plan. The federal government should allow prayer in public schools. The findings overall indicated that slightly more than half around 52% of the participants agreed with all or most of these statements among the true believers defined as those who want to spread christian nationalist ideas. Over half, 55% identified as evangelical Protestants vs 19% of Catholics, 11% of mainline Protestants and 10% of black Protestants.

Now, obviously more is at work here than just merely religious affiliation as Whitehead and perry summarized the christian entity of christian nationalism represents something more than religion. It includes assumptions of nativism, white supremacy patriarchy and heteronormative Itty along with the divine sanction for authoritarian control and militarism. It is as ethnic and political as it is religious understood in this light, christian nationalism contends that America has been and should always be distinctively christian from top to bottom and its self identity interpretations of history. What? Yes. And then that was a description of christian nationalism in mind.

Let's flash back to January six for just a moment, it unpacked some of the symbolism that was on display during the attack on the capitol. Among the crowds were numerous flags and signs with jesus saves and bolted across them and other christian symbols, probably during blatantly racist symbols. In the senate chamber, Jacob chance lee sat in the vice president's chair and prayed at length throat a bullhorn, thanking, quote, a divine omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent creator God for filling this chamber with patriots that love you and that love christ to exercise our rights to allow us to send a message to all the tyrants, the communists and the globalists that this is our nation, not theirs end, quote white supremacists dressed in t shirts displaying a red crusader cross were also present throughout that dark day, time and again, the most deeply irrational and violent impulses of christian nationalism, Ron full display fueled with ample degrees of rage, paranoia and apocalyptic forever as historian, christian cobb's muse writes in her book, jesus and john wayne quote today.

What it means to be a conservative conservative evangelical is as much about culture as it is about theology. The evangelical political resurgence of the 1970s, coalesced around a potent mix of family values, politics, but family values always intertwined with ideas about sex, power, race, a nation. The reassertion of white patriarchy was central to the new family values politics. And by the end of the 1970s, the defense of Patriarchal power had emerged as an evangelical Lee distinctive. And while christian nationalists might represent only a fragmented minority of the american electorate, they are a well funded, hyper organized, powerfully aligned and politically influential coalition.

Christian nationalists have their sights set on hijacking the federal and state governments believing they are restoring America back to its christian birthright. They reject pluralism and refused to see themselves as coexisting alongside those with opposing views, christian nationalist view the rising tide of diversity and tolerance as a visceral loss of their cultural dominance of form of persecution, from which they must rise up against creating of course, an atmosphere of rage, resentment and unhinged paranoia. That is quite susceptible to conspiracy theories and only further insights, calls for violence.

It is an attempt to rewrite the history of our nation in accordance with their theory of american exceptionalism, which is what we see reference when the political right rails against public schools that corrupt our Children with lessons on critical race theory and non heterosexual gender norms. A recent proposal submitted to the texas state board of Education is considering curriculum changes after texas passed a law about a year ago allowing them to get this eliminate topics from students from schools that makes students feel discomfort. Among the most recent proposals is a call to rewrite textbooks for second graders that would remove the term slavery and replace it with involuntary relocation end, quote comical as these efforts might be.

They extend far beyond the culture wars we see playing out in the states, christian nationalists have acquired little, have acquired literal power throughout the federal government, Gaining access to our nation's most powerful institutions from the federal judiciary, the military, mainstream media and even within the ranks of Fortune 500 companies and they have used this access to bring their faith and misguided conceptions of America to bear on the top leadership of our governing institutions. Christian nationalists have spent the last 30 plus years building and strengthening an army of organizations focused on transforming the cultural mainstream.

It has allowed evangelicals from different sectors of society to join together and influence major institutions like Congress in the White House in the world of business. Evangelical executives has focused their energies on building corporate cultures that are not only amenable to people of faith, but exclusive to them. Evangelicals have been particularly focused on higher education, trending up an army of young people to join the ranks of the future leaders in the christian nationalist movement by taking up locations not just within the church, but at Goldman Sachs, the Supreme Court, the State department, the military and a very mainstream of our political systems with the express goal of utilizing those positions towards entrenching and politicizing their faith and excluding anyone outside their dogmatic views.

It is only when you understand the magnitude of the religious rights infiltration of almost every powerful or influential organization in America, that's the threat of an actual theocracy emerging emerging from this manufactured chaos of our present era. It becomes more plausible. We can agree with them or despise them but to reject them as unworthy of careful monitoring is just lazy and extremely risky. The religious right won't go away if we just simply ignore them. In fact ignoring them only furthers their efforts and that my friends is the last word up front.

I'm sean ST hard and you're watching crusade America. Stay tuned. We've got a very interesting show ahead as we continue this conversation about christian nationalism, Crusade America tends to focus a great deal of attention on the rise of christian nationalism with future episodes dedicated to various employees and mechanisms by which they are acquiring and wielding power. I want to be very clear here. This is not meant to denigrate religion and while as an atheist, I may have a clear bias in this regard. I want to stress that I have no issue with religion and I of course respect the importance of faith as a sociocultural cornerstone.

It is the vein of theocratic and religious extremism that perverts religion into a militant force that deserves all of our condemnation. America is and always has been a secular nation where religious freedoms are protected under the pretense of freedom from religion, which is a fundamental principle for ensuring tolerance across all religious denominations and faiths. For this reason, I want to begin our series of expositions on the rise of christian nationalism by focusing on the importance of the separation of church and state. Our guest today is someone I've been very excited to introduce.

His name is Barry Lynn. He served as the legislative counsel for both the Washington office of the United Church of christ and the american civil liberties union. Lynn is an ordained minister in the United Church of christ and a member of the Supreme Court Bar. He began a 25 year stint as executive director of Americans, United for separation of church and state back in 1992. Lynn is the only american ever likely to have won a Free speech award from the Playboy Foundation and a Medal of Freedom award from the franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Foundation for protecting our freedom to worship.

You've also seen him on the David Feldman show. He decided his own radio show. Uh and he's gonna be joining us in just a few seconds. We'll be right back America right later, others. Mhm. And welcome back joining us now is my good friend, the reverend barry W. Lynn, I am so, so excited to have you joining us. Thank you so much. It's wonderful to be here. I want people to understand that you are actually one of the unsung heroes in America. And I really mean that um you have defended what some might call the unscrupulous.

Um for instance, I and I want to talk about the playboy and pornography for just a moment because I think it's very important. Um can you, can you just kind of share a little bit of history for those that may not be familiar? Sure. I came to Washington after teaching school in boston and south boston at a catholic high school, very progressive, needless to say very progressive. One of the few progressive catholic high schools, I came to Washington to work on kind of the detritus of the Vietnam war.

I had failed my own medical physical when I went for the army physical. And therefore I felt obligated though to keep up a kind of a drumbeat for justice for those people who chose to serve veterans and those who chose directly to resist it by going to another country or hiding in the shadows of the United States. And I did that and shortly thereafter I started to work for the american civil liberties union. I do remember when the director at that time, Ira Glasser, about whom a documentary was made last year?

He said, are you, would you be comfortable or working on the abortion issue? Because I was a minister. And so many of the ministers at that time were developing followings primarily because they were anti reproductive choice. And of course I said to Ira, I'd be I'm quite happy to do that. And in fact, my interest in separation of church and state did not come from prayer in school, although I was subjected to that. My jewish friends were subjected to that my atheist friends in high school subjected to it.

But it was in college when I was talking to a friend of mine about going on the spring break, I said, where are you going to go? And he said London, I said that sounds like fun. He said, well it won't be fun. I said why? And he said, because my woman friend at the time and I are going there to obtain an abortion. I had marched with Dr King. I had been a staunch opponent since high school of the Vietnam war and I didn't understand the clout that churches had at that time, frankly was mainly the roman catholic church.

They had so much control over the legislatures of places like new york and massachusetts. You could not obtain a safe legal abortion anywhere in the United States. So I worked with the judson Memorial Church in Greenwich village and arranged some information about how to get them connected to abortion providers in England, that was the centerpiece of my transformation and I after working for the A. C. L. U. For a while, I was given the opportunity to run americans United for separation of church and state. That was an organization that had been started back in 1951, primarily and ironically by members of the clergy at that time, there was the beginnings of the kind of christian right that you've been describing.

But there was mainly this deep concern that the most powerful religious institution of the time, the roman catholic church was getting undue influence over the direction of the country. And in its beginnings there were some things that frequently the case with nonprofits, things you kind of wish you could erase from your history. There was a lot of anti catholic bigotry at the time and some of what americans United was about was fomenting that same thing. But by the time those early days were over, when Jack Kennedy was running as a catholic for president, his brother ted Kennedy came to one of our meetings and said if it hadn't been for americans United saying you cannot vote against someone based on his or her religion.

He said, I'm not sure my brother would have been elected president and at that time you could fill up to thousands of seats in major auditoriums around the country with activists interested in the separation of church and state. If you did that now you might get 500 people. But the truth is in most places until very recently, people thought this was a principle established. Maybe there were some nit picking of the edges, but it was secure. Now, of course, we know, particularly from the last Supreme Court session.

It is far from secure. It is eroding very, very quickly. So those are the three things working on peace, working at the blue, where as you mentioned, I did a lot of work to destroy something called the Meese Commission, which is a commission studying pornography under the auspices originally of Attorney General William french smith. And then Ed Meese took over and it's been known with high degree of dishonor as the Meese Commission. Most of its recommendations went nowhere. But when people are too satisfied that they can go and find their favorite corn on the internet, remember the Supreme Court will take an interest in that and will be much more willing to agree to censorship whether it's a sexual material or any anything else that a majority of people in the state don't like I'm doing that too.

What was that? We're already sort of seeing that as well already. We are. I mean, it's you know, it's a I'm doing this thing at the kurt Vonnegut Museum and library later in july, It's called, it's a 2-hour program called everybody doesn't like something, why not ban everything? There are people, you know, Alan Dershowitz before he became further and further into the depths of weird constitutionalism. We used to talk a lot, We did some television shows together. And one thing he was known to say, which I do think is a good idea.

He said, if you really want to prove that you're a First amendment purist then be exposed to the thing you hate the most and try to defend it. And I think First amendment people who have the best or they think they're pure in heart when it comes to it. Then you find some things that they don't like. There were efforts in the Senate for example, to do things like a guarantee that if a political candidate had someone make an adverse comment about his or her opponent, that person would be given free television time.

And I would like to think I've never run for office, I've never had any interest in doing that. But I'd like to think that if I did my principal point would be not just some good things I'm in favor of, but I want to be very, very directly opposed to the principles and the positions of my opponent that would come across to some as negative advertising. And of course negative advertising has blossomed, blossomed with these kind of cancers on the body politics, like political action committees. 5 27 organizations, even these spin offs of charities, charities are constructed as five oh one C three organizations in the tax code, but there's a sister way to do that C four's and even those, ostensibly none of these are supposed to coordinate with the actual campaigns of people running for office.

But they always do. And in fact, during one of the more recent cycles, I remember always watching CNN and they had some guy from a pac supporting one candidate and the host just said something like, well, I know you can't coordinate them, but I'm sure they're watching so that this whole thing, I think if you're a charity, you ought to do charitable things. If you're a political organization, you ought to do political things and then you can do anything you want. Churches, on the other hand, are not supposed to, charities are not supposed to endorse or oppose or support or oppose any candidates for any public office.

And you can see that that is really nonsense, that it wasn't taken seriously, even by Bill Clinton, even by Barack Obama and certainly not by joe biden instead of saying and bringing test cases saying you have crossed the line, you've done something. These are not things on the fringes. These are things like churches that put up, this is a recent Senate election. They put up a senator and said this person believes in life and then they had a smiling baby and then they had this person doesn't and a really terrible photograph of a Democratic opponent.

So if I were to give some advice about what you should do with political ads, you should just ignore them. Don't pay any attention, even if you like the information, make sure that you as a citizen and you as a potential voter have an informed basis made up by your own research. Instead of listening to the crap that is produced by republicans, democrats and rarely independence. It was a party, a little bit of history, but just I have played this game to where they've used religion sort of as this political football.

And I mean, and yet, and I think democrats, the Democratic Party is kind of literally stunned. We're actually here at this point, but I don't think they fully the um, I just lost a little bit of what you said at the end there. But during the john Kerry effort to become president, he actually had an assistant, an aide who said that to the new york times one day that she was urging democrats to de emphasize the phrase separation of church and state, separation of church and state was an idea that was so powerful Back in the 40s and 50s.

People understood what it meant. Now, People are confused and nobody, I can't think of a single politician in the last 20 years who's campaigned with a present with a statement that says, we are going to defend the separation of church and state. Now they might say it privately. I don't take much from private promises from would be politicians. I really don't, I'm more interested in what they're willing to say publicly, what is separation of church and state, because there's arguments right now saying wishin. Um, and they were making reference to a letter written by thomas jefferson. Right?

So it's really the establishment clause that we're talking about separation of church and state is where did that term kind of come from? It does come from that letter that Jefferson wrote to the, to a congregation in Connecticut, but it means something a little more than that. It means that there should be a decent distance between the institutions of government and the institutions of religion and the free exercise clause, which has occasional value. Let's say you want to be a firefighter for a long time. If you were a Sikh of the Sikh faith, uh, you couldn't wear a turban and be a firefighter in most states.

And there were ostensible reasons like, well, your turban might catch on fire. Well, you know, that's, that's why firefighters often have helmets. There were prisoners who could not grow a beard. If there were a muslim prisoner and they felt that they needed to grow a beard. Prison officials would say you can't do that because you could hide contraband in the beard. I mean, outside of those characters from Duck Dynasty, with those really long beards or the band members of Zz top, you cannot hide a weapon in a beard.

I mean, but this is the kind of nonsense that was being promoted. So I do think there was justification for saying the free exercise of religion does mean something. The problem is now, it doesn't just mean sikhs can have turbans, prisoners can have beards. Now, it means Well, in the last two weeks, football coaches can pray with their students right on the 50 yard line after a game. That is not the free exercise of religion. Now, some people may say, well, who's harmed if a football coach wants to say a prayer, how would you respond to that?

Because I mean, a lot of people think, yeah, this is a relevant issue. Yeah, it's, um, I think it goes back when I was in high school, there was still, I went to high school and pennsylvania. So there was both bible reading and um, prayer every day. And I asked one of my jewish friends once, I said, aren't you uncomfortable with this? And he said, yeah, but he said, what am I going to do about it? And so the other thing about whenever politicians get close to religion, they do tend to corrupt it.

And I remember so vividly, Although I was 74 years old, what it was like to be called upon to read these bible verses to the class in high school, there were a couple of favorite verses because I was a pretty staunch sunday school attendee at the time. So I took it somewhat seriously, but I tried to read from the christian old testament because I knew that there was for jews and for a lot of other people there was no new testament, but people would read from a passage in the book of proverbs that uses the word breasts, because how else in the high school can a student go breasts and then or read the gats?

You know, this effort in the early part of the so called new testament to explain how people got along. So that adam and eve to get this and that goes on for a long time. But I think people didn't take it seriously. I think some of us may have not spend a lot of time listening because it's a really good time just to make hand signals to your friends or perhaps even even for me, look at somebody who had a crush on and go, wow, she's beautiful, That is not what religion should be all about.

And I was really, really offended by that. As I said, it wasn't the single thing that took me into. But I think the other thing about prayer, if you do it, jesus, by the way says don't pray in public, this is very clear, jesus says, if you want to be listened to by God go into a closet, go into a room by yourself, explain what you would like and then God might respond affirmatively, but this character judge Kennedy in Bremerton Washington, Wanted to do this in a very public spectacle way.

He wanted to go out on the 50 yard line and pray and that the harm there is not just that it might seem strange to people who were not christians of his kind, but that a lot of people, a lot of parents would report and filed affidavits where they'd say their son came home and said if I don't join the coach in the middle of the field, I am not going to be allowed to play. I was just talking to a guy in massachusetts the other day. He was on the wrestling team of the high school and he said we knew that if we didn't go along with a christian prayer and he was not a christian, we might not get to wrestle.

So I mean these are very real. And the a word that I've tried to keep using more and more is evil. There are people with evil intentions and those people with evil intentions are really happy to couch it in any other way. I did hear donald trump once at a campaign rally literally in a, at a religious right gathering, which they used to go to all the time. And he was, it was inconceivable to me that he had any idea what the christian faith was all about because as is said sometimes biblically by their fruits, you shall know them if you're going to mock people with disabilities.

If you're going to grab women non consensually guess what? You have just demonstrated that you don't give much of a hoot about Christianity when he was Yeah, the whole bible, it's held upside down. That's that's always a Q two. But the thing about he was obsessed with a couple of things in that speech including how he would make sure that more people said merry christmas as if the President Commander in chief. I mean I I did dozens, maybe 100 television shows about the so called war on christmas.

There was no war on christmas. There was they would consider it a war on christmas if you're on the religious right by anything that they didn't get to do. So if they didn't get to put up a nativity scene right in City Hall, that was a war against christmas and we had a lot of victories about that when I was at americans united and even before that at the A. C. L. U. But there was no war on christmas and people used to say, well why do you do?

I used to go on Fox a lot Fox News channel and it's an embarrassment. I mean it's it's literally when I was on it and doing it, there are only two other liberals, robert Reich and Ellie Smeal who runs runs the feminist majority and I there are only three liberals that would ever go on the Fox News channel repeatedly and when I had a guy who was one of the bookers at Fox News channel and he said that I'm quitting getting another job. I want to take you to lunch.

And he told me this interesting story. He said, I said, yeah, I don't get really invited much to be on Fox. And he said, you want to know why? I said sure, he said, because americans united for separation of church and state is a big organization and you're very articulate. And so what we were told the book is somebody you find on the internet who, you know, has no organization and is not going to know where to look in the camera. But I think that one of the things that happen is with the media these days is no matter how much time they spend, they don't get much to the point on something like the Kennedy case involving the prayer at the football game.

One of the difficulties with having a segment of most segments are 66 to 7 minutes long, the court doesn't even agree on the facts. If you look at the dissent in that case, where they say this is clearly a violation of the separation of church and state. You think, and of course, one of the dissenting judges put a couple of photographs in her dissent that depicted This coach and dozens of players surrounding him at the 50 yard line. And yet if you look at the entirety of the majority opinion, the six people, majority opinion, you would think that the only thing he did was give a private affirmation to God at the end of a game, which I think in fact what I understand, I mean, I wasn't at americans United was our case, but I get when I retired, it was taken over by other people, but in a good way.

And I don't think anybody would have had brought a lawsuit if the only thing the guy had done as a coach was go and say a prayer on the sidelines or maybe even on the football field. But it was this idea of inviting other people inviting with of course, that possibility that if you don't accept the invitation, you're not gonna get any birthday cake or in this case, you're not going to play at all high school football. Even if you didn't say that outright, That pressure that one might feel is very real.

Even if that wouldn't have been the case, right? Even if the football coach would have been like, okay, well, I'm tolerant of that and I understand it's how that person feels, and that's what a lot of people don't understand, is that there is that pressure that exists. Yeah, I mean it and it's very real. It's um, it is not something trivial. I mean, I I got it. I used to get in a little trouble because I frankly, um, I'm not, I'm not a huge proponent of removing the phrase in God we trust from the money.

Now, people should know, we didn't have it at the beginning of currency in the United States, it appeared on the two cent piece after the Civil War and then by congressional action was required to be printed on every coin and every bill back in the anti communist fifties, when I guess the assumption was Those calm, you see in God, we trust on that $5 bill, they're gonna get scared and run away. I mean the absurd, the absurdity and I used to say, and in God we trust on the coins is kind of a fraud because um when you think about what money is used for bribing public officials hiring somebody who, you know, is a sex traffic prostitute.

This is the same thing that you used with that. So I just found it absurd to believe that this was somehow necessary or important for the very promotion of the faith of Christianity. That's ridiculous. Yeah. And what if there's a let's say that somebody is jewish or muslim too? And you see these memes on facebook to like, well jeez, what this means is that the church of satan can now say prayers on the or Muslims and that will really, and and that does kind of go back to that point.

This is one of the justices, I think it was maybe it was Kennedy in this case remarked that this would teach kids tolerance, but that's kind of the opposite of what Yeah, it's um, hey, it is, I think safe to say with the possible exception in recent years of justice Sotomayor and justice Kagan, I was never sure Justice Bryer really fully understood what separation of church and state was all about. There's a point where the passion is important and one of the reasons as you described in monologue that the christian right has gotten as powerful politically as it is, is because people ignored them.

They thought these people are crackpots, we don't have to worry about them. But you do when Eleanor Roosevelt who was a friend of the first, the founder of Americans United is she? And he used to have meetings and go to the White House and talk to her. She was a very strong proponent of separation of church and state. She she was against prayer in schools. She wrote a thing for the most popular magazine of the time, reader's digest explaining why this is not a good idea. She opposed the idea of paying private religious schools to educate Children.

She said that she and franklin had sent their own kids to private schools, but it was, she said unthinkable that we would expect somebody else to help pay for that. Now we've kind of come full circle on that issue as well because just days before the Kennedy decision we've been talking about, here comes another decision out of the state of maine. A lot of moose is there, but not so many high schools. If you're in a congressional, in a the school district that doesn't have a high school, you've got two options.

You can either arrange with some neighboring school district to have the young people go to those alternative public schools or you can just say we'll subsidize private schools. But the state of Maine did understand separation of church and state and they said, now the one thing we're not going to do is subsidize those private religious schools that actually say were teaching along the lines of our particular religion. So you could you could be affiliated with the Methodist church, but you couldn't say, by the way, we're teaching history based on the history of Methodism or the presbyterian doctrine of well, the Supreme Court, just get away with that just two weeks ago and said, no, you have to.

Now there, he said, well, what's the problem with that? Some people say problem with that is you're paying for somebody else's religious education. And some of these schools were bitterly anti muslim. For example, they said, right in the materials. And one of the few things I'm going to say that that's nice about religious right is that if you listen to them, they're often very honest, not always, but if you look at their materials, they say we believe Christianity is the only religion worth promoting. We we want our students to learn how to combat islam.

I mean one of them was that blunt about it and don't get me started on people who are trans or the Back in 2002 when they first started to put a dent in this idea that you don't give money to private religious schools. It was in the state of Ohio and in the state of Ohio at the time they had very strong anti discrimination laws about who can or cannot be allowed to be in a school when they said well religious school but you'd have to apply the same statutes of non discrimination.

Um That was I mean I remember doing a lot of shows that night saying well remember you can only get this money because you're always looking for some vaguely golden police in the middle of something and and it's at least they have to a baby nondiscrimination laws of Ohio. Now you don't have to do that anymore. You can discriminate and still get the money. That is a terrible duplex of ideas. And that's one of my biggest problem without ruling is because there are schools that have basically they've expelled students who even express L. G. B. T. Q. Identities or even have an interest that they're identifying as that as you said Muslims, other religions I come from maine Um I was born and raised until I was 18 and then I left like you said too many mousses.

Yeah there I was fortunate I lived in Bangor. So there is a public school of public high school and there were a couple of middle schools and so forth. But yeah there are a lot of different areas in Maine where they do not have a school. My stepsister um actually lived in a district and she and here's a strange thing, she actually went to a religious school paid for, so I'm not sure how that worked, but it just it was unthinkable even back then, I mean I know that my step sister who I said she went through a baptist school, they had people that I mean it wasn't as as welcomed as it is today, but there were people that were gay in that school that were you know um and it just seems like it was back when I was a kid, it just even seemed like it was unthinkable that you would expel the student that that um and yet today it just seems like, I mean we've seen that with the case somewhat back with the baker that wouldn't make a cake for a right.

Um I mean this seems to be where there this faction of the religious right has decided that religious freedom means we have the right to basically expel people that we don't agree with. Yeah and it's in a sense it's you brought up the cake, the masterpiece bakery case, I would I try to avoid going to bakers to claim their works are masterpieces, but I guess he was trying to somehow convince you that I'm more of one of those tasty cake crimp it kind of guys, but but this year they've already, the Supreme Court has already agreed to hear a very similar case where a gay person has asked for the creation of a website and the web design company, the head of this thing said I were not designing any website that promotes gay people.

So she's gone to the Supreme Court, they agreed to take the case if four members of the court agreed to take a case out of the nine, it's taken almost uniformly because the website creator lost in the lower court. They want to overturn it. They don't hear cases where they want to affirm a wisdom of some federal appeals court. And I think, I mean, okay, is I see no hope that that gay person will ever be granted the demand no matter what the state was are a lot of states in colorado.

one of the things that that was interesting about that case, it kind of hinged on a very narrow determination. I don't think it's going, you're not going to see it. They talked about the way in which regulations and the statute requiring um I kind of non not supporting religious people not doing what they were supposed to do because they said that a civil rights commission in the State of Colorado had actually, during the deliberations. This is the central point during the deliberations. One guy said, you know, we can't just open this door because religion has been used in the past for all kinds of nefarious things to justify anything.

And the majority of the Supreme Court. That's shocking. That's called truth. It's called truth. It's why there were jewish um Uh students going to college under these very rigid, we will only admit 6%, Jews all these things. This is part of our sober, terrible history of the United States. And for somebody to acknowledge that is simply telling the truth, but they focused on that one sentence and the masterpiece baker is now presumably master piecing cakes for only bible believing christians the but this other case doesn't have that.

I don't think the facts are going to have that kind of a sentence. And as a consequence, I I suspect that that will be another breach, another breach. And what we thought was serious and clear First Amendment doctrine that the First Amendment does not negate the civil rights laws of the state or of the country. Yeah. And period, and I'm somewhat ashamed of this. Yeah. When this kind of first started to to come about this, even went back before the master piece based masterpiece cake shop where I just became very hostile towards religion, right?

Because I mean, I received against and I want to really was watching you on the David Feldman Show and I really recommend people watch or listen to the David Feldman show. Um that sort of woke me up a little bit because it was like, wait a minute, I'm not going to let this fringe minority taint my view of religion. Um and I really want to thank you and tom weber as well um for that, because and and watching you and I'm gonna I forgot the name again, I'm sorry, but he was you did an interview on the David Feldman who who actually had changed his position on abortion, rob shank, rob shank.

I thought that was in incredible interview. Um so you've really inspired me on this, and and and I really want to thank you, and it was shocking to me to to learn that. Mr who was religious, we like even go after defending pornography, right? I remember your interview on the David Filmon show where you were talking about um meeting a lot of these, you know, porn stars and talking and just really humanizing them. That to me is what Christianity is about, right? I mean, it's about jesus, was not did not go around, you know, dismissing people.

Um and it's just serious to me how this has been, and I think a lot of it too is that it's not so much about religion, it is about this idea of american exceptionalism. This idea that America is a christian nation and that we somehow, I mean it really is a lot about the culture. Um the problem is that even though this is a fringe minority, they are winning. And part of the reason they're winning is because they understand how to use power. The I think it's Liberty University jerry Falwell correct who they've got schools that their entire mission of these schools is to produce lawyers on the Supreme Court or the different federal benches.

And we're sort of and the Heritage Foundation is part of that as well as part of that attempt to sort of elevate through just right. What do you think? Do you think it's going to be easy to to to overturn the overturning of roe v wade and and combat some of these rulings or do you just think it's going to get get worse because with the Supreme Court and play the way it is, it's quite fearful. I think some big changes need to come. I think that I don't know about you but I get 15 emails a day demanding that I send money for some kind of response to roe versus wade.

And I know the leadership of all these organizations, I have deep respect for them. But when somebody says I don't have much money who should I give it to? I say give it to abortion providers give it to the D. C. Abortion, the access project. I don't know if you saw my interview with a young woman from the kind of got me involved in in the D. C. And and there's a women's reproductive project out in Los Angeles that they will provide abortion services. They will get you the money if you need to come to California to obtain an abortion, they're there to help you because that is a way that individual people can feel like they have done something if you give money to the Democratic Women's Caucus, whatever that is, who knows where that's gonna go?

I want to help the people that need the help. And then I want people to strategize in a serious way about what in the hell to do about the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court is not going to get any better. In fact it's going to get worse Because no matter what happens, it's a 6-3 rigid minority of conservatives. I mean, the only reason that john roberts occasionally votes right is because he does have and many people have said there's a kind of institutional interest in the court not losing the credibility that it used to have.

And you have to we have to expand the size of the court. The one thing that americans united that I wish I had done was spend more time on these structural changes. That is we have to get more people on the court. And even a year ago there were still people who would and were progressives who when I bring this up, they would say yeah, but that's a terrible idea because then when the republicans back in power then they'll expand it some more. That's okay by me.

Let's worry about that when it comes. Let's worry about what is here. What is here is a runaway court, a court that doesn't care about precedent. It lies its members of all lies. Stari decisis this idea that once you decide a major case that ought to be the framework in which you were. So all the trump appointees lied about it. And people forget that Clarence thomas. I remember sitting there watching his confirmation here. He didn't just say something vague about starry decisive. He said when asked about abortion.

I really haven't given that much thought who in the right mind or off mind or in any mind didn't know about roe versus wade. That's a lie. And so people get there all upset. Did he did he violate Anita Hill's rights? And did he harass her? And what did he do with you to get rent porn? And the other that's trivial. What's important was did did he lie? And of course I think he lied about Anita Hill but to go back to Joe biden because I only mentioned him once.

But I mean he sat there during the confirmation hearings, having evidence. And I strongly suggest people read a book called Strange Justice about the confirmation hearing of Clarence thomas, joe biden had documents from two other women that were going to testify specifically to the pattern. Oh, Clarence thomas's interaction with them as employees in other situations. And biden just sat on it. He just sat on it. It was a very close call. And if you look at the latest documentary on Anita Hill and you look at what the judiciary committee looked like at the time of the Clarence thomas hearings.

It was all white men for Dianne Feinstein was in the Senate but she wasn't on the committee at the time. It was just a bunch of white guys talking to an african american guys and when Clarence thomas talked about, I don't want this to become an electronic lynching everybody's people squirming at that they don't want to, they don't want to be looked at as electronic lynchers, but they never really probed. And this is a problem that we have consistently with the democratic leadership and I know you're pretty tough on them and with good reason there is a there's kind of because we know, I mean you mentioned what biden did in the past and then of course last week he announces he's going to appoint to a trial court in Kentucky.

This character, I think Campbell is his name, who is anti choice. I mean he was going to announce that the day the roe versus wade decision overturned was overturned but he waited a couple of days and it leaked out in the papers in Kentucky. He should repudiate that, why would you possibly do that make a deal with? Mitch McConnell mitch McConnell is an anti institutionally, he doesn't care anything about the Senate of the United States, he cares about making policy decisions that he can live with. Exactly.

It is, it is infuriating well in the same thing with You know, Nancy Pelosi, I got those emails from her all the time, Hey I need $5 or $15 you know, to protect Roe V wade. Um I'd love to say to her well maybe you should have thought about that before endorsing Henry Cuellar and opening your arms. I mean it just seems absurd to me that the party says, hey we stand for abortion rights and yet Nancy Pelosi is making statements back in 2015. We should really pro life and against abortion and hey, but in what really infuriated me was that immediately after the Supreme Court struck down Roe V wade literally minutes almost as if they knew and they were prepared for this is when the flood of emails came asking for money and to me I thought and safe I've gone on facebook too and I've said the same thing that you said on facebook like do not donate to democrats donate to organizations or groups that are going to help women get abortions.

I mean abortion is now illegal in 13 states, yep, there's organizations, these women get to the abortion providers that they need to. And of course these things that joe biden could do, he could open up federal lands for abortion clinics. He won't do that. Um sean he doesn't even try. I mean there, I understand that there is a legal question about whether he could open the land. There's also native american lands could they, could they be used under what circumstances? These are interesting issues. But when I hear Kamala Harris say, well we looked at that, but we're not going to open federal lands and so I would never suggest never send money to democrats.

But I would say they have to guarantee that they're going to do some right things. I'm happy that there are a lot of opportunities. Um, I don't know if you listen to john Fugelsang show on XM Sirius, but I do that once a month. There's reason to believe in places like pennsylvania, even in Ohio that there are going to be actual democrats who can take out in those cases, both republican senators Are retiring, but those are open seats and they're a little easier to deal with. But even in very contentious ones like Iowa where Chuck Grassley has been senator for like 10,000 years.

I think I gotta walk to school and there were still dinosaurs there, but he's not very popular anymore. And so you've got several candidates there, They haven't had the primary yet who might take him out, you just need to not have. Everything comes down to what joe mansion and Kirsten cinema think is what the Democratic Party ought to be. You have to be able and you also have to be able to break these filibuster rules. Um and I was I was not originally convinced of that because when I worked at the A. C. L. U. For example, I used to work with liberal senators who really understood filibuster rules and who their colleagues knew really understood that.

I remember once there was a First Amendment issue yeah, before the Senate in a tax bill, just days before christmas. And of course you never want to get get members of the Senate to miss christmas. So and Lowell Weicker, who was then a Republican in Connecticut went on to become the independent. The governor of Connecticut calls me on the phone, he says barry, I don't think you're watching this. And no, I'm not watching C span on a tax bill. He said, well, there's something in here. I think that the bridge is the First Amendment.

So he reads it to me and I go, no senator that you're good to catch that because that that really has a serious First Amendment implication gangs up the phone goes back onto the Senate floor and announces to the presiding officer, Mr president, I have just consulted with counsel. I believe there is a problem in this paragraph and he cites the paragraph and he said now we could talk about this for three more days because he was really good at the rules of Philip or he said we could just take it out a nanosecond later.

They take it out. So I was a little bit and during the post Vietnam stuff there was also some good there even moderate to liberal republicans and sometimes you would use them for the sake of trying to get the filibuster rules to work in the defense of some otherwise endangered group of people. But I I quickly lost that sense. And I think now it's very clear to me that the filibuster has no good purposes. It's never going to be used for any good purposes. What we needed the votes as democrats to make sure that nothing gets past.

That is terrible why I live most of the time in the District of Columbia we have at least as many people as two states. We have no senator. We have one Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton who is a wonderful person but she doesn't get to vote except in committee. Why are we disenfranchised? Why? So I think the litmus test for Senate candidates. Will you abolish the filibuster? If so will you add more seats to the Supreme Court and when you go along with D. C. Representation statehood so that we can get the representation that we deserve. Yeah. Absolutely.

And Supreme Court. My caveat would be that the Supreme Court needs to they say it's not political it's always been a political body. I mean, which is why we see when a democrat is not, you know, gets to nominate someone to the Supreme Court. They choose a liberal conservatives, they choose a conservative. What I would like to see is I would like to see B. T. Q. On the Supreme Court. I want to see more diversity. Never mind, you know, political, but I want to see the Supreme Court and Congress too, for that matter, be more representative of America the diverse country that we are.

I mean, what about a muslim on the Supreme Court? Right. I just I politicized and I agree with you about there is some hope and with the democrats, with some democrats in the Democratic Party. I guess my thing coming from a sort of sociological perspective is that it seems as though they're not addressing the structural and systemic causes. Um I mean, when I see racism, when I see even with the religious right, for the most part, this more as symptoms of a much deeper problem connected problems like the economy.

And yeah, all of these things that it seems like nobody wants to address that. And I've been arguing since roe v wade got overturned that this isn't even about abortion release, not even about the Supreme Court in court, but it's we can't just focus on abortion because you're not going to even if they win them in terms of democrats, they win them in terms and they codify roe v wade. I don't see that as a solution. If they're not willing to tackle the court. I've yet to hear other than AOC and a few members of the squad address that.

I mean, they're promising to over to codify roe V wade talking about again, the deeper issues. And that's what I find most frustrating is that they're not willing to even talk about the fact that there is deeper systemic issues at play here that go way beyond just abortion. And I think that the right wing kind of gets that a lot too. Well they do. I mean, you know, we progress is have a lot of trouble coming up with messages that fit on bumper stickers and the good news is they shouldn't need to do that because they should want more time to explain what is so terribly wrong, wealth inequality, the way we treat the elderly, the way race works and religious discrimination works in this country ought to be addressed in order for the congress though, to take those things seriously.

They have to be asked by the media to take things seriously. I mean, I've had television on for the last two days since the horrible shooting in Illinois yesterday. Where do you where do you find people who will talk about the systemic question. They let people come on. I watched an interview on CNN with Governor Hutchinson from Arkansas? And he was talking about these new plans to do mental health work. And what does that mean? What does it mean? And how do you avoid with these so called red flag laws?

The fact that you're more likely in a lot of states to red flag people of color, that's going to happen if we know that. And these predictions of psychiatrists, it's kind of like prison recidivism. It's very difficult. You talk too serious people. They go, we can't predict whether someone is going to go out and become a burglar again. We don't have the tools to do that. So though, but that requires more than the kind of trivial. When I was doing a lot of television, I was asked to be on because I knew stuff.

I knew a lot about the military discharge system. I knew a lot about pornography. I knew a lot about the First amendment, a new church state, but now they just have people who just are so called experts on everything and trust me in six minutes, you can be an expert on anything. You can just sit there and repeat some talking point that you got from your favorite right or left wing magazine and you can sound that guy really knows what he's talking, why she's brilliant. That's what is so corrupt about it.

When I was first when CNN just got started, I had been in Washington a couple of years and they had this remarkable show on most of their shows. Didn't start in Washington. They emanated from Atlanta and you'd have to fly down to Atlanta to be on shows. And so somebody called me, You want to talk about women in the military or I think that was that sensible purpose of it. And I was editing a military law magazine at the time and I said sure I'll do this.

So I went down, I flew down there. The other two people, one was the woman who ran something called the Committee for a Free Afghanistan and the other was Phyllis schlafly anti R. A support. We did the whole show, an entire hour on women and the military and military justice. An entire hour. You couldn't get an entire hour if you were, I don't know, pop star. It was unthinkable. And even MSNBC when it started, I used to do a show that had Ron Reagan, you know the good Ron Reagan, the son of Ronald Reagan and a woman named Monica Crowley and they would actually go over there and do a show and they give you two segments.

I remember being on with franklin Graham once, it was two whole segment to 6. 5 minutes segments. Unheard of. Now it's one segment we get rid of you. Oh by the way, let's go to the same person who used to be a cop somewhere and will get his view and police activity in this case, no connection to the issue, no knowledge except what you used to do. That's not the way to educate. And it's not the way to force people to actually know what they're talking about. It is so easy to get political figures to just say nothing and then get thank thank you senator.

And I know that pressure because we used to I used to do radio shows at the end of the day and it was a big deal to get a senator. So you didn't want to start off by saying? So senator, I heard you kicked your dog last night. Is that true? We don't wanna you don't wanna piss people off directly. But on the other hand, if you have a relationship, you should not allow them to get away with just saying nothing and then hoping I got my six minutes, How did I do?

Oh, you did great. Because Sycophant is um is not something that we ought to recommend for the future. Well, the mainstream media though, the whole problem is that it's become just, it's an establishment, right? It's almost an empire in itself. And so media, I mean, one of the things that I love about the David Feldman Show is the diversity of views that he welcomes on there and I like that he challenges himself to, I mean, and I've seen David change his views on things by just because he's had guests on that that have kind of challenged him.

And that's that's what we need. We need to have more conversation. And the what really gets me too, is when the media says that their, to me that's just dishonest. There's no such thing as unbiased, Be honest about your position if you're conservative. I mean, like, come on Fox News, I mean, just acknowledge that your conservative, I mean, just be honest and upfront about that, because it otherwise it's just not only just dishonest, but it's misleading to the narratives that there is just disingenuous. But the mainstream media, unfortunately, I mean, you've got basically politicians.

Now, if you look at MSNBC, um I mean, a lot of those are former political operatives. You see a lot of I mean, like national security experts are from the C. I. A. Or N. S. A. You're not getting informed opinions, you're getting manufactured as non chomsky consent. That's right. And that's what scares me and they're not. And the way and again, the way the media is reported on and here's the thing too. It's become if you criticize the religious right, you're seen as being bigoted, you're seen as attacking religion, the mainstream media has Kind of put blinders on in that respect.

When they talk about January six, for instance, About the fact that there was a lot of Christian nationalism on display on January six. I mean, they're talking about Trump supporters and their insurrectionists and so forth. But people need to understand that this faction of the religious right, that that is a real threat. They're not only being ignored, but it's a there's this atmosphere of fear around even talking about them, right? Very true, very true. The, you know, the closest thing um, and only getting this detail, but when I was Five years or so into being at Americans, United where it was for 25 years.

But um, I was, I started doing a radio show on Fridays with Oliver North. And so MSNBC comes up to him and says we'd like you to have their version of crossfire, the famous thing that was on CNN and we don't know who we're going to pair you with. So what we got three people were thinking of barry Lynn because you do radio with him and paul Begala, who is of course a nice moderate corporate democrat. And I think maybe the third guy was E. J. Dionne from the Washington post.

So I did a couple of tryouts and they seem to be going very well, I get a call from the vice president of NBC one morning who says, you know, we really liked your interaction with North on television. But he said, I have one question to ask and I think I know the answer, but think about it for a second here is the question Clinton was in office. He said we want to make sure that the person on the opposite side of north will agree with the Clinton administration every single night on every issue.

I said, you know, I'm not that guy. He said, well, I thought so, but he said, you just you're out of the running. And what was interesting is Fox News at the time had something with Sean Hannity and a fellow named Alan combs and very, very bright longstanding radio host. And when during one of the clinton incursions into eastern europe, they both said he's wrong. I remember calling Alan up and I said, Alan, I was great. You know, last night you just said, look, I like Clinton, I don't like his warmongering and even if you're on the same side, but clearly on MSNBC, I would never have been allowed to be on the other side.

And then by the way, there aren't two sides. That's another ridiculous thing that presents the liberal side and the conservative side. And there aren't any sides in the middle, but there should be and there are and there are articulate people who say on some issues, you take energy policy. I mean, there are a few people who go, you know, I'm not sure we should just discount nuclear power and other people don't know, it's horrible think Chernobyl, but there are things to talk about, but when's the last time on any program?

Except possibly on Feldman's show. You ever hear a discussion of what do we do for the need of power? We're not gonna we're not gonna stop putting on lights, we're not going to go back to candles. But what do you do? How serious? I haven't heard a discussion about biofuel. I haven't heard a discussion about what it's going to take to turn the solar in five years and I do, I mean I'd rather go to the movies, but I do watch a lot of television and I it's always on the news stuff, but there's not much news.

The media decides what the important issues are, the media decides who to put on and the structure of it is a structure right now. That makes it so easy for politicians to go on those shows. Act like they've said something I'm so sick of when you ask some of these senators. Well, what about Amy coney Barrett? You know, she she was terrible. I mean, you'd have to be an idiot not to know that she had signed onto an advertisement before her confirmation that said abortion is a barbaric practice.

What do you need to know about what she's gonna think about abortion if she said in writing it's a barbaric practice. And well, I think and then then you get to some of these super liberals senators, I took to the floor and I gave a great speech and then I went on MSNBC and I gave a great speech. That is bullshit. That is not enough. You have to be prepared to fight. You have to be prepared to go there and do whatever is necessary? Do the kind of Lowell Weicker stuff scare the other side make it clear you are not going to put up with this, You're not going to, if you don't want to take pac money, then don't take pac money, but don't change your mind.

As unfortunately Elizabeth Warren did and say, well everybody's taking it, I'm gonna take it. Not corporate, but everybody's gotta pack now. I don't think, you know, not yet. But I hear that everybody has it, they're easy to set up. You can and you don't have to really discuss in much detail what you do with that money you just collected. We learned that again from trump collecting hundreds of millions of dollars for purposes that are very unclear. What does he do with. And but you you have to take these aggressive positions, you have to look at the structure.

You have to break the structure if necessary in order to get things done or we're never going to get any if we don't, if you don't make DCs state, you don't add some justices to the court, we will lose everything and we will lose the green new deal. Oh yeah, that's done. I mean E. P. A can't regulate pollution now. So I mean there's nothing uh all of these ideas about what to do with roe versus wade? I mean, should there be a federal statute? Well, what if the federal statute is challenged as being unconstitutional?

Do you think, do you think that the author of the, you know, Sam Alito would go, well, I know said send it back to the states, I didn't really mean that, you know, these people lie, that we know they lie and to get back to this is the thing that bothers me. We need in the same way that I suggest people give money to the organizations that provide. I want people to know if they are criminalizing abortion against a woman or a doctor. If you sit on a jury in one of those cases, just nullify it.

There's a doctrine that's not practice. Judges don't talk about it, but it's right in the heart of english common law. If you're on a jury and you sit there and you go, well, this is this is, yeah, judges don't even ask about it because they don't want you to even know that such a doctrine exists, but you say I've heard the facts and I've listened to the law. You get into the jury room and you go, you know, it sounds like crap to me, this shouldn't even be a crime.

You can hang juries and this is what happened toward the end of the Vietnam war with draft resistance cases, A lot of the juries just were hung because people like what, why are we still prosecuting people in obscenity cases? There are almost no obscenity cases unless there are Children involved, which, you know, is it's a good thing to prosecute, but it's because jurors, they think They put, you know, Debbie does Dallas part 75 and they go, all right, we just stream that the other night, add a little spice that we're not going to send somebody to jail for five years for distributing that film.

So the people end up having more power in more circumstances than I think we give the people credit for. You don't have to convince everybody that making it a crime for a doctor to provide to a woman an abortion To know that you have power to prevent that doctor from being sentenced? Some of these sentences are 10 and 15 years in theory, just learn what it is and know about it. And I guess these days in the judicial system, you just lie about anything. We know that because of those three justices in their opinion.

If a judge actually says, will you listen to the law and the facts and apply that? Yeah, tell the truth. But and I hate I hate feeling like this. I hate generalizing. But in these states where we're talking about is it, and I know that the media likes to do this. They like to black and white. Like, well everybody in those states support this. But what are the chances, I mean, how, how much of a majority in these states do you think that the religious right has that could because I just I don't know, we don't know at this point.

I mean, I want to have faith in fellow citizens. I want to believe that even people that are anti abortion, like we're not going to send a doctor to prison politicization that we see in this country and the radicalization in these states. Do you think that there are people that would oppose these or or because it seems like it's this culture world, like let's own the Libs or, you know, vice versa. Um Ralph Reed, ralph Reed, who was kind of the creator of the christian coalition. Mhm.

Used to say I would rather have control over most of the school boards in this country, then elect the president and he did what progressives forget that you start you have to have a bench when you think about somebody asked me yesterday, well, if biden doesn't run and she knows I'm not a fan of Kamala Harris, who would you who would you run? And I'm thinking, well, we don't have much of a bench and and the people, some of the CNN correspondents who are in state legislatures and then they decided that maybe they lost or they decided they could make more money on CNN Anderson, you can't you cannot give that up.

You have to look at everybody, you have to care who's the sheriff that's running? I mean, I'm in massachusetts now and there there's some upcoming local races if I lived here. If I was a voter here, you'd better believe I'd figure out who these people are because I want to know sometimes the telltale signs, like if somebody has a yard sign and also one of those flags that are blue, black and white, defend the police flag, I'm going to be very skeptical about whoever that person is endorsing because that seems wrong.

If you don't research, if you don't know who these candidates are, if you don't consider something, I never considered running for public office, um, because I wanted to work in a different way. So people would say, what do you do? And I work against the government, which government, any government until there is pure. I remember Pat Buchanan asked me once, why didn't you ever work for President? I said because I never found one moral enough to get my support, which is just a smartass answer. But in some ways it was true.

You have you cannot ignore what's going on at the local level. If you do, then you end up with state legislatures who want and will probably be given more power By the Supreme Court in two years. You have to know who these people are. You have to work to elect them. You can't just assume that if the president is a good woman or man that will fix everything because it won't because it won't. And I just uh, the progressive movement in my experience, sadly does not does not stay late enough.

I can't tell you how many meetings I'd be at whether these right wingers and once a handful of left, does it go home to watch television? You're right wingers that stay there and work all the time, stay longer and win because they're there and they're noisier. Absolutely, and and that's exactly how this minority this religious right has game power is they've they've realized you have to have played the long game and they started at the local level. I mean, you've got started with sheriffs, as you said, they've taken over.

Um and everybody else has just been focused on the L. G. You know, we need a woman president. Let's let's just go with Hillary. I mean, it's so much focused on the federal level and I get that people are busy with their lives, they're distracted and it's very difficult to be informed about who these politicians are, especially at the lower levels. So we've got this easy system. Well, I'm a democrat, D there you go, oh, I'm a Republican are the and that's part of the problem with party politics, especially a two party system.

Well, one party system, really, but um and, you know, you're absolutely right, we do need more people running for local office, because that's really, I think, and it took me a while to realize this, but I think that's really where the true power lies at the local level. It really, it starts there and sometimes it ends there. I mean, I'm a big fan of Jamie Raskin's. I used to be one of his constituents. He was a friend before then, but he is an example of a person.

He starts he ran for office in Maryland and the state legislature, He won that a couple of times, then there's an opportunity to go to Congress. And if you listen to him as opposed to most of the people that I've been griping about, he actually knows stuff. He was a law professor and he was also a great communicator. That is to say he could actually talk to students and convince them about what the law was and where he thought it was wrong and where it ought to be.

So you need people when you listen to the people on the fringes of the Republican party, like Lauren Colbert and goes, er and okay, former judge from texas, Louie Gohmert, you listen to them and they go, well, he was a former judge, what? That's really goldman Gohmert. Louie Gohmert, he was a federal judge in texas, and now he's in Congress and he's he's just stupid, but but then you take the next you look at the list. I mean, I've been out of the direct lobbying business for three years.

There are people who are republicans who show up on these talk shows and I've never even heard of them. That's because they don't do anything, I want people to do something. I'd almost rather have somebody who says, you know, I've been in the house for six years and uh, this is what I'm gonna do. Even if I don't agree with it, at least I know that they're not simply checking the box and going to kevin McCarthy, how do I vote on this? You know, those days ought to be gone forever.

Democrats and republicans, they've got to think for themselves. But if you have the leadership of a nancy Pelosi, it really matters. If you, if you really think Jessica Cisneros is the reason she supports Henry Cuellar is she's assuming that there's some slight chance that the house may stay Democratic and she's going to need every single vote, Jessica cisneros probably wouldn't support nancy Pelosi as speaker. So there are these and so they are outside outsized members of Congress, um, who ought to be more responsible. If they're going to lead a party, then they ought to know what the party should stand for and it shouldn't stand for.

Everybody has an opinion on abortion, it doesn't matter what yours are you gonna vote for me, Henry? I'm supporting you. Those people, those people in leadership ought to be leaders. They ought to be people who are able to look at what is happening, what the problem is and come up with clever ideas that are workable. And if they're not workable, try it, this country used to try things now we don't try a damn thing. We just we're locked into this pattern where we decide well there's this alternative and that alternative, we don't think to use that cliche out of the box, The smallest, the biggest boxes are the boxes around the capital because people do groupthink, they very rarely do independent thinking and they have a lot of staff, it's like, you know the people on the Supreme Court do not write those opinions.

They have a huge number of clerks every year who write the opinions for them and then they try to convince us that it's really, really they're so smart, you know being a lawyer, I think I can say this, it doesn't take you don't really have to be that smart to be a lawyer. A lot of lawyering is just simple, you can almost go their their internet sites where you can go write a will, you know to I mean yeah it's boilerplate stuff. Even in major appellate cases, there's a lot of boilerplate stuff, you don't have to be a genius.

And with the demonstration of that is people like Clarence thomas uh mm cavanaugh amy coney barrett, do we think those are the best people. I remember when Clarence thomas was nominated, the president came out and said this is the best person, we had the best person in the whole world is Clarence thomas, you've got to be kidding as I used to debate him when he's on the equal employment opportunity commission. And I thought where did where did this guy come from? And then soon he went all the way to the Supreme Court.

Yeah and it's worked out well for him as it has. And for the religious right the religious right is in total control of the United States Supreme Court. When people say what does it mean that you know it's lost its credibility. It means it's so obviously wrong that it shouldn't be allowed to get away with it. That's what it means. It's not one decision. What we've seen in the last months of the latest time is that one horrendous decision right after another. You can have guns on the new york subway system.

They're passing a law that says you can't maybe they just did. But that too will be challenged. In fact there's a challenge in Washington D. C. Which has a lot of regulations appropriately against carrying weapons. Um Some guy challenging his right because the metro in Washington, it's always it's a little more fun frankly than new york's. But even do you really want to go, yeah there is an opinion. We don't have time to talk about it. But you look at that gun decision. The gun decisions written by Clarence thomas.

He says the only two reasons you would have to want to conceal carry is because you're a criminal plotting a crime or you just want it for self protection. There's another reason if you have a concealed handgun and somebody cut you off road rage. You go to the gun, you point the gun then maybe that guy has a gun to there's a shootout on a side street in the middle of Washington, D. C. They it is as if the Supreme Court justices do not live on this in this world, on this planet or in this country because it is a naivete about the writing.

I'm sure it's tempered slightly by the fact that some of their law clerks are youngish people. But I've lost all faith in the United States Supreme Court. I would not have ever wanted to bring cases like we brought up the A. C. L. U. Or americans United to this court. I wouldn't. Yeah. And and and that's again that goes back to our, what we were discussing earlier unless democrats are serious about reforming court. Nothing that they I don't care about codifying roe v way it will be challenged.

Um And that's what's just again, so frustrating is that they don't either they're completely incompetent and they don't understand this or they're complicit. I don't really see, you know, it's just disgusting. Yeah. I mean the one thing about the senate races that gives me some sense of optimism is that the these very hot button issues we've been talking about are ones that Senate candidates who are democrats could talk could say meaningful things about and that there might be enough ticked off people in the state of Ohio for example, to go, I often vote for republicans, but this democrat says we're not arresting women for having an abortion.

We're not, maybe I'll vote for her. A lot of women can't excuse me. A lot of women candidates running this time too. Think well, before we wrap up, do you, how confident are you? Because it seems as though I'm seeing a lot of people that are even with the abortion ruling there, there there's almost like a backlash against the Democratic Party. Do you think the democrats would come out ahead in the midterms? Because I'm not confident that I think the house is lost. But I think the Senate and individual races, you know, tip o'neill speaker of the House at all.

Politics is local and in some ways I think that's true because I think if you look at what's going on in Georgia, for example, when you have pastor Warnicke who was elected in a special election, has to run now for a full term running against a man who I think in all candor it is the dumbest human being I have ever seen run for the United States Senate herschel? Yeah, I mean, I mean I said this on the show the other night host said what, but maybe it's just brain damage from concussions.

Well it is maybe it is. But this is, this is stupidity without it never ceases it. Every two days. He says something so weird and, and the polling numbers for Warnock are going way up in the last week or week and a half. That doesn't mean he's gonna win, but it does mean that, that that seat, which I think everybody thought would be lost. You know, it's not going to be lost in pennsylvania notwithstanding john Fetterman stroke. Maybe he should have been a little more candid about that, but he's still way ahead of dr Oz. It's just a charlatan.

I think people in pens and Fetterman is way ahead, way ahead, meaning I think if you're not ahead by five points, you're not gonna win. It was a demo. But yeah, I mean, but I think there, and I think as I said, I'm up in massachusetts for a couple of weeks and a lot of ads for Maggie Hassan who's running for re election as a democrat in new Hampshire and you know, she's, I thought she was probably a goner. But then the governor of New Hampshire governor, Sununu, I think most people thought he was his father, johnson, but they didn't remember why they knew him.

Um, but he decides not to run. And so now she has, I think a real chance of holding on. So you have to hold on to some of these, you have to gain a couple more. So this is not, you don't need a blue wave. You don't need a tsunami of democrats. You just need to be careful about the last couple of weeks is when people make decisions about who to vote for, Who's got a reliable chance of winning so that you can get to a number of 50 that does not include senator cinema or senator joe Manchin.

So yes, that I have guarded optimism because you can't be in despair. You can't literally go, it's all hopeless because if you do that, you contribute to an attitude of national suicide and you deserve what happens to you. You can't give it up. You walk around, you walk, it is possible in most states still to cast a ballot by mail and the other side is making it very hard to do that. But you know, if you have to, if you have to take a half a day off of work, if you don't have a ride, there are places now that will give you rides.

I wish a company. I mean, I wish that nonprofit would literally say all we're doing with your money is hiring busses and we are going to go to neighborhoods on Election Day and pick people up who want to vote well in some states that that have done that they've made that illegal. Yes, Well at least one has or they think they have, I mean that's just the, the christian right has been doing the bussing thing there against bussing of course integrate schools, but they're fine with bussing people from church right out to vote at the so they know what they're doing, they really do.

They always played this long game as you mentioned. Um, we we ought to be progressives ought to be planned at least, you know, a longer game that we've been doing. But you know, they're good people. There are the people who do change their mind. As you mentioned with Pastor Schenck. Um that was a great interview by the way that I loved that interview. Yeah, I I knew that he was moving more in the direction of of Progressivism, but I didn't know that it would be that far.

That was quite a surprise to me. Yeah. And then he apologized to you, which I just thought it was just I was very moved by that. I mean I just I didn't exactly think I was the person who needed to apologize to. But um, there are those people, but then there are the people I think of. My father. My father was a republicans an entire life when he got severe Parkinson's for years, he couldn't get out of the house. Nobody came to see him including people from the local pennsylvania Republican party and then one day he just says, you know, yes, you couldn't speak very republicans, abortion, not their business.

I mean I'm sure he was personally against abortion, but um, he just didn't think the government had that right to encroach on a decision made by a woman to have one. And I think those are people that are still out there, they still call themselves republicans. And and on our side I think we have to look at some of the things that just don't work. I mean we've all had um bad ideas sometimes they get implemented and they turn out to be really bad ideas and we ought to instead of just trying to desperately save some program that we think we love.

You need to say this isn't working, let's try something else. And then the public ideally would say you're right, it's wrong, let's think of something else. And really come up with a creative program. Creative compromises. Exactly. I was involved with one on a church state issues or wrapped us up. They wanted to pass a bill to allow christian clubs to meet in public schools and I said you know this is a terrible idea. So I went to the A. C. L. U. Leadership at the time I said why don't we just try to make this a student rights bill and say not just religion clubs of any kind about any culture or political issue.

And the head of the A. C. L. U. At the time Ira Glasser said that's great think of what we could have done with that during the Vietnam war. So working with Lowell Weicker again we've got him to change the bill. Is this big two Hour session with another senator? Senator finally said, okay, let's make it. That's why there's so many gay straight student alliance is all over the United States because of that bill and the right wingers who kind of went along with it in the beginning, who wrote them in their right wing magazines.

I wonder if we made a mistake in passing that bill. We got our christian clubs, the gay people got there. It's too, and this is why you are really an unsung hero because so many of the things that we have come to take for granted you have been a part of you've you've defended. So on behalf of everyone, I want to thank you for all of the work that you've done and the work that you continue to do. I appreciate it. And really do you really, I've been so nervous interviewing you because um you know, literally seeing you on the day of filming show and it's just you you are an inspiration to me and you've you've really in my eyes and my heart on so many issues.

Um, we don't get enough of you on the David Fellman. So you've got an hour though. Still need a little bit more. We need you to do more interviews too on the David Letterman show because the people that you've been interviewing lately. I mean, we need to hear those voices actually, it's been postponed because they had an illness in his family. But I have one coming up next week where I'm talking to a draft resistor from the jimmy carter reinstitution of selective service. And the First amendment lawyer who handled a lot of obscenity cases.

And the question I want to address to both of them is why do we have laws on the books? Criminal statutes that could come crashing down on a person if we're not going to enforce them and draft registration is unenforced obscenity laws, as I mentioned earlier, virtually not. And force if you pass the time when the culture needs these prosecutions, why don't we just take the laws off the books? That's my little libertarian tinge. I agree. Because some of those laws do get applied occasionally. Um, and a lot of times it's, you know, it's it's in unjust ways.

I mean, we we do need and again, I agree we need a lot of compromise. I mean, I love that. Again, I don't have a problem with christian groups in schools, but I like the way that you frame that is it should be open to everyone. Exactly. So on people other than the David Filmon show. Working people learn more about you and listen to your show? You said you had a show on Sirius. I do john Fugelsang show on XM, the progressive Network usually once a once a month.

And I think the easiest thing to for people to find that they want a little about history in line is to go to www dot barry w Lynn dot com my website and um it talks about other things I'm doing. Sometimes I do um still do some public appearances, but and I am almost finished. I'm we're doing yet another edit of my memoir which is called paid to piss people off and people go, where did that come from? A high school student came up to me at a party when he lived in Maryland and he said, mr lin, I want to do what you do when I grow up.

I said, what do you think I do? He said, I think you get paid to piss people off. And I did say, well sometimes you have to get their attention before you can make real change, but it's been fun to write it and I hope that will be out. Well, I'm I'm talking to one publisher about the possibility of getting it out in before the holidays, the december holidays, but I don't know about that. Well, see, I've enjoyed this very much. Me too, thank you so much.

Um and stay out of trouble, as David Feldman would say, and only good trouble. Only good trouble mary Lynn, thank you very much. We will be back. We will see you next Tuesday 2:00. This has been crusade of America. Thank you