Off The Grid News Better Ideas For Off The Grid Living
It’s now officially at an end – the posturing, the political show, the grandiose speeches, the “tingle down the leg” moments, and the media attempts to shape public perception. The two parties have had their conventions, and at no time in recent memory have we seen the world views and party platforms so diametrically opposed.
This election is going to be the defining moment when our country decides which course it wants to take. Are we going to continue down the path of socialism and increasing government control, or do we turn back to our Founders’ vision of limited government and liberty? This election will represent in microcosm our beliefs and values, and in January 2013, the person who places his hand on the Bible before the Chief Justice and swears the oath of office will be whom we have chosen, and by extension, whom we deserve.
Off The Grid Radio
Ep 119
Released: September 7, 2012
Bill: Here is today’s show. I’m Bill Heid with my guest today, Brian Brawdy. Brian, what in the heck are you up to?
Brian: I’m just sitting across from you, glad to be here—sunny, beautiful day.
Bill: Sunny, beautiful Thompson Illinois. It’s always beautiful and sunny here, I would say too.
Brian: I will tell you that it’s also a zero chance of rain today here in Thompson, which makes it terribly like the site of the outdoor Democratic Convention and where our President—President Obama—was going to give his speech. Now they say although it was driven indoors because of the fear of lightning, there is now a zero percent chance of rain so we share that in common.
Bill: Can I just say something in President Obama’s defense? It might have looked… When he went outside and looked it might have been cloudy to the west and he might have thought, “You know, why chance it? Why chance it? There are some clouds down there” and so what do you think? But there is a zero… The meteorologists are saying there is more likelihood of being struck by lightning…
Brian: Meatballs. Cloudy with a chance of meatballs.
Bill: With a chance of meatballs. You’re more likely to get hit with some food item or something falling from the sky. So what’s behind this—the venue? Is he…? Are they not filling up the venues, really? Seriously?
Brian: Yeah. That’s… And I worked in politics for a long time so I can tell you that you always want the candidate framed so it looks like the room’s packed and a lot of times you use bunting and camera angles but I guess if you’re in an outdoor stadium that holds—what’s it supposed to be—a million people or whatever? That’s a lot of bunting.
Bill: Well it’s got to be 80,000-100,000 in that particular venue. Isn’t that where the Panthers play?
Brian: I believe… You know I’ll check real quick while you’re doing some other stuff and see if that’s what’s going on. But yeah, they are worried about not being able to put people in the seats.
Bill: Well I think everyone’s going to get a seat inside too and I was interested in watching just last night with the whole God thing and it’s on Drudge today—today as we film this—Thursday. This show will be Friday. But now they can’t figure out—the Democrats—can’t figure out whether they want God involved or not and I always get a chuckle out of that. Are the booers—the guys that were booing; the anti-God part of the Party—are they booing because they’re the more consistent Democrats? Are they saying, “Look, we’re the Party that kind of doesn’t need that”? And are the other ones…? Are the other guys, Brian, like the sort of astute fellows like David Axelrod—and the Carvilles and the Axelrods—are those folks saying, “Look, this isn’t going to play in Peoria very well. We better God this… We’d better church this up a little bit” is the [inaudible 0:03:11.8]. “We’d better church this up.” And so is that what they’re trying to do?
Brian: I think so. You know when you think about political spin—and this is a question that I’ve asked you throughout our friendship—just how gullible must we seem? When David Axelrod sits in a room with Valerie Jarrett or for that matter, Bill—any political spin.
Bill: It could be on the other side.
Brian: It doesn’t have to be. You know and the names of Romney’s team escape me but anyone—sit in a room and go “How are we going to pull one over? The American folks are fairly gullible. They’ll fall for anything. How do we pull it over? How are we going to spin it?” You know? And I’m looking now. It says yeah—“Chance of rain at the Obama speech zero percent. Advertisers lower expectations for convention bounce.” So the political types will do what they can to spin it to always make their guy look good and it’s not one party. It’s both.
But as far as the God reference goes that was kind of surprising to me because when you think of the Declaration of Independence, when you think of a lot of the other founding documents, you think—which you’re more of a comedian than I am—but when you have on your paper currency “In God We Trust,” I don’t see… But I should say—in fairness—when the whole thing went down with the… What was it, Jeramy? The corpsmen—remember the corpsmen that would run in to save everyone? I go how do you get away with butchering the S when you come from the state of Illinois? Now if you’re from Texas and you say “corpsmen,” I’ve got to give it to you because you pronounce the S. But when you come from the state of Illinois and the S is silent…
Bill: Illinois.
Brian: Illinois. I’m sorry.
Bill: If you’re from Illinois you could logically make that mistake or maybe he really wasn’t from Illinois.
Brian: Maybe not. I don’t know about that—maybe not. I now… Anymore, I just call it the great state of Illinoid. If you have to deal with anyone down in Springfield I just call it Illinoid.
Bill: No birth certificate and no documents saying that he was ever in Illinois. I’m just kidding.
Brian: That’s okay.
Bill: He was our Senator for a short time and man—quickly got on that ballot and did quite well for himself. Probably the country—not so well—in terms of the economy and so forth, Brian. I think… I don’t think that we’re better off. I’m not sure how… If you were to put one of the other candidates there, there is no real way of saying, “Well if Bush would have been elected for another term we would have been X.” I don’t know all of that because some of this… The guy’s a socialist, a progressive and so forth and I think people really need to kind of think about that in terms of how we think and vote but in terms of the economic side, I don’t know. I mean…
Brian: I’m with you.
Bill: Who was going to come in there and what are they going to do? So let’s… I happened to talk to a Congressman that knows Paul Ryan and said, “You know Paul Ryan’s the real deal. He’s going to try to do some things.” Well if you remember, Brian, we’ve had insiders from the Reagan administration… One of the attorneys—remember the attorney that we had on…
Brian: Jonathan Emord?
Bill: Jonathan Emord.
Brian: Great guy.
Bill: He was on Reagan’s team and remember the question I asked him? I said, “Jonathan, was Ronald Reagan for real? Did he really…? Was his intent really to eliminate the Department of Education like he said?” And he said, “Without a doubt it was” and he got in there and realized that… Their team realized the thing was a bureaucratic buzz saw and… I’m not saying Reagan was a puppet. He’s one of my heroes. I think he was a great guy and did a lot of good—not as good as probably he could have done—but whatever. He’s still probably the last great statesman that this country has had that made you feel really good about being an American. And what’s Paul Ryan going to do? My point is—is he going to turn the spigot off?
Brian: He’s going to push old people in wheelchairs off of cliffs, right? Didn’t I see that on TV, Jeramy? Isn’t that what’s going to happen?
Bill: That’s probably what they’re saying is going to happen. But I’m saying an honest man would go say, “Look, we can’t continue to spend this money. We have to turn this spigot off.” And that’s not…
Brian: Can you turn a spigot off though, Bill, when it eclipsed $16 trillion, $6 trillion of that in the last four years? Is that a spigot that can be turned off?
Bill: I think Lord Cains has won the day. In other words, I think it’s part of a zeitgeist that’s part of the landscape. In other words, it will be very difficult for anybody to turn any spigot off because what we’ve learned from Europe is anyone—a political candidate—that says, “I’m going to cut your check out,” the next time people go to the polls that guy doesn’t win.
Brian: Sure.
Bill: So as we progress down this road towards this financial cliff that Paul Ryan has addressed—probably one of the… At least he’s saying that it exists. That’s a good thing… If you want to get to Point B you better where know where Point A is and Paul Ryan—certainly economically—knows where Point A is. But what’s he going to do? Is he going to turn…? I mean we live in farm country here. This year a lot of our friends that are here that have property—even around where we’re at—they’re going to be with their hand out to the government saying, “I can’t make it. I need a bail out. You’ve got to bail me out.” So everyone—even Conservatives and these farmers are conservative folks—they are wanting… They are going to need to be bailed out or they’re not going to make their payment. They’re going to lose their farm. Roll cascading series of economic events. So “When do the bail outs stop?” is my real question.
Brian: That’s…
Bill: Who is going to address that?
Brian: I don’t know. Yeah, I’m with you, my friend. And I think that getting back to what you said about God and in the platform and you said that they’re socialists and progressive and I heard the line the other day from one of their videos—“The government is the one thing we all belong to.”
Bill: I heard that.
Brian: Wasn’t that amazing?
Bill: That was an amazing thing—which Hegel would be happy. That’s a bumper sticker that you should get—“Hegel would be happy”—because Hegel said that government is God walking on the earth and so if our unifying factor… Tommy Jefferson—an ostensible deist—the unifying factor in this country wasn’t government. He hated that concept and so did Patrick Henry and everyone… all of the other founders. They hated government as a unifying concept. They wanted something transcendent to be unifying. They wanted the Ten Commandments to be… That’s the culture they grew up in. That’s not the culture we’re in now.
Brian: No, not at all. And I think to your point, when you said, “Look, if we’re the people on the floor that booed the reintroduction of the word “God” into it”—and we’ll probably get all the emails. Direct them to Jeramy. I… But at least they stood for what they believe. Even though I disagree with them they stood for what they believe. So I’d be a little more of a fan of President Obama if he just stopped all the bologna, stopped treating us like we’re gullible little school kids and go “Yes. I’m a socialist. I’m a community organizer. I’m…” Whatever “I” am—I’m an atheist—I’m a this or that. At least… And then let the country decide who you’re really voting for. But every time Valerie Jarrett or Axelrod or Rahm Emanuel… I saw something the other day from our mayor in Chicago—correct me if I’m wrong—but “When President Obama gets there the rain will stop”?
Bill: Well there is a zero percent chance.
Brian: Well Rahm was right.
Bill: He called that one, didn’t he? The rain stopped. The power of Obama. The power of government is amazing and one of the things we want to talk about today a little bit is when the power gets out of control and what happens? And so I kind of wanted to look behind the scenes at some of the ways that government is becoming more powerful and some of the tools that are being used to sort of snoop on us, as it were. We’ve had this article that I gave you a copy of and I’ve got a copy in front of me too. The information comes from the McAlvany Intelligence Advisor, which I get. It’s a newsletter from Don McAlvany and it’s a good one because Don’s a Christian fellow and so forth. Well he had gotten some information from Mike Snyder’s website End of America—EndOfTheAmericanDream.com—and it’s pretty amazing stuff. He’s got 14 or so different technologies that are using that the government—that unifying…
Brian: Sure. That we all belong to.
Bill: That we all belong to. If it’s all such a friendly thing why so many tools to sort of Orwell up on us? Why so many gadgets and gizmos? Why so much money being poured into all of this technology—this snooping technology?
Brian: Well like you said over a year ago to me… You said, “Brian, watch. Pretty soon you’re going to see TSA all over the place.” Remember? It wasn’t just going to be at the airports. Transportation security administration—you told me last year—you’re going to start seeing them at more public venues. You’ll see them on trains. You’ll see them… You were absolutely right.
Bill: Do you know where part of that conversation…? Do you know where that came from? That was from my conversation in Mexico at the Ambassador’s house and talking to an unknown friend. It also has something to do with Thomas Jefferson, believe it or not. Anyway, with him—one of Dick Cheney’s friends—just with him saying, “Wouldn’t it be great if I could put these full body scanners in every gym and train station?” So I guess those companies want to put that technology in gymnasiums, train stations, bus stations, NFL stadiums—everywhere you go. So you’ve got kind of government… This is a case of maybe mercantilism, right? You’ve got government working with business…
Brian: Sure.
Bill: And this is where Cheney’s company really does best, right? Knowing what strings to pull to make this happen. So these companies…
Brian: And who was the other one, Bill? Chernoff, wasn’t it? I don’t see his scanners anymore in any of the airports. I’m going through—just flying back from Denver yesterday—a totally different type of scanner now than the ones…
Bill: Scanner wars.
Brian: Scanner wars—yeah. Yeah.
Bill: Who’s got the best scanner?
Brian: Yeah.
Bill: I have to tell you, at a recent… I went on a little trip not too long ago and was going through a scanner and so I thought I would leave an aspirin in my pocket—and this is a full… They have full body scanners now, even at our little local airport. And so what I thought I’d do was leave… And I’m not into… These guys… Listen, I hear a lot of wacky, negative TSA stories. These guys are really nice people down at our airport so it’s in a small airport and everybody’s nice. But I had an aspirin in my pocket and you’re supposed to empty everything out of your pockets. And so I thought, “Well, everything doesn’t mean this aspirin.” Sure enough… Sure enough, that came up on the scanner and I had to go get patted down.
Brian: Really?
Bill: An aspirin. So amazing what technology it is. So you can imagine… I should have asked him if I had any tumors or anything.
Brian: When you ask for the full body scan I usually say, “Look, can I just turn my head to the left and cough because I’ve got a doctor’s appointment next week. Could you check my hernia for me? I can kill two birds with one stone here before I get on the plane.”
Bill: Yeah, we could… You could actually… I would pay $10 to go through the scanner if it gave me medical… if it gave me the same data that maybe they have.
Brian: Yeah. I say they subject us to an MRI. Let’s just… You know they could lie me down on the conveyer belt and I’ll go right through—just like my luggage—give me a quick MRI so when I’m done I’m clear to fly and I get a clear bill of health.
Bill: They could have a doctor or something right at the end of the conveyer belt and he could advise you wherever you’re flying—wherever your destination point is—the hospital that could have all of that stuff, send your medical information to the hospital, get you there ahead of time, have your operation before you go to do whatever it is you’re going to do.
Brian: That’s a great idea. I mean like I said, kill two birds with one stone. That’s amazing, Bill—an aspirin? When I go through… You know my little bucking of authority. I leave anything in my pockets I can just to kind of win my little battles but they found an aspirin on you? Like a bottle of aspirin or one little aspirin?
Bill: No—one little tiny aspirin that I had. I got all kinds of aches and pains, as you know, and next thing you know I’m getting the big pat down. Of course, as I said, these guys… Our local TSA people are just kind of a lot of fun and whenever I wear my Packers shirt it’s even more fun because they’re Bear fans and so forth and we go back and forth. It’s just a lot of…
Brian: They’re planting aspirin on you.
Bill: But the big picture is that’s problematic. If you can spot an aspirin you could probably, as we say, spot a tumor or…
Brian: Sure.
Bill: Who knows if you had some kind of thing wrong with you, they may be able to sort of help you medically somehow.
Brian: That would be great. Then I think other people would have a different opinion of screening agents.
Bill: Just don’t call it full body scan. Just call it an MRI.
Brian: MRI—I like that. Hey, you know when you were speaking earlier about this Intelligence Advisor that you get and I was really kind of drawn to this pre-crime surveillance camera. So no more…
Bill: Speaking of airports… Yeah.
Brian: Yeah. No more innocent until proven guilty. You’re already guilty, Mr. Heid, and we’re going to use these cameras to catch you pre-act.
Bill: Yeah. What they’re doing is putting cameras out that are sort of connected to computers and they’re looking at your body language and they’re going to develop models for criminal behavior. So when I limp along because I didn’t take my aspirin that’s creating a profile of a type and then they’ll put all of these types into a computer and eventually have some kind of program that sort of says, “Here’s what a criminal looks like” and as you walk through airports, bus ways—wherever the public is. My guess is these will be out in front of NFL football stadiums—pregame and so forth—looking at the way people walk and all in the name of stopping terrorism, which we haven’t really… There hasn’t really… When was the last terrorist act that there was in this country? Real terrorist act—not the phony, staged ones that the government puts on every once in a while but the… I mean real—like 9/11 was pretty real.
Brian: 9/11 was real. How about… Was it Fort Hood or are we no longer allowed to talk about Hassan? Was that considered a terrorist act? I don’t know how that all played out—when he shot all the soldiers?
Bill: I guess that was a terrorist act of some sort.
Brian: Kind of. Yeah.
Bill: Maybe learning how he walked—shuffled—whatever. And then if you do the same thing then that gives them a profile and I don’t know if they rush out and tackle you or something but that’s a scary technology.
Brian: So are unmanned drones in US airspace. I saw a thing the other day where thousands of police departments… Now you know we were joking last summer about this one police department in Maine—remember—that got the tank? Its police department was given like an urban assault vehicle and it was in a city of 100 people or something. But now I saw a report where thousands of police agencies—even local police agencies—are putting in for their own drones.
Bill: And media. Of course the media gets drones as well. So the police and the TV become the same thing on some level. That’s an interesting concept where it’s all kind of… Everyone’s joining forces. But… So private industry’s getting drones. The government’s getting drones. I know there have been stories about drones being used for Nebraska and Iowa farmers for EPA’s looking at what do you do with your hog set up or whatever they might be checking out. So they’re checking you out from space. Every little thing that you do they’re going after and they’re going after… One of the other ones that was on here—not… I mean drones are scary and the fact that nobody cares that this is going on—that should send a… That should scare people.
Brian: But what do you think the tipping point’s going to be, Bill? Because most people go “Well, if I’m not a bad guy I don’t care if people surveil me.”
Bill: What was the tipping point for the Jews in Nazi Germany? It was too late. The tipping… The too-late tipping point—there’s another title for another book—but I just think people don’t get it until it’s too late and that’s the problem. What percentage of people, would you say, kind of understand that this is an important thing—that this is something that really can’t be… that we can’t allow government to do? Who is government? Is it all this big, smiling, kumbayah, we-are-all-one—this monistic idea of just oneness? Well I don’t think… I don’t get that impression from reading these surveillance technology articles that they think we’re all one with them. I think that local police departments, Brian, are becoming militarized and being trained to say, “We’re not all one”—that “We’re the government and we’re here to enforce X, Y and Z”—whatever that might be.
Brian: And you know it’s infuriating to me because here in the state of Illinoid when you’re driving around and the like on some of the highways it’s the word “obey.” And I see it more and more on traffic control signs—say, “Obey traffic laws.” It’s just the word “obey.” I don’t know why that grates on me such but much the same as when that DNC video the other day that the government is the only thing we all belong to. Well there are two—actually there are more than two—but the differences are the two top meanings of “belong.” It means like you’re a group or your car belongs to you. So you can look at the word “belong” as you’re a group of people or someone owns you. Think about that. The government is the only thing we all belong to. I don’t belong to the government. So that to me is what’s so troubling.
Bill: Well that’s Marxist language.
Brian: Sure.
Bill: Because I mean that’s right out of Marxist playbook. And again, he’s emphasizing oneness to the exclusion of diversity. I thought we’d like diversity.
Brian: I guess.
Bill: This is the left again. They’re… One guy years ago—Cornelius Van Til—talked about the rational-irrational… He likened it to—in his world years ago—to washwomen, Brian—the rational mind and the irrational mind. Well when the left is done with the rational they give it over to the irrational—that wash maid—and she washes it for a while and then she gives it over to the other one—the rational—and it just goes back and forth because it doesn’t make sense. It can’t make sense. So I mean I think it’s a problem of understanding. You mentioned this idea of who owns what. They certainly want to know what you own. One of the articles in here was these mobile backscatter vans.
Brian: Yeah—look at that.
Bill: That fly…that drive around and x-ray everything. These are unmarked vans that are in our communities that are driving around just x-raying everything. Is that amazing?
Brian: Well and it goes on to say, “American cops are set to join the US military in deploying American Science and Engineering’s Z Backscatter Vans or mobile backscatter radiation x-rays. These are what the TSA officials call ‘the amazing radioactive genital viewer.’” So I’m going to go out on a limb here, Bill, when they have these things that model your movements in public so they can see if you’re a bad guy—I guess turning your genitals towards one of these American Science and Engineering’s Z Backscatter Vans might very well be one of those signals that you’re a bad guy. I guess it doesn’t matter to them.
Bill: They call this an isotope cannon.
Brian: See there are certain things I’ve learned to leave alone. I threw it out there and go “Well, I’ll tee it up for Bill. He’ll use the word ‘cannon.’”
Bill: Yeah. Well I mean just imagine if you’re a police officer… And you and I—you’ve been a police officer so there is a degree of respect that we have for police officers, obviously. There… You have to have… If you’re going to have a republic you’ve got to have respect for law and order. What we’re pushing against is when law and order becomes the police state and in this case I was thinking about the guy that comes home from work and the wife says, “What did you do today, Honey?” and he said, “Well I ran the isotope cannon.”
Brian: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I’m going around scanning radioactive… the amazing radioactive…
Bill: I worked my way up to the isotope cannon. So I started out as a patrol guard—as a crossing guard—and now I’m playing with the big boys.
Brian: I like your point earlier that when the tipping point is tipped it’s too late but what happened to the fourth amendment because if you could help me—you’re more of a Constitutional scholar and I’ve read some of your papers and listened to your audio interviews and some of the CDs and everything else—could you just catch me up real quick because I missed the part of the fourth amendment that allows the “amazing radioactive genital viewers.” Did I…?
Bill: It’s in there.
Brian: I’m not very well read. It’s in there?
Bill: And again, as long as it’s an election time, let’s talk about something. And again, we’re not trying to be partisan, necessarily, today but listen—President Obama believes that the Constitution is liquid, dynamic and moving. There has always been throughout history this concept… If you look at philosophers, a lot of the even early Milesian philosophers had this concept of things are dynamically changing. So Darwin wasn’t the first guy that came in and said that “I’m thinking about a changing universe.” There have always been this idea of static versus dynamic since mankind—early on—that’s been the philosophy is “Are things standing still? Are they moving?” And so the people that think that things that are standing still and are more static—they say the only time we need to explain things is when they’re changing and vice versa. The people that think that the universe is in a constant state of flux say the only time we need to explain things—that’s its natural orientation is flux—and the only time we need to really have an explanation is when we see that it’s not changing.
Brian: Sure.
Bill: So that’s been the great argument for philosophers for years and years. Fast-forward to President Obama—President Obama’s philosophical perspective is that the world is changing. That’s why he leads towards the sort of Hegelian-Marxist concept and so presuppositionally, as he looks at the Constitution, Brian, what he sees is something that’s changing and moving. So back to the fourth amendment—or any amendment—yeah, I believe in the Constitution. I can believe in the Constitution.
What’s that really mean? That means that here is this document that needs to constantly change and change and change. So the fourth amendment to… If you say “the fourth amendment” to President Obama that means totally something different than it does to you and I because of his worldview. He just sees it as something that needs to change and move along. Being a Christian, I kind of cling to sort of a static orientation, at least with respect to God’s law and the Constitution. I see them being hey, if we want to hold onto freedom we hold onto the Constitution the way it was written and analyze it in terms of what the original intent was and we try to hold onto it. It doesn’t change every day.
Brian: Right.
Bill: And I think he sees that—and people like him—he sees that and they see yeah, it needs to flux and I’m saying President Obama doesn’t get up in the morning and say, “How can I destroy America?” I say his worldview is such that he sees this in a different way.
Brian: Oh, absolutely agreed. Absolutely agreed, Bill. I… And that’s why I say…
Bill: Which probably is more dangerous than getting up and saying, “I wish I could destroy America” in some ways because he believes what he’s doing is correct.
Brian: And to your point about the people standing up and booing when the word “God” was reintroduced—you look at that and go “Well, at least you know where they’re line is.”
Bill: Good for them.
Brian: That’s more honorable in my book to… Just tell me the truth. Don’t lie to me and then look at me like I’m a gullible little four-year old. Tell me the truth and then let me make my decision based on your truth. Let me hold it up to my truth, see how they gel—if at all—but don’t feed me a bologna sandwich and just treat me like I’m an idiot.
Bill: Yeah, like you’re part of a poll and “Let’s throw God in there because that can get some voters that are undecided.” Cornelius Van Til—back to him again—he would talk about those folks becoming epistemologically self-conscious. In other words, they’re not fuzzy minded. They’re starting to know who they really are and what they really believe—and good for them. Now I happen to be on the other side of the aisle of that belief system but good for the people that kind of know what it is that makes them tick. If they’re anti-God let’s play out the implications of being anti-God.
Brian: Absolutely—and then let the chips fall where they may.
Bill: Let the chips fall where they may.
Brian: Just be honest about it. I’m with you. So let’s see… I’m loving this letter. Do you mind if we go over a few more on here?
Bill: No, let’s go over them.
Brian: I can tell you from back in the day when I had to do fingerprints, Bill—and this goes back quite a few years—but I used to use superglue and what I would do is when you went into a place—a detective sergeant that taught me very early on—whenever a crime is committed one thing is left and something else is taken away. And the best detectives don’t focus on what was taken away. They focus on what the bad guy left behind. So I’d go in with fingerprint powder and I’d… You see this all the time on
TV. There’s a little brush and they put fingerprint on them. Well what a lot of people don’t know is we used to take superglue and if you put superglue on cotton balls—and I used a regular little fish tank with a glass lid to kind of trap it in—well the fumes of the superglue would harden on the fingerprint so I could make constant, innumerable replications of it. But now, according to this newsletter, they can snag your fingerprints from 20 feet away and it says here “Can you imagine someone reading your fingerprints from 20 feet away without you ever knowing it?” This kind of technology is actually already here according to Popular Science. What do you think about that, Bill? Talk about the fourth amendment.
Bill: Well, it’s another… And of course the biggest customer for this would be the military and the police but it also has private uses. One of the articles… In the article it actually talked about maybe a gym—just it sees your fingerprint coming 20 feet away and knows biometrically who you are. And so that’s really interesting, isn’t it? I mean where is the privacy at all? And there’s nothing wrong with biometrics in and of itself. If you want to create your own biometric devices that get inside your house and outside your house—it’s not the technology that’s evil. It’s the way that this can be used—especially if everyone ends up having a biometric… if the government has everyone have biometric prints.
Brian: That’s a great point and it leads to the other one where it says law enfor — talk about technology that isn’t either good or evil—it’s just the way it’s used. Another paragraph here in the newsletter—“Law enforcement”—this isn’t going to surprise anyone, I hope—“Law enforcement using your own cell phone to spy on you.”
Bill: Oh, especially iPhones and the Androids that have all the geo-syncing so everybody… There is always… It’s nice because you can know where you’re at and you can find out where the nearest Starbucks is.
Brian: Right. You can get a coupon, I guess. I don’t drink coffee. I don’t know but I eat scones—look at me. You’re not going to be my size by saying no to a free scone so… I leave mine on just for that.
Bill: So everybody knows your biometric information. They know exactly where you are. Most people carry their phones with them all the time. They know exactly where you are, for how long—and folks will… At least a good cop—you were in this business, Brian—a good cop would say, “All right. What’s the Bill Heid story? What’s he do? Where’s he go? He goes from this place to this place and this place and this place. And then are there any aberrations to that?”
Brian: But see in my years we had to get a court order to find that. I had to get a court order. I can’t… Back in my day I couldn’t stop someone in an airport. The moment I would walk up to a suspect—lets say Bill and you suspect them of committing a crime—the moment you’d say, “Hey, can I ask you a question, they had to be given Miranda. Didn’t matter whether you thought—they were under arrest—the moment you impeded at all their movement in a public place they had to get their Miranda warrant.
Bill: But think about this thing that we just talked about, Brian.
Brian: Sure.
Bill: Think about the world seeing itself—the collective populous—seeing the world, seeing the Constitution, seeing law as something sort of what we would call positivist or dynamic. In other words, you used to have to have X. Now laws change, right? Because we’re in this state of flux—everything’s in a state of flux—so you no longer… Judges no longer need that. Cops no longer need that. People don’t need to go through these archaic, barbarian things like they used to have to do. Yeah, you need a warrant—okay. Well that’s barbaric. Like they call gold barbaric, right?
Brian: Sure.
Bill: Anytime they don’t want to do something they call it barbaric and that’s what they call this and so you have in effect people getting all your information and it just becomes such a burden on the system—every time a judge would want something—so they just give them these blank checks and say, “Do whatever it is that you want to do.” That is a formula for a Nazi police state.
Brian: How would you like this as a formula for a Nazi police state? “Automated”—this is another one of the paragraphs in this article—“Automated license plate readers—more than 250 cameras in the district and its suburbs”—District of Columbia—“and it’s suburbs scan license plates in real time, helping police pinpoint stolen cars and fleeing killers.” Even their own spin—isn’t that great? “Oh yes, because we’ve got to catch the fleeing killers.” “But the program quietly has expanded beyond what anyone had imagined, even just a few years ago. With virtually no public debate police agencies have begun storing the information from the cameras, building databases that document the travels of millions of vehicles.” They track you from the moment you come into the District of Columbia and they keep tracking you, Bill, until you leave.
Bill: That’s crazy. That’s outrageous. And like you said, with the… What would the founding fathers say to such things? Do you need that much security? What’s the trade off here? What is it, Brian, that we’re trading off?
Brian: What would they say to RFID microchips in people’s clothing? What would they say, do you think—another one of these, Bill, as you know from reading the article—was the face reading software. Good golly. Who are we fighting?
Bill: And again, this is a modeling software that creates profiles and… I don’t know where… Where can this end? And the unusual part about it is anytime they start these programs it just gets expanded and expanded and there is no resistance because… Here is a… Can I make one little point about a representative democracy?
Brian: Please.
Bill: I mean we really live in a republic—we don’t really live in a democracy—that the only way to gain a democracy is what’s being done now and that’s special interest groups—lobbying groups—information-rich intermediaries come in and argue for X-cause. Well, there is no one to represent us so when someone goes to expand… Let’s just play this out a little bit. Let’s say someone wants some face reading. Let’s say that the Thompson police want face reading software to put over at Casey’s across the street in case—in a town of 500 people—in case there is any kind of bad guys walking around. Well, they could… What would they have to do? The answer is really nothing.
There wouldn’t be any… If they wanted to get some from a judge the police department would just go to the local judge and say, “Hey, we’d like to put this. Would you give us some kind of authorization to do this?” and it’s just that person talking to the judge and then he goes “Well yeah, if it helps… If it just saves one life…” and that’s another common thing that they always say—“If it just saves one thing…” Well, then they go do it. But there is nobody to stand in there with those two people talking—the judge and the cop—to say, “Hey, wait a minute.”
So the “Hey, wait a minute” factor in this country is gone and that’s… If republics have an Achilles heel—if Brad Pitt can get nailed in one spot—it’s… The weak spot of it is we’re helpless against lobbyists. We’re helpless against the special interests because there is no… Who is there to represent us in Congress? And the answer is nobody. It’s all these big companies paying off Congressmen to vote a certain way and where is the American public? We’re busy doing our jobs. We’re busy working to make our payments and so forth. We’re busy being wage slaves to the control grid—whatever way you want to phrase it. That’s what we’ve got and it’s the undoing of the republic. It really is.
Brian: Well you know you say you were busy working, trying to pay our bills, do all the rest of this—look at this paragraph in the article. “Spying on us through our own appliances.” You’ve been telling me about this for a couple of years—these black box technologies. So now we’re busy, Jeramy, as you know. I always like to reach over and get Jeramy’s attention and make sure he’s not like Skyping or Twittering or something during the show. As you know now, we’re busy making money to buy these appliances, Bill, so they can do what?
Bill: Spy on us.
Brian: Spy on us. God love us. We’re so gullible. We’re so nice.
Bill: The nice part about it, Brian, is your refrigerator can tell you… You’re going to be able to go on your iPhone…
Brian: Oh, cool.
Bill: And you’re going to know whether you need more milk or not…
Brian: Groovy.
Bill: …when you’re at… Yeah. I can see how excited you are.
Brian: I am.
Bill: And when you’re at the grocery store…
Brian: I like chocolate milk after a workout.
Bill: I know you enjoy shopping so when you’re at the grocery store you’re going to know exactly what… Your refrigerator is going to report to your iPhone app and tell you exactly how much cheese and chips you have and milk and so forth. But it’s also…
Brian: Salsa? Let me know if I’m running low on salsa—that’s an event for me.
Bill: Yeah. You… Well you need a lot of salsa.
Brian: You make great salsa.
Bill: Yes.
Brian: We should do a commercial on that to… That salsa you made me last year was something else. That was great.
Bill: We make that as a family. That’s one of the things that we do as a group—the grandkids and my dad and everybody—quite a few… four generations there made that salsa for you.
Brian: Well you get the Heid app that signifies or notifies me when I’m running low on Heid salsa and I’ll put that app in my fridge but that’s about it.
Bill: Were you okay the next day, after you ate that salsa?
Brian: I don’t have to answer that. No—but I ate an inordinate amount, I would say, my friend. It was… because I like… For me, when I eat I like it to be an event. I like my eyes to water. I like my ears to just kind of cave in on themselves. I like to sweat and I like jalapenos.
Bill: Sure, sure, sure.
Brian: I like… It’s an event with me. I just don’t want to taste it. I want it to taste me. You know what I mean? I want…
Bill: I want to get sick and fall down.
Brian: Yours was nice and spicy though. I loved it—but very fresh tasting too. That’s something else.
Bill: What I think—Brian, as your friend—I think just prescribing just a cleansing every now and then is appropriate for you.
Brian: Well then I’ll take another jar of salsa before I leave today because that did the trick, my friend.
Bill: All right.
Brian: Okay, so now they’re spying on us through our appliances. Look at this one. How about your streetlights? Next time you go out, Bill—you live out in the country—next time you go out… I don’t even know if you have a streetlight near you now that I think about it but next time you’re in town you look up at a streetlight—they could be looking back at you.
Bill: They built some of these streetlights, as you know, so that they could—in a lot of places—they put speakers and cameras in them so that the Homeland Security could make announcements. So let’s say you’re walking in downtown Chicago in front of Nordstrom’s or something, getting ready to buy yourself something and you hear… Janet Napolitano has some message she’d like to give you. She would have the ability to sort of get on this speaker and tell the world something.
Brian: That’s very nice.
Bill: I’m not joking. They really are trying to do that and of course there may be some reason… Let’s say if you were in New York someone would say, “Well there is a 40 foot wave coming. You probably should all…”
Brian: Swim.
Bill: “…go to the Empire State Building.” Swim. “You should go the other way”—whatever it is. There may be some way that they could use that as a public service thing. I don’t know. But then they’ve also built them to sort of take in information as well as push out information.
Brian: Oh, I see.
Bill: So they’re looking at you. When you’re standing up there looking at it, it’s probably reading your face and trying to figure out what your pre-crime is and so forth. So there is another thing where you’re walking down the street—“There she was just walking down the street.”
Brian: Bernanke… he owes me money.
Bill: He owes me a lot of money.
Brian: All right. Speaking of hijacking your mind and Bill Murray—“US military literally wants to be able to hijack your mind. The theory is that this would enable US forces to non-violently convince terrorists not to be terrorists anymore.” Well that’s some good news. Hijack away, State Department.
Bill: Read them the Bible. Maybe that would help.
Brian: There you go.
Bill: Maybe that could give them… What they’re trying to do is create narratives—friendly narratives—and I don’t know how all that’s going to work. What we let into our minds is kind of a focus, as I was saying earlier, of our worldview. Lots of luck telling someone that wants to blow up buildings in New York to love their neighbor because that’s just not… They’re going to read that in a whole different way and they’re going to say, “You know what? In order to love my neighbor I’m going to blow that building up because that’s what Allah wants”—or whatever crazy thought that they have.
Brian: Sure—whatever it is—right. Right.
Bill: So I don’t know about that technology. I don’t know about that idea. I think maybe out of all of these things the idea of the military sitting down with terrorists and telling them stories may be one of the weaker projects. I’m not sure how much money we should put into that one.
Brian: Well this one isn’t going to surprise you. It may have happened to you. It happened to me just last week. My daughter was on my computer and I guess there is a show called “Ants” now, Bill, on TV about these really bright kids. So Paige went on and did some surfing on the internet. Now every time I’m on the internet I get a little thing popping up asking me if I want the first season CD set of Ants. I even got one the other day about the new song “Calling All the Monsters.” I guess one of the girls on the show is a vocal artist as well. So when I say… read the next paragraph—“Automated ISP monitoring of your internet activity”—it’s already going down. I can’t get away from the Disney Channel and the Ants show.
Bill: If people think that they can do something on the internet and not be able to have it tracked… The Internet is the most trackable thing in the world. And of course we’re involved in a law suit right now—I can’t really give you the details—but some of it is where we had to go back—someone did us some dirt—and so we had to go back and sort of prove that and man, there is nowhere to run here. If you’ve got an ISP and it’s yours… I suppose you can say Paige was the terrorist or whatever you want to say…
Brian: Sure.
Bill: But if it’s yours, I think the authorities are going to say, “Hey Brian, why do you go to Glen Beck’s website so much? You must hate President Obama”—or whatever logic that they might use.
Brian: Right.
Bill: That’s another scary thing that would be… At first it would start out and it would be for the terrorists and then it would be expanded to the drug trade to try to get drug guys and then it would be… Where the rest of it ends up being is a question mark, of course.
Brian: So we talked earlier, Bill, about the tipping point and the conclusion here—I thought maybe that may be something that you’d like to read to the listeners—but what are we going to do? Now that we’ve highlighted this dozen different things what do we do? Do we just wait for it to take full hold knowing that as, I believe…? Who was it that said that the tree of liberty needs to be re-watered from time to time? Is that what people are holding out for—thinking, “It’s so bad now. The only thing that’s going to help is let it run its full course and then 50 years from now we’ll all get together at Runnymede”?
Bill: I think generations… I think you’re pointing to something very right and true in history, Brian. I think generationally, every generation or every other generation has to earn their own freedom. I think it’s difficult to inherit freedom and to keep it going. I think when people came back from World War II that had a really sort of strong “What were we fighting against?” I think the things were clear. I think their kids kind of didn’t… The baby boomers probably didn’t understand that sacrifice in the same way. It doesn’t make them less people in any way, shape or form but understanding the sacrifice and I don’t think that you can… that one person can sacrifice for another—apart from the faith that I believe where obviously Christianity is a sacrificial concept—but I think for you to do something for your kids, it’s difficult. It’s just difficult. You can leave them an inheritance, Brian. You can leave them an understanding of this history. But in some form they have to fight. They have to see the battle.
So I think it’s incumbent upon parents to show their kids these marks of demarcation. What’s the antithesis here? What’s the freedom? What’s the line of freedom versus the line of slavery? I think we owe it to our kids. You’re probably not going to… Your kids aren’t going to get this in public school system—probably won’t even get it in a Christian school system. But you’re going to have to show your kids what’s right and wrong. What’s worth fighting for? What should you leave in your life and what should you leave out of your life? How to fight some of this is by just avoiding it. In other words, we talk about living off the grid. Some of the ways is—and of course we’re not talking about being paranoid and cynical and living in some little cave someplace—but we’re trying to minimize our exposure to a lot of these things.
Brian: Sure.
Bill: Just because we’re busy doing things. We’re busy playing basketball with our kids. We’re busy picking berries. We’re busy planting strawberries—whatever it might be. Now I don’t see any of these things that gets you when you’re picking strawberries or planting strawberries except maybe the drones and all I can say is wave.
Brian: Right. You know Bill, as you said that it reminded me—and you say it with such passion and I get to sit across from you and see your facial expression as you do it—but do you remember that quote from President Reagan when he said, “Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty. Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected and handed on from them to do the same or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.” That’s exactly the point you were making—just like President Reagan.
Bill: Wow. That says it all and I think that is what we have to do. We have to enable and prepare our kids for the intellectual battle. I don’t know about any other battles. I’m not God. I could never… Who could know what’s coming down the line? But we know that the worldview battles—the intellectual battles—the war for ideas rages around us, Brian, daily. We’ve been talking about the incidence… All you’ve got to do is watch… turn on a little TV and find out where these paradigms reside but they’re everywhere. So we have to gird ourselves up. At some point we have to say no. People have to say, “No more.” And I think increasingly more and more people are doing that. So prepare our kids.
Brian: And when you think about that it’s not passed in the bloodstream… People ask all the time and I respond very simply “If you go to Paris and you’ve never spoken French or never studied French you can’t expect to be able to converse in that language when you’re at the Eiffel Tower.” If you don’t know freedom and liberty… For that matter, Bill—and this is a discussion you and I have had before—if you don’t know gratitude… That’s why I’m always fascinated by people that can never be grateful for anything because I always envision them…
You know you go to Heaven one day and you’re there and you finally make it to Heaven and I picture people going up to God and going “Excuse me. I really wasn’t interested in this particular Heaven. Do you have a second or a third or a fourth? Look, I appreciate you hooking me up but I really had a different picture in my mind.” If you never learn gratitude then even if you get to Heaven how would you know you’re there? When would you be thankful for it? If you have no sense of liberty and freedom and gratitude you just don’t spontaneously get those understandings. You have to learn them now—or like a foreign language—you don’t have it when you get there.
Bill: Yeah. What you’re getting at is freedom is something that has a price and to not understand that is to not understand the nature of the universe and I think you’re just messing… You might as well take God out of your own personal platform. Everybody ought to have a person platform, right? Kind of. I mean you might as well take God out of your personal platform and operate as if there were no God because if you think that your freedom is entitled to you—without a fight, without effort… Cicero always had that comment about getting the kind of government that you deserve. I think that he was—for whatever reason—he was right on. And I think we are in the process… This election is a microcosm of our country’s beliefs of what we deserve and it’s coming and no matter what we get it’s going to be a function of what the American people deserve and I don’t say that lightheartedly. I think that that’s kind of a serious, serious thing.
Brian: Well maybe it is cyclical, Bill. Maybe it’s… I guess for folks that look back at 200-plus years now maybe our country’s run its course. Maybe it is cyclical. Just like the seasons, maybe if you back out and you look at a millennia—you just keep backing out from time and go “All right. But it will rise again” or “It will happen again. There will always be the ones that stand for freedom.” And I thought earlier when you were saying, “We’re busy playing basketball with our kids. We’re busy growing strawberries. We’re busy doing this and that”—well the regular folks alive at the time of our founders—they come to Philadelphia, they do the Declaration of Independence, they do the Constitution—they were busy with their families, playing the basketball of their day. They were busy with their families picking strawberries. They were busy. But there came a point—there came a line in the sand—where they were just like “I’ve had about enough. This ends right now.” And maybe that’s the tipping point that other people are looking for. But I guess you have to find it in your own heart before you can see it manifest in the world around you.
Bill: And Brian, certainly the folks that said that understood the concepts that we’re talking about. They weren’t rabble-rousers in such a way that we would call them revolutionaries. They simply wanted the king to go back to their original contract so they weren’t trying to just… It wasn’t the French Revolution. They weren’t trying to overthrow for overthrow’s sake. They were just trying to say, “Look, we had a deal. We had a contract. We had a covenant. And buddy—you broke it and we’re not going to take it anymore.” And I think less people think that we’re sort of talking to revolutionary talk—as we close here Brian.
Brian: Sure.
Bill: I think people need to realize that the only constituted form of revolution that’s sanctioned in the Bible is find a representative. Find a—Paul talked about in Romans—a lesser magistrate. So you need to find lesser magistrates who you can get behind and elect them. That was the genesis of the revolution in this country and if your lesser magistrate wants to say, “Hey, let’s march. Hey, let’s do something else. Let’s all vote this other way”—you follow that lesser magistrate. But for individuals to do… to take a revolution upon themselves with respect to violence—I think it’s stupid. This isn’t 1776 where England was busy with other things and couldn’t make this into the police state. There was what’s called salutary neglect. They were busy messing with the French and so forth like they’ve always been and this country was an isolated little pocket with basically no cops. That’s a whole different thing.
Brian: Sure.
Bill: This is more like Rome today. Pretend you’re in Rome. You have to do what’s pragmatic.
Brian: Sure.
Bill: You have to do what’s smart and responsible and I think at this point education probably is the best thing. How can we tell other people what the roots of our country are, Brian?
Brian: And I think the saying from Shakespeare—“Cometh the hour, cometh the man.” I agree with you that the revolution has got to be in your own heart. It’s not an outward type of display. It’s just realizing that as Rousseau said, “You were born free but everywhere you are in chains.” You look to see what are you going to do in the revolution of one in your own heart? What can you do to make a difference? Bill, we’re going to have to run here in just a minute. Any closing thoughts, my friend, on the newsletter—the Mc…?
Bill: The McAlvany? No, it was just good to get Don’s newsletter that the McAlvany Intelligence Advisor—and if you just go Google that you can find out how to get a subscription to that. I think it’s $100 or something and it’s money well spent.
Brian: Well cool. Well it was very interesting reading. How about I’ll go ahead and close it for us?
Bill: You bet.
Brian: Ladies and gentlemen, as always thanks for listening here at Off the Grid News. You can email us your questions, your comments, your critiques—your complaints to Jeramy—no, your critiques at info@OffTheGridNews. You can find us on Facebook—like so many new people do Bill, every day. Facebook is growing and growing. You can find us there by going to Facebook.com/OffTheGridNews. Of course you can also follow us on Twitter– @offgridnews. Thank you again for listening. We know an hour is a huge chunk of your day and it truly is an honor to have been able to spend it with you.
