Photo Courtesy of National Geographic
Do you ever watch reality TV and wonder what in the world they don’t show? Well tune in to hear Jay Blevins talk about his involvement with National Geographic’s Doomsday Preppers. Jay tells us the two things that he wishes would have been made more prevalent throughout his appearance on the show.
Jay also talks about how much his Christian faith plays a part in his prepping. He believes that his faith is the single most important prep he can practice. Heid asks Blevins what type of role law enforcement played in his ability to prep his family.
For the second half of the show, Heid is joined by his good friend, Brian Brawdy. Heid and Brawdy cover the most controversial government overreach in the news. They sit down to talk about the controversial discussions involving Attorney General Eric Holder and Fox News reporter, James Rosen. Brawdy offers the perspective of a former news reporter and suggests that the First Amendment is slipping away from the clutches of freedom.
Off The Grid Radio
Ep 159
Release Date May 31, 2013
Bill: And welcome to Off the Grid News. It’s Bill Heid, your host, and my special guest today is Jay Blevins. Jay’s been around, he’s been on Doomsday Preppers, he’s a police officer from the Washington, DC area. Jay, welcome.
Jay: Thanks, Bill. How are you doing today?
Bill: I am fantastic. It’s great to have you. I’ll never forget the first time I saw the episode that you were on. You seemed like a normal human being. A lot of doomsday guys, and we’ve had quite a few of them on the show, aren’t so normal. Actually you and your family seemed pretty normal to me and out of everybody—and I get my wife and I said, “Here’s a guy who’s not going to eat his cat or he doesn’t have a lot of these strange rhythms that a lot of them had.” So it was good to see just a normal person and a police officer above all things. So I know a lot of police officers but a lot of them don’t seem to have the same mindset that you have.
Jay: Well first of all, I appreciate that. I do like to consider ourselves a normal family that does prepping as well. Part of the reason we wanted to go on the show, there are a lot of preppers that don’t want to do things like that because of privacy and things like that. I respect and appreciate that. But our goal was to put a more normal face on it because we like to look at things like real events that have taken place. We don’t talk about the zombie apocalypse. We don’t talk about things we don’t know about. We look at history and know—we can look at this week in Oklahoma, the tornados and things like that. We know these things are part of our lives and so we wanted to be a normal face out there. As far as regarding police officers, I think a lot of them, well the guys that I work with, some of them are into prepping but I would say that a lot of them feel that they themselves are prepared but they are so busy taking care of other things they don’t have the time to get the word out there I would say.
Bill: Yeah, they’re just like everybody else. They’re busy with their lives, picking their kids up at soccer, and all of this and that. They get off work. They don’t have a lot of other time and it hasn’t become a huge priority. But I have to say to you that in Oklahoma, what was just experienced, in the beginning of your book, your new book, you start talking about the scenario with the hurricane Andrew versus Gordon. When I started looking at that I was thinking, “This is just like that, only it’s a lot quicker,” isn’t it? What’s interesting about a tornado scenario, and I kind of want to get your perspective on this, is that it’s like a hurricane only—it’s like being a SWAT officer on a swat patrol because the decisions that have to be made, there’s not a lot of planning. The plans have to be in place, the procedures have to be in place where there’s a tornado coming. These guys had 16 minutes, which is a lot of time but compared to a hurricane that’s no time at all.
Jay: Sure and first off let me say our thoughts and prayers go out to the folks in rural Oklahoma and other places that have been affected. A lot of people are receiving bad news today so thoughts and prayers are with those families. Part of the reason I’m so passionate about immersing in preparedness, prepping, survival, whatever you want to call it is because these events do take place and so often people think to themselves that, “Well, that’s never going to happen to me. I live in Virginia. We never have earthquakes here except for the two major earthquakes we’ve had in the last three years in this area.” Or, “I’m in New York.” “I’m in Philadelphia and we don’t ever get hurricanes here. Oh, except for Hurricane Sandy.” You have to be able to have a perspective that says, “Hey, you know what, these things might not be normal but they can take place.” And so part of the reason I started my book on emergency preparedness with an actual real life survivor was because some people haven’t been through those scenarios and I wanted them to hear a firsthand account of how bad it really can be.
Bill: And as a first responder, I think that’s—you were in the business of sort of showing up in many cases when perhaps people weren’t ready for something. Maybe it wasn’t a tornado or a hurricane or something in Washington but that’s kind of your business to be in that. It’s important to remind people that things do happen and you can’t go along just, Jay, with your acting like things will always be the way they’ve always been because we have these discontinuitous events in our lives with weather and other things. So it’s always amazing to me, maybe you can speak to it a little bit, how asleep we are and that if someone does go to take some action to kind of provide insurance for an event then it seems like they’re ostracized for being a little strange or being out on the periphery of society.
Jay: Sure, yeah, and again a lot of the reasons that we’re without there doing what we do is really to wake people up because in these events that have taken place, and I talk about this is the book, since the year 2000 well over a million people have died in catastrophic events. Of course millions and millions more have been affected by those events. We’re talking about large scale catastrophes like the tsunami of December, 2004. We’re talking estimates of three hundred thousand people that were killed; in the earthquake in Haiti where tens of thousands of people were killed. The tornados of this week, I’m sure more will come in this season; the hurricanes will come in this season. You know, those are smaller scale but I think again it just points to reality that we need to be prepared. I do like to point out, we have—the average American family spends about $500 on car insurance, homeowners insurance, life insurance. We’re spending money for insurance for things have not taken place. Nobody will say, “Well, you’re crazy for having a million dollar life insurance policy.” No. I spent that money so that if something happens to me, my wife and my kids are taken care of. For me prepping is the exact same thing. I put a little bit of money and a little bit of time into it, that way I do have sort of insurance for these types of events.
Bill: Sure and another question for you that I think is an important question that’s maybe going back to the show a little bit. I didn’t realize you; of course you seemed kind of like a Christian with respect to how you portrayed yourself, just your humble approach to sort of self-reliance and so forth. I didn’t really realize that you were a Christian until I went to your web site. I’m interested in—was there a lot of stuff that didn’t make the cut then? You know, as the edit came down on Doomsday Preppers—because that really didn’t come through and yet I have to say sort of to qualify it, Jay, I think my guess is that your Christianity is probably at the core of what you do and not dressing or frosting on the cake. It’s at the very beginning or center of your life rather and not a peripheral thing. So it’s amazing that nothing showed up there.
Jay: Yeah, so a lot of people—I get e-mails and phone calls and things from people across the country, actually across the world, and a lot of them ask me about the opening scene where they first talk about our network and people say, “It looks like you’re sitting there with Bibles open and having a Bible study.” And that is the case. Actually, we did a full Bible study with National Geographic there with the cameras rolling. We are not ashamed of our faith. We are Christians. It is the biggest part of our lives. So what I will say is that I think National Geographic did an outstanding job of portraying who we are as far as the prepping is concerned. They took 24 full hours’ worth of footage and had to narrow it down to a 12 minute section to tell our story.
The two things I was most disappointed about were, number one; they didn’t really get much of that aspect of our lives into it, our Christian faith. But number two, they didn’t get much of the writing. Because to me, the writing is very important because that’s really my main medium to get the word out there to folks to say, “Hey, you really need to wake up.” It is a huge part of our lives. If you go to my websites jayblevins.com [1] or the thelastfallbook.com [2], actually you’ll see the first book is inspirational fiction. It’s a Christian novel. And in my new book, actually one of the six main aspects of prepping, I talk about spiritual preparedness. So yeah, my Christian faith is very important to me.
Bill: Well talk a little bit about your first book. Talk about that novel because that’s intriguing and sometimes as you know you can communicate a truth via a novel a little better sometimes than straight facts. What motivated you to do that?
Jay: Sure, so The Last Fall came out in October 2010. It was my first book. OakTara Publishers put it out there and it’s basically a redemption story. If you see movies like The Bucket List or anything like that, long story short, it’s about a sort of self-centered, ruthless but very successful attorney, Eric Stratton, who is diagnosed with cancer. Part of that was inspired—my father is a cancer survivor. Though he’s not at all like this character, a lot of the research came from his experience. But Eric Stratton finds out very early in his career, as he’s reaching for the pinnacle of his success, that he has cancer. So this story is his attempt to sort of look back on his life and right past wrongs and look back and basically realize there’s a lot of things that he could have done a lot better; relationships that he didn’t need to forsake and so it’s his attempt to try to make those rights wrong.
Bill: Sure, and then your new book, talk a little bit about that which you can find at your website that you just mentioned. What’s the inspiration there? How did that get started? Why that new book?
Jay: Sure, it’s called The Survival and Emergency Preparedness Skills Against Mental, Physical and Spiritual Readiness for Uncertain Times. It just came out in November, pretty much coinciding with the show and for me it’s basically the six main aspects of prepping. I think there’s a lot of information out there about the different supplies you can get, a lot of ways to survive different emergencies and things like that but there’s not a lot about, number one, the mental aspect of it. I think that’s really, really important. I think it’s more important than everything else because if you—number one, if you can’t keep your head about you, if you don’t have that will to survive, it’s very difficult to survive. And of course like I said, on the other end of it is the spiritual aspect of it is there are some emergencies that no matter how much preparation you’ve done, you may not survive. So the question I like to ask is, “Are you prepared for eternity? Have you made your peace with God?” So I think that’s what sets it apart from other stuff that’s out there on preparedness.
Bill: Well, the ultimate emergency question to ask somebody, “Have you made your peace with God?” That’s a prepper question if ever there was one. But as you say, I don’t see that in too many books. So give a little advice as long as we’re on that subject. There has to be almost weeping and wailing in Oklahoma. What do you say to somebody? What’s the advice that you give to people? You almost have to do it a little bit like Job, right? You look around and nothing’s left. Maybe you’ve got a rock you can scrape some of your sores with and your wife comes by and says, “Why don’t you curse God and die?” But then you say some people don’t do that. Some people really have this desire to just keep on going. What do you say to the people that don’t—that are just blown away by it and what do you say to the people that maybe have a little different—because I think there’s a number of different categories that you’re in if you’re stunned by something like that.
Jay: Again I would say that we are—you know the Bible described us Christian, “We are the salt of the earth and the light of the world.” We’ve been put here to help out in these types of situations. And so really in a devastating scenario like these tornados, first of all as people who are already prepared, we can go to those situations, provide help, provide assistance and then try to provide comfort as best we can. There are going to be a lot of questions, of course. Any parent will ask; I’ve got three young kids myself and I would ask if something happened to my kids,”Why did this happen?” We need to be there to provide hope, provide a reason and say, “Hey, what you see around us, this is temporary, the suffering is temporary. There’s something much more important, eternity after this,” and to be there for people in that situation.
Bill: Yeah, that’s important to at least, like you said, to have the right mental and spiritual side of it because if you don’t have that, I think, there’s probably not much left. At least as we look at Job’s life, his own stuff, and that would include his family, wasn’t the most important thing to him. And so, Jay, that provided him with nice anchor point because he’s able to sit there and say, “Well, at least I’ve still got my God,” and everything was stripped from him.
Jay: Absolutely. That’s another thing where as Christians—and I got to tell you as I travel the country; I’m going to be going on a 12 city tour here, speaking at some different expos in some major cities. But as I’m travelling, been on Today Show and Access Hollywood, things like that, I’ve met so many Christians who are preppers and it’s very interesting to see that. They have their supplies, they have their gear, they have their plan. The number one thing that gets them through these kinds of situations is their faith. So that’s definitely an important part of the prepping.
Bill: And it’s a great opportunity to pass that faith on and as you said, share that spiritual side of, “Hey, you know what? Just like Job, we can get other stuff back.” Maybe we won’t get our kids back. In Job’s case he did get his kids back or got another family back; but maybe not in this life. But what is the most important thing—so it is a theological or philosophical, and I know you have a degree in Christian Ministry so you could probably speak to that. So it really is a theological issue. At base when you strip it all away you’re talking about ultimacy and you’re saying, “What is the most important thing?” And to be able to at least articulate that, Jay, I think that’s a good start for folks.
Joe: Yeah, it is. I was recently speaking at an expo we did here in Virginia and I was kind of surprised. I was going through my six points as I normally do and I got to the end I usually stop and say, “I know a lot of you didn’t come here today, you came here for your supplies and you came here to hear some of these speakers. But I got to tell you there’s one thing a little more important than this stuff.” I got to tell you the response. It was a packed house. There was not a seat available, standing room only. I just shared my faith and shared very briefly the gospel and people were applauding at the end. This isn’t something that people look at and either shy away from or they think is way out there. People respond to it and receive it. So I think that’s again important for us to be out there and to be bold about it.
Bill: Well you just made a great point. I was thinking back. I had read an article about the guy that started the whole Duck Dynasty, the guy that did the calls, and he was speaking some place because he was at a calling convention and he was speaking about calling. And when he was done he pulled his Bible out and started talking about the gospel. And he said you could have heard a pin drop. And then he gave his talk and he said the number of people that came up to him afterwards and applauded and everything after he did that. He just took a step out in faith. He didn’t have some big professional. He didn’t go to seminary or anything like that. He just did what you did and let the Holy Spirit do His job and he did his job and the results were incredible. And who can’t say that they haven’t been blessed by a lot of success and I hope, Jay, the same things—just your boldness, that God would just reward you for just sort of not being afraid to say “Here’s what’s the most important thing.”
Jay: Absolutely. Thank you. It absolutely has a reward in and of itself. There’s been so much blessing for me to hear from people. They’ll write and say, “This book changed my life.” They’ll say, “I never really thought about God before but now I am.” To hear those kind of things both about my first novel and the new book, that is a reward in and of itself. And to be able to reach people in that manner, it’s definitely a reward.
Bill: Well and a lot of times people think, as you said earlier, “Nothing can happen to me,” and then you get an event like in Katrina or in Andrew or any of these storms that we’ve had just… even the tornados—I had my first tornado experience the night before last and actually looked back out of my house and saw my first twister ever and it was on—and I had a houseful of grandkids and it was my first experience ever and of course you have a kind of a strange feeling. You’re hoping that it continues to go the way that it went. It formed in a field back behind my house and then took a guy’s barn out and took a whole bunch of stuff out on the way somewhere else but there’s that moment where you just go, “I am totally helpless here. I have no ability. I can go to the basement.” But going to the basement, the tornado is like the ultimate thing, right, because you can go to the basement but that’s not even really a guarantee of anything.
Jay: Right. You can prepare with time and money and things like that and look at the situation where you—look at the devastation that we’ve seen and some of these folks were in their basements. I read an account of this morning of some folks that were in their storm shelter and the tornado went through and literally ripped the steel door right off of their shelter. It’s definitely a humbling experience to say the least, to go through one of these things, to survive and just to see just how powerful our God is and some of the things He has created and how small we are.
Bill: Well said. Another little thing that I was going to mention to you, because you guys were practicing and I remember the episode like it was yesterday when you and your family—because I thought to myself, “You know, I’m not a police officer.” I do not want—and there’s a lot of tough guys, people that I know in the survival prepping world that talk a big game about shooting people if things get bad. I’ve never talked that way because frankly I don’t want to shoot another human being and yet you do have to be sort of ready to do that. Could you speak a little bit—and you’re in a great place to do this because you know when lethal force, there’s times for lethal force. There’s times for—it’s like turn, turn, turn. There’s a time for this and a time for that. Talk about the ability to be sort of tough at times and loving at times. Because I think the secular world especially—and we have a lot of different people listening to this show, a lot of Christians but a lot of other people. People say, “Well, how can you have a God and point a gun at somebody and pull the trigger?” and I think really the Christian position is you do have to protect your family.
Joe: Sure, that’s a great question and a great consideration. I’m not looking to hurt anybody. I’m not looking to fight anybody. I’m not looking to shoot anybody. I’m not looking to kill anyone. It goes against everything that I believe as far as being out there and pursuing that type of an encounter. I’ve had many, many nights on patrol where I’ve had to defend myself, where I’ve had to draw my gun, where I’ve had to use other weapons. And nobody wants to take another human life. I think anybody that’s out there that wants to do that I think there’s probably something wrong with them.
What I would say from a Christian perspective is that we do have to, in every decision that we make, whether it be the day-to-day, how you treat people, all the way down to the way you’re going to defend yourself, you have to take that into consideration. That said, I’m not called to stand by and watch as someone kidnaps my child or worse, tries to kill them. I’m not called to stand by while my neighbor, while their house is being broken into or they’re being attacked. As a believer, I believe I have been put in a position to help those people and it is my duty.
A lot of people are afraid to act in these types of situations and for me personally I believe I’m called to do unto my neighbors as I would have done to me. Well, if it’s happening to me, I’d want somebody to come and help. And you better believe that in any situation when if I see something like that or whether it’s a criminal attacking somebody, at that point for me they’ve taken their lives in their own hands.
In the book of Proverbs, it talks about criminals who lie in wait for innocent blood and in fact they’re lying in wait for their own lives. And there’s a reason also that…Romans 13 talks about there’s a reason that the government bears a sword. There’s a reason that there are people out there to protect you. The law in the United States allows you to recognize self-defense so I truly believe like I said, I’m not out there looking for it but if there’s somebody that’s going to bring it to me, that’s going to bring it to my family, I’m going to do everything I can or that I have to do in order to protect them.
Bill: You sort of tried; you did your best to instill that on the other members of your family. Talk a little bit about how that goes as you try to do that. You’re a trained police officer and I know that you’re not doing that full time now but you have that instilled in your DNA, as it were. How do you train a wife and kids that may not be, may be a bit reluctant in a situation like that?
Jay: Sure, great question. It’s really hard. Our kids are 9, 7 and 4 and we want them to enjoy their childhood. We don’t want them to have to be worried about the prepping and stuff like that. So we try to make it fun for them, but at the same time I’m not scared to tell them about situations like when Sandy Hook took place. The day that happened, I left work early. My wife went and picked up the kids at school. We sat down with them, as young as they are, and explained what happened so they could understand that there are people out there, whether they’re just crazy or evil, that are going to try to do bad things. And so we tried to teach them that day, “Here are some things you can try to do to try to survive.” Because an unfortunate reality of the world we live in right now is that there are people out there that will try to hurt us. So we use those types of scenarios—again the real life scenarios to try and teach them to start looking at things. As far as my wife is concerned, you saw the episode. She’s the mama bear, don’t mess with the cubs. Normally she’s the nicest lady on the block. She volunteers, she sings in the church, but if you mess with the family—and when I say mess with, I mean you actually threaten them, she will take action. So as far as she’s concerned I don’t have to—I have to train her a little bit but I don’t have to do much because that mother instinct kicks in and I would say, “Look out,” for anybody that would try to attack them.
Bill: Well said. Another question that I have that I think you’re uniquely qualified to answer is—and as you say we need to be involved and there needs to be volunteer help and you need to be ready, but as a police officer—and let’s pretend we’re out in Oklahoma right now; in Moore or one of the surrounding areas. How do you get involved with helping? Is there a sense in which people who—the self-reliance community is in a unique position to help. But can you get in the way? As a police officer you can kind of look at this and say, “Is it possible for people to get in the way?”
Jay: Yes, at times, it is. I think in situations like this, where the hospital’s been destroyed, where the school’s been destroyed. In situations like this, they are going to need all the help they can get. I think it’s in those situations where fire departments and law enforcement officers can help sort of organize and conduct the operations that allow people to help out. What I would say is I wouldn’t run into a burning building without someone first saying, “Hey we’re going to take care of that part of it. You just stay out here and do what you can on this side of things.” I would just say respect the authorities in so much in that as long as they’re looking at your best interests, respect what they’ve got going on and try to help if you can.
Bill: Do you want to make plans to work with the civil authorities earlier rather than later? In other words, do you want to sort of let people know you’re available ahead of time or do they dismiss you as somebody that’s crazy or what’s it like being a police officer if someone says “If there’s an emergency I’d like to help.” Is that even—are they even on the radar for the police department or sheriff’s department?
Jay: Absolutely. There’s many groups, many of them called CERT teams, Civilian Emergency Response Teams. A lot of the sheriff’s offices have like auxiliary deputies. They’re not sworn deputies but they’re people that volunteer their time, search and rescue groups and things like that. There’s many, many ways to get involved and I would say that’s one of the best things. I talk about that in my book. Yeah, reach out to the authorities and find out what are the types of things they have available where you can officially volunteer. When I put together—I did a community fundraising event for our volunteer fire department in the town I live in. I actually invited a local sheriff, I invited the police chief, I invited all the local authorities to come speak because I wanted people to know what plans are in place and what the authorities will do to help them and what they can do to help the authorities. I think that’s important.
Bill: So I saved my last question or my biggest question for last and it sort of put you out here a little bit. What do you think, Jay, the biggest threat to our country is as this point?
Jay: I’m still going to stick with the thing we chose for our show. I think it’s social unrest brought on by an economic collapse or economic strain. And you know since our show aired there’s been many, many examples in our country of places like O’Brien, Oregon; Wayne County, Oregon. In Wayne County last year they released 100 prisoners from their jail system because they couldn’t simply afford to keep them. In O’Brien, Oregon, they may be better now but back last year once again—last fall they laid off so many of their deputies and law enforcement officers that they only had service eight hours a day, five days a week.
So if you call 9-1-1 on a weekend or outside those eight hours, you’re not going to get anybody and that’s all due to the economy. We look at the news right now and the Dow is doing well, the stock market is doing well, but the job situation is not good and looking at the economies across the world, it’s not a good situation. I still would say the reaction that people have in these tough economic times, people that take advantage of the lack of law enforcement and things like that, I still think that’s the number one risk right now.
Bill: And criminals are pretty shrewd; they get that pretty quickly that there’s no help for people, so I think your point’s well taken. Jay, how can people find out more about you? I know they can go jayblevins.com [1], that’s B-L-E-V-I-N-S.com but what’s your schedule like? I know you said you were going to do some speaking. If people want to come and hear you speak, how can they do that?
Jay: Yeah, if you go to the website, go to the news and events section, I’d like to highlight one big event that’s coming up. It’s June 27-29. It’s the first of a twelve city tour. It’s called the Doomsday Expo. They can go to doomsdayexpo.com [3] and I’ll be speaking all three days there. I also have a booth there available. I’ll be signing books and doing a meet and greet and I’ll be speaking on what I call Steps 101, the six foundational aspects of prepping and just stay tuned to the website. Like I said, there’s one coming up in June. There’ll be one in December and there’s going to be one coming to a city near you.
Bill: All right. Jay, thanks so much for being with us today.
Jay: Thanks, Bill. Have a great day and keep on prepping.
Bill: All right, God bless.
Jay: God bless you.
Just a reminder. You’re listening to Off the Grid News Radio here at offthegridnews.com [4].
Welcome back to Off the Grid Radio. Better ideas for off the grid living.
Bill: And we are back in the studio. I’m Bill Heid with my good friend and co-host, Brian Brawdy. Brian, welcome.
Brian: Bill, thank you very much as always for having me, sir.
Bill: Always a pleasure and a lot to talk about today. You’ve witnessed our current, our most recent interview, I should say. I talked a little bit with Jay. That was good, but there’s so much stuff in the news and I wanted to just kind of catch up with you and see how things are going, see what’s on your mind. Your mind’s always running at 100 miles an hour, so what do you thinking about today?
Brian: Well, I’d like to talk to you today if I could, Bill, but I’m a little concerned in that if I do, they might very well decide to tap my phone.
Bill: Your phones are all ready tapped.
Brian: I know but I’m trying to limit the scope of any would be investigation. I don’t want my parents implicated or, as I’m reading now, maybe even for others or my co-workers; with the exception of Jeremy. I don’t mind if they tap Jeramy’s phone. Jeramy’s a good guy. They’ve got nothing to learn there. So let’s…
Bill: That’s a great subject. Let’s talk about that for a little bit because there is weather and there’s a lot of stuff in the news, but just this concept of what’s tyranny look like and I think we’re seeing it right before our eyes. It’s here; it’s not something that you need to read about. You know ‘this is going to happen in the future, the great Armageddon’ this or that. You’re seeing this right in front of us. And I think it really tells a story, Brian, about just where our civilization is when, I guess I don’t—I understand what he’s doing. He’s targeting, Obama’s targeting his enemies. He gets it that there is a culture war. So on one level you’ve got to give him credit; as we said before, we got to give him a little credit for that fact that he understands there’s a war going on. So bravo for him. But I just got to say this, if W would have done the same thing, you tell me, what would the news cycle have been? The news cycle would explode. If I type in Google news and I get my news. If I just go to Google news and say, “What are the news stories?” there is no—so there’s a cultural trend, too, because Google doesn’t want to give you the news.
Brian: And I would ask—I’ve been listening the last couple of days. For those that may have forgotten the verbiage of the First Amendment, remember it says that Congress is going to make no law respecting the establishment of religion; obviously the freedom of exercise thereof, bridging the freedoms of speech or of the press or of assembly. There’s a reason that it’s called the First Amendment. The press, even like Off the Grid News; we didn’t sign an oath not to publish classified information. It’s the person that gives away the classified information in the government that took an oath, violated the oath, broke the law but the framers knew how important a free and vibrant press was, right?
That’s why it’s the First Amendment. It’s not the second, the third, the fourth, the tenth. It didn’t come after the fact. It was right up there, right after freedom of religion, freedom of speech and freedom of the press and then assembly. So they had a pretty good idea that that shouldn’t be happening and my question, Bill, and maybe you can help me with this. I understand, as you know, you have to sign off on what’s called a statement; you provide the information to a court. You’re a police officer at any level. You want to get a warrant; you fill out an affidavit of information saying here’s what you think has happened. How is it that the FBI agent hasn’t been charged? Now I’m going to get in a lot of trouble for this, but why isn’t an FBI agent—you would hope an FBI agent would know the law, knows that you’re not conspiring, you’re not in conspiracy to commit a crime, if you’re a reporter, saying nice things about someone you’re trying to get information from. So the FBI agent misled the judge when he signed an affidavit, right? He swore under penalty of perjury “What I’m saying here is true, that a television reporter may have been a co-conspirator in the commission of a crime.” The FBI agent knew that wasn’t true and if he didn’t know it wasn’t true he shouldn’t be an FBI agent.
If your acumen that you’ve amassed as an FBI agent says to you that there is no First Amendment and that a member of the press can be arrested as a co-conspirator for the commission of the dissemination of classified information then you need to go back to FBI school, right? And everyone wants to pile on the judge. Now I get that. Everyone’s saying, “Can you believe the judge signed it?” Well judges in those positions; I can see O’Reilly’s point. I can see some of the other people’s points where they want to go after the judge. Okay, well the judge has to kind of pay attention a little bit. But I would also imagine the judge at some point goes “Well, the agent must have done his or her work.”
I can tell you before I have stood in front of a judge; I have signed the affidavit in front of him and I’ve gotten a search warrant. I’ve stood in front of judges, signed affidavits and gotten arrest warrants. And you build rapport with a judge. You give your word to the judge that you have probable cause that a crime was committed. So, if you don’t have the where with all to know that a reporter can’t commit a crime as you alluded to in your affidavit, in your statement, in the information you provided to the court, how do you not know that? And if he knew that, why isn’t Rosen arrested?
Bill: Well, do you think that that’s coming? He’ll get thrown under the bus, I’m sure. There’s no—that’s what bureaucrats do, they throw—that’s what Holder’s doing. They throw their lesser lieutenants; you hit the eject button and get rid of them. That’s part of the deal, right, when you sign—maybe I’m pushing the envelope here but like when you make a deal with the devil and you’re on the dark side and you do dark side things, should it surprise you that dark side things happen back to you? Live by the sword, die by the word. And so a lot of these guys, a lot of people they pick for positions because they know—in a lot of bureaucracies they’ll pick people that they know who will sort of compromise.
Brian: And, Bill, you and I have discussed it before, and that’s why with the current administration that’s sitting now, arguably people said President Bush would have been treated different but this is the bureaucratic behemoth. And yes, you would hope your president stands up and says, “Look the buck stops here. I’m in charge. It happened under my administration,” but that’s why the legislative leviathan and most certainly the bureaucratic behemoth that you and I have discussed in past shows, you don’t get to elect them. They’re not career politicians. They’re bureaucrats. But look at the power they have, Bill. Look at the power they have. These are people, not elected by you and I and other registered voters. Look at the power. It doesn’t matter what administration. It doesn’t matter what year. Look at the bureaucratic behemoth and what they’re able to do. You can talk about the FDA. You can read laundry list of people, aggressive prosecutions of this and that but look at what happens when people run unchecked. Look at what happens.
Bill: Yeah, who’s guarding this henhouse? And the answer is no one. We’ve got to the point where—in the old days they used to say, “You could find everything in Rome.” I think Luther said that. He came back and they sent him to Rome for a while and he came back and they said, “What’s in Rome?” He said, “Everything but an honest man,” and I mean have we reached that point, Brian, where there’s not an honest man in Washington DC?
Brian: I’m the wrong guy to ask, my friend. I call them the packs and the jacks. I call them the pachyderms for the elephants and the jacks for the donkeys are the two parties. I think they’re the same. I think they’re two different gangs within the same cartel and I get in trouble all the time on Facebook and Twitter when I go, “Look, politicians, in and of themselves, there’s nothing wrong with our government. We have a great government, we got a great Constitution. It’s the people we put in the position to drive the bus. It’s the people we put in position to run our government. It’s the people we put in position hopefully to protect us from the bureaucratic behemoth. Those are the people.
Bill: And maybe, Brian, what we see is with respect to the problems, maybe we see a version of Pareto’s Law. Maybe it’s 20% of the bureaucrats doing 80% of the damage and so that’s where you kind of see the action. But let’s face it, people are people. When you get elected to a government position, sin still exists. Problems still exist. So you don’t become superman if you’re elected to a post or if you’re appointed to a post or if you get a government job. You don’t all of a sudden become superhuman and a disciple of Christ per se. You still carry to that job the propensity to do or at least the possibility to do bad things. And the difference between a bureaucrat and someone like yourself or myself, you’re put in a position of strength and power and it takes a certain kind of fortitude to say, “No.” I don’t think as a culture we are producing people that have the ability to say, “No.” Certainly with the public school systems, not producing people, not producing Patrick Henrys and people like that that would say, “No.” “Here I stand, I can do no…? We’re not producing that type. We’re producing sheeple and we’re producing sort of power hungry people. So there’s the two categories that come out of our institutions, people that don’t want to create any trouble and sharks.
Brian: That’s why you see the one television reporter; I would say I think it was for MSNBC—a young lady from MSNBC that said, “Unless you’re applying say for a 501 C4, this isn’t a story that concerns you.” There’s other people saying, “Unless you’re a reporter, this isn’t a story that concerns you,” but freedom of the press is supposed to be our line in the sand. Now I know a lot of our listeners will say “It’s actually the Second Amendment that’s our line in the sand,” right? Our right to keep and bear arms, that’s the line in the sand but even more so than that is a free press. And when you start targeting people, when you suggest that the press—good golly, well what was the crime? Well he said nice things about his informant. He took his informant to dinner. He tried to get his informant to give him information. Oh, those all sound like felonies to me except when you read the law. I know it’s unpopular to do today but when you read the law it’s not a felony.
Bill: Well look at this, Brian. Here’s another side of freedom of the press that I think’s not being discussed. If you prosecute and persecute those members of the press that are in opposition to you, defacto, the other side of that transaction is you’re rewarding members of the press who tell your story; who buy into your narrative. So what do you get? What you get here is a continued sort of fascist state where your enemies are marginalized and in this case who are the friends? MSNBC, NBC, certainly Google, those are people who want to contour and shape the news and they can—look there’s some sense in which news is subjective. What’s the most important story? Some producer has got to make that decision, right?
Moore Oklahoma’s got the news right now. So any time you’ve got something of that magnitude, it’s going to occupy the news cycle. But let’s say that goes away and we rebuild Moore and people, they weep and we bury our dead and we do what we do when people die and we all feel bad. I feel badly for those people because what did they do? What chance did they have? It’s just hard stuff but that cycle goes away. So how do you decide what story to put up?
Brian: Well, I think you have to decide based on your political bent, your philosophical bent right? I love getting up in the morning, going to the Drudge Report and then heading over to the Huffington Post. Now most of our listeners probably don’t listen to the Huffington Post but I can tell you given an e-mail that Jeramy sent me last week, Huffington Post listens to our show. We’ve got Huffington Post producers calling saying, “Will you guys come on and do on interview on Huffington Post?” But what I love to do in the morning is I like to get up, I like to see what’s going on Drudge. I like to see what’s going on on Huffington Post. I like to see both sides of the story. Then I’ll go to MSNBC and I’ll go to Fox. And people say to me all the time, “Why would you go to MSNBC?” Well, you got to know what your competition’s doing, right? You just can’t say, “It’s only my opinion.” You’ve got to see what the people that stand against you are saying and try to figure it all out. So who decides the story? It all depends on what news bureau you work for, doesn’t it?
Now I would say to you that AP is going to wake up. Last week they were saying that CBS reporter thinks quite possibly—a CBS reporter covering Fast and Furious thinks maybe her computer was hacked. So what are you going to do? So here’s CBS, arguably…I mean, I think a couple of weeks back Bob Schieffer did a great job going to Dan Peiffer, the White House communications—one of the chief advisors to our current president went on Face the Nation and he asked him, “What are you doing here? With all due respect why did you even bother coming? Why is the Chief of Staff here if all you’re going to do is read the sound bites? Where was the president on the night of the Benghazi attack?” And he says, “That’s irrelevant.” How do you get to use that word? How is the location of the commander in chief of the military when four US citizens are abducted, tortured and killed? Now before anyone says, “Brian, you have no proof that they were tortured,” you look at some of the pictures. If these guys were taken alive, they weren’t rushed in an ambulance to a local compound and tried to be revived. If you are the commander in chief on a night that we lose four Americans, it’s irrelevant where the commander in chief is? Two former special forces, two career diplomats, we lose those four people and it’s irrelevant where the commander in chief is when that happens? Irrelevant.
Bill: Well it’s irrelevant if that’s your antecedent, if that’s your pre-supposition.
Brian: Absolutely.
Bill: And your narrative is different. It seems to me, Brian, that there’s very little objectivity as I say. People say “You’re an American citizen. What’s it like to be an American citizen?” It’s almost like there’s great polarity that’s developing and you’re either, as you said earlier, you’re a Drudge guy and you go to Drudge, you go to the other side and it doesn’t seem—it seems like those sides are really digging in more than they are sort of communicating and cross pollinating. You don’t see a lot of interaction between the two things. And I think what you see, we’re discussing a little bit of the sort of the breakup as this culture becomes more atomized. You go to the like minded places for refuge. People watch the Ed show because they need a dose of that. They don’t want their paradigm ripped up. So they go back to find something, a reinforcement of something they think they already believe and they just, like a shot of heroin, have to hear something that reinforces their world view.
Brian: That’s why I think this is a great time to be in news. This is a great time to be in Off the Grid News. It’s a great time to be alive because whether it’s Drudge or Huff, whether it’s the left or the right, the packs or the jacks, if you’re a news organization that isn’t offended by what happened to the AP. If you’re a news organization that isn’t offended by the fact that a reporter can be accused of committing a felony, then you are a partisan hack and the people that continue to report, “Oh, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter.” It’s a great time to be alive because they’re highlighting that.
Any reporter—and I hate to do this because I sound like “Well Brian, how many jobs have you have in your life?” Technically as Jeramy often says, “I think you’re unemployable.” The fact of the matter is I’m an ex-cop and an ex-television reporter for CBS. Any reporter that isn’t troubled by the attack on the First Amendment, when an FBI agent can go in and lie about you, give false statement against you—and the only reason I’m confident in saying it’s a false statement is because Mr. Rosen has yet to be arrested. Yet to be arrested. So if he was guilty, involved in a crime, involved in a conspiracy, right? We’re not talking a misdemeanor. We’re not talking about leaving his dog run unleashed. If he signed an affidavit saying Mr. Rosen had committed a crime, why isn’t Mr. Rosen in jail? You know why? Because he didn’t commit a crime. And whatever news agency you work for, if you’re not offended by that assault on the First Amendment then just admit that you’re a partisan political spokesperson. God love you. We need political spokespeople, but don’t masquerade as a reporter if you’re not offended by that story. Don’t masquerade because you know what? There are a good number of us that are just freaking tired of it. We’ve just had about enough of masquerading as a reporter when you’re…
Bill: Do you think Chris Matthews has had enough? Speaking of people that masquerade as reporters but are just spokespersons for the administration, what’s the deal with Chris?
Brian: Now I don’t know Mr. Matthews so—but I’ve read a few stories that said he’s less than thrilled that—one headline that I saw is that the thrill is no longer running down or running up his leg.
Bill: That goes both ways, (inaudible).
Brian: I would hope that serious reporters would look to the First Amendment, the reason I would hope that they originally took the job, not because they wanted to be on TV. You can tell, Bill. For all of you who have a hometown anchor, all of you that watch the evening news or your favorite cable news. You can tell who the people are that wanted to bring you the news and who are the people that ever since they were little, they weren’t going to be Kim Kardashian, but they still wanted to be on TV. This can’t be breaking news. Our listeners are smart enough, astute enough to tell who got in the job to be a reporter and who got in the job because they liked the idea of being popular and on TV. All you have to do is look at the work that that person does and you can tell whether they’re the Edward R. Murrow of their generation or they’re just fired up about a make-up artist that gets them ready for TV every day. That’s why it’s a great time to be alive. I cannot tell you how excited I am to see how this works out. I have absolute faith in our government. I have absolute faith in our Constitution and that we’ll get to the bottom of this. It’s just a fascinating time, exciting time to be alive.
Bill: Let me disagree with you as we kind of get ready to wind down and say this is one of those things where we’re kind of like at a Y. We’re at a Y in the road and part of us, we’re going to say, “Look this is a breach of all breach. Targeting reporters, you’re targeting conservatives and you’re just outright playing games. You’re tapping people’s phones. You’re tapping people’s parents’ phones. It’s the Orwellian Brave New World super state that wants to control everything and will come out swinging if you just disagree. So these are thought crimes in essence.
Brian: Sure.
Bill: People are sort of thinking thoughts like, “We got to be free,” and those thought crimes, to the Obama administration, have to be punished. Here’s what I’m going to tell you… here’s my pessimistic—you know me, Brian. I’m a long term optimist but I think we’re short term pessimist. Do you know what I’m going to say? I’m going to agree with the people that say, “It’s just going to go away” because you know what? The tipping point is here. Over 50% of the people are consumers and don’t produce anything. So what I’m going to say is it’s just going to go away. It’s just going to go away and nothing’s ever going to happen from it. I’ll make that prediction. In making the prediction I hope that I’m wrong because I think we’ve sailed too far out from the shore without a compass. We don’t have a compass anymore, a moral compass; that I don’t think we can look at the stars and find our way back. I don’t think we can look. We no longer have any kind of way of knowing what’s right or wrong and I’m thinking of Leonard Cohen, the old blues rocker, the song where he said, “When they said repent I didn’t know what it meant.” In other words I don’t think these people think that it’s wrong. I think if you’re a Marxist, for example, it’s okay to lie, Brian, because what justifies the means? Of course the ends justify the means.
So in Marxist philosophy lying to a judge, it’s not only not wrong, it’s actually right because the goal is to punish those thought crimes from those who you want to marginalize. That’s what’s going on in the world. That’s my crazy—there’s my ugly. I want to be wrong. I want to agree with you and say, “You know what, I’m saluting the flag. Old Glory’s blowing in the wind, like the old Memorial Day parades and we used to go out and all the ministers from town were there and the mayor was there, and all the people and little kids and adults and a lot of vets alive from World War II when I was little. That’s the world that I think would have existed and would have done what you said. But, that was 50 years ago.
Brian: Well, I don’t think that you and I are disagreeing. When I say it’s an exciting time to be alive, tipping point or no, I think and I’ll leave you with this thought, Bill. When you look at what you could only call family, extended family, the camaraderie, the valor of the people in the immediate and I mean the immediate aftermath of the F5 tornado that went through Moore Oklahoma last week. You look at the people banding together. You look at the people doing what they could to get those kids out of the school. You look at the people doing what they could to help complete strangers—total strangers. One mom interviewed leaves her own kids in the cellar and rushes to get to kids she doesn’t even know to help. Tip or not, I still have faith that there will be groups of us, there will be people that will rise to the challenge, that do have that compass regardless of how far our boat’s been pulled from the shore.
We still know where we are. So I don’t think you and I are disagreeing. I think it’s a phenomenal time to be alive because we hear all the time, “Oh, what if this happens, what if that happens?” Well, the first 100 years of our country, that was kind of how life was. What happens if we lose the grid? What happens if we lose food production? We did great, your great grandparents did great you know what I mean? So we can do it.
Bill: They were sort of the ‘bring it on generation’.
Brian: Yeah, yeah.
Bill: Those folks, where today I think we’re a little less that way. There’s always pockets of resistance. There’s always—the Bible talks about a remnant. So there’s always a little bit of that. I’ll grant you that that exists. But I’m just saying what happens when the masses start believing the big lie? The guy with the narrow mustache told the big lie over and over and over and that lie was a little different lie than we have now. But the lie that’s being told over and over now is that you’re entitled to something, that somebody owes you something and I think that’s the new big lie and if you tell it often enough…
Brian: Sure.
Bill: Doesn’t matter how old people are, you have the big lie being bought by, “I’m a senior citizen, I want this and I want that.” No matter what group you are, you have a race, you have this. I’m an immigrant, I get this. No matter who you are, you’re somebody that gets something and the only people left are just the handful of people in the middle class that are sort of producers. The rich get their own gig, they’re specially treated. They’re privileged and entitled. Who’s left? The poor taking care of one another? Pretty soon those people that you say are in the middle and those people that you’re talking about, the folks that left who will do brave, daring, courageous things, at some point they get overtaxed and overburdened and targeted by this group or that. And some of them, just like the Jews, a lot of them just will shut up because they see this. Everything’s on the margin, right?
Brian: Sure.
Bill: Out of 100 people, if you crucify one of them, 60 of them are going to go, “I don’t want to have any part of that”. Nero. No more for me, man.
Brian: That’s true.
Bill: So it just breaks down and these have sort of as Judge Napolitano would say, “A chilling effects on all of us.” Not you and me; we just don’t care. That’s the difference. I get audited, I pay my taxes. So, someone wants to audit me, have a party. I’ll probably end up getting something back.
Brian: Yeah.
Bill: I probably paid too much because my accountants too conservative, I think. I’m always pushing him—that’s another story. That’s another radio show.
Brian: And I would say that—Jeramy, how are we? About ready to wrap? All right, then we’ll save it for next time as well. Bill, great first half hour. I enjoyed listening to that. Sorry I wasn’t able to sit in. Ladies and gentlemen, as always, we really do read your e-mails, your texts, your Facebook posts, the messages you send us on Twitter. So thank you so much, continue to reach out, tell us what you like but we also want to hear what you don’t like about Off the Grid News. For Mr. Bill Heid, as always on behalf of everyone at Solutions from Science, our parent company at Off the Grid News. Thank you so much. We know an hour is a huge chunk of your day and it’s an honor to be able to spend it with you.
This has been Off the Grid News Radio. For more information, go to offthegridnews.com [4].