Live from Music Row Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed all-star panelist Roger Simon in-studio to discuss the squeeze on middle-class Americans and small businesses through centralized control.
Leahy: In-studio with us, a very good friend, all-star panelist, my former boss at PJTV, novelist, Academy Award-nominated screenwriter, and senior editor at The Epoch Times, Mr. Roger Simon. Roger, how are you this morning?
Simon: Better than usual.
Leahy: Better than usual. Well, look, you look at this – and I keep going back to remember that apocryphal statement of Ben Franklin as he left the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, and he walked out the door after they finished their business.
And a Mrs. Powell, who’s, like the big social butterfly there, asked him about the Constitutional Convention. What, sir, have you given us? And his famous response?
Simon: A republic, if you can keep it.
Leahy: And we’re in the land now of “can we keep it?” Right, Roger?
Simon: Yes, totally. Because we were talking – I could say from my old Hollywood days, off-camera – about the problem why we don’t have people like Ben Franklin running for office anymore, because Ben Franklin is almost an American DaVinci.
So it’s like an incredible human being that comes along once every few hundred years. But where are our, “best and the brightest?” Look from the White House down?
Leahy: It’s pretty pathetic. Yes. I mean, you would say, let’s take a look at all of the people. When you say the White House down, let’s look at what characterizes, what’s the main quality of the people working in the White House?
And let’s even talk about the legal but not legitimate president Joe Biden, who can barely string a sentence together. Kamala Harris, who can string words together. They don’t necessarily translate into a coherent sentence.
Simon: The word “together” is the word she always uses – “together.”
Leahy: Together we’ll be together.
Simon: And we’ll all do this together. (Laughter) It’s so sad, really, at first it’s a big joke and you see it on Newsmax. They’re playing it repeatedly and you laugh and then you go “oh, geez.”
Leahy: Yes, I know. The other part about this is if you look at, like, who’s in Washington? Who’s in the White House right now? Who’s calling the shots? It ain’t Joe Biden. It’s not Kamala Harris. Most reports are it’s this guy Ron Klain, who is a far-lefty.
Simon: Plus Obama, plus Valerie Jarrett.
Leahy: And Susan Rice. These are basically despicable political hacks who are very bright and very clever.
Simon: Yes, who probably admire the Chinese system, because the Chinese system is now built like modern-day communism built on a lease, controlling everything and everybody else. They all get along like little puchins.
Leahy: And the theme here, is because of our complex interrelated world, the theme is Big Tech and government and Fortune 500 companies that are combining to centralize power and authority and to limit the ability of everyday Americans to act independently.
Simon: [And t]o have a personal agency and to feel good about yourself, really, because I think under those kind of systems, under the communist system or American communism, which is what we’re veering towards, the individual doesn’t get to feel good about himself. Besides the fact that he, or she, has less money than the elites. That’s the kind of obvious thing.
Leahy: The broader theme of what’s going on, if you look at what all of these basically political hacks, authoritarian political hacks are doing – here’s the squeeze going on in America.
Middle-class Americans and small business owners are being crushed by taxes, by regulations, by all of these rules and regulations of what you can and cannot do. But who’s benefiting? The elites are doing fabulously well.
Simon: They are totally entrenched. It’s a system by which there is no freedom. One of the great pieces of propaganda is that whole stuff coming from the World Economic Forum, which, of course, this is part of …
Leahy: The Davos crowd, our friend Steve Bannon says, in Switzerland.
Simon: … you will own nothing and you will be happy. That’s the famous line.
Leahy: But you’ll be entertained with meaningless things. We are now – in the United States of America in 2022, we’ve got this world that’s a weird amalgamation of the worst of 1984, Brave New World, and communist China. That’s where we are.
Simon: Yes, exactly. And how do we get out of it? Because of this brainwashing, or mass formation psychosis, to be fancy like that guy in Belgium, is so pervasive.
Coming back earlier to what we were talking about, what’s going on in Pennsylvania, when somebody who can barely talk, and when he does, mouths the most benign, idiotic liberal pieties or left-wing pieties, really, is an example of why that’s really scary right now. Freedom of thought is like being annihilated.
Leahy: But here’s the broader problem. Where is freedom of thought being annihilated? Pretty much everywhere, clearly. And really leading the way in annihilating freedom of thought, is public education.
Simon: Oh, absolutely.
Leahy: Higher education in particular. And there’s been this report that just came out, documenting all of these efforts to force diversity and equity inclusion concepts at the University of Tennessee, here in Knoxville.
Simon: Yes, I saw that. And of course, that’s been going on for a while. It’s like a gradual, one of those graphs that you see that just goes up and up and up. And it starts from kindergarten or even nursery school.
Leahy: And the other part is K-12 public school education.
Simon: And all the way to a PhD.
Leahy: Now, this is some new information for you. It’s been reported previously, but now it’s actually happening. The Biden maladministration, through the evil Department of Education, is now – there’s supposed to be a national program to fund school lunch programs, right?
Simon: Yes.
Leahy: We’re getting reports that K-12 public schools in Tennessee who are running school lunch programs are not receiving the federal monies promised, because of our laws that in essence reject transgenderism.
Simon: Oh, we’re bad people.
Leahy: And so you talk about centralized control. This is what the Department of Education and the Biden administration are doing. Now, would you like some good news today?
Simon: I sure would.
Listen to the interview:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Roger Simon” by Roger Simon.
