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 Carol M. Swain in-studio to discuss UC Berkeley’s “anti-Karen law” that would likely eliminate neighborhood watch programs, and how to solve the current climate of divisiveness in America.
Leahy: In studio, all-star panelist Carol Swain. And we’ve been talking about how you’re very, very busy, Carol. It’s been over a month since you’ve been here in the studio, but that’s because you’re in such great demand. Yesterday morning at 4:00, you were on Fox and Friends, right?
Swain: Yes. Talking about Berkeley. They passed an ‘anti-Karen’ law. And that means that if you’re a white person and you report a racial and ethnic minority because you think that they are menacing you, or you think they’re engaged in crime and they’re not actually engaged in crime, or they’re not actually convicted of what you accuse them of, you can be sued. And so the purpose of the law is to cut down on the number of 911 calls.
Leahy: Oh, my goodness. Berkeley, California …
Swain: Must be teeming with white racists that report racial and ethnic minorities.
Leahy: Have you ever been to Berkeley, California?
Swain: I have, yeah.
Leahy: It’s a beautiful campus.
Swain: Yes.
Leahy: But it is filled with far-left lunatics. It was the birthplace of this free speech movement.
Swain: Oh, I know, 1964.
Leahy: But now it’s like the place where they do the most you possibly can to suppress free speech.
Swain: They do. And I think that this 911 discouragement, it’s really discouraging people from reporting suspicious characters or suspected crimes. It would definitely kill anything like the neighborhood watch.
Leahy: Oh, boy.
Swain: And a lot of us in our neighborhoods, we look out for each other’s homes. We are on the alert. Well, if you are the person that makes a 911 call, and what you report doesn’t result in someone being arrested and convicted, that person can sue you successfully. So it will put a damper on … it will make everyone mind their own business. (Chuckles)
Leahy: It will make Berkeley even less safe than it already is.
Swain: All the laws that the Left is pushing at this point in time seem to be to the benefit of criminals and not to the benefit of regular law-abiding Americans.
Leahy: I want to go back to the name of your company for this training that you’re conducting for school board members on prohibited concepts in curriculum and law. This is going to start on November 1st in Brentwood.
But it’s interesting, it’s called Carol Swain’s Real Unity Training Solutions. Now, here’s where I want to go with that. You travel around the country all the time, right?
Swain: Yes I do.
Leahy: You go to speaking engagements. You’re on Fox and Friends. You’re on Fox News.
Swain: I’m on Newsmax and Sean Spicer this afternoon. (Chuckles)
Leahy: Newsmax and Sean Spicer. Tell Sean hello. (Laughter) All right, so you get out there. You have a sense of the country. And so here’s my question to you. This is a big, big question at 7:10 in the morning.
But regarding the talk of unity, I don’t see the forces in the country moving toward unity. I see particularly the Democratic Party pushing divisiveness in the past couple of months. Have you seen more moves toward unity or more moves toward divisiveness in this country?
Swain: We need to make a distinction between what we see on television, among our political leaders, and among political activists. And make a distinction between those people and regular Americans.
When I’m speaking across the country, I often have very diverse audiences, and what I see are white people, black people, and Asian people. I see Americans of different races and ethnicities getting along.
And I think people are hungry for calm. They just want to be able to live their lives. And so they’re not very happy with the direction our nation has taken.
Leahy: So are you optimistic or pessimistic about whether or not we’ll move more toward unity?
Swain: I’m optimistic that the American people have awakened to what has taken place, and they’re not very happy with what they see.
But it’s going to take more leadership on the part of Republicans as well as those Democrats who are afraid of the mob to stand up and speak out.
Leahy: Well, we’ll see if that happens.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this 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 “Carol Swain” by Carol Swain. Background Photo “Berkeley Free Speech Week” by Pax Ahimsa Gethen. CC BY-SA 4.0.
The take-away comment from Carol Swain: ” . . . more leadership on the part of Republicans as well as those Democrats who are afraid of the mob to stand up and speak out.”
To be a leader takes courage, and courage is in short supply right now.