Live from Music Row Monday 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 the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio.
At the end of the second hour, Carmichael weighed in historian Jon Meacham recent appearance on Face the Nation adding he was surprised anyone would have recorded that snippet in the first place. He also found it interesting how the Democratic Party was making things difficult for Kanye West citing tiny technicalities in a recent attempt to get on the ballot in Wisconsin.
(Jon Meacham clip plays)
We separate rightly church and state in this country but we’ve never been able to separate religion from politics. Or religious feeling from politics. This goes back to Jefferson who was the person who popularized the phrase, ‘the wall of separation between church and state.’
But he understood something that Tocqueville saw later which was that if you are leading a popular government you have to meet the people where they are. And many people, at least part of the music that plays in their heads is in fact, faith-based.
Leahy: So that’s Jon Meacham the Nashville based historian who is kind of in my view, I think you are a little bit more generous to Meacham than I am. I’ve decided that he’s just unbearably sanctimonious. And there he is trying to tell evangelical Christians that they should be voting for Joe Biden. You know the guy who supports abortion versus Donald Trump. Because Donald Trump has had a personal life that’s not exemplary from a biblical perspective.
Carmichael: The part of the soundbite that I heard, I’m not disagreeing with you per se but the part that I heard was Jon Meacham was stating the absolute obvious. I mean, why was it insightful to say that people’s religious values have something to do with the way they think?
Leahy: Yeah. (Laughs)
Carmichael: I don’t even know why that was recorded by anybody.
Leahy: Well, it was five very long minutes of Meacham on MSNBC perhaps the most anti-Christian network.
Carmichael: The only part that I heard was him saying that first of all he didn’t go into much detail about Jefferson’s letter about the separation between church and state. It was actually the opposite. And Meacham probably knows that. Jefferson was concerned it would be the government. By the way, Jefferson’s concerns are coming true today because it is the government that is telling people they can’t go to church.
Leahy: It was a letter to the Danbury Baptists in 1804 that asked for advice on this.
Carmichael: Yes. And the separation of church and state was to protect religion against the government, not the other way around. But in any event, just the soundbite part that we played was that he said apparently there was some great insight that people’s religious values had something to do with the way they think the country should be governed.
And therefore, the people who are in government need to take that into account. What else would you do? Would you ignore it? Oh, wait! If you are a Democrat you would ignore it. (Leahy laughs) For people who say I’d like to go to church because I’m feeling depressed and I’d like to open my heart to God and to Jesus, I’d like to go to church because I feel terrible. No, no, no. You cannot go to church.
But if you want to go protest you can stand next to thousands of protesters. If you want to burn down buildings you can do that very close to each other. But if you try to go to church you will be put in prison or they will shut down the church and fine both of you.
Leahy: I missed the part of the first amendment that apparently according to most Democrats now the freedoms guaranteed in the first amendment are freedom to riot and cause violence for a certain section of the population. That apparently now overrides freedom of speech and freedom of religion.
Carmichael: Yeah. Now there’s another interesting story here Michael. This is from the Milwaukee Journal Centennial. Kanye West is trying to get on the ballot in a number of states. Wisconsin is one of them running as an Independent.
Leahy: He’s filed all his requirements here in Tennessee and I think he’ll get on the ballot in Tennessee.
Carmichael: In Wisconsin, he turned in his papers according to the Democrats, he turned in his papers at five 0 one. And you must turn them in by five o’clock.
Leahy: But his campaign director there says that she walked in the door of the offices at five o’clock and 14 seconds.
Carmichael: Yes. The instructional part for us, Kanye West is a Black man. Democrats are doing everything they can to keep a Black man from being on the ballot.
Leahy: Absolutely.
Carmichael: That’s what they are doing. They are trying to use a technicality because these very same Democrats want mail-out voting. These very same Democrats are happy to count votes that come in a week after the election. In fact in New York state where we have the evidence. The election was on June 23rd.
A judge finally took 13,000 ballots and threw them out. He said you can’t count them. Did the Democrats take heart in that? We know in New Jersey that one election was so fraudulent that the judge ruled that the election would be held over again.
Within a couple of days of that judges ruling the governor of New Jersey said there was no fraud in New Jersey. I mean it’s comical. But the telling part of this story in Wisconsin is that it would be very very easy to argue as the Kanye West people have argued is that they were there closer to five o’clock then they were to five 0 one. So if you are rounding, you round to five o’clock.
Leahy: Yeah.
Carmichael: And if you think that Black people should have the right to vote which they should then you would think that you would go out of your way to make sure a Black person who wants to run for public office would be able to do so. You wouldn’t do the opposite. You wouldn’t try to keep them off the ballot on a technicality that is that tiny.
Leahy: I would think that Kanye West, a Black man would have good reason to file a lawsuit in federal court alleging the Democratic Party of Wisconsin is violating his civil rights and the voting rights act of 1965.
Carmichael: In his case could actually I think make an interesting case about the management of ballots in the upcoming election as to how they would have to be construed in the same level of specificity.
Listen to the full second hour here:
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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.
