Live from Music Row Wednesday 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 to discuss social justice yard signs, their meanings, and the role of power.
Leahy: We are joined by the original all-star panelist. He’s been on the Nashville airwaves since the 1980s. Crom Carmichael. Crom, good morning.
Carmichael: Good morning, sir.
Leahy: You know by the way before we get into your topic, I was watching and I think I have a prediction.
Carmichael: Yes.
Leahy: I think we’re going to have a lot of people from Los Angeles moving to Nashville.
Carmichael: Well, (Laughter) California.
Leahy: California, Los Angeles area.
Carmichael: Well, California yeah. But Los Angeles, you know, it’s interesting Governor Newsom who’s destroying their state…
Leahy: Destroying it.
Carmichael: Previously destroyed San Francisco. And then the previous district attorney in San Francisco.
Leahy: That destroyed San Francisco with him.
Carmichael: Who destroyed San Francisco is now the district attorney in Los Angeles.
Leahy: And he’s destroying Los Angeles.
Carmichael: And now he’s in the process of destroying Los Angeles. But before I get to that I really want to talk about I was digging through boxes and my wife Kathy laughed about this because we moved from one house to another in 2006. And when we did, I packed up some books that I had in the old house. And Kathy found these boxes that said really important paperback books. (Leahy laughs)
And they’re still in the box 14 years later. That’s how important they are. And then there was another one that says really really important. She was just howling and I was too. It was just hysterical. But one of those books was George Orwell’s 1984. Now Kathy and I like to take walks with the dogs. And there are these yards signs now. And these Black Lives Matter yard signs have little expressions on them and they truly remind me of George Orwell. So let’s just kind of review. Not all signs are exactly alike.
Leahy: I can’t wait.
Carmichael: We walk a fairly broad area and they’re probably 10 of these yard signs up in that whole area. But one of them says we believe black lives matter. Okay now. By the way, you know, anyone who says we believe all Black Lives Matter, they get criticized for that because really what we believe Black Lives Matter means is we believe only Black lives who are interfacing with police and especially those who died at the hands of the police which represents less than one percent. Way less. Way way less than one percent of all the Black people who die violently. The next one is no human is illegal.
Leahy: No, human.
Carmichael: No human is illegal. Now by the way the new district attorney in Los Angeles would I guess agree with that. I don’t know quite what no human is illegal means.
Leahy: So people who live in India, they’re not illegal people who live in China, They’re not illegal. What exactly does that mean? How about unborn children?
Carmichael: I don’t know exactly what that means. The next was kind of humorous. Science is Real. (Leahy laughs) Now that’s actually false. That’s very Orwellian because science is the effort to seek the truth. It’s trying to find out what is real. Science isn’t real if it’s the effort to find out what’s real. Then this one is good. Love is Love.
Leahy: That’s called a tautology.
Carmichael: Is that what that is? Is a tautology a tautology? Is that the way to define tautology?
Leahy: Yes.
Carmichael: That’s helpful because I thought that was interesting. Now like this one, Women’s Rights Are Human Rights. I guess that may be stating the obvious? I’m not quite sure. And then Water is Life. Water isn’t life. There may be life in water. (Leahy chuckles) But water itself is necessary for life. But water is not life.
Leahy: You’ve got one more?
Carmichael: There’s one more. This one is in really small print on the signs. Injustice Anywhere is a Threat to Injustice Everywhere. Now, that actually applies to this election.
Leahy: (Bellows) Give that to the Texas attorney general and put it in front of the Supreme Court.
Carmichael: So we need to have little yard signs that we run and stick next to these yard signs talking about the Supreme Court to take up the Texas lawsuit.
Leahy: So when we first met back in the 1990s you had a series of audiotapes.
Carmichael: Still do.
Leahy: Knowledge Products. Fascinating. You did series on government and science and philosophy.
Carmichael: Its history. We take particular philosophers. And some of them had I thought terrible ideas. But they’re very influential so when we covered when we, for example, we covered the giants of political thought. Well, we covered people like Adam Smith. And we covered people and Thomas Jefferson. We covered Karl Marx because our definition of a giant was not somebody whose ideas were necessarily good but they were influential. And so we covered all those.
Leahy: That’s funny.
Carmichael: I saw these signs by people. I’m sure when they put it up they are very proud.
Leahy: Look how morally superior I am. This stupid blather. You don’t’ like my stupid blather? Then you must be a racist. (Laughter) Now, Crom, I want to bring this point. I’ve been thinking about this. I want to get your reaction to it. I think you did this and I never pronounce it right. Nietzsche. Did I get that pronunciation right?
Carmichael: Yes.
Leahy: So his famous book was Will To Power. I think about that a lot right now. I think about, where is the will to power? And I look at what’s going on in the country right now. Is it about a particular political ideology? Or is it about the desire for Democrats and authoritarians to have power over the rest of us? and they seem to have great will to secure that power on our side. Where is the will?
Carmichael: Well that’s a that’s a that’s a very very good question. I also think that in order to have the ‘will to have power’ you need to have the funds. You need to have the money to support your efforts. And the left is funded by government employee unions, billionaires, and China. And China may be the biggest funder of all of those things. And their idea of power is not the same idea of power as the others. Theirs is ultimately is submission.
Leahy: Yes, that’s ultimately the path. That’s why stolen elections have consequences.
Carmichael: Yes.
Leahy: That’s why under a potential Biden administration the United States will be on a path to submit to China. It seems obvious to me. Would you agree or not?
Carmichael: Yeah, what’s interesting is that the two voting blocks using identity politics for purposes of discussion. Black people and Hispanic people will be hurt the most as China continues to influence the United States and gets more powerful.
Leahy: That’s exactly right.
Carmichael: If the Republican party is going to succeed as a party standing up for individual rights and freedom and liberty and innovation and all the things that America was built on then the Republican Party is going to have to do much more significant outreach to the people who are being hurt. Trump started that. No Republican prior to that in my lifetime even came close to it. Both Bush’s kind of ignored it. They tried to do things but they didn’t try very hard.
Leahy: Not hard at all.
Carmichael: Jeb Bush probably tried the hardest with his school choice and vouchers in Florida and did a good job. And I give him credit for that.
Leahy: And that’s one of the reasons why education in Florida is improving.
Carmichael: Yes. For Black and Hispanic children in particular.
Listen to the third 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.Â
