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 guest host Ben Cunningham to the studio.
During the first hour, Host Leahy and Cunningham examined the concept of intellectual dishonesty that conservatives experienced from progressives and liberals who believe they know more about governing. They also touched on social media censorship and how some states may be leading the path that may hold Facebook, Google, and Twitter’s of the world accountable and un-protected by Section 230 legislation.
(David Ismay clip plays)
Leahy: That’s David Ismay, Ben.
Cunningham: He’s the commissioner of people control. He’s a tyrant in the making with this virtuous face of saving the planet. Those are the people that are in control of the government now. They think the ends justify the means and they are good virtuous people and their governing over a bunch of deplorable people who simply will not see the light that they see. So they’re going to force us to bend to their will. That is a very scary reality.
And it is not just climate change. It’s on all these other issues. issue after issue after issue. It’s this end to justify the means because we are the enlightened ones. And as Thomas Sowell wrote 20 years ago, we are the enlightened class. So you must listen to us and it is only right that we are in charge of the government. This fellow Trump was a pretender.
All of his followers are unwashed that we must direct and tell them how to live their lives. It’s the same script over and over and over again. And do not discount this. These people believe that they are the enlightened ones. They believe that they’re the ones that should be in the position to rule over the rest of us and for them, freedom and liberty, it’s not even in their bubble.
Leahy: So this guy David was actually appointed there by a Republican Governor Charles Baker.
Cunningham: Oh God.
Leahy: Republican in name only type of guy.
Cunningham: A Massachusetts Republican. (Chuckles) Yeah, which means a Massachusetts Republican which means a Democrat in essence. But this Ismay character, notice what he said. 60 percent of these emissions are coming from you. What emissions? Oh, yeah, it’s carbon dioxide. Yeah, that natural emission that comes from plants and all that sort of stuff. It’s like if you just look at common sense, here’s my problem with all these guys. And by the way, Ben I went to school with all these guys. I grew up with all these guys. I know what they think like.
Cunningham: What happened to you, Michael?
Leahy: Well, I started looking at the facts. I started thinking for myself. I suppose. It’s an interesting point because I have I still have friends on the other side. I talk to them.
Cunningham: Oh, I do too. Friends and family.
Leahy: Yeah, I talk to them and I’d be curious to see if you have the same reaction. When you present them with a logical argument do you get a logical response? What kind of response do you get?
Cunningham: They want to respond before you even start talking. They’re thinking about their response because they are so self-assured of their own virtue. It’s not a debate. It’s a firing line sitting down Bill Buckley versus whoever. We’re way beyond that. It’s not a debate. You’re a sweet lovely person but you simply don’t have the moral and intellectual insights that I the enlightened one have. You can talk and we’ll listen to you.
Leahy: We’ll pat you on the head.
Cunningham: But we won’t really listen to you.
Leahy: That’s the problem is at its core is intellectual dishonesty, right? I’ve had this in the past when you talk to somebody who has a worldview and thinks in a ‘logical process’, here’s the problem that they have. They don’t measure the consequence of their logical thought process with the empirical evidence. That’s the key element. Well, I follow this logic A, therefore, B, therefore, C, therefore, D. But a, therefore, B, if you say well look at what’s wrong with that because if you look at the evidence here it is completely inconsistent with the next step of your logic. They can’t process that.
Cunningham: No.
Leahy: That’s what I’ve noticed.
Cunningham: It’s all about narcissism and self-glorification really and it’s all about aspirational. I have this vision of the world as being a place where we don’t have any carbon emissions and we don’t have any bigotry. That’s my vision. And they are really glorifying themselves.
Leahy: You are such a wonderful person. You are so much nicer than I am because you know, I am cravenly filled with self-interest. But you care about the world. I must bow down before our great moral authority.
Cunningham: Absolutely. The irony there is fracking which has allowed us to replace all these coal-powered plants with much cleaner natural gas. And the actual carbon emissions are down to 1983 levels. This is from the energy administration and from the government numbers. The carbon admissions went up and then about 20 years ago started going down. And we’re back down to 1983 levels.
Leahy: (Whispers) Don’t tell anybody that.
Cunningham: And the main reason is that all of these coal-powered plants are going offline. And you know who’s building more coal-powered plants? Do you know who’s building coal-powered plants as fast as they can?
Leahy: China.
Cunningham: Our friends over in China.
Leahy: Yeah friends with an asterisk. So here’s the way the world works today folks. There are increasingly two different lanes in the world. One right now is a really really big lane and that’s the mainstream media, Big Tech, Democratic Party lane where all you can do is follow the party line which is socialism, socialism, socialism. And you know, the average constitutional conservative populace is a bad person.
Cunningham: The CNN line.
Leahy: Yeah, but they’re all they’re liars. They really are very dishonest people. I know this because about once a month some knucklehead from one of these places sends us a message and we’d like to have you on here and we’d like to talk about how miserable you are (Cunningham laughs) and how you beat up puppies. And of course, I’m not going to come on air because I know you’re going to try to sandbag me.
I say, send me your questions. And they send like 20 questions. We answer each one of them and then they do a story on us and they don’t use any of our answers. They’ll take one part of a three-sentence answer and then they’ll weave it into the story they’ve already written. They’re very dishonest people. Very dishonest. The other people that are really dishonest about the free engagement of ideas are all the social media guys.
Google by the way is totally throttling us. You go to do a search for The Tennessee Star and you can’t find us. You cannot find us. It’s intentional. Facebook, same deal. They’re throttling us. Twitter over the weekend Ben I invited you to join the alternative Facebook called CloutHub. And I want to encourage everyone here in our listing audience to go there right now and sign up at CloutHub.com. You just tried it a little bit ago.
Cunningham: It’s very easy to log on. It’s a great site. And I’m so glad that people are moving to these sites. As I told you earlier.
Leahy: Have some more coffee, Ben. (Laughter)
Cunningham: We got thrown off of LinkedIn.
Leahy: Yeah, that’s right. You are so bad Ben. So bad. Bad boy Ben. What did you do?
Cunningham: And I’m still surprised that we are still on Facebook. We’ve go about 200,000 people that follow us on Facebook. Why we’re still on I don’t quite know. They have this kind of passive-aggressive hatred that they have for conservatives and they will look for any excuse. I’m sure you saw Jim Hoft got thrown off of Twitter. Who is the other guy? I can’t think of his name.
Leahy: Other people on our side. Anybody who has an alternative point of view, they throw you out.
Cunningham: And they don’t feel any need to be transparent or to have any kind of due process.
Leahy: No due process.
Cunningham: You’re gone. You’re gone.
Leahy: Because you are guilty of “Bad Think.”
Cunningham: That’s exactly right.
Leahy: You are guilty, Ben. Guilty of Bad Think. (Laughs) You are just going to have to guess and figure out what you are guilty of. (Cunningham laughs) And of course, Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act provides them ‘protection’ from being sued for censoring. There’s some hope though in North Dakota.
It looks like this law may have passed that allows North Dakota citizens who’ve been censored by Facebook, Google, and Twitter to sue. There will be a big court challenge on that but I think in the end the Supreme Court will rule Section 230 granting them immunity as unconstitutional. That’s what I think. We’ll see.
Cunningham: I think you’re probably right. I don’t know but it’s going to be a long way down the road. But Ron DeSantis in Florida, there is a great Powerline article the other day about how that really is the path at the state level to pass legislation.
Leahy: I’ve been talking about it. Founders federalism. The next movement. The next part of the constitutional conservative movement.
Listen to the full first 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
