The Roots of Political Thought: A Conversation with Dr. Michael Anderson

Moore to Consider (00:01.127)
Welcome to another edition of Moore to Consider and, and our past shows we've discussed. like to talk about what interests me and politics is certainly one of those things. We do a great deal of sports, politics, pop culture, United States of America. How did it come about? What's it really about? Why do we think the way we think? Are we influenced greatly by media or other sources and we don't really know what the hell's going on. So today I have on Dr. Mike Anderson.

Dr. Anderson is an historian. He has a very interesting background educationally and the subjects he studied, but he has a lot of interest in basically that concept. Where do we get our ideas left, right? What does that really mean and how those things are influenced? And he's written several books on this type of subjects, kind of the psychology of politics and why we get to where we are. Dr. Anderson, so happy to have you, sir. Welcome.

Mike Anderson (00:58.818)
Thank you for inviting me. Great to be here.

Moore to Consider (01:02.355)
So when you go back into your upbringing, because I think everybody's like literally at the time from the crib has some influences that drive them politically. It's whether they grew up in a certain household, certainly in a particular neighborhood, working class, did they come from an affluent background? All these background aspects I think has some driving force on how people think government should work or what are the relationship of people.

What's your background on where you came to on what you write about?

Mike Anderson (01:35.17)
Well, I am a baby boomer. I grew up in the 60s, so I was in the middle of the counterculture movement. Almost went to Vietnam, but I lucked out because Nixon stopped the draft after I had my army physical, but before I went in. So was incredible luck. But when I graduated from college, I didn't get any jobs because I had or job offers because I had a low

draft number. So then I went to graduate school and took a different direction. And you'll see in a minute when I talk about this more, but I label myself as genetically conservative because I have the characteristics that most conservatives do. Respecting the status quo, I accept change as long as it's

occurs at the right pace and not too quickly. And I have a lot of respect for traditions. That's why like history. But politically, I'm more moderate. I'm way to the left of the Republicans, Republican establishment on various social issues. So I call myself a moderate. Because I've written books about the left and right, I respect

the left and right equally because the differences between them are genetic and they can't help those differences.

The origin of those differences was way back in prehistoric times, and they were part of the development of human beings to adapt to different ecosystems. So the people on the left are more interested in change. They want change, they like change, and they pursue change. People on the right are more status quo oriented. And so this worked out in the ancient world because

Mike Anderson (03:48.206)
depending on the food supply, if there was a lot of food, the conservatives would manage it, and if there was no food, the liberals would go look for it, basically. So that difference has existed for 100,000 years as a behavioral trait. And of course, politics didn't exist till about 1800, because all the historical...

governments were monarchies or totalitarian systems run by one person and people had no rights. So it wasn't until parties formed and people were given the right to vote that they started engaging in politics. And so they could take one point of view or the other, depending on their personality. And you mentioned about where you grow up, 80 some percent of

Republicans had Republican parents and 80 % of Democrats had Democrat parents. And the genetic influence is about 50 % and the other 50 % is environment. But if you have conservative parents and they have conservative friends, you live in a conservative neighborhood and blah, blah, blah, you get it. You're gonna most likely be a conservative.

Most kids go to college and they become liberal while they're at college and if they are innately conservative, they flip back as soon as they graduate. So that's basically our political point of view. One of the major differences between the two groups is that, you know, I talked about change versus status quo, the left has a obsession with equality.

And so they're always worried about equality, unfairness, inequality. they, that's one of the reasons why, and the left is a very big tent. It has communists, socialists, Marxists, identity politics people in it. It's very complicated. But the reason that Marxists and the socialists are there are because they wanted to throw out our government and put in theirs. So they're always working for that. And this,

Mike Anderson (06:06.379)
recent Biden administration was a kind of an insane example because never before has a left wing political platform put in place because in history, if you were too far to the left or too far to the right, you didn't win the vote because you have to carry the independence. But

Moore to Consider (06:25.633)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Anderson (06:29.259)
Joe was sneaky and didn't tell anybody what he was gonna do. So everybody thought they were electing the same old Joe, which they weren't because he was implementing this new thing.

Moore to Consider (06:40.961)
So one question that comes to mind is all this growing up, having certain influences, et cetera, you the family you grew up in. One thing I've noticed is you can probably tell from behind me, I'm heavily involved in athletics and you know, I've worked with a lot of kids in professional baseball, big football fan growing up. So one thing I think that sort of influences athletes, even though I've probably been around coaches,

In people that I know, lifelong Democrats, but you know, when you're talking about the Pennsylvania Democrat 50 years ago, you're talking about a very conservative person. Everybody voted, or West Virginia, wherever the particular area was, they tended to be coal miners or they tended to be laborers of a sense that they were maybe even union members. And they thought the Democrat, the Democrat party stood for the little guy or for the working class guy. So they weren't like not conservative in their lifestyles. But anyway.

I think that when you play sports and you move up the ranks sort of, and you play competitively, you would never want your opposition hampered by something. You look for the angles you can cut to get a competitive edge, but you want the game to be above board and you want to think you beat your opponent at his best type of thing. So, it's highly competitive. And I've noticed, I noticed this in law school when I went to law school.

Mike Anderson (07:57.025)
Right. Yep.

Moore to Consider (08:03.204)
you started to see sides of people come out and there were, thought, fairness freaks. literally fairness freaks. And you're like saying, well, this athlete has this ability that well, then that's not fair. And then we should, you know, we should tilt the playing field. And in extreme example, I was coaching at a college a few years ago and I came in and I was talking to a Dean and she's like, how's your summer going?

And I'm like, going really well. know, I've been doing a lot of recruiting. I got a really good looking kid the other day, hitting the ball really well, runs well. He's out of Chicago. He's going to come visit. And she goes, Jack, I don't know if you realize it, but people sometimes find that offensive. You tend to talk about kids that you work with that are highly talented. And I go, yeah, we're at a community college level. And she goes, well, all the little Jimmies and Timmies and Billies ought to be able to play if they want to. So my response was I said, hey, you ever faced a 90 mile an hour fastball?

And she goes, well, I don't know anything about that. And I'm like, well, it's not for the faint hearted. Not every kid gets to play. So she keeps pushing the issue. I said, let me ask them, do we have some kind of honor society here? The five eight of Kappa, do we have something that honors achievement in the classroom? Well, yeah. Why don't two Os get in? Well, that's different. I'm like, you don't think a two O GPA student doesn't want to be in an honor society. Why don't you let them in? And then it kind of shuts her up. But what I recognize there was that theme with her all the time. We're trying to level the playing field.

But athletically, we don't expect it, nor would we want it. But when I throw it back into the academic field, hey, why aren't you letting the two O's in? Well, that's different. How the hell is it different? You don't think too, you you see my point. So I did notice that some people growing up in life that gravitated towards athletics always tended to be, I don't know if they're Republican, conservative, all those terms we use, but they are far more into, I want to just openly compete, see where it lands. I don't care so much.

And then you have the people, as I'm saying, that always tend to be fighting for those that they feel are quote unquote marginalized, that, you know, they didn't start the race in the same place, et cetera. last thing I'll say, and then I want your response. What you just said to, I thought a lot about, cause I don't know, I can't remember who is attributed to, but there's the famous, I think Churchill gets it generally.

Moore to Consider (10:21.404)
But that if you're not a liberal at 18, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by 40, you have no brain. know you've all right. That would kind of align with what I think you just said about some kids who are innately genetically conservative go to college. listen to whatever they're going to listen to in college was 98 % probably lived Marx's thought. But then they come home or they come back to the real world and they kind of shift back to what they are anyway. Okay. So that's an explanation for that. Okay.

Mike Anderson (10:26.669)
Yeah.

Mike Anderson (10:41.079)
Yeah.

Mike Anderson (10:47.223)
Yeah. Yep.

Well, let me, you brought up a very interesting topic that I don't think I've thought about before, but we can move in that direction. I've always objected to the everybody gets a trophy theory. And the main reason I object to it is practical. If you're getting a trophy up to some point in your life, at that point, you're not getting a trophy anymore, if you aren't any good. So at some point, life becomes competition.

Moore to Consider (10:57.999)
Mm-hmm.

Moore to Consider (11:03.909)
Yes, yes.

Mike Anderson (11:22.057)
And so why not, why not experience competition as early as you can? Maybe you don't have to in T ball, but once you get in peewees, maybe you should because that starts you adapting. Plus, you know, you can recognize the fact that, you know, I, I'm a pretty good athlete or I could be better or whatever, or I'm no good at this. I should do something else. So, I wonder if more elite athletes are conservatives because

Moore to Consider (11:22.256)
Yes.

Moore to Consider (11:51.209)
That's kind of what I was questioning.

Mike Anderson (11:52.982)
Because I don't think an elite athlete can make any sense out of everybody gets a trophy. And he got to where he or she got to where they are because it was a competition and they excelled. They had talent that others didn't have.

Moore to Consider (12:11.3)
You know, I had a, I had a gentleman on, we were talking baseball the other day and I said, what's the best baseball movie? I agreed with him. said bull Durham, but then we talked a little bit, about some of the other movies and the messages and field of dreams came up. And I said, you know, as a baseball player, college baseball player, but work with a lot of people professionally and that type of thing. said the line in the movie, everybody kind of knows that cost is going to end up figuring out that,

that the, the gentleman out there catching was his dad. And that's going to be the heartwarming moment. But I thought one of the biggest moments was Burt Lancaster goes to that line and realizes if he crosses the line, he leaves being a ball player and back to being a doctor. And there's the line he told Costner. Well, if I'd never been a doctor for 50 years, that would have been the tragedy. The fact I never got another at bat, but was telling this friend, said,

The pivotal moment in that movie is what all males go through. Females to some degree, I'm sure, but I know it as a male. When he's walking away, all the players are pat, good job doc, way to save the little girl doc. So he's getting that recognition from his peers. But as he walks away, shoeless Joe Jackson says, Hey rookie. And he looks back and goes, you were good. That's all any guy plays for. That's all anybody plays for. You want to be considered by your peers to have been a good player.

So he got that thing from that one at bat, the fly ball to right to get a sack fly to be on the field with those guys at that level. Although ghost in the field and, you know, when I went to cornfield, but I really, when, when, he said that, so I don't know how people survive in a, Hey, you got everything you got because the board got together and leveled the playing field and you're really not that bright or you're really not that fast or you're really not that whatever, but Hey, here, we'll pin this on your chest. Anyway, I don't know how anybody would ever want that.

Mike Anderson (14:02.689)
I agree. I think that the recipients must not feel comfortable. Once they're a certain age, if you're eight or something, you don't care. It's kind of cute. You got a certificate. But if you're older and I mean, DEI is a bigger deal in business and education than I think in sports because sports, becomes obvious who's good and who isn't. And you're not going to put a player on a baseball team, maybe a cheerleading team that isn't any good. Can't do it. So.

Moore to Consider (14:32.695)
Well, they get their, they get their bites at certain places though. They are definitely like, you know, in the NFL, you know, you're, definitely seeing, um, a movement and I think it's throughout sports, uh, you know, being more inclusive, hiring a female, for example, I know I'm to get some shots for this, but if you're a, you know, high school to college football player, you're playing at one of the top schools in the country, you're drafting the top three rounds and you're

You know, you're six foot six and 317 pounds and you look over and there's a female that says, Hey, I once played flag football, but I'm going I'm going to teach you here on defensive line play. don't know. Maybe a guy, I think every guy that plays at that level is kind of looking at the coaching staff. I mean, Chris Cooley played for for the Redskins when it was the Redskins years ago, he was asked a question about a guy with a lot of athletic background that was a tight ends coach. And they said, how did you feel? And he goes,

Once I figured out he knew what he was talking about, I was fine with it. But he really had to prove something to me. Cause if the guy had been all pro three years and he's out there as a tight ends coach, I'm kind of like, okay. But he said, I did have a guy that was all brains and he kind of worked his way into the coaching ranks. And I listened to him. I'm like, okay, conceptually he knows what the, and cool. He was a really bright guy, but he goes, yeah, there's a sniffing test. You know, anytime you're out there a bunch of around a bunch of alphas and you didn't do it.

Mike Anderson (15:35.063)
Yeah.

Moore to Consider (15:55.859)
you're going to come in and teach the ones that do, there's a little bit of what are you doing out here? So, so yeah, it's, it's, and then it.

Mike Anderson (16:04.661)
And it's funny because analytics has kind of changed that because you can be a super analytics guy if you weren't a great player maybe. And I mean, you're not gonna be running the team, but you have a role.

Moore to Consider (16:13.566)
Yeah, well...

Moore to Consider (16:18.068)
Actually, there's quite a bit of that. And I know some people on the ground in big league baseball that it's a huge fight. It's a huge cause there are managers at different levels. Even at the big league level, they got a guy that spits out the lineup every day from a computer program.

Mike Anderson (16:32.823)
Yeah, I don't agree with that. Right, yeah.

Moore to Consider (16:34.964)
They don't either. then in scouting is where it's really, if you saw the movie Moneyball, you know, you kind of get the old school scout. I can see it. Then the analytical guy goes, yeah, the guy doesn't walk enough for this, that, and the other. So yeah, that's, that's another whole thing. And I think that's driven a lot by the very things you're talking about too. How do we, how do we see the world?

Mike Anderson (16:54.029)
Yeah, and historically, if you look at the human race since it came into being, there are three ways to get ahead. One is you're smarter. Two is you're stronger. And third is you're a good salesman. And I don't know how to put it other than that, but there's always been a middle class built in the great societies like Rome or Greece out of people who made their own money.

Moore to Consider (17:03.741)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Moore to Consider (17:10.397)
Yeah.

Mike Anderson (17:21.879)
through guile and negotiating skills and whatever. you can argue whether that's how smart they are, but it's a skill they have that may or may not include high intelligence, but they're successful. So those are the three ways you can get to the top.

Moore to Consider (17:22.173)
Mm-hmm.

Moore to Consider (17:39.218)
Let me ask you about this historically. This would be a great road to go down, I believe. OK, one of the things that bothers me is I listen to the language. I hear things go on. You know, I'm born in 62, so, you know, I'm born during the Kennedy administration, so I kind of watch the culture as well. And I remember 30 years ago, roughly, I started hearing gender replacing all the time, which was naturally sex. It was a designation male female. I kept hearing was gender.

Then there was gender blending and then there was gradations of gender and it all led to where we ended up, you know, in the last decade. Right. So another thing I've noticed politically and it's been going on for a while. It's an attack against our democracy, our democracy sacred. And I'm like, okay, this is my understanding of the constitution. The executive branch was to be selected by basically electors selected by the state legislatures. They never said anything about people voting. And then the states adopted over periods of time. I think in the first election.

11 of the former colonies now states two had not yet ratified the constitution. Six allowed people to vote. Five did not. I don't believe South Carolina allowed people to vote until 1852. So it wasn't the framers intention that you voted for president. Then the, the, uh, the U S senators were selected by the state legislatures until the 17th amendment. So really the only aspect of democracy in the founding documents or the constitution was you got to vote for dumb.

Farmer Brown down the street for the House Representatives. And then the check against him was your US Senator selected by the people in the state Capitol to protect this. So I keep hearing this. It's a democracy. It's like, well, it's not a democracy. So going back to Rome and Greece and going back to, you know, empires or great civilizations from the past. Where is the history of democracy? Cause you mentioned earlier, you're right. There's all these monarchs and pretty much everything with totalitarianism.

Mike Anderson (19:13.485)
Exactly. Yep.

Moore to Consider (19:35.961)
But the concepts of a person having a right to speak to how they're governed, what is the history on

Mike Anderson (19:43.982)
Well, the Greeks set the example and Greece is one of the very rare exceptions in history of an existing democracy. there are reasons why, couple of basic reasons why theirs was successful and nobody else tried it. If you've ever been to Greece, Greece is very mountainous, only 20 % of the peninsula is arable. And so

Moore to Consider (20:02.799)
No I haven't.

Moore to Consider (20:10.252)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Anderson (20:11.437)
mountains separated communities there. And because the mountains separated communities, the community could never be very large because they couldn't absorb other communities. So the polis came in existence as a way to build a government basically around the people. And it started small and the people had votes and the people participated. They were in the assembly and they voted. They didn't have representatives. Okay. And so

Moore to Consider (20:31.598)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Anderson (20:41.131)
That got went through an incubation period and then developed into a mature political system like during the Golden Age of Greece, which was basically 450 BC. And it's never really been duplicated. The founders did not were not interested in democracy at all. Yep, the word democracy is not used in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution.

Moore to Consider (21:03.479)
Scared to death of it.

Moore to Consider (21:10.763)
Nope, not once.

Mike Anderson (21:11.755)
And those guys, you know, we always talk about how smart they were, but most of them could read Latin and Greek, believe it or not. They were that educated. So they could read Cicero and they could read Plato and all that stuff. So, and you're right, there was a great fear of the public by the founders. And that's why they only gave the House of Representatives the people's vote. And the Senate and the president were to be chosen by the states.

Moore to Consider (21:19.405)
Yeah. Yes!

Moore to Consider (21:25.335)
Yes!

Mike Anderson (21:42.31)
And we've made ourselves more democratic by that definition. In other words, the people have more impact, but it isn't really a democracy. The other thing is, like Rome, when the constitution was adopted, you had to be a landowner to vote. It's called a democracy. so we were requiring various states, the whole country was landowners in the beginning, but then

Moore to Consider (21:48.971)
Right. Right.

Mike Anderson (22:12.159)
States dropped out and allowed that allowed you to vote without owning land, but it was till 1850 or 1860, I think, till the last state went forward with that. So that's another democratic adaptation. So we have more democracy than a republic, but we're not really

I don't know. We don't wear a hybrid, I guess.

Moore to Consider (22:44.395)
Yeah. And I think you would agree too, the people that are signing on, you know, and this is probably my version of history I picked up from watching ABC's Saturday morning cartoons, you know, but I've done some study, but I think what they would have thought maybe more so was they were a bunch of little nations coming together with the, with the common interest in defense, especially coming out of the revolution. But, and I'll throw this bike.

I was doing a show the other day. I have been absolutely convinced upon study of this and it's been several years that I've become convinced of this. The second amendment is clearly about they didn't want standing armies. Bottom line, that's all it was. And if you go look at Madison, which I was talking to a friend the other day and you can understand, I go up, my family tree goes back to Jamestown.

I was telling somebody at Monticello, said, know, pretty much Virginia wrote the founding documents. Madison pretty much wrote the constitution. Jefferson wrote the declaration of independence with influences, no doubt. But when you mentioned about their level of literacy and their knowledge, I remember seeing a thing about Alexander Hamilton, who I believe went to Queens College, which is now Columbia University, and what he had to know to get in. And it was like fluency in like five languages.

That was the entry into college then, which less than 1 % would get. But my point is, I look at the way they probably saw things. And again, the standing army, what happened, namely in the New England states, is they went door to door and took their weapons away. What else did they They kicked in their doors and they slept in their beds. So you got the Second Amendment. Don't take our weapons away. Let us be the army.

Third amendment, stay out of my house. Fourth amendment, got to have a warrant probable cause. So all of this that they're getting into is how they were treated by the British. And a point I made to a friend is if you were in that time and you just saw people the same race, ethnicity, and religion, when a revolution, wouldn't you have the same concerns about them and leadership? They're the same people. Why wouldn't you think they might do the same thing? Article one, section eight says, provide for Navy, one sentence, period. Well, what are really the...

Moore to Consider (25:01.33)
the federal ground forces, the Marine Corps, Marine Corps was established when it hit the shores of Tripoli, they sent in the Marines. So you have a federal ground force, but they did not want armies. That's what it is. So now when it gets kicked into whether you have a right to hunt Bambi in the backyard or home protection, it's frustrating to me. I'm not trying to say I'm smartest guy in the room, but when I hear all the discussions, no one's operating, I think, from a basis of what the founders were really saying. So it's.

scary to me when I'm hearing the talking heads going like our democracy, know, an attack on our democracy. I'm like, well, what the hell are you really talking about? And so since we're so far away from the founding, and I don't think that from 1791 to today, we're better off than we were then as far as the mechanisms of government.

Mike Anderson (25:50.925)
All right. Yep.

Moore to Consider (25:52.359)
But how lost are we in the woods? You and I know this, but I mean, does anybody else? I mean that sometimes when I hear people that are in high positions, either they know about the constitution and they disregard it, or they have really no working knowledge of the constitution.

Mike Anderson (26:09.089)
Right, yep. Well, you want to talk about the billionaires a bit because that's another topic we could get into if you'd like. Okay, so I told you the title of my fifth book, America's Counterfeit Democracy, which refers to the fact that we call it democracy and it never, it was a republic by creation. And even though it's,

Moore to Consider (26:18.149)
I would love to talk about that. Yes, sir.

Mike Anderson (26:36.461)
called a democracy, now it doesn't really function because the public has little, much less impact on what the government does than it thinks it does, or they pretend that it does. Because the billionaire class, and I would argue that the thing that created wealth and inequality in human society was the formation of governments based on owning land.

Moore to Consider (26:46.918)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Anderson (27:02.145)
Because when nobody owned the land, we were nomads and you couldn't accumulate any wealth. So I mean, back to, you know, Greece and Rome and all those other societies, there were wealthy people. And wealthy people have always participated in the function of government. Aristocratic class, if they didn't like the king. I mean, the Magna Carta was signed because the aristocrats said to King John, you know, you're an idiot.

So we're gonna take your power away and give us some. But today it's worse by far because there's an alignment between the wealthiest families in our country and major international corporations to work together and control everything. So there's a hidden association between them. They meet all the time.

You know, there's probably, you know, one to 10,000 power elites. And I better define that first. I use the term power elite in my book title because there was a book written called The Power Elite by a sociologist. It was published in 1956, C. Wright Mills. And basically he described, he was worried about the power elite of the military industrial complex after World War II.

Moore to Consider (28:25.911)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Anderson (28:27.871)
So, but the term now, there are rich families and rich people in our country that don't give a damn about politics, right? But there are a lot of them that do give a damn. So they want to influence what the federal government does. And so they apply pressure to accomplish that. And they apply pressure in three major ways. One, they get themselves appointed to high level

positions in the executive branch. Secretary of Treasury, Secretary of State, Secretary of Commerce, all those. If you look at the resumes of all those people, they're all identical. They went to a prep school, they went to Ivy League school, they've been in corporate world, they've been a major consultant, they may have been in academia, blah, blah. They're all the same. And they're there to do homage to the wealthy class.

The second way they influence us is they lobby and influence the Congress to do what they want. Here's a statistic for you, which is in my fifth book. Somebody did a study and they looked at how different groups feel about a particular issue that the Congress is considering.

and its likelihood of happening. If the power elite is in favor of it, it's got like a 79 % chance of passing. If the lobbyists are pushing for it, but it isn't necessarily a consensus among the power elite, it's like 50, 45%. If only the public is interested, it's 6%. So the point is that, and I'm not saying the public is always getting hosed because if

The public is interested in something the power elites interested in. You got a good chance of it passing. But the number of things that the government does that directly address issues that the public has is minimal. The third way they influence us is elections, because they drive the money that gets the people nominated, and then they drive the money behind which one gets elected.

Mike Anderson (30:53.037)
In recent elections, if you look at the money spent, there's a 90 % chance, this is Congress, House and Senate, if you spend more money than your opponent, you've got a 90 % chance of winning.

Moore to Consider (31:01.279)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mike Anderson (31:08.737)
Now what that tells you is that people are voting for the winner through name recognition from all these ads. I feel more comfortable with that guy because I see him more or something. I mean, the ads have degenerated over the past 10 or 20 years as obviously you've seen because they used to be positive. They used to be like, did the, you know, here's my career and I did that. Now it's just bash the other guy.

And I mean, I never watch a political ad because it's useless propaganda, basically. One side bashes the other, the other side bashes them and it cancels out. So I don't know what we have to do about this. I mean, it's interesting what Trump has done because Trump sort of

Well, he's attacking the establishment. I went to the Republican convention this year because I worked there as a volunteer. And I interviewed people because I wanted to reference them in my books and stuff. And I had lunch with the operations manager for the Trump campaign, not the campaign manager, but the operations guy. And I said, who's your biggest enemy? And he said, the Republican establishment. Because the rep...

Moore to Consider (32:08.318)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Moore to Consider (32:25.64)
Sure, I absolutely believe that,

Mike Anderson (32:29.057)
Because the Republican establishment and Democrat establishment both want the status quo that they can control. And so all these people like the Lincoln Project, the anti-Trumpers, all those people do not like Trump. They hate Trump because he gets in their toy box. They want to control everything. They don't want him controlling anything because they can't control him.

Moore to Consider (32:53.309)
All let me ask you this, because all things kind of swing back to this interest I've had and where all this went. Growing up, I was fascinated. I mean, it was from really young age, Kennedy's assassination. I ended up writing a master's thesis. And it's interesting at the beginning of the movie JFK, they have Eisenhower giving the famous farewell address, January 17th, I think of 61, where he says, beware the military industrial complex.

Some research shows me that he actually wanted to throw Congress in and his handlers were like, Dwight, hey, don't go too far. Don't throw Congress under the bus. But he made the famous thing, quote, also, we're no longer going from plowshares to swords and back. We don't have a peacetime industry anymore of just making farm equipment. We're going to continue to make this war stuff.

And things that are made to go boom, tend to go boom somewhere. We're going to sell it. We're going to sell war. he's saying that. So in 2004, see Eugene Jurecki, an independent film documentarian do this thing called why we fight from the Frank Capra from the Frank Capra title during the indoctrination films, basically a world war two. And they have a CIA type on. And he said, let me give you an example. This plane, which is completely outdated, has a part.

made in all 50 states. And then they show these videos of these lobbyists slash weapons manufacturer types at these conventions. They're schmoozing four star generals that work in the Pentagon. And you see where I'm going. You see this entire industry, you see the stain of Vietnam. You mentioned that going in just missing service yourself there. I had a next door neighbor that went, you have a generation of young people that are maimed, disfigured and killed.

over what the hell, who the hell knows what that, what are we doing in Vietnam? In my research too, I found a fascinating thing. John F. Kennedy met with Douglas MacArthur in 62. I MacArthur dies in 64 and they sit down and in this biography of Kennedy, this writer said, Kennedy wasn't the least bit impressed going in with MacArthur. He kind of thought he was a five-star stooge or something. I don't know why, you know, Kennedy, you know, I think was an 02 in the Navy at the time of his

Moore to Consider (35:13.645)
Hey, he was there. wasn't, but you know, he's looking at, at MacArthur sorta like, yeah, let's what the old man has to say. And they said there's a point where MacArthur says don't buy into the domino theory and never ever get involved in a land-based war in Southeast Asia. You'll never get out. Whatever the French did, you saw what happened to them in 54, stayed the hell out. And that Kennedy's shaken by this. So.

You know, I think Oswald did it. Why we can get into, but it does seem Kennedy starting to align against that apparatus. Now this is where I want to take you to let's go back to 1913. I mentioned earlier, you got the 16th amendment. However, that was ratified if properly ratified income taxation. Yeah. The 17th amendment sent two more horse to Washington, send the U S senators in from the, from the voter and not, not the state legislature.

And it also happens to be about the time of the Federal Reserve System. So when I was hearing you say, probably historically, why would the rich or the wealthy have had an interest in government? was to protect their own interests, I'm sure, the wealth. But I think what this has devolved into is why not be kind of like a mob type of figure, get paid tribute and sort of run the government. So everything the government does enriches me. So not only do I have the interest

I might have had the interest centuries ago to have the government's laws reflect the protection of my property. Now it's, hell, why not use the government to make the wealth? Fair?

Mike Anderson (36:44.545)
Yeah, yeah. Well, I say in my in my fifth book, there are two reasons, two motivations for the power elite. One is increase their wealth and the other is keep the American society stable because if it's unstable, their wealth is is threatened. That's why. Right, that's but but. Right, so we have we have seven major international corporations that.

Moore to Consider (37:02.625)
Well, you might get revolution too. Bread and circuses, basically.

Mike Anderson (37:12.787)
own all the media in our country. And they put out, since they're corporations, they are aligned with the power elite and they put out propaganda to make us feel like everything's good. And the second thing they put out is that they're really good. I mean, look at what we're doing as a corporation. Don't listen to anybody that says we're not in the up and up.

Moore to Consider (37:14.849)
Yeah.

Moore to Consider (37:39.063)
Now, would you not agree though, it appeared in 2020 that whatever the hell went on with the summer, you know, and there's always, you can go with that. Um, and the questions involving it, but I thought the media and whatever this apparatus is clearly was trying to scare. I mean, our cities are in flames. There's this riots everywhere. There's craziness going on. Now I I'm old enough to remember and you're, I'm sure you are as well, given the timeframe you're talking about.

I told a thesis, one of the members of my thesis defense, I'm born in 62, pull out of Vietnam in 75. So I'm 13 years old. And I remember talking to one of my thesis defense members. She's kind of radical left. I loved her. We got along really well. said, yeah, you know, I just kind of wonder what war I was going to get drafted into. And she went, oh my gosh, that's fascinating. I'm like, I had six great uncles in World War II on one side, my mom's side. I had four on my father's side. My father was drafted during Korea.

My next door neighbor was drafted to why the hell is a young male in the period? You not think which war am I going to get pulled into? And she thought that was like a fascinating revelation. I'm like, no, I think that's how young males thought. So now you go over a period of time. Now everything's strictly volunteer. And I think that matters. I to run this by 1960. You can watch this on YouTube. Huntley and Brinkley doing the election, Nixon Kennedy. So of course, one third of the sentence being elected and all of the members of the house.

So Huntley at one point goes, let me talk to you about the M1A1 running for a member of the House of Representatives. What percent in 1960 do you believe had served in the military?

Mike Anderson (39:22.093)
No clue.

Moore to Consider (39:22.932)
96. I was saying that to a friend one time and they're like, what? And I go, it's Korea and world war II 15 years prior or 10 years prior. You couldn't run for public office in 1960s, a 42 year old male in the neighborhoods. Like, I'm sorry, where were you in Korea? Where were you during the world war two? You had to be from the military background. So those people clearly, although they certainly made their mistakes in Vietnam, those same members.

Mike Anderson (39:25.174)
of

Moore to Consider (39:52.691)
of the house. But what I'm saying is if you were in the house then, you had some aspect or understanding. Maybe you got shipped to a port where you really weren't in harm's way, but you respected military service. I'm afraid today, since most of the members of Congress don't have any children in the military, some do, but not many, and they didn't serve, they don't care where kids get their limbs blown off. And that annoys me more than anything. In 1984, I saw

the 20th anniversary of the filming of Eisenhower and Cronkite at the beaches of Normandy. So in 1964, in 1984, I saw it for the first time. When Eisenhower, five-star general, two-term president the United States, when he began, supreme commander of allied forces in Europe, when he began to discuss sending the troops on June 6, 44, he started to tear up.

I told a friend, that's a guy you want to be president.

He got emotional, I am now, thinking of the number of lives that were going to be lost and what he thought was a necessary mission.

Mike Anderson (41:03.403)
And you've read his letter, right? His letter to the troops that they got the night before.

Moore to Consider (41:08.517)
Yeah. He's pretty special guy. think, you know, and how has he looked at in pop culture history circles? Hey, I don't think we had any losses to communist countries during his eight years. Got out of Korea, however, artfully or perfectly or whatever. And things were pretty stabilized. America was doing pretty well. And, you know, I don't know how much he had to do with that. I mean, I just know that.

Mike Anderson (41:28.791)
Yeah. Yep.

Moore to Consider (41:36.546)
I think that when you read about him and his military, you he was more of an administrative guy than he certainly was, you know, I don't think his levels of strategy may be up. He certainly had a lot of hands, a lot of cooks in the kitchen on that, but I do respect, I think what he upheld most of all was that you don't put somebody's kids in harm's way unless there's a noble purpose in doing so and a constitutional purpose.

Mike Anderson (42:03.361)
You know, it's funny when you say Eisenhower to me, I think of the politician, meaning the politician during the war, not after, because he had to juggle Montgomery for all those years. I mean, he kept having to defer to him and let Montgomery screw up and then pick up the pieces. It's just crazy.

Moore to Consider (42:17.52)
Yeah, it's true.

Moore to Consider (42:25.188)
You know, I listened to an historian say that no question the best soldier military figure was Patton. But in one of these depictions of Eisenhower, saw in a film depiction, he calls Patton and chews him out. Patton laughs, going out the door. Who the hell knows what the truth is on that? But I remember reading a history that in 1940, I think Eisenhower had hit full Colonel, I believe.

And he was going to be, as they say, just kind of like selected out or riffed out or whatever the term would be. Just, you know, he was a middle of the class graduate, 1914, 1915. It's funny him and Omar Bradley were there, get five stars. And the top guy in the graduation class, I think at six, I think he made Colonel. But I was kind of on his way out. Then he's Brigadier, then he's major general, then, you know, these moving up the chain and they create this fifth star. And I think the overall impression of him was.

He kept everybody kind of working from the same end of the rope and he was more that kind of administrative person.

Mike Anderson (43:25.111)
Well, Patton could have never done his job. Patton had a skill that was perfect for the situation, but not for other situations.

Moore to Consider (43:35.182)
Well, and I think that's what this historian was saying is maybe they lost a little bit of the use of Patton because of his political incorrectness. Even in 1943, 44, 45, he was a mess to the establishment, but he was a great general. So it's a balancing.

Mike Anderson (43:49.791)
Yep, yep. What general in history do you admire the most? Do you have a favorite?

Moore to Consider (43:55.592)
Wow. Wow.

You know, there's something about Grant and the surrender, you know, being from the South. I think Lee is totally misunderstood. And I think Lee, you know, when Phil Scott said it, Grant was really moved just to be in the presence of Lee because he's so looked up to him. So I think Robert E. Lee as a man is of course in today's time. But the fact that Grant allowed them to carry the horses back, allowed them to take their firearms, allowed so much. And I think a lot of it was deference to Lee.

But he did the one thing that none of the Union generals would do. And then of course, in his own troops, he was called the butcher and the death in Spotsylvania County up above where I grew up and all that region. But he did this. The Anaconda plan was, was to win out in the West, win in the Mississippi river down around Vicksburg and come back and take Richmond. And he won in all those places. He went from Tennessee straight down to Vicksburg and then up to Virginia. And he threw forces. He did the nastiness.

that the other generals didn't apparently want to do. I think that

Mike Anderson (45:01.825)
I want you to go back farther, back to the ancient history.

Moore to Consider (45:07.847)
You got me there. not as much. I'm more of a US start guy, who do you got? Who do you have?

Mike Anderson (45:13.003)
Well, everybody says Alexander number one, would probably be Hannibal would be number two. And I just had to tell you this story because you brought it up about Scipio Africanus is the one that beat that one, the second Punic war and beat Hannibal, the Roman general. so there. Because you might find this funny or not, so.

Moore to Consider (45:16.085)
Okay.

Moore to Consider (45:34.379)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Anderson (45:41.474)
Scipio and Hannibal are having dinner after the battle or some kind of meeting or something and they they said Each asked well, I think Scipio asked first. Who do you think your greatest general of all time and Or no, maybe Hannibal asked Scipio and he said Alexander and then Hannibal No, sorry got it backwards Hannibal said Alexander and then

He has Scipio.

Got it backwards. Anyway, doesn't matter because Hannibal's answer was Pyrrhus from the Pyrrhic victory. And I don't know if you know anything about Pyrrhus, but Hannibal rated him the second or third best general of all time. So you got to throw Julius Caesar in too because he was, there's your top five.

Moore to Consider (46:15.691)
He

Moore to Consider (46:27.698)
Mmm, yeah.

Moore to Consider (46:42.921)
Yeah, that's, uh, it's interesting though in war. Uh, I was teaching at a community college, a history class. was telling somebody this last night, actually was teaching a history class and I had read the numbers that said in the American revolution, about a third of the colonists were really for revolution. About a third were against it generally in the South because they had better relations with Great Britain. And a third were waiting to see who was going to win. That's just basically staying out of the way.

Mike Anderson (47:09.655)
Yep. Yep.

Moore to Consider (47:11.945)
So to be a revolutionary in the time wasn't popular. wasn't above a majority. So I'm teaching U S history, American revolution, and a young lady comes up from the back of the class, clearly a British accent. And she goes, you Americans are so funny with your revolution and all. And I was like, okay, dear, where are you from? She goes London. I said, okay. So how did they teach it in London? She said, it got to be too costly and unpopular. We brought the troops home. And I thought that's pretty fair. Cause I mean at the

Mike Anderson (47:38.061)
Yep. That is pretty fair.

Moore to Consider (47:41.865)
Battle of Yorktown, you mean the British couldn't keep coming? Cornwallis surrenders. Now this war continues through 1812, 1814. I mean, it's still the same war. It continues on. But her point was it became, we teach it became unpopular and the crown brought the troops home.

Mike Anderson (47:59.724)
Right, but the other reason Cornwallis surrendered is because the French fleet showed up.

Moore to Consider (48:04.092)
Yeah. Yeah. yeah. Without the French. You're right. But, but you know, as a kid, I don't know all the particulars and I'm not that kind of military story, but I used to think like if Great Britain or England continued to have that level of power, why did they just give up? I mean, why now? But I think when you look at the timeframe and you think about the amount of blood and treasure that's been spilled over this thing, I could see where England was finally like, right already, they'll probably be an ally one day.

You know, they kind of speak the same language and all of that. I don't know that they were thinking at that time, but it wasn't a great risk to England to have the United States 3000 miles away. It wasn't like, okay, they're going to keep knocking on our door and keep causing havoc. It didn't make any sense to think it was just, they wanted their independence, whatever the hell that meant kind of thing. So, but it was interesting to hear it from a young lady from England. You guys are so funny with your revolution and how glorious it is. Like she thought it was a joke. I don't know.

Mike Anderson (48:59.063)
Yeah, you reminded me, we were talking about the founders before, but when you think of the founders, you know, a small group of intelligent men, and then you have Washington with the ragtag army, and you probably know that they signed on for a year at a time, the soldiers did, and they all quit at the end of every year. A lot of them didn't come back because they weren't getting paid and all that. So they had to scrounge around. mean,

When you think of what we put up against the British, it was pretty awful. And Washington basically did a retreat, marched to retreat for most of the war and we won. So it's amazing.

Moore to Consider (49:40.837)
Which I think people have often argued Lee did the same thing. I don't know how accurate that is, but it was sort of that same kind of a war setting. And you know, you look at the election of 1864 and McClellan running against Lincoln, the Copperhead party, there was that movement among people in the North like, right, already let them have it. Let it go. them go. There was a movement for that. So Lincoln wasn't exactly walking through 1864 with the ease. So he needs a victory.

You know, for the emancipation, gets Antietam. Gettysburg was huge. So some might say, if you look back July of 63, maybe if Lee doesn't go up to the North and create this conflict and kind of put the knife in the heart, because Vicksburg is going on at the exact same time, that's clearly going to be sort of leading to the end. But you know what? It's still an election in 1864. There hasn't been some situation where Lincoln's just completely taken away the election process. What if?

There's a groundswell of support on the other side, the North from the South saying, you know, we've had enough of this, the war. I mean, what if they get that kind of president? The entire history. And I don't think that was inevitable. I don't think that was possible, but it was on the table.

Mike Anderson (50:50.797)
Right, right. Well, the South couldn't win though because of the economic difference. So eventually it would have been over. if the North was to have said, we're tired of this, we'll just do a truce and let you guys go. But Lincoln would never fathom that. He couldn't because of the...

Moore to Consider (50:57.23)
Absolutely.

Mike Anderson (51:17.741)
You know, he honored the Constitution, the founders and all that stuff.

Moore to Consider (51:22.179)
All let me ask you this. So I did talk radio with Guy a number of years ago and I grew up, know, part of my fascination with the Kennedy assassination is my mom voted for Nixon and then loved Kennedy. She ended up loving Kennedy. She was going to vote for him in 64. I think she's somewhat emotionally devastated by his death because she cut out all the newspapers, the magazines. I become fascinated, blah, blah, blah. I really start researching it. But Mike, I don't think my parents were really, really super

Mike Anderson (51:23.469)
.

Moore to Consider (51:51.394)
party political, but I remember my mother loved Nixon again. in 76, eight and 72, she voted for him. Um, you know, cause she liked Reagan. I'm thinking more about my mom. My dad is the ultimate conservative guy in that worked for it. He grew up dirt poor, goes in the army. I mean, he grew up in the red clay of Lynchburg, Virginia area, tobacco company, tobacco country. And he gets in, he.

In the army, he's 18 months in, he's already in E5 and he tests through the roof on his IQ. They waive college and put him in OCS. I read his paperwork later. He finished in the top three in his class. They offered him a regular army commission. He turned it down, went to state police school in Virginia and was first in his class. Went back in the army reserves and made full colonel. He's one of the smartest human beings I've ever seen. Just incredibly smart, innately smart. But he wasn't hugely political.

But you know, so I grew up with that. I guess you say conservative, but anyway, back to I'm at the radio station and working with the Marine that served in Vietnam. He'll be 75 this year. And he brings up Ayn Rand. I was familiar fountainhead Atlas show, you know, but then I really got into it. I'm like, man, she's singing from a sheet of music that makes sense to me. And I saw the visceral reaction. You've probably seen the 1959 Mike Wallace sit down with Ayn Rand.

Mike Anderson (53:18.263)
Yes.

Moore to Consider (53:19.444)
And I ran this basically saying, Hey, if that's of your value, stroke checks funded and Wallace like, how do you hate people so much? Hey, it's all this government has to do these things because no one can survive without government. And I'm hearing her and I'm like, I think she's twisting him and not. But I think probably 80 % of the people watching it kind of side with Wallace. Yeah. Send your money to Washington so we can dole it out and make everybody feel better or something. But.

I don't, that's what I'm saying is does it take a special ear to hear her? And one other thing about my dad, he's in law enforcement for 40 years. You're probably familiar with the Loving versus Virginia, the biracial marriage case. Okay, was a biracial marriage case, went to the Supreme court. There was a couple that went to DC to legally marry. She was part Native American, part African American. He was a white guy. They go to DC because in Virginia,

Mike Anderson (54:01.005)
Mm-mm.

Moore to Consider (54:14.388)
The law said you could not marry a non, a white could not marry a non-white. Asian could marry black or anything, but a white had to only marry a white. So they went to DC and got legally married, came back to Virginia, were arrested on the felony, two felonies. One, being married and being in violation of that law. And two, going out of state to avoid the law. The sheriff that arrested them, kicked their door in at 2 a.m. arrested them was the man my father ended up defeating for sheriff and served 28 years.

But where I was going to go with this, I'm at a college and he's closing in on his retirement, 28 years, seven terms as a sheriff. He goes, you know what, Jack? And I said, what? He goes, these drug laws, don't work. You know, and you think of these fairly conservative law enforcement. Yeah, they just need to end the drug laws. He goes, it's just, it's the same thing as prohibition. You make a black market, you're to have all this crime associated with it. So that's a very libertarian view. And in years of watching.

quote unquote, the drug war and being in law enforcement. It goes, leading to dirty cops at least, you know, he was able to see through a lot of that. Man born in 1928. And I thought that was interesting. So that all shaped the way I grew up. But why, guess what I'm asking is why does someone here, Einran, talk about altruism is kind of dead end. Somebody always has to have to be able to provide for those that don't. And when you use government to get in the middle of that, they become corrupt.

Mike Anderson (55:27.885)
All right.

Moore to Consider (55:42.927)
Why is it some people hear that and some people don't? I guess.

Mike Anderson (55:45.868)
Well, I think it's partly explainable by the left, right differences again, because I talked about the left as into equality, which means they're also into the welfare state. They like big government because they think government should take care of people. Conservatives are individualists. They they don't really want to fight the left. They just want to live their lives. Leave me alone. You know, if you're transsexual, that's OK. Just.

Moore to Consider (55:50.683)
Okay.

Mike Anderson (56:14.123)
You know, I put my face and that so that that's the difference between them. I don't think there are any libertarians on the left, to be honest, because how could that work? I mean, because libertarianism is small government. I mean, if you look at classic a small government and they would never support small government. Now, one other point that I want to make from my books, it's important to understand is people on the left believe

Moore to Consider (56:23.163)
wondered about that.

Moore to Consider (56:30.373)
Yeah, yeah.

Mike Anderson (56:42.347)
that humans don't have control of their lives. People on the right believe they do. So people on the left think we need experts and well-educated people to tell us what to do. People on the right are much more gut decision driven and they go with their gut and they don't trust anybody. They don't trust experts.

And of course, there's a million cases where we see experts being wrong, like economists, for example. During the Roosevelt administration, Roosevelt put a law in place called the National Recovery Act, NRA. You probably know about it. And the idea was to assign these codes to every business in the United States that put a limit on their profit. It defined what the person should make.

Moore to Consider (57:25.761)
yeah.

Mike Anderson (57:39.127)
for wages and what their revenue should be. Can you imagine running an economy like that? Impossible.

Moore to Consider (57:46.318)
Well, it's interesting that again, because that kind of run the libertarian circles, I was part of a book club thing where I was getting literature and this guy, Cato Institute type, I'm sure, I can't remember what university he was from, but he does a deep dive into the depression, what caused it and basically federal reserve and these bubbles and things. But he said it's easily stated that

Roosevelt basically extended the Great Depression a decade. would have come out of recovery. All of the over-regulation led to greater pain. Then World War II comes along. And then after World War II, we're the only country really that's not bombed to smithereens and can actually make anything. I've heard the story that went by 55, I think Detroit's the richest city in the world because the auto industry. But he makes the point.

When I was in college, I went to the home of an elderly gentleman then in the mid 80s. And it was part of a history project. And I went in and this guy's got, I'm not picking, he's a pastor. He's a Baptist church pastor. He's got a picture of FDR on the wall. So what our professor had set us up is to go and interview these people who lived it, the Great Depression and all this. And he was a farmer down in the Western North Carolina. And he was fighting back tears talking about FDR.

because they had nothing and he felt like because of FDR they had something. Now, how accurate he is in that assessment is anyone's guess, but in his mind, FDR was a saint. Every, yeah.

Mike Anderson (59:22.061)
Well, there's a psychological aspect to it, I agree. I'm reading about the Depression right now. It's interesting because passing the 18th Amendment, is a revoking prohibition, had an enormous positive impact on the country. People felt like, man, we can enjoy ourselves again, even though unemployment was high and manufacturing was down and all that.

Moore to Consider (59:39.853)
Absolutely.

Mike Anderson (59:48.75)
It still had a positive impact. I never knew the story that it passed Congress and of course has to go to three-quarters of the states to pass it but before immediately when it passed Congress they started brewing 3-2 beer and 3-2 beer came from the fact that it was below the level that made it illegal so people could drink beer during the period before the ratification was complete. story.

Moore to Consider (01:00:04.182)
That's right.

Moore to Consider (01:00:15.36)
Yeah, I believe it was the Volstead Act. And then they came into the problem of it was unenforceable without the ratification of the constitutional amendment. So the constitutional amendment goes through. Now I didn't know this until I watched the documentary recently. I think it was accurate that there was a one year moratorium on enforcement. So all the rich went around the world and bought the highest priced wines and they were bringing over crates of liquor and the poor people, maybe they could find some or make something in their backyard.

But the rich stockpiled it. So the law actually said you got one year to get all you want stockpiled if you'd like. And of course there was distribution of those booze too. So we know that was the worst kept law and it led to the prohibition. The other interesting thing I saw in a studies, showed the, it showed the level of alcoholism and the level 12 years later when the 21st amendment overturned the 18th amendment. And it showed that there was kind of a baseline of alcoholism. It spiked literally.

spiked during the first years because what people stopped doing was taking the smaller amounts of liquor that you might find in some percentage. And if you were going to get bang for your buck, you got like a hundred proof. You were like trying to get, you know, the highest possible amount of alcohol or is the other way around. say, yeah, you're getting the really, really high end alcohol. So they're drinking a higher concentration because if you're going to transport it, you want more bang for the buck. So there's a spike.

Then it starts to kind of level back down. And by the time you get to the end of the 12 years, alcoholism is no more, no better, no worse. And the bottom line is people were going to drink. But what it allowed is, as we all know, it allowed for a black market that led to another avenue for call it organized crime, call it black markets. It didn't.

Mike Anderson (01:02:03.15)
It's the greatest example of you can't legislate morality of all time.

Moore to Consider (01:02:09.012)
Absolutely, Okay, please tell me, we've been about an hour now, if you want to close down here, please tell us all of your books that are available and where the people can find them.

Mike Anderson (01:02:21.783)
Well, I'll do this easier. I have a website that has all the books. You can buy the books there. My sub stack is there. I have podcasts there. So everything about me is there. It's Mike Anderson's books.com. So it's Anderson with an S books with an S.com.

Moore to Consider (01:02:24.275)
Yes, sir.

Moore to Consider (01:02:41.779)
What do we do on our way out here? What? I think you and I, apparently, you're a gentleman, I've greatly enjoyed speaking to you. I know that we could coexist in a world where we'd probably see things pretty much the same way, but we'd certainly be neighbors and not have a problem with that. How do we get the rest of the world on board? What is the answer to this tension of how people believe things that may cost us or impose upon us when we just simply want to probably be left alone?

Mike Anderson (01:03:10.861)
Well, tribalism came from pressure the left applied to the right because the left wants change. want, you know, identity politics, fairness, equality and all that kind of stuff. Conservatives want to be left alone, but if pushed too hard, they will react back. So the tribalism is the formation of the tribes by the right to oppose the left.

The only way to fix it is for the, and I mean, they've got a lesson and point that Democrats did with the election. They need to move more to the center. They need to take the radical part of their party and shoot it. Because it, I mean, how many of the things that they were pushing, like the 32 gender thing, how many of those things are totally impractical? They're made up university ideology.

know, professor needs to publish something, a paper on something. So I'll say there's more genders and whatever. But it has no practical value. The public doesn't understand it and it doesn't make any sense. So they have to get more moderate and if they can get, you know, I have a significant complaint about the old Democrats and New Deal Democrats because they have empowered the radicals.

There's more of them than there are the radicals. About 10 % of the, or 10 or 15 % of Democratic Party is radical left. But they've been empowered because the rest of the Democratic Party sat on their hands. They need to wake up, kick those people out, become more moderate because, I mean, I talked about the genetics of the two groups. We need two parties. We need a consensus because half the country is in each party.

or 40 % in each, are in the middle. So you can't, I mean, the thing we learned during the Biden years is you can't have a one party ideology because then you're leaving half the Americans out. need an ideology that's developed by consensus among all the people.

Moore to Consider (01:05:19.331)
Would you not agree though, that we go back, let's say safely 30 years ago, there was the, what we thought of, kind of stiff white collar Republican party country club set Democrats were union workers, got their hands dirty farmers. We all kind of thought that. And now there's no question that Democrat group is all with Trump.

Mike Anderson (01:05:41.257)
Absolutely. Absolutely.

Moore to Consider (01:05:48.759)
And that white collar Republican establishment country club have, they don't want anything, as you mentioned. Right. But they're also out of, they're not in the Trump camp. So there has been a realignment of America, I think politically that hopefully could be a good thing. Take your working class people that thought, you know, I'll go to church. I'll make the donation. I'll help my neighbor when I can. I don't want big government, but I want.

Mike Anderson (01:05:53.409)
They're marginalized. They're marginalized. Yeah.

Moore to Consider (01:06:15.35)
I want factories back in United States. I want manufacturing. want that. I want to see America be strong. Now they go with Trump. So those groups of people on both sides that are at the elites, they went to all the Ivy league schools and they have all the right, you know, within their realm thought process. They are their stars in their own league. And I think your, your rank and file former Democrat with a lunch pail. He's sick of that person. And.

He's no more happy with the people that were the right call them the rhinos, whatever you want to say. So there has been some kind of a realignment here. And I think it could bring a greater consensus of American people. Cause if there is a realignment in the federal government of cutting out some of the bureaucracy, now there's going to be a fight screaming and crying till the end. And when we're seeing that now, but I don't know exactly how it plays out, but I will say this. I was,

working on my masters 30 years ago and I was in a school that was every professor I listened to every teacher should say I listened to was extremely dismissive of the students. was the second poorest County in the state of North Carolina. The all the teachers talked about these kids don't have any chance would downgrade them say they weren't bright say they weren't this that and the other and they were all very liberal. Nope, no doubt. So

I'd go in and just run my mouth in class. They would make me a substitute teacher, so I'd just talk to students. I had a young lady, I'll never forget this, four weeks in probably. I had been in front of her like three times. I'd just talk to the students. They weren't gonna do their busy, I'd give them some busy work and then we'd just talk. And I was in graduate school and I had a young lady stop me in the hall, 16 years old, stop me in the hall. I was about 31, 32 at the time. And she goes, Mr. Moore, can I talk to you for a minute? I said, sure, dear, what you need? And she goes,

I feel really convicted. needed to talk to you." And I said, okay. She goes, first time I heard you in class, I hated your guts. And I was like, okay. And she said, the second time I listened to you, I really thought about what you were saying. And now I wanted to thank you. You've given me the belief I can do anything.

Moore to Consider (01:08:31.113)
And she'd never heard that message. If you heard how these teachers in the lounge talked about these kids and they were all hyper-liberal, they can't make it. Look at them. So I had a young black male in class one day and he said, what's your story? And I went, I'm working on this thing. goes, what you got going? I'm like, I'm doing the Kennedy Establishment. What do you think of the autopsy? I'm like, what'd you think? So he starts talking. He's 19 years old. Turns out he's a senior in high school.

I said, what's your take on that? He starts to tell me, I'm like, what's your background in this? He goes, well, I'm a medic in a guard unit.

He gives me the hug, the handshake, the hug on the desk. So I see his hyper-liberal teacher the next day. The next day, and I said, hey, your boy Johnson in the class, what a super, he goes, he's a dumb ass. He doesn't do any of my work or something. I'm like, you think that kid's stupid? And it was funny, it was just a personality thing. When he said, he looked at me and said, what's your story? What are you doing here? And I was like, I'm working on, and so we start talking. He's going chapter and verse about what an autopsy is.

And he might've been 18, but he's already in a guard unit and he's working as like a paramedic in a guard unit. And then this teacher's like, oh, he's a dumb ass. He doesn't do my work or something. And I'm like, you don't see any signs of life there with this kid. So my point in that is I think the kids can be, and I'm not saying we were there to indoctrinate them in these settings, but they get so many negative messages of really the negative message is the dependence.

It's constantly, well, you can't do that. You need this. You need us to step in for you here, there, and otherwise. You can't make it on your own. And I think the 16 year old was saying to me, you've given me a vision that I can do this. And it was moving to me. I was like, wow. But she admitted up front she didn't like the message because you never heard anybody else say that. So if there's anything I could do and wave a magic wand, was abolish public education.

Mike Anderson (01:10:28.533)
It's funny, I am pretty active on Twitter. Somebody posted last week, they said, if you could consult with your 10 year old self, what would you tell yourself? My answer was, I would tell myself that you can accomplish anything if you put your mind to it. Which is basically what you said.

Moore to Consider (01:10:33.031)
Mm-hmm.

Moore to Consider (01:10:47.155)
Right. Again, that's a message they just don't believe me. It was a cesspool, the bad ideas at the school. It was really frightening. That was 30 years ago. And it was in a, like I said, very poor County. So there's no industry, there's no opportunity. And the students were constantly being told they were, they were up against the eight ball and they never, they'd never get out of there. And so they're angry. They're angry. The message every day is you don't have a prayer. It's kind of tough.

Mike Anderson (01:11:15.981)
I got to say, tell you one more thing that's important because you're talking about the realignment of the parties and that's important for me to describe for you why that happened. In the 90s, the left began to embrace the Silicon Valley elites because they're all very left and they stopped supporting the mega part of their party. They ignored them basically. And Trump was at the right place at the right time because the mega group

Moore to Consider (01:11:18.897)
Yes, sir.

Moore to Consider (01:11:23.344)
Yes, sir.

Mike Anderson (01:11:45.686)
wanted a leader. And populists always rise to power when there are large groups that don't feel they're being represented. So they got to Trump and then the rest is history. But there's a radical realignment of the parties and the Republican Party is becoming much more middle class than it used to be. All those rich billionaires and top hats are all gone.

It's much more of an average common man party and the left is the elites, basically. There are now more billionaires and millionaires in the Democratic Party than Republican Party. The point though is the Republican Party, if it's smart, is going to have to learn how to behave with their new constituency. They're going to have to respond. You know, in the old days, they didn't care about anybody that was poor.

But they're going have to figure that out now and be responsive to that constituency because it's a large component of the party. So that's the challenge for the establishment. Trump understands it, but the party doesn't.

Moore to Consider (01:12:59.748)
Well, but I do wonder about this though. Some of the people since I think there's been sort of a cleansing of the anti-Trumps from the Republican party. Do you think there's enough of the residue of what's left? These were the people that probably leaned more towards social consciousness anyway. Yeah. And when of course we also have the flipping going on. Like I remember, I could be right or wrong. I don't know. But I remember the first time I saw Tulsi Gabbard.

Mike Anderson (01:13:19.159)
Right. Yeah.

Moore to Consider (01:13:29.932)
She strikes me as Jimmy Dore does, the comedian. It's like people that I totally agree with. They're anti-war, they're anti-establishment in so many ways, but they still think the government's the answer to everything, sorta. when I saw Tulsi Gabbard a few years ago, I told a friend of mine, I'm like, hey, she's been there, she's been in Iraq, she's been under fire, she knows what the hell's going on. And she's smart, she's like really, really sharp. And then when Bobby Kennedy Jr. threw in, I was like...

There was a little bit of nostalgia. like, he's a Kennedy. He looks like his dad, know, only taller, but you know, he's, he's his dad. And I thought these are kind of positive things. Then boom, the Democrats completely try to destroy them personally. And then they're gravitating towards Trump. And I thought that's kind of a nice alignment. do I think that Kennedy really bought more, brought more votes to Trump?

Mike Anderson (01:13:58.872)
Yeah.

Moore to Consider (01:14:21.708)
I don't know that the Bobby Kennedy voter voted for Trump, maybe a little bit, maybe, but it certainly didn't hurt. It certainly didn't hurt. And I think the same with Tulsi Gabbard. So that kind of a realignment, I think says a lot about.

Mike Anderson (01:14:26.519)
Right.

Mike Anderson (01:14:34.893)
Well, what it says is the left is too far left and the moderate left is now on the right. Basically.

Moore to Consider (01:14:38.049)
Yes.

Moore to Consider (01:14:43.328)
You know, and another thing socially way off topic, but sort of on topic. I remember in the eighties, Martina Navitalova, and I thought, you you kind of heard the rumbles because, know, this is pre Ellen coming out on TV. It was kind of like, yeah, she's a lesbian tennis player. I just remember like, damn, she's like really good. Like she's really, really good. So she becomes a part of this whole apparatus of sexual orientation in sports. And she's like on a board.

And she speaks out like what four or five years ago, maybe four years ago. Nah, the transgender male athlete, you know, the male, as a female that can't happen, they kick her off the board. And, know, I'm on the outside of this, but I'm like, damn, if you're kicking around Martina Navarro, she's an icon in sports period. She's a lesbian who has stood for her sport and her causes. And if she speaks out and you kick her out.

You're eating your own to a degree that man, that's a, that's a minefield. You know what I mean? It's like you're kicking around Martina Navitolova. You're going to say something. Yeah, that really shocked me. And I think that projected upon the whole party, you know, going after the whole Clinton, when Hillary Clinton was calling her an agent of Russia and my God, you know, like basically, know, Mitt Romney, Tulsi Gabbard, they were basically saying she was treasonous.

Mike Anderson (01:16:06.903)
Calling Hope.

yeah.

Moore to Consider (01:16:12.672)
And she's like, Hey, I'm a full colonel in United States army reserve. I believe it's full colonel. Kiss my ass. Like you're going to call me a traitor, a treasonous. And the way they just kind of Willy nilly threw that around about an officer in the armed forces. That's been a, what I think she was a four term Congresswoman. That system, that's a lot. But you know, when you go back and watch what's available from TV, what 1945 long, but pretty much the fifties on.

I'm always shocked to go back and look at the sixties and see how nasty it was then. It wasn't this nasty, but it was clearly, you know, it kind of some unkind things, you know, and you know, back at the formation of the country, the Jefferson Hamilton fights and Adams and all the rest. was super.

Mike Anderson (01:17:00.417)
Yeah, they, Jefferson and Hamilton both bought a newspaper so they could dish dirt on the other person.

Moore to Consider (01:17:07.059)
Yeah. And people acted like 10 years ago, the Sally Hemings thing was some kind of new story of 20 years ago, whatever it was out then it was being reported at the time. So all that's there's nothing new under the sun. Anything else you'd like to say closing.

Mike Anderson (01:17:16.193)
Yep. Yes, it was.

Exactly.

Mike Anderson (01:17:23.917)
No, I really enjoyed our conversation. That would be the thing I would say. And I hope we'll have another one sometime.

Moore to Consider (01:17:32.479)
I would love to have you on again and let's continue to talk.