World War 2, remember this, this concept of isolation. We were once there as a nation and then Pearl Harbor happened. Let's remember recent history. Europe remembers it well. We then when we got attacked Pearl Harbor, we jumped in. And it is because America jumped in that we were ultimately able to win that war. What we're talking about, I'm going to let you just explain your, your broader project.
You had sent me a, a pair of articles, one on Pearl Harbor and one on Winston Churchill. And then I folks, I said, you know what? This is such a lot of stuff. Let's focus just on the Pearl Harbor one. But first, Keith, let me just let you give the the big vision
here of what you're doing. Almost every time you hear a debate today on the Russia Ukraine situation, on the Israel Gaza war, you frequently will almost always hear people give the analogy of the Second World War and how, look, everyone agrees, every Scotsman knows, every schoolboy knows that the Second World War was a morally justified war to get into. So that's kind of like what we're in today.
The problem is the opportunity cost of getting yourself educated on the specifics is so, so high that people will just revert to analogies, heroes, Churchill and Roosevelt, Billings, Hitler and Hirohito and Mussolini. So because it's much easier just to create a prevailing interpretation of a past event and then give people an analogy on whose side they should be on. That is why we get this so
frequently. The reason Churchill specifically, or Harry Truman in today's case is important is because you will have a number of historians, Andrew Roberts, Niall Ferguson, David McCullough, they will say, look, politicians today, they can get corrupted. And unfortunately, democracy is sort of out of whack a little.
This is not a problem of, you know, the state having a monopoly on violence, the state having access to a central bank, the state having a monopoly right to issue taxes while controlling the compulsory education system. It's none of that. It's we can have really good people in charge of these institutions and the proof is in the pudding. People like Harry Truman, Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, these are good statesman who we can actually admire.
So what they do is they get you to say, we've done this before, we can do it again. Don't change the nature of the state. That is the problem with the Second World War. It's the blanket analogy used to justify current aggression, and it serves as a justifiable example of how we can get good people in. And it's not a problem of inherent incentives. Look, I stopped right there. Yeah, when I was younger, there was a period I, I was fast. Well, I'm still fascinated by
the world wars, I suppose. But I was back in. I didn't use the term. I don't even know if the term had been coined, but I, I arguably was a neoconservative. I'm talking like when I was in high school and listen to Rush Limbaugh and stuff. And I remember thinking about World War 2 like, Oh, it's just such a great illustrative example to to guide us in our, in our current political affairs because it just so crisply demonstrates the dangers of
appeasement. And, you know, and that's things for the edit, you know, now, given my perspective, of course, I realized like how I fell hook, line and sinker for the marketing. But it is amazing just how much of A lightning rod World War 2 is.
And I'm just repeating stuff that, you know, you guys have talked about Dave Smith, of course, and commenting on when Darryl Cooper was on Tucker Show recently and how why that it's if you want to get up and say the US shouldn't have gone into World War One, nobody cares that like major mainstream historians might say, yeah, you could possibly make that case.
OK. And I suppose the Civil War, even the Civil War, it's fine for historians to talk about how the US state's been like failed, you know what I mean? Like, oh, they had kept doing compromises up till then. And then it was a failure partly of diplomacy and the strategic moves of the various, you know, politicians involved. But whereas with World War 2, if, if somebody says like, you know, if we only could have kept the US out of that, somehow, people will look at you like you're a monster.
Yeah, almost always the notice the appeasement contradiction only works in One Direction. So if Vladimir Putin hypothetically, potentially threatens our freedoms, we need to go to war and risk mass death. If Xi Jinping doesn't, we have to go to war and risk mass death because our freedoms are being violated. Now, when our domestic government violates our freedoms, you can't so much as walk into the Capitol building without a permission slip or they will literally blow your
head off. And Michael Byrd, the officer, will get an interview at ABC about it. Or NBCI, forget which one. This is the officer who shot unarmed Ashley Babbitt right in the face. It's on camera even though she was just in. I guess it's her own building. Cause government belongs to the public. We are the government.
So she was just in her own building without a permission slip and they shot her in the face 'cause she was attempting to intimidate people who she thought was were violating her freedoms. She was someone in the military. So the appeasement contradiction only goes in One Direction. Foreign governments risk mass death. The domestic government violates your freedoms. Engage in deliberative democracy, but other than that, just send them 40% of your income every April.
That's very interesting. I never thought of that. It's anyway I don't. If we had more time, I might just ask you to let's unpack that for 10 minutes. But I don't want to cut short our discussion of the dastardly FDR. So when it comes to Pearl Harbor, let me I've read like the day of deceit, or is it a Day of deceit or the day of deceit? Do you? Remember Day of Deceit is Robert Stinnett's 1999 book where he actually puts a nail in this
Pearl Harbor myth. There were a number of things that really got people speculating as to the true nature of it 'cause remember, there's a social contract we have with the government. We have to pay them the taxes. If we don't pay, they put us in jail, but in return they keep us safe. But if we don't hold up our end of the bargain, we have have to go to jail. The question arises, what happens if they don't hold up their end of the bargain? What if they don't keep us safe?
Well, what happens is their approval ratings go up, the amount of money they print increases and they have more powers than they ever did previously. So this is the nature of the incentive of the state when it comes to warfare that is so often glossed over by the Andrew Roberts's and Niall Ferguson's of the world Anytime, guys, Libertarian institute.org. You're welcome on the the
podcast. So what Stannett did is he got access to a number of Freedom of Information archives and one of them stood out quite notably to him. This is a memorandum from October 7th of 1940. It was written by Captain Arthur McCullum.
His title was Chief of the Far Eastern Section of Naval Intelligence. If you read the 1946 Pearl Harbor Congressional investigation, his name is mentioned 55 times indicating this is a memo from someone who was in a position who was in a place to know what he was talking about. This was not just some random lunatic. Here is what this memorandum,
October 7th, 1940 says. It's titled Estimate of the Situation in the Pacific and Recommendations for Action by the United States. He says it is not believed that in the present state of political opinion in the United States, government is capable of declaring war against Japan without more adieu, and it is barely possible that vigorous action on our part might lead the Japanese to modify their attitude. Therefore the following course
of action is suggested. A Make an arrangement with Britain for the use of British bases in the Pacific, particularly Singapore. Make an arrangement with Holland for the use of base facilities and acquisition of supplies in the Dutch E Indies. Give all possible aid to the Chinese Government of Chiang Kai Shek.
Send a division of long range heavy cruisers to the Orient, Philippines or Singapore. Send two divisions of submarines to the Orient. Keep the main strength of the US fleet now in the Pacific, in the vicinity of the Hawaiian Islands. G Insist that the Dutch refused to grant Japanese demands for undue economic concessions, particularly oil. Finally, completely embargo all U.S. trade with Japan in collaboration with a similar embargo imposed by the British Empire.
If by these means Japan could be led to commit an overt act of war, so much the better. At all events, we must be fully prepared to accept the threat of war. What's important about these is, again, not just some guy rambling. The primary points in this mellorandum ended up coming to fruition.
I'll get into the case of the Philippines in a second, but obviously the Lend Lease package primarily included Britain, heavily included the Soviet Union, but third on the list was Chiang Kai Shek's government fighting the communist revolutionaries. So this came to fruition.
He was in a position to know what he was talking about when he was talking about ways to provoke the Japanese into attacking America. Section F Keep the main strength of the US fleet now in the Pacific, in the vicinity of the Hawaiian Islands. Hawaii was not a state until 1959. So it's not just like, well, yeah, that's part of America. They were going to be there anyways. This was a very unique idea that
was not just inevitable. Let. Me just make sure people caught that because that was something
to like. I vaguely knew that, but I never really put it in the context of World War 2 that yeah, I think right now people think, say what you will about whether, you know, the Roosevelt administration was being belligerent and and they could have, you know, maintained neutrality, but they were trying to provoke the Japanese in the firing the first shot at still we had our ships parked at AUS State and they came and bombed us on our own. And your point? No, it wasn't AUS State.
It was a clearly a naval outpost at that point. It was a a colony more or less Section H completely embargo all U.S. trade with Japan. This ended up being titled, I want to say this was August or July of 41, the Export Control Act of 1940 or 41. And then there was the freezing of all Japanese assets in 41, which took place under Franklin Roosevelt. So all of these things coming to fruition, these were not inevitable.
You could say, well, it's 'cause Japan was such a belligerent country, since 1937, they had been committing atrocities in Manchuria. All of which is true, by the way. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, Chinese civilians during the Second World War lost about 20 million people. That's the number that Britannica gives for Chinese losses. And this was mainly as a result of the Japanese Empire with
Hirohito at the helm. However, the reason it wasn't inevitable is cause the US at the time clearly could have said, well, it's important we have a nice bulwark against the Bolshevik regime and the communists fighting in China. So maybe a strong Japan would be a good defensive mechanism on our, you know, western half of the country.
So it none of this was inevitable when it comes to the section on the Philippines, which is important now because with when it comes to whether the US and China might engage in a military battle or tensions might escalate, it's going to be either over Taiwan or the Philippines. So Section D, as I mentioned, send a division of long run heavy cruisers to the Orient, Philippines or Singapore.
This is a restricted document from November 15th of 1941 titled George Marshall's Conference Today. You can find this on George C Marshall Foundation's website. George C Marshall was the Chief of Staff of the United States Army at the time. This memo on their foundation was written by someone present at the meeting. It says the US is on the brink of war with the Japanese, said the General Marshall. Our position is highly favorable
in this respect. We have access to a leak in all the information they are receiving concerning our military preparations, especially in the Philippines. In other words, we know what they know about us, and they don't know we know it. Under great secrecy. the US is building up its strength in the Philippines to a level far higher than the Japanese imagine.
General MacArthur is unloading ships at night, is building airfields in the carefully guarded interior, is allowing no one within miles of military reservations. Most important point to remember is this. We are preparing for an offensive war against Japan, whereas the Japs believe we are preparing only to defend the Philippines. We are piling a large portion of our new material into the Philippines, several shiploads of it a week. If war with the Japanese does
come, we'll fight mercilessly. Flying Fortresses will be dispatched immediately to set the paper cities of Japan on fire. There won't be any hesitation about bombing civilians. It will be all out. That is what you get when you grant one group of people a monopoly right on violence. They have the right to tax, they have no incentive to spend your money wisely, and they have
access to a central bank. You get endless, endless provocations like this because they don't have the incentive to actually keep the domestic population safe. OK, I mean, yes, I agree. I agree with that. Let me go through here because there there are some things
about the plan. So this is I'm quoting from your article here Keith. The plan to provoke an incident Pearl Harbor was not widely known until January 2nd, 1972 in the New York Times summarizes then recently released British war cabinet papers covering the period of January 41 and July 45. The article titled War entry Plans laid to Roosevelt claims. So I think I'm quoting here from the New York Times that you're quoting, Keith President.
So I'll just read a little bit of this and I'll let you respond. President Franklin D Roosevelt told Prime Minister Winston Churchill in August of 1941, so well before Puller Harbor, that he was looking for an incident
to justify opening hostilities against Nazi Germany. dot dot dot the minutes quoting Churchill indirectly said, quote, he meaning Roosevelt obviously was determined that they should come in if he were to put the issue of peace and war to Congress. They would debate it for months, The Cabinet minutes added. The president had said he would wage war but not declare it, and that he would become more and more provocative. If the Germans did not like it, they could attack American forces.
The president's orders to these US naval escorts were to attack any German U boat which showed itself, even if we're 200 or 300 miles away from the convoy. Everything was to be done to force an incident. OK, so these are quotes from the British War cabinet papers talking about this is what happened when Roosevelt met with Churchill. So this is not, you know, anyway that do. You know. Does anyone dispute the authenticity of those? OK, well one more thing.
The last sentence in there, the president had taken this very well and made it clear that he would look for an incident which would justify him in opening hostilities, Churchill told the war cabinet, according to the minutes of the meeting. I shouldn't have stopped quoting. Yeah, that. Was important. So what this is, is an admission that there was a general policy of provocation a lot of people when they question this.
I will get back to the authenticity that you asked about a lot of, but people when they ask about this, they say, oh, so Pearl Harbor was basically cooked up by Roosevelt and this was a plan he had had all along. That is not even close to what I'm claiming. This was a policy of provocation with the Axis powers.
And we know this because of the actions that were suggested by General Arthur McCollum in his October 7th, 1940 memo came to fruition by President Roosevelt's legislation, both executive orders and actions by Congress. This policy of provocation was summarized by all people.
Henry Kissinger, he wrote a book in 1994 titled Diplomacy where he goes, I think all the way back to GOSH, past the Treaty of Versailles. There was like a European meeting in 1850 he starts with and then towards the end of the book he mentions the Second World War. Here is I'm quoting Kissinger. Talk about a man in a position to know, Kissinger said. In September 1941, the United States crossed the line into belligerency.
Roosevelt's order that the position of German submarines should be reported to the British Navy had made it inevitable that sooner or later, some clash would occur. On September 4th, 1941, the American destroyer Greer was torpedoed while signaling the location of a German submarine to British airplanes. On September 11th, without describing the circumstances, Roosevelt denounced German piracy, comparing German submarines to a rattlesnake coil
to strike. He ordered the United States Navy to sink on site any German or Italian submarines discovered in the previously established American Defense Area, extending all the way to Iceland. To all practical purposes, America was at war on the sea with the Axis powers. Roosevelt instructed the American negotiators to demand that Japan relinquish all of its conquests, including Manchuria.
By invoking America's previous refusal to recognize these acts, Roosevelt must have known that there was no possibility that Japan would accept. Roosevelt had achieved his goal patiently and inauxiliary, educating his people one step at a time about the necessities before them. His audiences filtered his words through their own perceptions and did not always understand that his ultimate destination was war, though they could not have doubted that it was
confrontation. So again, we have more evidence for a policy of provocation with this career incident that Kessinger does a very good job in summarizing. It's not that he knew. Just to make sure people got that Keith wasn't quoting his own article. He was. I mean, he, it was quoting from the quote from Kissinger. So all those words Keith just read, that was what Henry Kissinger wrote in a 1994 book talking about those incidents. So again, that that was, that
wasn't Keith paraphrasing. That was literally Kissinger's words. I just want to make sure they got that. Yeah, that's a direct summation of or or. That is a direct quote. I had to skip one or two paragraphs cause Kissinger goes on a little, but yes. And you can look at my citation in the article at libertarianinstitute.org. So there was a well known prophecy of provocation because
America was too isolationist. Isolationist is when governments constantly provoke wars and people don't want to have their sons get their limbs blown off. That's what the isolation I believe is officially defined as. So when it comes to, again, foreseeable consequences, Japan, or maybe you could say this was unforeseeable. Japan basically had been colonizing Korea since 1910 and established a colonial rule there.
They had invaded and more or less conquered Vietnam in September of 1940, so they were the states in these two areas. Once the Japanese Empire came crumbling down, the US had inherited all its liabilities along with some assets, and they got a nice surrender. And Douglas MacArthur gets his nice photo next to Hirohito. What America ended up having to do was fight wars in Vietnam and Korea because there was not a
monopoly on violence there. I'm not justifying any kind of colonialism or any state in general. I'm saying when it comes to these wars, a lot of times not only are the costs extraordinarily high monetarily, but the life, the cost of life and limb, the cost of the trauma, the blowing up of buildings which took centuries to erect, they also have very unforeseeable consequences.
I don't know if at the time people could have said, well, if we take down the empire, we might inherit all its liabilities and might be fighting proxy wars against the Bolshevik empire at the at the end of this. So some of this is so unforeseeable that we should always have a policy of constant diplomacy. Just as Nixon was able to shake hands with Mao SEI tongue, obviously Roosevelt was able to shake hands with Joseph Stalin.
But even Dwight Eisenhower, who was a World War 2 general, shook hands with Nikita Khrushchev in America in 1959. Khrushchev toured the country for like 2 weeks at that time. We can absolutely be friends with Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin. No need to exchange nukes. OK. I agree. Agree as well with that. So let me ask you this from these quotes, does at this point, does any mainstream historian deny that Roosevelt was trying to lead?
And he wouldn't use the term drag, maybe if he's a fan, but lead the Americans into the war that, you know, Roosevelt knew that it was necessary for the US to help save civilization from the Nazi Barbarians. And unfortunately, the Americans were pinkishly isolationist. And so Roosevelt had to do what he had to do. Does does any historian dispute
that at this point? So after I had heard Tony Fauci finally come out and address the fact that, well, yes, I did tell people they should not be wearing masks, but here's what was going on, I thought we would face a mask shortage. So that is what I said on 60 Minutes at the time. But that was not the real science behind it.
So once I saw an actual noble lie in real time, from its origin to its depletion, I had to just see, look at all the historians, Barbara Tuchman, Niall Ferguson, the people I mentioned previously, Doris Kears Goodwin. I had to see what their position was as far as what was, was this New York Times document just completely fraudulent? Again, I have two other things that I want to go over which
make the case for provocation. The most unbelievable thing is it's not the authenticity of the documents that is even disputed by any mainstream historian that I'm able to come across. Realize they have every incentive for these very big things to be addressed and refuted. They have a huge incentive for a lot of, but instead what they simply do is say, unfortunately there are truths that children cannot handle because they just don't know how to act right.
There are truths the average person cannot handle, so they should be protected from them. And there are truths that even the smartest people should be protected from, but they should know the most amount of truth in existence. This was Irvin Crystal's general philosophy that his general world view justifying the noble lying to the masses.
So yes, he, the historians in general will say Roosevelt engaged in some mischievous more or less, because unfortunately with, you know, terrible people like, oh gosh, who was the pilot? Charles Lindbergh? You had the America First Committee, all these idiot bigots who were not very forward saying Roosevelt brilliant enough to give us the New Deal. He also foresaw that we would have to go to war with the National Socialists in Germany. So he could have tried to debate, but debate doesn't
really get you anywhere. Unfortunately, because of isolationist people like the Mises Institute and the Libertarian Institute holding us back, we had to engage in provocative actions that really united the masses. Here's how we can verify that this policy was appreciated. Another example, Barack Obama came out and said women earn $0.77 on the the dollar for every dollar a man makes. This is a perfect example of a politician. He graduated from Harvard, sitting president of America.
He cannot believe that he's actually telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. So help him God. We constantly see these noble lies everywhere we go. So what we can do is look at the Secretary of War's personal Diaries. His name is Henry Stimson, and in 1948 he published a book titled On Active Service in Peace and War. He has a diary entry on Pearl Harbor.
On the day of the incident, December 7th, 1941, Stimson wrote his own word say when the news first came that Japan had attacked us, my first feeling was of relief that our indecision was over and that a crisis had come in a way which would unite all our people. This continued to be my dominant feeling in spite of the news of catastrophes which quickly
developed. For I feel that this country united has practically nothing to fear, while the apathy and division stirred up by unpatriotic men have been hitherto very discouraging. This is the noble Lyme mindset. Stimson summarizes it perfectly in his own book he wrote. He Co wrote this with his brother. I think his name is Bundy Stimson, but the book is titled On Active Service in Peace and War.
So the reason these are generally circulated and more or less allowed to be out is it's important that the people at the Council on Foreign Relations are able to access a real understanding of what goes on behind the scenes without the media giving it too much attention. One more thing on Stimson. So Stimson was secretary of war.
You know what? I forget the years, but throughout the all Pearl Harbor provocations, there was the 1946 congressional investigation of the Pearl Harbor incidents titled Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack. Here is a quote from page 177 starting citing Stimson's diary. On November 25th of 1941, a week or two before Pearl Harbor, he says General Marshall and I went to the White House where we were
until nearly 1:30. At the meeting were Secretary of State Cordell Hull, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, Chief of Staff of the Army George C Marshall, Chief of Naval Operation Harold Ramser Stark and myself.
The president brought up the event that we were likely to be attacked perhaps as soon as next Monday, for the Japanese are notorious for making an attack without warning, and the question was what we should do. The question was how we should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves. So we have means, motive and opportunity when it comes to the attempt to provoke an. Incident can I stop you T this I
want to make sure yeah. I'm glad you read that because I was going to if you didn't want to yourself that. So folks, again, this that the phrasing there is not something that, you know, Scott Horton's making up.
This is from Stimson's who was the secretary of war at the time, his own diary entry for November 25th, 1941, right, very soon before Pearl Harbor. And he it was his wording when he's in his diary writing down what happened today when I was listening to the president and he said the question was how we should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much damage to ourselves.
So again, that's not them talking jargon and then us looking on as cynics and saying, oh, so you're basically trying to maneuver them into firing the first shot. No, that's how he described what it was. Roosevelt said, this is what we're doing. And so I, yeah. So I got the only way, Keith, I can see someone disputing that is just say, well, that's that's a forgery or we have no way of knowing if that's, that's
legitimate. So I not only have the 1946 Congressional Record that is linked to in my article at libertarianinstitute.org, I have Time magazine. I have a book published. I want to say it was in the late 40s or early 50s on Pearl Harbor by a man named George Morgenstern. He said the secret war at Pearl Harbor or the secret of Pearl Harbor. Other authors found this authentic. A gentleman named John Toland in his book infamy also cites this.
These are widely recognized people in the position of no, of having access to the accurate information using primary documents, not like the he said, she said, that we get from the Democrats today. I have it on good authority that it was actually Putin who hacked my emails. This is what Hillary Clinton said on the presidential debate stage. Joe Biden was on the presidential debate stage, said it's been confirmed that Putin is putting bounties on the heads of soldiers in Afghanistan.
The Pentagon was asked to clarify and said that's not something we have access to. And then Biden said 50 Intel officials and five directors of the CIA from both parties have confirmed that what he's talking about Hunter Biden's laptop is a Russian plan. And to this day, we're still waiting for that evidence. It's going to come out any minute now. These idiots are the prisoner
walking down the Green mile. Just saying any second now, the governor's going to call and exonerate me and Get Me Out of this. It is so pathetic to watch them keep grappling at the Russia collusion conspiracy theory, the racism conspiracy theory, the gender wage gap conspiracy theory. They're the conspiracy theorists who should feel insecure, not us. Let me ask you, I didn't see you addressed in there. So if you want to, by the way, good, good answer.
I wasn't expecting you to have four bullet points in terms of the off of this. The other was going to say, no, this isn't disputed. And then I said I would have just said, oh, OK. So that's great. Do you know, have you done any reading on? Yeah, my understanding is where there is dispute still is.
Some people say FDR, like they got naval intelligence, warned they're heading for Pearl Harbor and that there was time and the authorities could have alerted the guys at Pearl Harbor, but they chose not to for the reasons we've been talking about. They said no, it's better to let them take the hit and then we can get into the war rather than if we tip them off and they're ready for it, then there might not be enough, enough of a provocation that the American
people will want to go to war. Do you have any insight on to that question if they knew that much? I've read quite a bit about that. They're referred to as the Purple Codes. I know John Toland finds a lot of legitimacy in them. I don't think they present a very persuasive clear cut case. That's why I chose these citations instead. OK. So this is great. And that's your following in Scott Horton's footsteps where you are really trying to be careful and nuanced about what
you're saying. And so even if this it might not be as much red meat for your fan base. So again, just so I understand your position, Keith, you're saying you think it's open and shut case clear cut that FDR was looking to provoke Japan into firing the first shot. But on the very specific question of did US higher ups have advanced warning of literally the Pearl Harbor attack and did they refrain from warning those guys?
You're saying, if I understand you, that may have happened, but you haven't seen any definitive proof that you think it did happen? Well, yes, I I've looked very deep into this. It looks like all the sources say the population was so ignorant at the time we we had
to lie to him. Just as Doris Kears Goodwin will almost never address the fact that, you know, before LBJ S War on Poverty, we really could have been straight with the people that we've seen a drastic decrease in poverty in the last 100 years. If it doesn't continue to decrease after the implementation of the War on Poverty, well, then we're going to retract all of this. They actively lie to us in so many of these cases.
And it's because they have this domestic imperialist mindset that they're the rulers, we're the children, they're the parents. They have to engage in noble lying. What Roosevelt also could have been incentivized by is what's generally referred to by John J Mearsheimer as diversionary foreign policy in 1937, as you write so eloquently about in the Politically Incorrect Guide to the New Deal in Great Depression.
Roosevelt's New Deal came into effect in 1933 after Hoover had increased spending by 33% and from 1933. After four years of these New Deal policies, America experienced a double dip recession in 1937. The diversionary foreign policy theory generally states it's an international relations term that identifies a war instigated by a country's leader in order to distract its population from its own domestic strife. This is widely recognized by
foreign policy the advocates. But people who research this in depth, this is a common tactic where they will always divert your attention. Just as Kamala Harris diverted the immigration question by saying look at Trump's rallies, he has small crowds and people get up and leave, this is a large scale version of the constant attempt to change people's focus on to something else. Unfortunately, in this case, it costs millions of lives.
Yeah, it's the high stakes here. Let me, I'm scrolling back up here, Keith, because before you jumped into the Pearl Harbor stuff, per SE, you opened up your article talking about the firebombing of Tokyo, and then you said this was interesting. I just want to read it for people who weren't aware of this, that Dwight Eisenhower in his 1963 book Mandate for Change, says so. This is not Eisenhower what he
wrote in his 63 book. In 1945, Secretary War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression, and so I voiced to
him my grave misgivings. First, on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary. And secondly, because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory is a measure to save American lives. And then the last sentence here, it was my belief that Japan was at that very moment seeking some way to surrender with a minimum
loss of face. So again, that's, you know, now when we have these annual remembrances and justifications for Nagasaki and Hiroshima, people should remember that among the people questioning the wisdom of that move was Dwight Eisenhower. So it certainly wasn't that he was some pacifist, you know, liberal hippie who didn't understand the threat posed by Imperial Japan. What you want to thought? Any thoughts on that, Keith? Well, I can't hear you. I don't know if you did
something. How about now I'm? Sorry, I can hear you now. Yeah. It's not just a general. Dwight D Eisenhower, later twice elected Republican president of America. Again, a lot of these people with what are called dovish opinions, a lot of them are Republicans.
So it's very new. If you look historically, the Democrats got us into the First World War, Democrats got us into the Second World War, Korea was Harry Truman, the Vietnam War was Lyndon Johnson. Barack Obama escalated in Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, as well as a fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. John Kerry supported of the war in Iraq when he was running in 2004. The point is that the hawk party that we know of as George Bush's
Hawk party, this is totally new. The reason it's important is because Republicans today need a golden bridge to retreat across so to speak, when it comes to having an anti war worldview. So what Republicans need to be willing to say is we have tons of historical examples of our people recognizing that the cost of war is too high and the outcomes are too uncertain. And 2nd you have as I mentioned earlier, Nixon meeting with Mao, Eisenhower meeting with Khrushchev.
Willing to be diplomatic. Also Republicans should have no problem saying the pro-life, pro family policy is to avoid mass murder campaigns at almost any cost because the costs are so high and the outcomes are uncertain. Another non hawk on this is Charles de Gaulle. Basically September 1st of 1939 Hitler invade Stanzig, Poland.
As a response France and Britain declare War Two days later on Germany. Germany invades France, installs the Vichy government, and the guy who is running the fighters opposing the new Vichy government in France is Charles de Gaulle. He wrote a book in 1954, The Complete Memoirs of Charles de Gaulle.
He said on August 6th and 10th the atom bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As a matter of fact, the Japanese had given indications before the cataclysm that they were prepared to make peace negotiations, but it was unconditional surrender the Americans demanded. Certainly they were following the success of the experiments conducted in New Mexico that they would obtain it. So again, it is multiple people in high level positions who are
Hawks in general. Even saying this atrocity was completely unnecessary and unjustifiable. But as you and I just heard Mark Thornton give an excellent speech on the importance of the threat of state force and showing its ability to enforce any law that's on its books, this sort of threat inflation that the state engages in will intimidate everyone else into complying because they fear that
they might be victims. So even though it's unlikely you will go to jail if you engage in tax avoidance or use illegal substances, you are so scared by what you've seen others go through that you just want to blindly submit. This is a much better explanation for why they killed 100,000 people in the span of two days or so. As far as the actual numbers, the numbers are hard to come across. Nagasaki I would say 40,000. Hiroshima I would say something like 60,000 minimum.
Not to mention all the homes completely vanished, all the people with long term injuries, and all the devastation. So Robert McNamara who was later Secretary of Defense, they changed the term conveniently during the Vietnam War.
He was keeping statistics at the time during the Second World War under Curtis Lemay. Here is the devastation the station, the great Social Democrat fighter of the proletariat, Franklin Roosevelt. Here's what he did to Japan, according to McNamara in his book The Fog of War. It's a documentary, but it was turned into a book format. Proportionality should be a guideline in war.
Killing 50% to 90% of the people in 67 Japanese cities and then bombing them with two nuclear bombs is not proportional in the minds of some people to the objectives we were trying to achieve. And the Pearl Harbor myth was of course used, this hatred of the Japanese people, that hatred of the Japanese race, as Pat Buchanan actually summarized it,
as a race war. This is used for things like Executive Order 9066, the mass kidnapping of 120,000 Japanese Americans. There were also German and Italian Americans. Because the executive order did not specify which demographic this was subject to, the executive order basically just said the Secretary of War now has the right to determine which geographical areas should be subject to military zoning and what is a war zone and what
isn't a war zone. That changes, so I'm giving that to the Secretary of War. So now you have a right to kill these people, but they were extra generous and just kidnapped them, strip them of their property and put them in internment camps. You can hear stories about the internment camps from people like George Takei by people like Secretary of Transportation Norman Minetta. In August of 1988, Reagan ended up giving an official apology
and $20,000 to all survivors. Very nice of him to give other people's money to people victimized by the state instead of making the politicians pay for it. Very convenient. So the mass devastation, this is what Americans should be proud of when it comes to, they should not be proud of anything like this. What they could be proud of is saying, since we declared our independence, we've led the world in saying here's what's moral, here's what's civilized, here's what's immoral, here's
what's uncivilized. We're no longer going to have double standards for the state when it comes to initiating violence. So this is a very unifying message that a lot of people can get behind. The leftist can say that well, paying someone a low wage is exploitative, OK, whatever. We can argue about that a different time. There's nothing more exploitative and unjust to the working polar vulnerable masses than having them murdered to the point of 50 to 90% of them
killed in 67 Japanese cities. It's not the 1% that the government goes after in these wars, it's the average worker. So both the left and right can come together on this anti war policy. And I think that is the best thing that we could really embrace. That's the most productive thing that I think the libertarian world can give the left and right today. Yeah, I definitely agree that if you're going to try to build bridges, that's certainly the most obvious place to start.
Let me just dwell a little bit longer on this question of the unconditional surrender. So my understanding is the US authorities were, you know, telling the Japanese government, yeah, we need unconditional surrender because it's clearly that the Japanese had lost. the US was island hopping and so forth, moving towards the mainland, and the Japanese couldn't possibly stop them. So there's no question that the
US is going to win. And it was just a matter of when we're going to seize the hostilities. And that they said no unconditional surrender and that the Japanese resisted that because they they wanted to keep their emperor, you know, in his position. And they were worried If we say unconditional surrender, what if you guys, you know, dethrone him and then try to just install a standard system, political system like yours? And so finally, though, after Hiroshi and Nagasaki, they did
give unconditional surrender. And then the US said, I think you can keep your stupid emperor. You know, that is what it was just the principle. So I've always just want to always. But I have thought for a while now that the US wanted to make darn sure they had the options. So they wanted to drop those bombs to show Russia you see what we got Now, like you, does everyone understand we're in charge now when this thing is over? Because look what we can do.
And I that I think they needed to do it, use it in war just to show how serious they were. Yeah. Not merely that we can do it. We will do it. So you don't want to cross us or else you will look like Hiroshi and Nagasaki to me. That's what I thought clearly was going on there. How do you feel about that? That is probably what Robin Hanson would say. Robin's general world view is people seek to increase their social status and access to resources.
They do that and then come up with rationalizations afterwards. So increasing the amount of power they had with regard to the new empire that they just helped take half of Eastern Europe, the Bolshevik regime intimidating them is definitely a high priority. You would certainly think, I just want to walk through what Truman says in his memoirs about how they chose Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This book he wrote, it's titled Memoirs by Harry Truman, 1945 Year of Decisions.
I just want to walk you through the words of the man responsible for killing the most amount of people in a single day and what his thought process was. It was their recommendation, Henry Stimson's group of people in charge of the Manhattan Project, that the bomb be used against the enemy as soon as it could be done. They recommended further that it should be used without specific warning and against a target that would clearly show its devastating strength.
The final decision of where and when to use the bomb was up to me. The top military advisors to the president recommended its use, and when I talked to Churchill, he unhesitatingly told me that he favored the use of the atomic bomb. If it might end the war. I wanted to drop it on a military target. I had told Stimson that the bomb should be dropped as nearly as possibly upon a war production center of prime military
importance. 4 cities were recommended as targets, Hiroshima, Kokoru, Nagati and Nagasaki. They were listed in that order as targets for the first attack. The order of selection was in accordance with the military importance of the cities, but allowance would be given for weather conditions at the time of the bombing.
He then cites a letter from the acting Chief of Staff to General Carl Spatz where he says the observing planes will stay several miles distant from the point of impact of the bomb. So they know they're killing miles of people and they have to be that far away so they themselves don't get caught in the explosion. So Truman's official policy is we tried to find the closest thing we could find to a
military target. He goes on to say it was actually Stimson's idea to keep Hirohito on the throne. Stimson said. Look, if we just take down Hirohito and install either an American guy or someone from Japan who's Japanese, who has high social status there, we're going to be seen as just, you know, imperialists. And the people are not going to accept the rule, even if we've scared the hell out of them with these bombs. So what we need is someone who already has authority.
So it was better for them to have Hirohito not surrender the throne and say, you're still calling the shots. People still answer to you, but you answer to us. That was basically the the rationale that I'm able to come across as far as why those places were chosen specifically.
Again, you also had very disproportionate amount of Catholics and Christians in these areas, which could be an indicator that the state sees religion and families as the biggest competitors to the state's complete monopoly on authority to be what Hans Hopper would call the ultimate arbiter and decision maker within a geographical. So maybe they targeted them for those reasons, but according to Truman, it was because of the military reasons.
Let. Me just make sure because I didn't understand you were saying Japanese Catholics were most highly concentrated in those areas. Is that is that what you're saying or did I misunderstand you? There was a disproportionate amount of Japanese Catholics and Christians in the areas of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That is 1 alternative that has been put forth by people who are skeptical as to whether or not these were just military targets, as Truman says.
So one possible explanation is the state seeking to be the monopolist on authority constantly fears of church in Waco, TX. Let alone a very big geographical area where people have an allegiance to another deity. OK, yeah. And unfortunately, I'm just not well versed enough in military history to be able to say whether Truman's discussion
there was. You know, I guess what I'm saying is I wonder if there were other places that would have been as important militarily to the Japanese defense effort at this point. But they wouldn't have involved melting a whole city. And so therefore, they thought, well, no, that's not really going to allow us to flex as
much. We got to pick a place because even in the quote you read there, they said something like it needed to demonstrate the devastation of which we were capable at this point, something like that. Well, and they wouldn't have picked cities. They would have said, we're going to keep an eye on the we're going to use our satellites and our planes to find out where the most soldiers are. And then we're going to strike that area as soon as possible.
So we're going to send planes to fly over, tell us where the soldiers are most heavily concentrated, and then we'll pick. Or they could have used the prime minister's palace. If it's all about, you know, just focusing on getting the bad guys. You have very different aims. And there are certainly alternatives. So I think it's unlikely. The point is, is that that is Truman's official position. So I just thought that was generally productive.
One more thing we have to mention the fact that, well, the the damn Japs attacked Pearl Harbor. So they had it coming. First of all, I'm curious to know what Ben Shapiro and Dennis Prager, what percentage of Japanese people were part of Yamamoto's plan, His secret plan to attack Pearl Harbor in 1941? I'd be shocked if it was as high as .01% of Japanese people were were in on this.
Second of all, in general, can I hold Americans accountable for what democratically elected Joe Biden or Donald Trump does? I think that's absolutely ridiculous. Second, when it comes to the Japanese atrocities committed in China, it's worth noting in the US War Department's 1944 Handbook on Japanese military forces, it says in peacetime all male Japanese subjects between 17 and 40 are subject to service
in the armed forces. It goes on to say this is the military conscription policy in Japan. So these were a bunch of slaves who even the most egregious villains, you can say, well, it's about getting. I really hope they kill a lot of the soldiers. Maybe the civilians are bad. Even the soldiers are performing forced labor against their will. And I I'm very glad that people are against forced cotton picking, that forcing someone to pick cotton is totally immoral, but forcing them to get their
limbs blown off to get killed. Mr. Zelensky, Mr. Putin, Mr. Netanyahu is doing this today, and these people are widely celebrated. This is a far more brutal form of forced labor, as Tom de Lorenzo said in his recent Mesa Institute publication. He said military conscription is far worse than slavery for a lot of people. Basically anyone who gets killed during military conscription is
worse off. Of course, there's some soldiers who get good pensions and everything, but the common response I get by people like Schenkjuger, Sam Cedars, well, the soldiers were paid as if slavery was a problem of compensation. Frederick Douglass in his autobiography, said every week the slaves would come and get their weekly allowance. They were given food, shelter, clothing, water, healthcare because it was in the slave owners self-interest to make sure he had healthy slaves
working. It has nothing to do with compensation. It has everything to do with the violation of the self ownership principle and the non aggression principle. So we're talking about worst case scenario, a bunch of slaves being punished for what a few psychopathic politicians were engaged in. This is nothing America should be proud of, but there are a lot of things we should be proud of. The Wright brothers built the
first airplane here. Henry Ford increased access to automobiles in America. Empire State Building was built in one year and 45 days, setting a record for such a structure at the time. Vanderbilt, a lowering steamship, cost from 7 dollars to six cents. With his excellent innovations, there's so much we can be proud of. The Second World War is nothing that we should be proud of. Unfortunately in economics it would be Irving Fisher and I'm not proud of him so.
Mostly. Candle, I guess Frank Federer. We could. We could like him. Where was wasn't Rothbard born in New York City? Oh, I but I was thinking back in the day, yeah. Oh, back in the day. Well, Jonathan Newman, Patrick Newman, Bob Murphy. I'm proud of all those American economists. That's future. Generations, we'll look back. Perhaps. They'll be like, yeah, those guys made the Matrix movies and some good Austrian. Economics. Actually are were the matrix guys American or are they
Canadian? Oh, I thought, I thought you were joking that the Newmans look like the brothers in the Matrix. Film. Yes, that is what I was saying. Oh no. Oh, I was just trying to think of the best cultural. Yeah, I was just trying to think of the best thing that the US has produced. And I was thinking the Matrix
movies, at least the 1st 2:00. Well, no one likes this, but I think My Chemical Romance is an excellent band and Dave Matthews, while born in South Africa, immigrated here to give the world the Dave Matthews Band. So tons of Taylor Swift is very talented. If you've seen the Eras Tour, she is definitely something we should be proud of. She just needs to embrace the division of Labor and shut the hell up when it comes to the gender wage gap and supporting Kamala Harris.
Other than that, she does great stuff. Shake it off, Keith. So yeah, this. Oh, I lost. I was going to ask you a great finale question here and I lost it for a second. OK well, what do you think is. Oh, I know what I was going to say is with Japan also you. I think you alluded to it quickly because you contrast it and say us with our democracy. But yeah, it's not merely as most governments do and conscript. There's armed forces.
But to say, yeah, but the people responsible for setting it up. But the the democratic system, you know, the parliamentary system that we think of is what a what a democracy is was until 1947 and before there that you had some stuff. But there was clearly like militarist rule for a while before World War 2 officially began.
So again, it's, it's a weird ethical system by which you can say some baby that is living in Tokyo or Hiroshima or Dresden for that matter, is responsible for what grown-ups did earlier. Like what, you know, it's a, it's a weird thing where we just kind of, well, you know, they should have, I guess they should have picked better parents or something to be born to. There's basically a division on this. There are bin Ladenites and then there are libertarians.
The libertarians say that people should be held accountable for actions they engage in. It's wrong to initiate violence or threats thereof against non aggressors. The bin Ladenite camp basically said in I want to say this was a 96. All of his collections of essays are in a book titled Jihad. Bin Laden's Speeches, Interviews and Declarations from king fought in 1995 to his last interview with, uh, Pakistani media.
Bin Laden says yes, uh, the military, the members of the US military are fair game to target thereafter all occupying the land of Mecca and Medina. So they did that in want to say Tanzania, Kenya and the USS Colon, uh, Yemen. But also the American taxpayers. They brag about having such a democracy where they themselves are the ones calling the shots.
Credit to the 9/11 memorial in New York City, which I was just at. They use this quote where it's the American taxpayers and their soldiers who are our targets because he sees them as all Co conspirators in this. That was at the memorial that. Was at the Memorial I. That's interesting. I hope you take a picture of that. Yeah. I'm I'm going to look through. I'm pleasantly surprised because you would think that might be a little too much raw.
Like don't let people think see how this guy was thinking because they might start, you know, saying, huh, I guess I see where he's coming from giving his perspective. I was so shocked at how good the 9/11 memorial is. It's propaganda for the 1st 80%. And I go please, please just
give me something. They cite the Phoenix memo, which was a guy in Arizona who contacted the FBI saying we have reason to believe this would have been in August of 2001, where he said bin Laden is recruiting guys to fly planes into buildings. This was popularized when Condoleezza Rice was talking to Congress, saying no one could have imagined someone would use planes and fly them into buildings. So even that was in there.
They cite the fact that Ramsey Youssef's primary gripe with America this was the 1993 bomber at the World Trade Center, that his primary gripe was US support for Israel and its atrocities against Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, as well as Lebanon. They mentioned that Mohammed Atta in 1996 basically pledged his allegiance to Bin Laden after America, who was supporting Israel after Israel's Grapes of Wrath operation into southern Lebanon. That was in 1996. So the 9/11 memorial was
shocking. Go see it while it's still up, because someone in there is in actually knows what what's going on. Well, good.
Good for them. So again, just to make sure people caught that transition that Keith was saying for those red blooded American, you know, Sean Hannity fans who anytime someone says Jesus, I think it might arguably be a war crime what we did in Hiroshima and Nagasaki to say, well, they attacked us on Pearl Harbor. So I mean, sorry, but your civilians are fair games for it's collateral damage. We're not intentionally killing civilians.
They would argue. But all, all's fair once you know that it's their fault that they they attacked us 1st. And so if you're going to argue like that, then OK, then if you can see why bin Laden would think he was justified in shooting at, you know, setting up car bombs or whatever, hitting U.S. forces on holy Muslim land, Well, then by the same token, why wouldn't he be allowed to do something to US civilians that arguably would hamper our war making ability?
And that's that's that is how he was framing it. He wasn't just doing it because, Oh well, I'm mad the Americans let me at least kill some of them so I'll feel better. No, he had strategic reasons that arguably succeeded that he wanted to provoke the Americans into overextending themselves and getting bogged out and, you know, hollowing themselves out from within, which looks like he may have been right about.
Which is exactly what's a big new Burzynski said could be a good idea to Jimmy Carter. This would have been in July and December of 1979. He wrote memos to Carter saying this is our chance to give the Soviets their Vietnam to bleed them dry, provoking the Soviet Union into over expansion in Afghanistan leaving their empire dry. Just as the Habsburg Empire of Austria Hungary thought we can take on tiny Serbia. What what's going to happen?
We have the backing of Kaiser Wilhelm that led to 1.1 million dead citizens in the Austro Hungarian Empire and the collapse of their empire. There's another reason Mr. Pro America Republicans should be anti war. It can even take down your own empire. I hope Jake Sullivan and Anthony Blanken are listening to this. I would be shocked if they're not. We have to stop at this point. Keith, thank you as always for all of your hard work. So I'll link folks to Keith's
specific article here. But Keith, in general, where would you point people to if they want to learn more of your perspective? People can check out Libertarian institute.org. They can either buy a copy or get a free PDF of the Voluntarist Handbook. 50 essays I read that turn me from being a progressive sort of conservative into being a voluntarist, and also my book Domestic Imperialism, 9 Reasons I Left Progressivism. Bob Murphy, thank you so much for having me on.
Sure thing, Keith. And it was great seeing you recently in person, folks. It was great seeing you virtually, and we'll see you next time as well. You've just experienced another episode of The Bob Murphy Show, the podcast promoting free markets, free minds, and grateful souls. For more information and to subscribe to this podcast, visit bobmurphyshow.com.