The Bill Walton Show

Unprecedented government measures to stop the spread of an unstoppable virus have morphed into mortal threats to our liberties and civil rights, not just here in the United States, but worldwide.

First we were told that lockdowns, masks, and social distancing stop the spread of the virus. Do these things and we would be safe. There's no clear correlation between these measures and the spread of the virus.

Then the CDC changed the definition of herd immunity on its website. They defined the concept to account for vaccines only, and erased the role of infections themselves. Winston Smith (1984) would understand.

Now, it's only vaccines, vaccine mandates, vaccine passports that will do the trick. Natural immunity doesn't matter. Why?

One big casualty of government responses to the coronavirus over the last two years is the loss of trust in our public health establishment.

Joining me to talk about this is James Patrick, documentary filmmaker, whose film Planet Lockdown is coming out January 15th, 2022 and Jay Richards, frequent guest, author of Price of Panic, who is now the William E. Simon Senior Research Fellow with the Heritage Foundation.

Our larger concern is the damage being done to our free speech and our freedom to have open debate about what works and what doesn't.

There are countless important questions we're not allowed to discuss. We're not allowed to talk about Ivermectin. We're not allowed to talk about whether the vaccines work, let alone whether they qualify as vaccines. We're not allowed to talk about the whether the pharmaceutical companies have an agenda.

This is forbidden speech that's being monitored and chilled by the public health agencies, the corporate media, and social media companies.

The censorship is growing more extreme. James interviewed Howard Berger, who's the chief epidemiologist and medical authority of Austria. James posted the interview the social media, which took it down, citing "medical misinformation." Are we to believe that YouTube censors know better than Austria's chief epidemiologist?

Where is this going? How does it end? Vaccine mandates seem eerily to recall why we have the Nuremberg Code. Vaccine passports could easily turn into a Chinese-like social credit system.

Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum has said the pandemic is an opportunity for "the great reset"—a restructuring of global capitalism for the 21st century.

We need an open debate about whether this is the future we want.

Jay Richards and James Patrick weigh in.

Today's episode is a treasure trove of important facts that we all should know about technology, society and the future. My guest is once again Mark Mills, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute - who specializes on science, technology, energy, and future manufacturing technologies - and who has just published The Cloud Revolution: How the Convergence of New Technologies Will Unleash the Next Economic Boom and A Roaring 2020s Conventional wisdom as to how technology will change the future is wrong. And what is quite wrong is the view that the only technological revolution that matters will be found with renewable energy and electric cars. According to Mills, a convergence of technologies will instead drive a broad economic boom over the coming decade. It will come not from any single big invention, but from the confluence of radical advances in technology's three domains: microprocessors, materials, and machines. At the center of all of this is the Cloud, history's biggest infrastructure, which is itself based on the building blocks of next-generation microprocessors and artificial intelligence. For an optimistic take on what's ahead, Mark dives into this, and more. But we also talk about some of the dangerous dead ends we face if we plow ahead blindly with a promised "green" energy future. As we all know, today's elites are obsessed with climate change and replacing fossil fuels with solar and wind energy and other yet-to-be-invented technologies. But has anyone really thought this through? Wouldn't now be a good time to assess what actually doing this would look like. Mark Mills has thought it through and has a stark message - an inconvenient truth: "There won't be a world powered entirely by wind and solar or batteries. The reason I say that is because it is not possible. We don't have the materials and we can't afford it in either environmental or economic terms. " To switch from hydrocarbons oil, gas, and coal to wind solar and batteries, the quantity of materials acquired to be extracted from the earth to produce the same unit of energy goes up a thousand percent - that's ten times. Mark jokes that people believe in a new element "unobtainium" with perfect attributes: high energy density, it weighs nothing, costs nothing, and getting out of the earth is easy. "You have to mine stuff, build stuff. You always have to do that. Everything starts with mining." Take electric cars. The battery in an electric car weighs about a thousand pounds. Most people don't know that the thousand pound battery is replacing a 60 pound fuel tank. To make the thousand pound battery, to fabricate it, ou have to mine and dig up somewhere on the earth, 500,000 pounds of materials. Nickel copper, the manganese, lithium, carbonates, all of that. All of that requires mining equipment and mining machinery, almost all of which is oil fired. This is just one reality. Listen in as Mark also explains the true costs of solar and wind technologies. They are not what you thought. We need to be clear about what we're doing. The most valuable thing in the universe is the time that we have to live on earth. Much of what history has been devoted to is making our time available to do other things which translates into speed and convenience and comforts. And making time always takes energy. We need to stay smart about this and Mark explains how.

Albert Einstein said science can only flourish in an atmosphere of free speech.

Today, despite claims about "following the science" with regard to Covid 19, this is simply not happening. Why? Because "they" have taken away one of the essential elements of science: allowing people to disagree based on facts learned through experiments and observation, reconciling practical knowledge and ends with scientific laws.

This is how science works. This is how freedom works. This is how good things happen in a free society because people are free to get information and disagree. Nobody is in possession of the ultimate truth.

By contrast, look at every totalitarian regime, what do they do? They squash free speech. And when that happens, people suffer.

Who are "they?"

I think we all know by now and it seems that they have the totalitarian playbook well in hand. Facebook, Twitter, all the tech giants and the mainstream media have all decreed that if you say something that is at odds with the CDC, the World Health Organization, they're going to censor you.

An open debate about the Covid-19 virus and its variants - their origins, spread, lethality, vaccine effectiveness, governments' mandates to control their spread and on and on - is simply not happening.

So to learn about what is true and what could be happening if we actually did follow the science, I'm joined in this episode by Jim Agresti, founder of an extraordinary shop, Just Facts. Just Facts a nonprofit institute dedicated to publishing comprehensive, straightforward, and rigorously documented facts about public policy issues.

Some what we talk about:

• The effectiveness of vaccines versus natural immunity
• How different are Covid 19 variants from the original virus.
• Claims Joe Biden has made about the virus and its vaccines. You'd be better off listening to Dr. Jill.
• How the virus really spreads. Hint: it's not what the CDC originally claimed.
• The effectiveness of surgical masks (as documented by peer reviewed journals).
• Breathing CO2 all day is not good for you.
• Why nursing homes - and you - could benefit from a good UV disinfection system.
• The social and health costs of lockdowns versus their benefits.
• The CDC and the WHO have been patently wrong about many important things.
• • "We've seen that time and time again, whether it's a death rate, how this thing spreads, the list goes on and on and on … misstatements by the World Health Organization," reveals Jim.

Jim Agresti's hard work at Just Facts has revealed a lot of essential truths - and a lot about real science - concerning the virus and its aftermath. Listen in and learn.

Over the course of roughly four generations, from around 1950 to the present, American culture has been transformed from a culture that believed in the value of self-control into a culture that celebrates self-expression. And that "self-expression" has now twisted into a new form of anger - political wrath - which makes a performance art out of our darkest emotions. So argues my guest on this episode, Peter Wood, author of Wrath: America Enraged and 1620: A Critical Response to the 1619 Project and President of the National Association of Scholars. "The question is not whether we didn't have to deal with anger before, but how we channeled it. What kind of cultural frame did we put around it? And that began to change. After World War II, the hero type of Gary Cooper who could maintain his cool under extreme pressure gave way to, think, of Allen Ginsberg, and his famous poem Howl." "We've brought anger into our music, movies, and personal lives; and now, having step by step relinquished our old inhibitions around feeling and expressing anger, we have turned anger into a way of wielding political power." But the "angri-culture," as he calls it, doesn't promise happy days again. It promises revenge…and a crisis that could destroy our republic. Are both sides equally to blame? No. Politics are not conservatives' obsession. Conservatives tend to see politics as just one part of life, and they've got other things going on, their family, their jobs, or church, their clubs, that sort of thing. And when you have a life, it's hard to take it terribly seriously that the other side is just simmering with rage all the time. It seems that if there is conservative rage in this era it is "further prodded by a progressive elite that seems to take sadistic delight in devising new ways to torment ordinary Americans," says Peter. 'Antiracism' is a psyops campaign aimed at institutionalizing discrimination against Whites. The 1619 Project is an attempt to erase American history and put in its place an elaborately constructed lie in which slavery explains everything. 'Critical race theory' (CRT) further amplifies the message that American success is built entirely of the bricks and mortar of White racial supremacy. The elite preaches and now practices the benefits of abolishing our national border and flooding the country with illegal immigrants, at the expense of working-class Americans. Progressives manipulated the Wuhan virus epidemic by turning a manageable health crisis into a major economic disaster, an excuse for stripping Americans of their civil liberties, and an incitement of mass hysteria. And progressives, claiming the need to protect 'voter rights,' seek to lock into place the subterfuges they used to elect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris." The list goes on … and on. Adds Peter, "and now we have the recategorization after the fact of the events on Capitol hill as an insurrection, which strikes me as a deliberate effort to marginalize dissent in this country." Liberty loving Americans feel this tremendous anger and a sense of betrayal that our institutions have gone to the dark side. Yet we very much do not want to be provoked into something that we would all regret. Listen and consider as Peter and I wrestle with this difficult topic.

In this episode, we're talking again about the coercive power of the Administrative State and its serious threat to our constitutional freedoms. No other development in contemporary American law denies more rights to more Americans. Joining me to discuss is Mark Chenoweth, Executive Director, and Jenin Younes, Litigation Counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) a public interest litigation and pro bono advocacy law firm. NCLA represents both plaintiffs and defendants engaged with administrative state actions to make sure that their civil liberties are not being violated. Although Americans still enjoy the shell of their Republic, the administrative state has brought about exactly the sort of government that the Constitution was designed to prevent. "The kinds of protections that you would expect to have, if say a prosecutor from the Department of Justice were going after you in a federal district court, those same protections don't exist if it's a federal agency going after you in an administrative adjudication." "We're looking for cases where we can change the law," explains Mark. For example: Challenging Covid-19 regulations and orders imposed by executive decree. The NCLA class action suit for naturally immune federal employees against Covid vaccine mandates. When NASDAQ attacks! The problem with mandated diversity quotas for corporate boards. Is this the SEC's job? It's vital that many more Americans recognize the administrative state's unique threat to civil liberties. "If the government can get people in the habit of just doing what they're told and controlling them through administrative actions, then that makes it easier to accomplish whatever socio-political objectives that the government may have." Thomas Hobbes titled his book on politics Leviathan after the Bible's monstrous sea creature. Seems a pretty apt metaphor for what we're up against today.

Your eyes may glaze over when you hear people talking about the "administrative state." But if you care about liberty, it's long past time to start paying close attention to what it is and how impervious it has become to election outcomes. Today in Washington, we have what's become effectively a fourth branch of government: an unelected permanent bureaucracy of self-regarding "expert" progressive elites who staff and run the federal agencies. And if you believe they are hostile to conservatives you would be right.

In the past decade, America's big businesses have increasingly moved to the political left. For evidence, take a look at their actions and stances on critical race theory indoctrination, vaccine mandates, radical climate change agendas, boardroom "diversity", doing business and making common cause with a hostile China, etc … on issue after issue they align with the "woke" left. Now even the Federal Reserve and the Securities Exchange Commission are weighing in to support these agendas. What does this mean for ordinary Americans, and what can be done to push back? Joining me to explore this are: Matt Schlapp, Chairman of the American Conservative Union, which sponsors CPAC, founder of Cove Strategy, and long time advisor to major corporations, and Justin Danhof, Executive Vice President of the National Center for Public Policy, who has been waging a courageous battle against creeping corporate socialism for years. If you feel like American lovers of liberty are fighting against mounting odds, you are right. Even the big money management firms like Blackrock and Vanguard are pushing the left's agenda. Whether cynics, or true believers, they are putting their agenda ahead of investors as you will learn as we explore the dirty little secret of "ESG" investing. Also in this episode: Ford Foundation's backing Black Lives Matter, the "degrowth" people behind the climate change agenda, shareholder proposals that have nothing to do with companies … and other alarming things that you need to know about. There's a lot to unpack here, and Justin and Matt are outstanding guides to this terrain. We offer several lines of action. We can push back and must.

I open this show fondly quoting Shakespeare about how "one man in his time plays many parts." He could have been writing about my friend and one of my personal heroes Tony Perkins Tony's indeed a man of many extraordinary and effective parts. He's president of the Family Research Council. He's been chairman of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom and past President of the Council for National Policy. He's a syndicated radio host. He's an author of a terrific book called No Fear of New Generation Standing For Truth. He's a Baptist minister. He was a Louisiana State Representative, a TV reporter, a Marine, a policeman and when he was five years old, he led his father to Jesus. In this wide ranging conversation we talk about his journey, the importance of faith for a thriving society and economy, the threat from China, but at about 14 minutes in we get to the heart of matter. The number one thing we have to do is take back control of education in America. The lockdowns gave parents - and really forced parents - to pay attention to what their kids were being taught in the schools. They saw clearly that schools have morphed from teaching children to excel in the basics and instead are working to train "social justice" activists. And parents are revolting against the all across the country. Tony explains, "We've been working with activists across the country that are requesting documents through the FOIA requests." "My prediction is that this will eclipse the Tea Party movement of 2010 in the midterm election. Parents have had enough." The midterm 2022 election will see energized parents and families in a wholly new way. As Tony puts it, "I see this as really a... it's an army of mama bears that are being raised up across the country because if you get between a mama bear and her cubs you have a problem." Parents are given the authority and the responsibility to teach and to train their children. Now you can delegate the authority to a public school, a private school or to a tutor, but you can never delegate the responsibility. Parents are the ones ultimately responsible for the training of their children. And parents understand that. The government schools are now not working in the best interest of our children or our families. In fact, they've been driving a wedge between parent and child. That's the fundamental divide. Do you think that children should be raised by the state or do you think children should be raised by parents? Marxists say the State and our American education elite wholeheartedly agrees. Parents should just stay away from schools. Case in point, Attorney General Merrick Garland, who appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and defended his memo saying that because the parents are threatening the school boards with violence, he now is instructing the FBI and all the other instruments of the Justice Department to work with local authorities to prevent parents' speech in schools. So concerned parents, and all Americans really, need to take a stand. "This is now how I close my radio program," Tony clarifies. "When you've prayed, because He says that we're to pray, and when you've taken your stand, when you've prepared and you've taken your stand, when you've done all, you stand. There is no retreat, there is no surrender, we stand firm."

America is waking up to the capture of our institutions by the "progressive" woke Left. Beginning with K-12 education, universities, the media, and Hollywood, it's now moved into many churches, our military and corporate boardrooms. This didn't happen overnight. In this wide ranging and thoughtful conversation with Mark Meckler and Eric O'Keefe, we explore its roots going back to an obscure Italian Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci writing in the 1920's and his strategy to gain control of cultural institutions. Eric explains that "Gramsci called it 'the long march through the institutions.'" It took 100 years, but now it's arrived. We also look at one of the drivers of the American Revolution: the contempt that elites in London held for Americans, even the successful ones. ==== Guests: Mark Meckler, one of America's leading grassroots activists, founder of Citizens for Self Governance, Convention of States, co-founder of the Tea Party Party Patriots and interim CEO of Parler. and Eric O'Keefe who chairs the Convention of States, co-founded U.S. Term Limits and the Wisconsin Club for Growth and a long time leader in the movement to re-establish citizen control of government. ==== Of grave concern to all of us is the ability of conservatives to communicate with each other through social media. Mark shares his experience as interim CEO of Parler, the social media company which was put out of business by Amazon. "What happened to Parler is, I think much more serious than most people understand," warns Mark. "Not only was Parler taken down, all the ancillary services that are required to be alive on the web, to have a presence on the web, disappeared as well." So sue Amazon? Amazon spends over a billion dollars a year in legal fees and was utterly unconcerned by any Parler lawsuit. Another looming issue is what Mark calls the "tech stack", the complex array of "many, many more layers, another 5, 10 layers below that of technical infrastructure that's required for any business or organization to exist in any sort of scale on the web." There's a lot of importance in this episode - Eric's chilling John Doe experience after defending Scott Walker, the Convention of States, Merrick Garland's attempt to chill parents speech, ways to cut the Administrative State down to size, and more - I hope you'll find the time to listen in.

It's almost two years on from the onset of the Covid virus and we know a lot now that we didn't then. Society should be healing. But we live in vitriolic and partisan times, and widespread disagreement abounds about what it was, what it is, what it isn't and how to cope with it. Yet to those who understand how economies work, this much seems clear: governments' blunderbuss one-size-fits-all lockdowns and mandates have turned a manageable public health problem into a social, medical and economic catastrophe. It did not have to be this way. Joining me on this episode to talk about the price we've paid and where we go from here are two of our most independent economic and social thinkers: Donald Boudreaux, professor of economics at George Mason University, who runs the "go to" blog "Cafe Hayek" which has become a critical resource for facts about Covid and sensible response strategies. And John Tamny, editor of Real Clear Markets, a Forbes Magazine editor and the author of "The End of Work" and "When Politicians Panicked: The New Coronavirus, Expert Opinion, and a Tragic Lapse of Reason". John and Don cover a lot of ground: the damage done to our civil liberties, the labor market, the politicization of "science", the madness of declaring businesses essential or non-essential, supply chains, social media censorship, how lockdowns were used to usher in the new era of mail-in ballots and how rule by experts - think Anthony Fauci - failed. We needed leadership wise enough to let sensible Americans take the measures we used in every pandemic over the last century. Instead, we got draconian lockdowns and mandates. As Don clarifies, "No doubt, a lot of these people thought they were acting in the best interest of society, but it's completely antithetical to the principles of a free society." Listen in here as we explore how to recover our Liberty.