The NSA's Spying and Why It Matters

0:00It is a terrific honor to welcome to this program Dr. Mark Thornton. He is an economist and a senior fellow at the Mises Institute. Mark, good afternoon, sir, and thank you for being with us. I certainly appreciate your time. Good afternoon, Coy. Good afternoon, Charlottesville. It's great to be here. So I want to ask about the latest that we know about what the NSA is up to. And the larger question that we want to communicate to Americans, Mark, is why should we care? So many people have two reactions, you know what, I'm not surprised the government is spying on their own citizens without warrants, but I'm not doing anything wrong, so why should I care? And that's the question, Mark. Tell us what we know and why should we care? Well, I mean, the vast majority of people support what Mr. Snowden did and are repulsed by the whole idea of finally figuring out, as most of us suspected, that the government's been spying on us, 1984 style.

0:58And so what we know so far is that they haven't been telling us the truth either, basically, and they've been leaking out information and it's contradictory. But basically the two programs that we know about are them monitoring our emails and monitoring our phone records. But in actual fact, they can actually read those emails and they can actually listen to those phone conversations if they choose. It's true that they're vacuuming up all the records, but they can also actually read and listen to what we're doing, and I think it's telling that in the most recent investigation in Congress that NSA, you know, prior to that, they admitted to a couple of dozen terrorist Plots Thwarted. And then under oath testifying before Congress, they said only a few plots were uncovered. And then just recently, I think it was yesterday in the paper, that the NSA chief said at least 50. And so we're getting contradictory information every day.

2:09Tomorrow it'll be 100. Well, yes, of course. But what does this mean that they've thwarted these terrorist Attacks, you know, I don't buy into that at all because this is largely a backward-looking project where once the attack has occurred, they can use those records to figure out who are the accomplices that are involved in such plots. But you know, before that committee of Congress, after the congressmen and senators came out of there, one congressman said that what we see in the media, what we know about these programs is only the tip of the iceberg, okay? The tip of the iceberg is the smallest part of the iceberg and the least dangerous. The underneath part of the iceberg is the gigantic portion that is of course the most dangerous, the thing that sunk the Titanic. And in fact another senator came out of the hearing and he said, and this is a senator on the senior ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, and he said he knew nothing of

3:11What the NSA was up to. So, the fact that a ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security Committee doesn't know anything about this gigantic program, this clearly unconstitutional, immoral, unethical program whereby they make up their own courts who then decide that things are okay, which is, of course, totally illegitimate. Now, Mark, what do you say to somebody who says, you know, Mark, it's a fair point. It is unconstitutional, but it's 2013. There are terrorists that want to kill Americans. There are terrorists who are every day thinking up new ways that they can hurt this country and kill the people we love.

3:57And we have to take extraordinary measures to ensure the safety of this great country. And the NSA is just doing what it needs to do to protect us. What's about safety? Well, I mean, that's just ridiculous. I mean, the idea that you have to monitor every American's phone calls and email messages and who, God knows what else they're doing when they're simultaneously admitting that they've basically broken the back of Al-Qaeda and that they're already, you know, they've already, of course, monitoring suspicious phone calls outside of the country. So why do they have to monitor the phone calls inside the country of Americans, which is against the Constitution, the cost-benefit analysis isn't even close, given the fact that they themselves have admitted that the Al-Qaeda and like-minded groups, their back has been broken.

4:49And, you know, there are other terrorist groups in the world, but they don't have their focus on the United States. They have their focus in European countries and Russia and Chesney and other places. We're honored to be talking with Dr. Mark Thornton. He is a senior fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Alabama. It is the World Research and Education Center for the Austrian School of Economics. Mark, I've got one question for you. Dick Cheney said that Edward Snowden, the man who blew the whistle on this, is a traitor to his country. Is he a traitor? Absolutely not. As a matter of fact, Mr. Snowden said that that was the greatest honor that he could receive is to be to be called a traitor by Dick Cheney who of course is a neocon warmonger profiteer at Halliburton probably one of the most evil persons in the government in the last quarter century and you know to be called a traitor by someone like that I think is indeed an honor you know and the the

5:49the lengths that he went to go to lie to the American people to get us into war in Iraq, and the fact that thousands of Americans died over there, the fact that thousands of Americans were maimed over there, the fact that thousands of soldiers came back with post-traumatic stress disorder, the fact that American soldiers are dying more from suicides this year than are dying on in battlefields, and it's all because of, largely because of Dick Cheney and the Professor Robert Higgs detailed the extent of the amount of spending and employment and resources that are just wasted in the national security state, and I think that if you saw that, it's not a very long article, but it's very telling and it's very interesting.

6:51is shocking, the amount of people, highly paid people, who are involved in all of this spying, both abroad and here in the United States. Yeah, and you can look at Eisenhower's speech about the war machine and expressing concern about that, but you can also go back to the Founding Fathers. Jefferson and Madison wrote extensively and warned us to beware of the warlords, beware of those who profit from and War because they want to take your government and keep you in a state of perpetual war that will empower them, enrich them, and keep you afraid. And as long as you are afraid and you feel threatened, then you'll be happily willing to give up your freedom and your liberty to ensure your safety. Yes.

7:37And how about Benjamin Franklin, maybe the wisest and level-headedest founding father who said that those who are willing to trade away their liberty for security will neither achieve nor do they deserve either. So he put it in very stark terms in the sense that if you're willing to trade away your liberty to get a little more security, you're not going to get it and you don't deserve it and that's the way the world works. Part of the reason we had American Revolution is because of the fact that Britain was taking away our privacy and stationing soldiers in our houses and barns and doing all sorts of things that infringed upon our liberties.

8:23And they had rights. I mean, the English Constitution, the English Bill of Rights of 1689, insured these liberties to the colonists and they were violated at every turn and the American Revolution was a Revolution to Restore, in many ways it was a conservative revolution to restore rights that they felt and they knew had been stolen from them by parliament and by a king. Yes, and you know, the founding fathers were brilliant people who, you know, thought through this meticulously and legalistically, made their case to Britain to reform itself. The Declaration of Independence was a warning about, you know, what the American people We're talking with Dr. Mark Thornton of the Mises Institute. You can learn more online at Mises.org. It's M-I-S-E-S. Mark, let me take this to the next step now. We know the government is violating the Constitution. It's corrupt. It's bloated. It's wasteful. We know that the president is sitting in the seat of the Senate. We know that the president is sitting in the seat of the Senate. We know that the president is sitting in the seat of the Senate.

9:31in the Oval Office, deciding who to kill without recourse to any courts, including Americans with flying robots overseas. What do we do? What are we to do as Americans at this point here in the first quarter of the 21st century? Aside from getting educated, which was number one on Jefferson's list, get educated as fast as you can about the issues of the day and number two participate and be heard and as far as I'm concerned I don't care what your politics are right left up or down be heard get out there and be heard and participate but what are we to do Mark about the news of the NSA because they're not about to stop if anything it's like okay well you know that horse is out of the barn but we're not gonna stop well I mean first of all we have to be We have to be a nation where we're not willing to trade away our liberty for our security.

10:26We have to be a nation where patriotism is understood not as just following along slavishly to you the dictates of your government, but be willing to stand up against a powerful national government when it's doing something wrong, when it's doing something immorally, illegally, and so on and so forth. That's what we do here at the Mises Institute in a scientific way in terms of economics, History and Political Science and so forth. And, you know, once the American people are cleansed of their weaknesses and become what the American founding fathers were, which were smart, dedicated, and clear thinking, the state itself cannot stand. These policies and these programs cannot stand if majority opinion is strongly against them. We don't We don't have to do this violently, but we have to do it in an ideological revolution which I think has already started and I think that this Mr. Snowden is contributing to the fact that for the first time, I mean, you know, in the 1950s and 60s you weren't even supposed to ask any kind of questions or have any kind of discussions about the CIA and the FBI and that sort of thing and nobody even knew about the National Security Agency. It was referred to jokingly in Washington, D.C. as

11:47and so we've come a long ways and I think the pace of change is only accelerating because the government is accelerating its efforts to destroy our liberties and seemingly to destroy the economy all to the enrichment of the people in Washington D.C. and in the government and the contractors and the big banks. And that's an important point to make, Mark, and I want you to flesh that out, that there are institutions, there are companies, there are individuals who literally profit from the suppression of liberty, who profit from a bloated big government. I say all the time, you know, it's broken. Yeah, it's broken, and it was broken on purpose by the people who will profit off the fact that it's broken. So there's no motivation to fix it as long as it's broken. It was the same thing with parliament in the 18th century. There were Yeah, and as Dr. Higgs' article on Mises.org explains, there's thousands of these spies, and of course they're all making, you know, $100,000 to $200,000 to $300,000, and you

13:02know, it's the big corporations who are benefiting from the cheap money policy at the Fed, the The big corporations and the big banks in New York, there's tremendous beneficiaries here and what we see now, we can actually see it in a macro scale, is that the richest and wealthiest group in America owns a humongous historical record portion of the wealth in the country and the whole middle class has been battered down and of course the lower income classes are all dependent upon government programs with 50 million people. We're honored to be speaking with Dr. Mark Thornton.

14:05He is a senior fellow at the Mises Institute. It's online at Mises.org. M-I-S-E-S. He is an American economist of the Austrian School. And just to bring politics into this for a minute, Mark, there is these vested interests that you speak of who profit off the suppression of liberty. They create this theater of choice and this theater of democracy. And they profit as long as they keep Republicans and Democrats at each other's throats, they're going to be fine because they keep one half of America fighting the other half when we have a lot more in common than we realize. Oh yeah, I think describing it as theater is absolutely correct because if you look at what's actually going on in Washington D.C., the Democrats and the Republicans are fully aligned with one another with respect to things like having no budget to go by, just spending Borrowing as much money as you want and borrowing as much money as you want, you know, Democrats and Republicans, Nancy Pelosi, Congressman Rogers, Congressman King, they all lined up,

15:14even though they're on different parties, they all lined up in support of the NSA, taking away our privacy so that government can have an easier job and give away high paying jobs to their friends. And of course, they're all very much in unison with respect to the Federal Reserve, the central Bank, which is printing up money and buying up the government's bonds to keep down the interest rate on government bonds. And meanwhile, they're ruining us, Mark. They're ruining this country. Yeah. I mean, the big banks, the big corporations, they can get access to this cheap credit money. The government can get access to this cheap credit money. But if you go out on Main Street, it's really hard for small businesses, individuals, even to get a car or to get a house, the paperwork has grown enormously, and so they're strangling the middle class while enriching the privileged upper class. Now, I'm not saying all wealthy people are evil.

16:13No, of course not. And we're not saying you shouldn't try to get rich. That's not the point here. That's not the point at all. Yeah, absolutely. They've taken away that by creating this fascist economy where it's difficult to have economic mobility you know that's was that's was one of the hallmarks the unknown hallmark of American success and the brilliance of America is that economic mobility in the United States has always been tremendous so that even somebody at the very lower incomes could in five or ten years end up in one of the upper income classes maybe for a few years maybe just to accumulate a nice pot of wealth and then they might fall back down if their business doesn't succeed or they stop working or something like that.

17:02So economic mobility, the hallmark of American success and fairness has been replaced by a system where privileged few in the elite get all the privileges and end up with tons of money. The financial sector, the government contract sector, and the government itself are being enriched. And they certainly have the government they want. They can run their companies into the ground and we will bail them out. And we'll provide a corporate safety net, but try to create a safety net for the poor or for middle class Americans who are becoming the working poor. And, you know, people scream bloody murder. No, no, we can't do that.

17:48Yes, I mean, you know, the bailouts were so indicative of that, where the money basically ended up in the hands of, you know, the people who own Goldman Sachs, and the owners of Berkshire Hathaway, his name is not coming to me, Warren Buffett. Warren Buffett has been given, essentially, Dr. Mark Thornton is our guest. He is, of course, a senior fellow at the Mises Institute.

18:47Go to the website. It's mises.org. There's lots to learn there. Mark, have we created a government that is worse and more foreboding and more dangerous than what the American colonists fought in the 18th century? Wow, that's a great question. I think so. I mean, I think that they have the physical tools available to them, you know, the spying systems, the drones that they have, the fact The fact that they have access to all of our financial records and have essentially given the CIA and the FBI access to all of our financial records, the whole country, you know, and so, and they, you know, they strong-armed Google and Yahoo and Apple into providing their customer records of their internet traffic and their phone traffic, and so they really have... This is outrageous. There's no reason somebody in Washington should know Well, the only thing, Coy, that is a silver line to the whole thing is that government is such a total blunderer that they're not really going to achieve anything. They probably

20:17won't actually, but it's certainly possible that they could arrest and convict people who would be wrongfully targeted, because one terrorist calls you and then you call me, and then I'm targeted, and the police show up at my doors and plant evidence and and so forth. I mean, that's probably going to happen, but hopefully not on a massive scale. Well, that's what's happening with those drones overseas, you know, in places like Pakistan and Afghanistan. And we're killing, indiscriminately killing thousands of innocent people with those flying robots. Oh, yeah. I know. It's just outrageous. You know, and it's so childish almost.

21:05It's so, you know, like you don't have any backbone. You can't fight a fight for yourself. Mark, let's end on a positive note, because I believe in my heart that the best years of America are yet to come, but that every new generation is given its struggle, and we are given our fight and our task as citizens, our responsibility to ensure that we leave behind for our children and our children's children, that we leave these liberties and these freedoms stronger and more vibrant and more healthy than when we got them. That is our job. There's no doubt about that. As a matter of fact, I think we've already achieved that in the sense that the current generation of college students that I'm familiar with and that have graduated in recent years and have been involved in the Ron Paul movement, these are people who are going to be the leaders of tomorrow, and they're intellectually and ideologically sound, hardcore sound, unlike Most of my generation and my parents' generation who were infected by Cold War ideology that

22:14you had to follow in lockstep with whatever the state said, this generation is not going to take that and the people who have already joined the movement of freedom, those are the people who are going to be the leaders of tomorrow in terms of politics, in terms of business, in terms of technology, in terms of entrepreneurship. And so I actually do have, in terms of the long run, I've always been an optimist but I think now more than ever I'm an optimist that more people are coming to our sites and our programs and learning Austrian economics and seeing the scientific reasons why a free society unregulated and untaxed by the government works perfectly fine and that the government itself doesn't add anything to the benefits of freedom, it only gets in the way, mucks Dr. Mark Thornton is an economist and a senior fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

23:15Go to the website, mises.org. Mark, it's been a privilege and I look forward to this opportunity again soon. Thank you very, very much. Likewise, I'm sure. I'm sure.