← The Josh Hammer Show
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I'm Josh Hammer and this is the Josh Hammer show folks. A totally action packed show for you today. You are in for a real treat. Dana Lash joins us a bit later in the show for a conversation about the Second Amendment and the ongoing information operation to co opt the American rights and by extension the American Republic. Also a conversation with recent author Emil Picken about his brand new book. But for now we begin with this. We recently had on the show Lila Rose, the founder and president of Live Action, for a deep dive conversation about one of the most indispensable rights, arguably the single most indispensable right in the entire Constitution. The entire declaration, the entire panoply frankly of human civil rights in our existence. That of course is the right to life. Today I want to continue, as we march ever closer to America's 250th anniversary this July 4th, I want to continue this conversation talking about some of the absolute bedrocks, the cornerstones of our American constitutional system that sometimes we really do take for granted. And today the conversation is going to move from the right to life to the right to self defense, that is to say the right to keep and bear arms. The Second Amendment is, as the name would imply, the Second Amendment. It is pretty high up there in the Bill of Rights. Bill of Rights, as you may or may not recall, it was hotly debated as to whether or not this would even be necessary in the first place. In fact, there was a pretty compelling argument actually on the anti Bill of Rights side that essentially said that okay, if you go ahead and you pass these enumerated constitutional rights, what is the implication? There will be a lot of people out there who say, hmm, it's not here, therefore do I have the right. And it turns out that their workaround to that is the ninth and tenth Amendments. The ninth Amendment basically says that the enumeration of these rights is not to deny those other rights that are still retained by the people. It's just A rule of construction. And then the 10th amendment essentially says that the rights that are not otherwise explicitly given to the federal government are thereby reserved by the states. So that was a framer's response to that particular concern. But in any event, the Second Amendment is pretty high on the list. The Second Amendment's text, because we always start with the text here. That's what we do when we talk about constitutional provisions. The Second Amendment reads, quote, a well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Now, there are two ways to read this particular provision. There is the smart way and there is the dumb way. In fact, we saw this play out in the D.C. versus Heller case that reached the United States Supreme Court in 2008, which shockingly was the first time that the Supreme Court ever definitively held that the Second Amendment text means what it says. But it was a highly fractured 5 to 4 decision. So the first way, let's call it the dumb way, the dumb way to read this Amendment is to focus on the first or second clauses, which is to say a well regulated militia be necessary to the security of a free state. So this is what the dissenters do in the D.C. versus Heller opinion. They say that, oh, they're only talking here about the right of the people in the context of a quote, unquote, well regulated militia. And therefore, because militia can be quote unquote regulated in the first place there, then the right doesn't actually really go very far because the states can regulate the militia and you can essentially regulate whatever kind of weapons they have there or so forth there. It's a very, very dumb argument. The proper way to read this text is to focus on the latter most clause which simply says, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. How do I know this? Because the key words there, the right of the people. That is a legal turn of phrase. It is a legal term of art. It is the exact same group of words that are used throughout the Bill of Rights that are used in the Fourth Amendment. The right of people to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. Just to give one example, there's plenty of others there as well. The Third Amendment against quartering of soldiers in the homes. Not a very frequently cited amendment, is it? But it was a term of art that meant an individual right. So it took 2008, maybe the defining majority opinion of Antonin Scalia, the late great justice, to say that this right Actually means what it says. As an aside, to this day, you may or may not know this if you're a close follower of mine. My favorite gun that I own to this day, because I am a gun guy, is a single action army colt.45 revolver, a seven and a half inch barrel. Beautiful, beautiful gun. Chambered in the original Long Colt.45. Very expensive ammunition by the way. It's not for the, for the economically faint of heart. I actually took this gun and I named it Scalia. I actually got a laser engraved Scalia in the wooden handle to this gun to name it after the man who wrote the opinion in D.C. versus Heller. So that was the first time that the court actually held that this means what it says. We had a couple of follow up opinions since then. In 2010, two years later in the McDonald vs City of Chicago case, the court then extended that right to the states. And then they said, let's let it fester. Always dangerous words if you're a judge. Let's let it fester. Let it play out in the lower states in the laboratories of democracy, or in this case, in the laboratories of the lower courts. Well, that was an experiment that did not necessarily go super well because predictably there were a whole lot of blue states and blue localities, places like Illinois, places like California, that took the Chicago opinion from 2010 and basically treated it as not worth the paper that it was written on. They maintained all sorts of bans on very common objects, things like quote, unquote, large magazines, where they define large as being 10 or more bans on certain types of firearms themselves, whether they are quote, unquote assault weapons, which by the way is a technically undefined and frankly it cannot be defined because it is a fake term. It is a fake category. To leftists, assault weapon basically means weapon that you are afraid of. But in any event, the court allowed this to play out for way too long. Finally, in 2022, just a few years ago, Clarence Thomas, maybe the greatest justice of all time, had a majority opinion in the case called Bruin, which is a case that said that no, actually the right to bear arms, to take it outside your home, to an extent at least to an extent actually means what it says, that some level of carrying a firearm outside your home is not just a policy that you can or cannot give the people depending on your own beneficence or generosity. No, wrote the court in Bruin, this actually is a real right. This is a real thing that the text guarantees. Again, to an extent, they're still engaging in all Sorts of nonsense here. But here's the thing, folks. When we talk about the second Amendment today, we talk often about self defense. We talk very often about defending your home, defending your family, carrying out in public. I am not undermining or downplaying this in the slightest. I am an everyday carrier. I carry a firearm every day of my life. Life. And a backup magazine and a knife. So don't mess with me. But the right is actually a lot, a lot broader than that. That's fundamentally not what they were trying to do. Was it the militia that they spoke of refers to a free and vibrant armed citizenry. That's the militia in the Second Amendment text, in what lawyers call the prefatory clause, the clause that the four dissenters in the Heller case said. Oh, this is the crux of the amendment, ignoring the whole write the people thing. Well, the militia is actually still defined today to this day. You can literally Google it for yourself. 10. United States Code, Section 246, the title of this statute, the composition and classes. I read from the U.S. code, quote, the militia of the United States consists of all able bodied males at least 17 years of age and except as provided elsewhere, under 45 years of age. So if you're between the ages of 1745 and you're an able bodied male, you're part of the militia. I'm part of the militia. Perhaps you are too. Congratulations. So this concept is still here today. The militia is ultimately here to defend the citizenry. It is here especially to defend the citizenry if all else fails. To the American founders, to the framers, a standing army was potentially really dangerous. You could have a coup, a coup d'. Etat. The standing military could try to topple the sovereign. Ultimately in our system, the sovereign are we the people. But really they were afraid of a standing army potentially toppling the President or the Congress or some other major institution, whether public or private, they actually were quite terrified of standing armies. They thought that the militia would do the bulk of the work. And therefore it is incumbent upon that militia to be armed not just in lieu of a standing army, but also to be a check on the potential tyranny of the federal government itself. This is a point that I have been making for years and years and years and years. You know, one of my favorite other guns I own is a Daniel Defense rifle. I've had this gun for some years now. I love it. It is all decked out with all the gadgets and this, that there. And I refer to that gun jokingly to my friends and now, to you, the viewer of the listener, I call that my Warsaw Ghetto gun because it is exactly the type of gun that the Jews of the Warsaw ghetto in the 1940s would have killed to have had. In the context of the roughly month long uprising against the Nazis there in Warsaw, Poland. Firearms are a check on tyranny. We know to this day that it is one of the reasons that Hitler did not invade Switzerland during World War II. There are other reasons too, but this is a key reason. Switzerland to this day and back then as well, has one of, if not the highest civilian firearm ownership rate in all of Europe. Arguably my favorite opinion ever written on the Second Amendment was out of California back in, back in 2003. It takes a somewhat complex procedural posture, so there's no reason in elaborating. But it was former judge Alex Kaczynski, who was no longer on the ninth Circuit. He was ruling in a quote, unquote assault weapons case. Kaczynski, who grew up in communist Romania, the son of Holocaust survivors, he had powerful, powerful words. In the Silvira vs Lockyer case, I read, quote, all too many of the other great tragedies of history. Stalin's atrocities, the killing fields of Cambodia, the Holocaust, to name but a few, were perpetrated by armed troops against unarmed populations. Many could well have been avoided or mitigated had the perpetrators known their intended victims were equipped with a rifle and 20 bullets apiece, as the militia act required here. If a few hundred Jewish fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto could hold off the Wehrmacht for almost a month with only a handful of weapons, 6 million Jews armed with rifles could not so easily have been herded into cattle carts. My excellent colleagues have forgotten these bitter lessons of history. The prospect of tyranny may not grab the headlines the way vivid stories of gun crime routinely do, but few saw the Third Reich coming until it was too late. The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision. One designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed, where the government refuses to stand for re election and silences those who protest. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once. Powerful stuff. I cite all the time and for good reason. And now you know as well why you have the right to bear arms. To protect you and ultimately to protect a free people from their government. Folks, stay with us through a quick commercial break. We'll be joined on the other side by the great Dana Lash, who has a thing or two to say I think about this very topic. We'll be right back with the great Dana Lash. 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Welcome back. So we're talking a lot there in the opening monologue about the second Amendment, the right to keep and bear arms. We are coming up on the 250th anniversary of America's founding. And this is one of our most important constitutional rights. And there's really no one better in America, I would argue, to bring on to talk about this and all sorts of other pressing issues than my good friend Dana Lash. Dana hardly needs any introduction, but she is the host of the nationally syndicated the Dana show, which you hear from coast to coast. Dana, it's great to see you, my friend. Thank you so much for joining us.
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You know, you're my good friend. Thank you for the nice introduction.
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Yeah, you bet. Of course. So, Dana, you are not a issue specialist at this point. You cover all the issues and you do so in prolific fashion for three hours on the airwaves every single day. But in a perhaps former life, you were more of a second amendment issue person at the end of that. I'm not saying that you don't care about guns. You obviously care a lot about guns. But in a previous lifetime, back when you're the spokesperson for the nra, I think a lot of people associate you with the gun issue. And what we're doing, Dana, is in the lead up to the 250th anniversary of America's founding here, we're trying to bring it back to basics. We just had on Lila Rose for a whole segment about the right to life issue, which is a deep passion of mine. And I wanna talk a little bit about the right to keep and bear arms, which is another deep passion of mine and certainly a deep passion of yours. So I wanna talk about some possible hot but from a policy or legal perspective when it comes to that amendment. But before kind of getting in there, kind of zoom out a little bit here. We're coming up again on this quarter millennium anniversary here, talk to us about the broader significance of this Right. Because that gets lost, I think, in the daytime discourse a lot.
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Well, I think a lot of people sort of forget what the intention of the Second Amendment was in the first place. I mean, we have to go all the way back, as we're going to be doing when we revisit history as we celebrate the 250th founding of this republic, to really what the founders were protecting. I mean, it really wasn't about just self defense. It was about freedom and keeping the republic free and fighting tyranny. And that's something very, you know, a lot of people who are pretty moderate on the issue or maybe against the issue, they're very uncomfortable with this historical fact. But that's true. I mean, you know, we're talking about the founders like Jefferson who said the tree of liberty must be watered from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. That's, you know, I mean, it's a little bit butchered, but that's, you know, the intent is that at some point you may have to defend your freedom and your free republic from the forces of tyranny. And you need to make sure that you safeguard the implements with which you use to accomplish this. And that was really ultimately the thrust in creating the Second Amendment. I mean, it's great. You know, obviously, yes, it's about self defense, but that shouldn't be where we retreat to and that shouldn't be where we always feel like that's, you know, a Mott Bailey, we have to go here. Because it's considered somehow not acceptable to talk about the real reason why the Second Amendment was created. And it was quite literally to face down threats of tyranny and people who were going to take over the republic and constrict our freedoms. And that's why we have to also remember back during the time the Founders when all of this was being debated and it was very hotly debated. I mean, the language is very simple and kept simply. So. But we had, you know, a standing army in the United States and we had, you know, all of the, I mean, from the British, there were a lot of restrictions on our freedoms. And people always, you know, freedmen always had ability to carry arms. We had cannons, we had everything else. They weren't going to give anything up. They really wanted to have the exact same as the forces that were seeking to suppress them. And so that's the other part that's a little uncomfortable. You should be able to have what your military has as long as it fits the legal definition of arms. Although I'd probably go even further. I would love to have an F15 and, you know, all kinds of stuff. But, you know, I'm just saying that's the other thing. Like we. We won because we had the same weapons of war that the Brits had. In fact, Josh, the reason that we won, our plucky little found, won the war of Independence is because we went one further beyond the weapons of war. We actually started incorporating French rifling into our. Into our arms. That's one of the things the Brits didn't have. So it provided us with greater speed and accuracy. And so as a result, we had a little bit of an advantage that in asymmetric warfare. So, yeah, that's an uncomfortable thing that a lot of moderates don't like to acknowledge.
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You know, it's fascinating because a lot of people, Dana, focus on the latter. This notion of guerrilla warfare, asymmetric warfare. In fact, one of my favorite historical anecdotes from the past century is that Ho Chi Minh actually closely studied George Washington's guerrilla warfare tactics during the Vietnam War, which is just totally fascinating. But a lot of folks don't really talk about the former. The fact that there actually were some forms of advanced weaponry. And one of my other favorite facts, Dana, and we actually mentioned it in the opening monologue today, is the notion of the militia. The very word militia, which is defined in the second man text that's really codified in federal law to this day, a lot of people across the entire political spectrum don't actually realize that the militia is literally codified. It is in Title 10 of the US Code. It is all able body males from the age of 18 until you're in your early 40s there. So I'm like literally part of the militia. And I think a lot of people don't realize that you obviously should be entitled to have proper weaponry for that militia. And that's why I just find it so baffling as both a lawyer and a layman, that it took the Supreme Court until 2000 freaking 8 in the DC vs Heller case to actually affirm your Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. Not the text actually means what it says. So I say all that for context, Dan, because this right, unlike a lot of other rights, really has been more of a recent development when it comes to securing it, when it comes to the jurisprudence, the public policy, the state houses there. It's a somewhat rare issue that I think we on the side of sanity and conservatism are genuinely, earnestly winning on So I say all that to kind of t. My next question for you, which is, what's the next step? What is the next step here when it comes to the gun rights movement there? Is it. Is it concealed carry, reciprocity from state to state there? What's the big issue that is on your radar right now?
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I think it's to not have the lack of balance between all of the states. I mean, you mentioned reciprocity, and that's a great way to go. I mean, it's kind of insane considering, you know, you can't. Every other right that you have doesn't end at the state's borders. You know, you still have free speech. And in New York, as you do in Florida, you'll have free speech in Texas, and you have it in Washington state, You even have it in very blue Illinois, you have free speech. And you have all of these other rights that you can carry with you and go and exercise in every other state in the Union, except somehow for the Second Amendment. And it's one of the things that Scalia said, you know, it's kind of, or, sorry, Clarence Thomas was saying that it's kind of, you know, treated sort of as a misbegotten right. It's sort of relegated as being something less important than all of the others when really it affirms and protects all of the rest of them. You know, you mentioned something interesting about the militia that's even narrowed down from what Mason had said back when they were drafting the Second Amendment, was that every single man and woman in the United States, every American man and woman, is considered part of the militia. And by way of being an American, you are part of the militia. And so that's in our rich Second Amendment heritage. You couldn't even serve in Washington's army in the beginning unless you had your own weaponry, unless you had your own rifle, because there wasn't the money to go around and there definitely wasn't the equipment to go around. That was considered an expectation. If you were going to serve Washington, Washington, you better bring your rifle and your cannons as well. I mean, that's really Lexington and Concord. They were going to go after a cannon that they knew some farmer had hidden with some hay in a barn. They weren't going to let that happen. But everyone was able to own their own stuff, so they were all part of the militia. But I think, to answer your question, though, what's next is to have these rights equally recognized state by state, because it really is a, you know, kind of a quasi disfranchisement in that. You, you know, I can, I can have all of these things in Texas, but pretty much most of. I was actually looking at this the other day, Josh. Most of what I have I think would be illegal in California.
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Wow.
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A lot of what I have would be illegal in New York, where you have, you know, your detachable magazines and you have all of these other accessories that don't affect the rate of fire or anything else. I mean, they're based upon these stupid notions, a lack of understanding by people who have never purchased a firearm, never shot a firearm, don't know anything about firearms. And so you create these like really weird little completely uneven laws state by state by state. And of course, you know, the states with the highest gun control also practice, as you know, this, the highest restorative justice, you know, this idea that we have to go soft on the criminals, which just breeds more crime. So I would love to see like a reciprocity of not just concealed carry, but constitutional carry and even what types of firearms that you can own. Because if a right is not easily accessible in every One of the 50 states, is it really a right? Is it being treated as a right if it's treated or practiced or supported less than in one state over another? And that I think is a huge problem.
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Yeah. So totally agree with you. And again, folks, Dana Lash is the host of the Nash syndicated Dana Show. You can follow her on xlash. So it was actually the 2010 case of Sea of Chicago versus McDonald that extended the Heller case to the states and by extension to localities. But you're totally right that that only goes so far. And the court basically rested on its laurels for 12 years until the Bruin case of 2022. Because as you correctly know, Clarence Thomas said over and over, over again that the court is letting the second Amendment be treated as a second class right, which it was. And frankly, to an extent it's still. It seems to me, Dana, putting on my legal hat, that there are at least two words that the court has a very clear ability to define which, which are bear and arms. To bear arms means to take them outside the home. That's kind of the crux of the Bruin. A lot of blue states are infringing and an arm basically just refers to a shoulder hoisted weapon. There's actually an interesting recent 5th Circuit opinion, the core that clerked on that basically said that on this definition, quote unquote, machine guns, frankly, they kind of fit. So that kind of calls into question the National Firearms act, all sorts of interesting stuff, folks. Anyway, we have Dana Lasch as our guest, folks. Don't go anywhere because Dan's gonna stay with us after a quick commercial break. She's the host, of course, of the Dana Lasch Show. You can follow her on X at dlash. We'll be right back with much more from the great and yes, she is the great Dana Laesch. Welcome back. And Dana Lasch rejoined us. She, of course, is the host of the Dana show, which is heard from coast to coast. She is the queen of the airwaves every day in America. I want to move to another topic because you've been so outspoken about what can only be described as information operation that is currently happening on the broader right and I would argue, frankly, across the the United States. And you've been one of the absolute heroes on this, frankly over the past year or two. So on this show, I wanna personally thank you and say thank you from the bottom of my heart for your outspokenness, your clarity on all sorts of these issues. And I talk, of course about this cabal of doomsdayers, not just anti Semites, but of America, haters of Western civilization, haters, people like Candace Owens, people like, sadly, Tucker Carlson, people who have not just turned on President Trump, but I would argue have turned on America. And you've really used your platform in a tremendous way to, to push back on that. And I want to just follow up on that here, which is to ask you, I have my own thoughts on this, but I would love your thoughts. Dana, where exactly is this coming from? What is the motivating factor here?
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Do you think it's the left? So, Josh, when we built the coalition, well, when we all agreed that we were going to be part of this coalition in 2016, that's something that the right hadn't really done before because it's always been Republican, conservative. And then you have got your moderates and we'll keep you over here and we'll keep the libertarians over here and you know, the rest who don't identify, we just sort of cut them at arm's length. Well, when Trump in 2016 started building this coalition because we realized that we really need some insurmountable numbers to really take over the polls. Republicans already always had a historically low turnout, which is really kind of annoying and a whole other topic. But I think the creation of the coalition and bringing in people who are maybe disaffected, people who just recently left the left, or moderates who were never all the way on board with being in the gop, but they really like what Trump was doing on a lot of things. All of these people were not only brought into the fold, a lot of people were brought into the strategy room. And, you know, I don't like putting political quarantines on people, except when you're talking about leadership, because I think that maybe you should be in a couple of battles and kind of prove your confidence and your acumen and maybe your trustworthiness before you get to start calling the shots. And I'm not just saying that. I mean, this is history. This is just a practical approach to this. So I think that's part of the problem, because a lot of some of the individuals who came over, we were happy to get the vote, but at the same time, and I talked about this way back in 2016, I'm like, this is may be a problem if it's not managed correctly in the future, for the future. So a lot of people, I think they came over to the coalition and they didn't necessarily leave all the vestiges of progressivism behind or liberalism behind. Not classical liberalism like Tocqueville, but just like the bad, the way that Reagan ruined the word for them, which was hysterical. But I think they. They brought with them identity politics, which they brought with them, you know, DEI and some of the applications of critical race theory that they were still practicing, which is why we see now this identitarian sort movement within the gop. If you are prioritizing any of these identity issues, that is a leftist behavior. And that's one of the things that they refuse to acknowledge, maybe because they can't, or maybe because they think it's more virtuous because they slapped the veneer of GOP on it for whatever purpose. They think it's somehow more virtuous because they do it. And it's. It's not as virtuous when the left does it. But I see this, like, for instance, in the argument over, over Israel and our allyship with Israel or even being a white Christian in the United States, just to promote something like that is the practice of identity politics, which actually betrays the very scripture that they say that they're fulfilling with their behavior, which also denies the Christ that they worship. So I get very critical over this because it is the implementation and the seeding of progressivism within the right. And they're trying to convince people that this is an acceptable somehow tactic or strategy when it's just literally what the left does, any kind of identity worship and is putting something else in the place of either God or country. And that is a leftist practice. Whether or not they want to admit it is irrelevant to the fact that it is a leftist practice.
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Well, it's arguably also a pagan practice, right? I mean, it's also quasi or full on idolatry. And the irony, of course, is that the original people that convinced the world that there's moral objectivity and not idolatry or moral relativism is of course the Jewish people who they hold in the absolute lowest disdain. And then of course, the Jews first, Christians second. All this actually is, is logical when you, when you think it through. It's demonic, it's horrific and it's awful, but it actually, in a very weird twist away, is actually logical. So I want to make sure that I understand your thesis here. I think a lot of folks, Dana, look at what's happening. And to be clear, I don't want to overestimate this market share. There was a poll that came out in March at the height of the epic fury operation there, and it basically said, who do you trust more in foreign policy? Do you trust Donald Trump or do, do you trust Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly? You know, it was like 85 to 5. So I'm not trying to embellish the popularity here, but there is a real question as to where These podcast numbers, etc. Are coming from there. So just to clarify your stance that these are leftists who came over and are essentially still leftists, Is that what you think?
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I think they are leftist who were convinced by some of the issues that they feel that they have in common with the Republican Party and with Trump, whether it's like on the economy or the border, which I think were the two driving forces. And then they came over to the right and they're still trying to, I think maybe shepherd the behavior of the right, but they're using leftist tactics in order to do it. And when, you know, I hear, you know, some, for instance, some of the things that I've heard Tucker Carlson talk about, I hear, you know, when he talks about, you know, some of these big government proposals, I think, gosh, that's. That sounds like the left when you're talking about some of these big government proposals or allowing the state to assume control over this or, you know, xyz. I mean, there's a lot of issues to dive through. And I've done that in writing and on my program. But I think ultimately it is individuals who are still, they have not shed some of those vestiges of leftism and that is kind of what's rearing its head. And I will say that I think some of them are just absolute psyops. I think a couple of them are transparently absolute, like GOP cosplayers who all of a sudden they just started saying the things that they think got clicks and that they think clicks translate to, translates to trust, which it doesn't. And it also doesn't translate to votes, which AOC has proven and others have proven, at least outside of New York. None of the, none of the, the, the influence on social media necessarily translates to meatspace support. However, it doesn't until it does. That's the, you know, kind of the irony of it. It doesn't until it does. Until it starts getting, you know, roots into meat space. Until you start kind of seeing that effect out in, outside of the Internet and outside of digital. But, you know, long story long, to answer your question, I think it's just they haven't shed some of those vestiges of leftism. And that's what you're saying.
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Yeah, no, it makes total sense. Yeah. Again, folks, we're chatting with Dana Lasch, host of the Dana Show. Follow her on X Lash. You know, Dana, when I push back on some of these people, when you push back, one of the things that I hear, and I'm sure you probably hear it, is let's just focus on the left. Why are you trying to punch right? Why are you trying to police the right there? And what I say in response to that, Dana, is that if you are a conservative, by definition, you try to conserve. The paradox here is that if you seek to conserve, you cannot simultaneously also conserve everything. Because if you conserve all ideas, all policies, you're actually conserving nothing. Because you're conserving both the right to life and the right to abortion, both gun rights and both gun grabbing, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So that kind of leads me then to my follow up question. I apologize because you and I could talk about this for literally three hours and we just have a minute and a half, two minutes left. But before I let you go, what are we conserving? What is the point actually of this
- [30:53]
C
current coalition to conserve individual liberty and to conserve the freedom of our republic. That's what it should be. And to answer your question about punching to the right, look, I, You're Jewish, I'm, I'm Christian, we're both conservative, we're, we're allies, we have the same principles in this country. So that not only makes us friends but it makes us allies. But we also have discernment. And I, you know, when I see people that are going out and saying some of the don't punch to the right or don't criticize. No, it's not cancellation and it's not punching to the right. It is implementing our God given discernment and we're going about it the correct way, which I would question. They are not in the practices that they have been going about it. And I've even offered to have some biblical conversations with some of them about that, but they're not interested at all in that because it doesn't generate clicks if you're clowned on your own airspace. So bottom line is that we have discernment and I think we're conserving the individual liberty and our freedom. And that's what being a conservative is, conserving the individual against, you know, the excesses of big government. And that's what we're fighting for.
- [31:57]
A
My friend, you are not just a friend, you are an ally. You're one of the most outspoken people against this horrific information operation that we all see playing out before our eyes. The good news, Dana, as I'm sure you see, just as I do, is that the president seems to have his eye on the ball with increased tenacity, calling out those who must be called out there. It seems to me that we are in some grand chessboard game of chess playing out there. How it actually works out in 2028 and beyond, frankly, I have no idea. It seems to me that that's what these people are making a play for, is they're trying to make a play to co opt the movement come 2028. But frankly, all of us on Team Civilizational Sanity are grateful that Dana Lash is on our side punching back against Team Civilizational Arsonists one final time, folks. Dana Lash can be followed on X. She, of course, is the host of the syndicated coast to coast show, the Dana Show. And just an all around menchess, I think I'm making up a word here. Not just a mensch, but a menchess. So there you go, Dana. Probably the first time you've ever been told that. So God bless you, my friend. We really appreciate you joining the show. Thank you so much.
- [32:48]
C
Thank you, my friend.
- [32:49]
A
Great conversation there with Dana, folks. Stay with us through one final commercial break. We're right back on the other side with a final conversation for today, actually with recent author Emil Picken, who's written a fascinating book. We'll be right back. So we talk A lot on this show about the threat of the left. And one of the rising voices on the left is a man by the name of Hasan Piker. You've probably heard of him. We've talked about Hasan Piker quite a bit on this show. Hasan Piker, at a recent event in April at Yale University, said that the demise of the Soviet Union was one of the greatest catastrophes of the 20th century. Well, I want to bring on a guest who has a brand new book out who might have a thing or two to say about that. So we're pleased to bring on Emil Picken. Emil Picken is, among other things, he is the youngest professor in the history. The youngest. Youngest professor to win teacher of the year. Even better in the very history of Wharton, the business school at the University of Pennsylvania. He's also the author of the new book, the Penny is Meditations of a Soviet Jew, More accurately. Really, he is the translator, the translator of a brand new book there, which is a great way to tee off a conversation. So, Professor Pitkin or Emil, if I may, welcome to the Josh Hammer Show. We're pleased to have you here. So you are the translator, really, more accurately, of this book, which I think does a lot to shed light on 20th century life under Soviet Communism. I want to get to the latter part about the life part of this question in just a moment here. But for now, what is this work that you. That you've just brought to the world? Tell us a little bit about it, Josh.
- [34:14]
B
The Honorable Josh Hammer. Thank you very much for having me here. I think we can speak for a moment about the history of how the book came to be and then the translation, and that will shed light on life under the Communist regime. It was written as a typed up manuscript in the early 1980s in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg in Russia, by my grandfather, my late grandfather, Emil Bezberkny. And the subject matter was so subversive that it was never published in print. It was never copied, it was never distributed. It simply lay inside a drawer in his home in Leningrad. It was one of the few possessions that we brought here to the United States when our family came as refugees under legal immigration policies in 1989. And now, for the first time, it's brought to the world. It is his meditations on the corrosive influence of the Communist regime, about how a society which exists on pillars of essential falsity turns inward against the very least of its citizens, in this case the Jews. It is a first person account of how a Jew him and how the Jews, his family, his broader community. The Jews of the Soviet Union suffered under this regime, suffered under persecution. Even though, and I think this is the critical moment, Josh, Even though under the law everybody was equal, the Soviet constitution guaranteed equal protections under the law. Except there's a difference between law and mores, between law and practices, virtues. And under that Soviet regime, when falsity was expected of everybody, when people thanked Stalin for a happy childhood and people denounced cosmopolitans, which of course meant Jews, the permission structure was created for mass totalitarian discrimination. So if you're asking me whether I agree with the assertion of a low IQ idiot with a large following who has been platformed by the New York Times, I do not.
- [36:12]
A
Vehemently, I'm sure you do not. And again, folks, the brand new book is called the Penny Is Gone Meditations of a Soviet Jew. We are talking today to the translator of this book, Emil Pitkin. The book is a memoir from his late, late grandfather. So let's talk a little bit more about life under the Soviet Union, which you can catch more than a glimpse of in this brand new work. And frankly, I think bringing light to this topic has never been more timely and more necessary due to individuals such as the aforementioned ones that we've just been talking about. Although he frankly speaks for a large swath, I think, of the American left and the Western left in general and trying to whitewash, to sanitize, and really trying to reincarnate various forms of communism and totalitarianism. The mere fact that this manuscript went so long without seeing the light of day, I think actually says a lot to in and of itself. But talk to us just a little bit more if you can, about just how little free speech and freedom of the press and some of the very basic freedoms that we take for granted in this country, just how little any of that actually was protected. And I think you mentioned how some of this actually was in theory, quote unquote, protected under the Soviet constitution. Well, I think also this quote from Anthony Scalia, the late US Supreme Court justice, who famously said that it's true the Soviet constitution did protect these things there, but we have America's constitutional structure, separation of powers to thank for it there. So all these things end up being related there. But paint a picture, talk to us a little bit more about free speech, or lack thereof, under the Soviet jackboot.
- [37:41]
B
Well, the joke is that there was a prize given for the best anti communist joke and the prize was 10 to 15 years. And you know exactly where those 10 to 15 years were in the far east of Russia in the Gulag. But joking aside, because this is no joking matter, let's talk about the freedom of the press. There were certain authors, There were certain works by authors which simply were never published, which were prohibited from being published. And if one was caught with a boot, a bootleg copy of this, that meant immediate imprisonment. In the 1980s, great works of literature by, let's say, Bulgakov, who wrote the Master and Margarita in the 1920s, after 60 years of communist totalitarian regime, for the first time made their way to Soviet bookshelves. My grandfather writes that the intelligentsia of the Soviet Union more often became acquainted with great works of literature not by reading them, but by hearing the denunciations of these works, which themselves would never ever have been published. To recite a joke in Russian, it's called an. With a political character to. It would be a sure grounds of being deprived at the very least of one's job, and in that case meant of the livelihood. There is something in Soviet Union called a stukach, which literally means a knocker. And this is somebody who knocks on the door of the regime, let's say kgb, with denunciation, because he has heard you speak ill of the powers that be. And I'll add one more, something called Nyedena sitilstva, which was a criminal code, which means non informing. So you were in the presence of somebody who was speaking freely and somebody who was speaking freely against the regime, and you did not denounce them, you yourself became liable. So I just want to paint a few of the criminal articles that were enforced just to give you a sense of the suffocating reality under the Soviet regime.
- [39:46]
A
It's very helpful indeed. And again, as I said, some of this history, really, I think, unfortunately, frankly, given the rising again of some of the worst forms of totalitarian ideology the past few hundred years, I think relearning this history, or frankly just learning it for the first time, has really never been more necessary. And I also want to ask you about the Jews themselves. So you come from a Jewish family. You're. Your late grandfather, of course, was Jewish. The Soviet Union famously or infamously, I really ought to say repressed Jews throughout most of its, really the entirety, frankly, of its existence. Now, Stalin ended up kind of sort of supporting the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 for purely realpolitik reasons. But the Soviet Union was, was overall a viciously, vehemently, vehemently anti Semitic enterprise. And of course that makes sense because communism has been anti Semitic ever since. Karl Marx. But what can we glean from your grandfather's memoir about perhaps why the communists had it so out for the Jews? My own working theory is that the Jews are the initial recipients of God's word, the initial givers of monotheism to the world. You want to come out objective truth, therefore you start with the Jews. Is that you think how the communists saw it? Is there anything in your grandfather's work that would help us deduce that?
- [40:56]
B
Well, in this work the penny is gone, which was just translated. There is the St. Paul banal and repetitive reason. And then there's the. When I say banal, I don't mean to diminish it. I just mean to say that it repeats so often in history that one becomes almost inured to it. And then there's the deeper reason. One is that it is the easiest way for a regime to redirect popular discontent away from itself. It is the surest way for popular brewing displeasure with their living standards simply to find an outlet. It's the reason why the French accused Dreyfus of treason and suddenly there was a popular bomb, an explosion of anti Semitism and people forgot how much or how little bread they had. And they were able to focus their ire on the Jew, on the collective Jew. Then of course, the Jewish people have always been separate, have always been apart, have always been a cherished people. And any differentiation from the planed down new Soviet man was itself a threat to the totalitarian and let's call it totalitarian ideology of the state. Two of the unfortunate and persistent reasons that we see, Josh.
- [42:09]
A
Yeah, and the latter has really been a persistent theme all throughout Jewish history. It really is the original reason for any sedentism going back all the way to Pharaoh in ancient Egypt, which is the stubborn particularism of the Jewish people. This has been the bane of the existence of tyrants since time immemorial and paradoxically, I would add, I think is actually one of the reasons for Jewish survival through all the tribulations through this day. So one final time, folks. The brand new book is the Penny is Meditations of a Soviet Jew. It is the translated memoir from our guest today who is Emil Pickens. So, Emil, really appreciate you stopping by the show. Congratulations, mazel tov on the book launch and we wish you all the best of luck when it comes to the book. Thank you so much, Josh.
- [42:43]
B
Thank you so much for having me.
- [42:44]
A
You bet. It's been a pleasure, folks. Have a great rest of your evening. Josh Hammer signing off. For now, we'll be right back.
- [42:49]
C
That.