Human Events Daily with Jack Posobiec - EPISODE 617： THE SINGAPORE OPTION

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00:00:57.340 This is what happens when the fourth turning meets fifth generation warfare.

00:01:06.500 A commentator, international social media sensation, and former Navy intelligence veteran.

00:01:13.140 This is Human Events with your host, Jack Posobiec.

00:01:16.060 Deliver us from evil.

00:01:18.020 Ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard today's edition of Human Events Daily.

00:01:20.700 Today is Friday, December 1st, 2023.

00:01:25.460 Today's episode is a very special episode that we title The Singapore Option.

00:01:30.640 Will Chamberlain joins me, and I got to tell you, folks, when you look out about all the

00:01:34.440 crime that's going on, and then you also talk about, you know, the problems of our prisons,

00:01:38.660 and certainly we want to crack down on crime.

00:01:41.760 We also don't want these overcrowded, overstuffed prisons.

00:01:44.980 What to do?

00:01:45.660 Is there another option?

00:01:46.640 Well, yes, there is.

00:01:47.240 It's called The Singapore Option.

00:01:49.540 Why not, instead of incarcerating people for all of these years, you take violent criminals

00:01:55.160 and you flog them?

00:01:57.180 Basically, we'll be talking about this.

00:01:58.600 We'll be going through how Singapore deals with violent crime, and we'll also dissect

00:02:02.820 that case from the 1990s.

00:02:04.600 Michael Fay, you might remember him.

00:02:06.380 He was an American teenager who got caught up in this.

00:02:08.820 He had to be caned in Singapore, but guess what?

00:02:11.100 He actually was able to turn his life around.

00:02:14.040 I think that you might find this information important.

00:02:19.540 In March, news, a Singapore court had sentenced an 18-year-old American to six strokes with

00:02:26.360 a bamboo cane swept round the world.

00:02:29.500 This is the first I've heard of and I'll look into it.

00:02:31.620 And Michael Fay, who insists he was tortured into confessing that he spray-faded cars, was

00:02:36.960 instantly caught in the middle of a raging debate.

00:02:39.160 If anybody just put themselves in this position, I don't think anybody would want their kid or

00:02:52.120 someone close to them to be beaten with a cane.

00:02:54.720 After President Clinton personally appealed for leniency, Singapore reduced the sentence

00:02:59.240 from six lashes to four.

00:03:01.620 But that wasn't much consolation for Michael Fay.

00:03:04.060 I was bent over halfway.

00:03:06.860 I mean, my back was bent in a 90 degree, and I was cuffed, buckled like this.

00:03:13.040 And he's whipping as he's going on each step.

00:03:16.140 Can you hear the whip?

00:03:16.800 Yes, I can. 0.99

00:03:18.740 And on the third step, he strikes, and he cuts open your buttocks. 0.94

00:03:23.280 And there's a lot of pain. 0.90

00:03:24.240 There's a lot of pain.

00:03:25.020 Throughout the incident, Singapore insisted its strict laws made it one of the safest

00:03:29.460 nations on earth.

00:03:30.920 Why does Singapore, and certainly many other Asian countries, but definitely Singapore,

00:03:35.740 seems to have these luxurious airports, incredible infrastructure, amazing downtowns, just an

00:03:43.500 absolute jewel in the South China Sea.

00:03:47.060 And the question is, why don't we have those things?

00:03:49.660 Well, a lot of people, including conservative commentator Matt Walsh, a friend of mine,

00:03:53.920 decided to say that it's because Singapore beats their criminals, and Singapore executes

00:04:00.500 drug traffickers.

00:04:02.040 And of course, most famously, we remember the case of Michael Fay back in the 1990s,

00:04:06.980 who was caned four times, not six, sentenced to six, reduced to four, for vandalizing over

00:04:12.440 18 cars.

00:04:14.820 It was 50 acts of vandalism total.

00:04:17.060 He pled guilty.

00:04:17.700 He was spray painting, doing all sorts of things, which, by the way, you're told not to

00:04:21.400 do.

00:04:22.400 So we went and looked up what happened to Michael Fay.

00:04:26.020 How's he doing now?

00:04:27.280 What's his life like?

00:04:28.900 Well, guess what?

00:04:29.980 He returned to the United States.

00:04:32.520 He went back to college.

00:04:34.340 And he now runs a successful food and beverage business, all thanks to caning.

00:04:43.220 And so to talk through these issues and go through it, I want to bring on a former colleague

00:04:49.420 of mine at Human Events, and currently the senior counsel at the Internet Accountability

00:04:54.780 Project, my good friend, Will Chamberlain.

00:04:57.000 Will, thanks so much for finally joining the show that you, by the way, helped create.

00:05:01.840 That's correct.

00:05:02.880 Thanks for having me on, Jack.

00:05:04.240 I appreciate it.

00:05:05.420 Yeah.

00:05:05.580 So the behind the scenes of this is that when Will was publisher over at Human Events,

00:05:08.960 he gave me a ringy ding ding one time and said, hey, Jack, you should start this like

00:05:12.560 video podcast kind of thing.

00:05:14.300 And I said, do you think anyone will watch it?

00:05:15.660 And you're like, I think so.

00:05:16.560 Let's see.

00:05:17.100 And here we are, what, a year and a half later.

00:05:19.800 Yeah, something like something like that.

00:05:21.320 You've done really, really well.

00:05:23.260 So sort of a little bit sad.

00:05:24.840 I can't be a part of it.

00:05:25.760 But, you know, well, you know, things, things and things have a way of changing, too, sometimes.

00:05:32.080 Yes.

00:05:32.280 But but Will, you know, walk me through this.

00:05:35.560 Um, when we see the success of something like Singapore, I mean, I remember if you go back

00:05:41.160 to the 60s, Singapore, it's like a backwater port.

00:05:43.940 I mean, it's it's it's nothing.

00:05:45.860 It's it's just sort of like a little dollop just kind of hung off the edge of Malaysia.

00:05:50.720 You know, it's a city that, you know, nothing necessarily wrong with it.

00:05:53.740 But it certainly isn't this worldwide phenomenon that we talk about now.

00:05:57.580 How did Singapore go from that to this?

00:06:01.460 I mean, you really have incredible statesmanship.

00:06:05.820 I mean, Singapore is a testament to the value of having really, really talented statesmen.

00:06:12.480 Basically, Lee Kuan Yew, who was the founder, effectively, of Singapore as an independent

00:06:17.480 country and president for a very long time, I think, or prime minister, rather, he's prime

00:06:22.120 minister for something like 30 years.

00:06:23.840 And his son is currently prime minister of the country, was one of the most talented and

00:06:28.120 brilliant statesmen of the modern era.

00:06:29.840 And as a result, he took a very, very tiny postage stamp of a country that was, as you

00:06:35.500 say, something of a backwater.

00:06:37.780 And through his leadership and wise policy in the town industry, the Singaporean people

00:06:42.160 turned it into one of the places that one has one of the highest GDP per capita in the

00:06:47.360 entire world is incredibly wealthy, a beautiful, safe, incredible place to live.

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00:08:08.800 And that isn't done by, you know, adhering to like a libertarian utopia or anything else.

00:08:13.940 It's a it's a number of different sound policies.

00:08:16.840 But one of them includes being very, very tough on crime.

00:08:19.400 Was it was it done through social policies?

00:08:21.280 Was it done through handouts?

00:08:22.860 Was it done through improving everyone's economic standing?

00:08:26.320 Was it done through critical race theory?

00:08:29.100 Because, of course, you know, Singapore is a diverse country.

00:08:31.700 It is certainly a multicultural country in a sense.

00:08:34.080 And they have melees.

00:08:35.020 They have Indians.

00:08:35.940 They have Hindus.

00:08:37.060 They have and then and then predominantly Han Chinese.

00:08:40.360 But, you know, it's certainly not a homogenous society.

00:08:42.840 So was it done through diversity, equity and inclusion and critical race theory and handouts

00:08:48.420 and reparations?

00:08:49.120 That's how they did it, right?

00:08:50.380 Yeah, I wouldn't say that's exactly how they did it.

00:08:52.640 I mean, there is Singapore is a very, very diverse place and was during when Lee Kuan Yew

00:08:59.020 was taking power.

00:08:59.800 And part of his skill was managing the various diverse coalitions to form a very, very stable

00:09:07.640 government, incorporating them all into his government.

00:09:10.120 But that was done not necessarily as a, you know, based on the buzzwords of diversity makes

00:09:15.640 us stronger.

00:09:16.360 It's sort of that's a way to tamp down ethnic strife.

00:09:19.360 He always saw that as how do we keep this place as peaceful and safe, as strong as possible

00:09:24.360 and simply excluding one large faction from the government was always going to create a

00:09:29.140 problem.

00:09:29.520 But I think, you know, it is to be fair, to be fair, I mean, Lee Kuan Yew was not some

00:09:34.820 radical libertarian.

00:09:35.660 There's plenty of social welfare in Singapore, but there's also an enormous amount of economic

00:09:41.220 freedom.

00:09:42.320 And there is, as I said before, extreme, you know, toughness when it comes to crime, vandalism,

00:09:49.880 harsh punishments and punishing things that we wouldn't think to punish, like spinning

00:09:54.260 gum out on the streets.

00:09:55.780 Right.

00:09:55.920 And of course, that's I think most people do think of that.

00:09:59.320 They say you can't spit gum out on the street.

00:10:01.440 I've pulled some up here.

00:10:02.740 Producer Angelo is throwing some together.

00:10:05.260 Small items like candy wrappers are fined 300.

00:10:09.300 I'm not sure if that's dollars or UN.

00:10:10.820 The first for a first time offense, longer, larger.

00:10:14.440 If you throw a bottle on the ground that you're drinking, that's considered defiance against

00:10:20.720 Singaporean law and requires a court appearance.

00:10:24.280 Penalties, penalties include corrective work orders where the offenders clean up a specified

00:10:28.720 area while while wearing bright green luminous vests.

00:10:32.980 Of course, the chewing gum is the famous one, ultimately began their operations of their

00:10:37.640 MRT, which is a five five billion dollar project.

00:10:42.380 And vandals started putting gum on door sensors.

00:10:44.580 And of course, the rest is history.

00:10:45.980 First time offenders.

00:10:46.700 That's a one thousand dollar fine.

00:10:49.740 Will, can you walk us through some of the drug laws of Singapore?

00:10:52.480 I can tell you off the top of my head, the drug laws in Singapore are extremely punitive

00:10:59.060 in the sense that if you are caught possessing an extreme, even a very, very small amount

00:11:03.020 of heroin, for example, within Singapore, you get the death penalty.

00:11:06.940 And there's a few minor exceptions, but they're they're trivial.

00:11:12.320 Singapore is extraordinarily hard.

00:11:14.060 Selling or possession?

00:11:15.800 Even possession.

00:11:17.040 Right.

00:11:17.200 If you come in with even possession, if you have a possession above a certain amount of

00:11:20.840 heroin and it really is.

00:11:22.320 Honestly, I think the total amount of heroin needed to trigger the death penalty is a little

00:11:26.120 more than one dose.

00:11:27.940 They're extremely serious.

00:11:29.100 Other drugs, it's bigger because they they do acknowledge that for things like cannabis,

00:11:32.800 they they want to get the traffickers, not necessarily the users with this kind of punishment.

00:11:38.160 But in general, I mean, the law, the drug laws in Singapore are extraordinarily strict

00:11:43.860 and they give fair warning to people.

00:11:46.600 Like if you fly into Singapore, you'll be given a card before you even land that says

00:11:50.060 if you come into the country with drugs, you will get the death penalty.

00:11:53.640 Which and they would consider that drug trafficking.

00:11:55.360 This is, of course, is Brittany.

00:11:56.820 Brittany Griner going into Russia was was considered drug trafficking, even though she 0.98

00:12:00.840 had like a couple edibles or something for exactly what it was.

00:12:03.260 But it's some what we would consider in the U.S.

00:12:05.900 It's minuscule or in Washington, D.C., by the way, is completely legal.

00:12:09.520 You know, anyone can go buy some great movies about this, by the way, because Singapore is

00:12:12.420 not the only country down there in in Southeast Asia that has strict drug laws.

00:12:16.640 They do have strict enforcement.

00:12:18.620 But Thailand, Malaysia actually have similar laws.

00:12:22.320 You can watch Broke Down Palace with Claire Danes or Return to Paradise, great Joaquin Phoenix

00:12:27.580 film that actually do deal with a lot of these things.

00:12:30.940 It's just it seems that in the West, we've gotten totally away from that.

00:12:33.780 Now, of course, President Trump's come out a few times and stated that, you know, when

00:12:38.600 it comes to these opium, opioid dealers or fentanyl dealers, just straight up death penalty.

00:12:43.440 Right. 0.88

00:12:43.680 And we should throw them, you know, Duterte, of course, did this in the Philippines for a

00:12:48.340 long time and was extremely popular for doing so.

00:12:52.400 So a couple more minutes left.

00:12:53.960 Will, why and I want to break this down in the next segment.

00:12:57.300 But, you know, why did Lee Kuan Yew decide to take this two track approach to revamp and

00:13:04.300 revitalize Singapore?

00:13:06.540 Well, I think on the one hand, he wanted to maintain social cohesion.

00:13:10.300 So he didn't want, you know, a lot of people who were struggling in the in the streets that

00:13:15.320 would, you know, rise up to his power.

00:13:17.200 And remember, again, how incredibly diverse Singapore was.

00:13:20.800 There had to be some form of social welfare just to ensure you didn't have that constant

00:13:24.700 factional strife and civil effectively civil war in such a tiny place.

00:13:27.980 But I think when it comes to why he was so draconian about the drug laws, his his view

00:13:32.260 is pretty straightforward.

00:13:34.760 We and we don't take him take it for granted.

00:13:36.800 But you've got to think about not just how many lives does a single drug dealer destroy?

00:13:40.800 How many families do they destroy in the act of dealing large amounts of heroin or cocaine?

00:13:45.600 They destroy hundreds of families, hundreds of lives.

00:13:48.940 And so from from the perspective of the Singaporeans, of course, drug dealing should be met with the

00:13:54.240 death penalty.

00:13:54.740 Um, you may not intentionally murder someone in the same way, but you're responsible for

00:13:59.780 so much death, so much sickness, so much harm, um, so much destruction.

00:14:04.380 By the way, this, by the way, is why, uh, Maurice Hall in the George Floyd case refused to take

00:14:10.660 the stand and took the fifth because his lawyer rightfully pointed out that in the state of

00:14:13.880 Minnesota, if you sell someone a lethal dose of fentanyl and it kills them, then you can

00:14:19.000 be liable for third degree murder.

00:14:21.140 Yeah.

00:14:21.720 I mean, as, as you should be.

00:14:23.480 Um, and I think that the, you know, Singapore just takes it much more seriously.

00:14:27.580 I think Lee Kuan Yew in a famous interview once said that if we could, if we could hang

00:14:30.700 these drug dealers a hundred times, we would, um, that they take it that seriously.

00:14:35.100 Uh, and, and, and it seems like they have a very good reason to a very good moral reason,

00:14:39.540 um, for saying, sorry, no, no, no, this is what you're doing.

00:14:43.160 The activity you're engaged in is causing so much trauma and so much death and destruction

00:14:49.020 that you need to be stopped.

00:14:51.180 And we need to deter this behavior as much as possible.

00:14:53.240 What you're saying is it's, it's pragmatism, pragmatism, pragmatism, that our values are

00:14:58.620 what works is what we're going to use.

00:15:01.280 We're not necessarily taking this from a holy book or a philosophy book.

00:15:06.140 We're going to use what works.

00:15:08.340 Now, well, one thing that I want to, to stress, and this is something that I saw getting totally

00:15:12.760 lost in that Twitter debate is that it's not just harsh on crime policies that made Singapore

00:15:19.260 successful.

00:15:20.280 It also was the fact that you're right.

00:15:22.440 They dealt with the intercultural strife as best they could, right?

00:15:26.640 Give everyone sort of a way in, but then also that they totally superheated their economy

00:15:33.020 and they were considered one of the four Asian tigers in the nineties.

00:15:36.020 Um, it was Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, and Singapore.

00:15:38.660 And so this idea of, Hey, how about instead of everybody getting upset that, uh, you know,

00:15:46.000 that somebody has got more than me or that this is going on or that's going on.

00:15:48.940 We all just get rich together.

00:15:50.340 Yeah, there's an enormous amount of economic freedom, um, and, and a complete, you know,

00:15:56.080 a very, very serious focus on free trade, getting, getting people to come in and start

00:16:01.060 up companies there, like inviting foreign corporations in soliciting them.

00:16:06.040 Um, there was a huge amount of focus on a workforce development from the perspective of Lee Kuan

00:16:10.300 Yu.

00:16:10.500 So for example, uh, the, the first language in the national language of Singapore is English.

00:16:15.280 And that did not have to be the case, uh, after the, the United Kingdom left.

00:16:20.340 And I mean, first it was part of the Malaysian federation and then an independent country.

00:16:24.920 There's not a whole bunch of English people, um, of English, of origin from the United Kingdom

00:16:30.360 in Singapore.

00:16:31.780 So that easily could have been, you know, it could have adopted Mandarin as their primary

00:16:35.940 language.

00:16:36.300 They could have adopted Indian or, or men, one of the Indian languages as their, their, uh,

00:16:40.140 primary language, but they adopted English because they knew that it would give them an advantage,

00:16:44.080 um, in the global marketplace.

00:16:45.600 And so you have a slew of very, very wise and sound policies economically that really

00:16:52.140 made the country very wealthy, rewarded, um, you know, economic industry, kept taxes reasonably

00:16:57.740 low and allowed for you to build, you know, really build Singapore into this economic powerhouse

00:17:03.980 that then when combined with their seriously tough on crime policies has made the place a

00:17:08.580 wonderful place to live.

00:17:09.440 And, and, and that's something that I think we should also get into in the United States.

00:17:15.080 So obviously we have the tension between left and right when it comes to economic policy.

00:17:20.420 Um, I think the right is settling into a place where, okay, we don't want to be full on, um,

00:17:27.060 uh, libs when it comes to, oh, we're going to just hand out everything and we're going

00:17:31.280 to raise carbon credits and somehow that's going to make the planet cooler or stop global warming

00:17:36.060 or whatever. But at the same time, we're also not going to be full on. This is where the new right

00:17:40.360 kind of comes in where we're not going to be, uh, uh, present Trump came out and I've seen a lot of,

00:17:46.480 uh, conservatives coming out saying recently about, no, we're not going to go Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney

00:17:51.840 and, and shut down or, or cut or privatize Medicare, Medicaid, social security, that we're just not going

00:17:56.900 to touch these things. We're just going to leave them where they are. Obviously it's, it's smart

00:18:00.460 politics. And, and I think really there's the country's just not ready for that. Um, I think

00:18:05.360 in a lot of reasons. And so finding this better, this better middle ground, whereas Romney and Paul

00:18:10.880 Ryan, we're trying to go full, like, um, get rid of all the entitlement programs right away. Even

00:18:15.900 these ones that people have paid into their entire lives, which I think rightfully so, um, made people

00:18:20.100 lose their minds. But at the same time, you are also seeing, you know, uh, conservatives and the new

00:18:26.960 right, I think. And, and as I wanted to get into the criminal section of it, because it's, it's sort

00:18:32.960 of like, which, which one are we, are we the people that are saying that we want to be tough on crime?

00:18:37.800 Or are we the people who are saying that we support the first step deck? Because it seems like we're

00:18:41.260 trying to do both at the same time right now. And I don't think that makes sense.

00:18:44.840 Yeah. No, I look back at some of my old tweets about the first step back and I'm, I kind of cringe.

00:18:48.600 Honestly, I, I, I think that they were, I ultimately think that was the wrong policy and that we should,

00:18:54.720 that we need to be stricter on crime and that we, we, we went in the totally wrong direction.

00:19:00.060 Um, like the problem, as I said before, that there, we do need criminal justice reform in this

00:19:04.720 country. We need more people to go to jail and for the penalties to be more severe. Uh, I mean,

00:19:09.780 you know, whether it's like people not getting severe enough penalties for serious crimes,

00:19:14.140 like armed robbery and assault, or whether people aren't getting serious enough punishment for sort

00:19:19.860 of these, you know, crimes of, you know, choice and convenience, the sort of protest crimes where people

00:19:24.620 stand in the middle of highways or destroy public patrimony and throw paint on throw or throw

00:19:29.700 tomato soup on paintings. All that stuff should be punished more heavily. And it's the kind of stuff

00:19:33.880 that Singapore would never tolerate in a million years. I mean, they, again, they would give you a

00:19:36.680 thousand dollar fine for spitting out gum on the sidewalk. Imagine what they do if you, uh,

00:19:40.160 threw tomato soup on a painting. Yeah. There was Helen Andrews in DC was counting fair jumpers. She 1.00

00:19:47.040 just went down to the Metro and was counting fair jumpers one morning in the DC Metro. She counted 40.

00:19:51.740 And she even asked somebody, she said, well, why do you do this every day? He said, well,

00:19:56.080 it's, it's cheaper. And, and, and someone else said, I don't think I've ever paid for the Metro in

00:20:01.600 my entire life. Just never done that. And this gets into the broken windows theory. And I've

00:20:07.300 interviewed, um, mayor Giuliani on this. And I've always said that in, you know, in addition to his

00:20:13.760 nine 11 response, it's one of the greatest things he did as mayor was to clean up the city of New York

00:20:17.840 and the broken windows policy, the growth windows theory to break it down for people. I have, um,

00:20:24.560 I have like sort of the textbook definition here. And that was something that Giuliani put in practice.

00:20:29.180 The broken windows theory stems from the work of two criminologists, George Kelling and James

00:20:33.900 Wilson, who suggested that minor disorder like vandalism acts as a gateway to more serious crime

00:20:38.800 by focusing on small offenses, often referred to as quality of life crimes. Kelling and Wilson

00:20:44.500 thought violent crime and other undesirable activity would decrease. Well, when Giuliani

00:20:49.600 attempted or put enacted this policy, put it into practice, did it work?

00:20:54.060 Yeah, it worked really well. Um, worked in Singapore when it was done to, uh, there's,

00:20:59.980 I think there's sort of this. Yeah, it's wildly successful. And I mean, there, there is sort of

00:21:05.180 an, there are really good art reasons to think that there's a causal relationship between punishing

00:21:10.420 low level crime and reducing higher level crime. Um, you end up with nicer places that people are

00:21:15.900 happier to be in. That's a, that's, let's start there that seem much safer and cleaner in general.

00:21:20.060 I think people's environment, uh, has some impact on the likelihood that they will want to commit

00:21:24.580 crime in the first place. Um, and then, you know, once you, you also create a culture of,

00:21:30.220 you know, abiding by the law and expecting to be punished, even if you break the law in small ways,

00:21:35.480 which leads to further, you know, a kind of culture grows where people just start abiding,

00:21:39.800 you know, you know, abiding by the law on their own. And then once you get there,

00:21:43.680 then you get to the situation where you've freed up your police officers to track down serious crime

00:21:48.280 and make sure that's gets punished too. Um, but it's the idea here is that you shouldn't be letting

00:21:53.280 go of the rope, that you should be punishing these low level crimes in order to make people

00:21:57.560 understand that this is a place where you're going to be expected to abide by the law. Um, and I think,

00:22:02.360 I think the idea of a gateway to, you know, once you start breaking the law,

00:22:05.340 maybe you'll start breaking it in, in different ways, or you'll, you create a social expectation

00:22:10.000 that breaking the law won't end up getting punished. And I think, I think we see that you

00:22:14.200 look at the places where they talk about, Oh, we need to stop prosecuting these little offenses 1.00

00:22:17.500 and they're, they're nightmares to live in now. And they're disgusting too. San Francisco,

00:22:21.500 we're essentially right to get to just explain for folks, what you're saying is that what we've

00:22:27.580 enacted or the Soros prosecutors or the woke process, whatever you call it, we're doing the

00:22:31.920 opposite. We're doing the exact opposite right now in, you know, I'm from the Philadelphia area.

00:22:36.740 You're originally from the Bay area, but our home areas, right. And we're in hometowns essentially

00:22:41.720 are experimenting with the opposite of this. And it's a free for all. It's a free for all of death

00:22:47.220 and murder and blood, uh, of, of, of people, of children in many cases. And it seems like we're

00:22:53.480 not even allowed to talk about it. Yeah. I mean, it creates a, it creates a really terrible culture.

00:22:59.080 I mean, I think about, you know, that, that store owner who sprayed the homeless woman with water,

00:23:03.340 like that, that shouldn't happen in the first place. He called the police on that woman 20 times.

00:23:07.000 She was breaking the law, but when the police do nothing, you get, not only do you get like

00:23:12.020 increased law ranking, you get vigilantism. I mean, the, the entire point of having a justice,

00:23:16.380 criminal justice system in the first place is to prevent vigilante justice and the sort of,

00:23:20.620 you know, vendetta type reciprocal murders. That's, that's, that's how,

00:23:25.080 why justice systems came to be in the first place. One of the things, you know, liberals fail 0.98

00:23:30.380 the sort of Chesterton's fence argument where they, they destroy something without understanding

00:23:34.780 why it was built in the first place and what problems it solved. Um, what is really for the

00:23:39.980 audience? So Chesterton's Chesterton had a saying about, uh, his fence or Chesterton had a saying,

00:23:46.220 it went something like this. If you see a fence and you don't know why it was put up,

00:23:49.960 you shouldn't take it down. Right. You should be able to answer the question of why it was put up

00:23:53.860 first. Um, and if you don't have a good answer to that, then that you don't understand the problem

00:23:59.500 it's solving. It's a good border policy, by the way. Yeah, it's good border policy, right? You

00:24:03.440 shouldn't, shouldn't take down fences unless you fully or thoroughly understand why they were put

00:24:06.500 up in the first place. To get into your, to get into that further, it's by the way, you know,

00:24:10.340 there's somebody else who, who understood this same issue. And that person was Karl Marx,

00:24:15.480 because if you actually read, uh, Marx's theory that it isn't, he doesn't just believe in the,

00:24:22.220 you know, joie and the proletariat, because he also understood something called the lumpen

00:24:27.540 proletariat known as, you know, I would say in English, the criminal class, that there are groups

00:24:32.900 of people who could essentially be just, just geared towards criminal activity or, uh, for a variety of

00:24:39.380 reasons, or you're always going to have criminals in any society. We just know that, um, we can get into

00:24:43.680 the issues why, but also the maker issue, I think is that if you're catching those criminals,

00:24:49.520 when they're committing the minor crimes, if you've, uh, caught the person who is dealing drugs

00:24:55.980 at 14, then maybe they won't become a high level drug dealer at 16. If you've caught them when

00:25:01.320 they're smashing windows, when they're doing vandalism, we've seen this time and time again,

00:25:05.180 and any criminologist will show you that no one starts out, uh, with, with, you know, no serial

00:25:10.900 killer starts out with serial killing. They start out with smaller, uh, and they move their way up

00:25:15.880 through the spectrum of this, the broken windows policy. Guess what? It catches that.

00:25:21.420 Yeah. I mean, it does, uh, it does a lot of good. It helps with rehabilitation. As you say,

00:25:26.480 um, it helps with deterrence. Uh, I mean, I, one of the things there, there's a criminologist. I think

00:25:31.920 there was a study in Hawaii where they were looking at how to ensure that, um, people comply with a

00:25:36.780 drunk driving program. And essentially one of the ways they did it is they made people,

00:25:40.860 they had a system that wasn't super punitive necessarily, but was almost always enforced,

00:25:46.020 right? There was never any getting out of it. Um, and so you could, you just, people knew that if

00:25:51.200 they didn't show up on, you know, to, for their, uh, alcohol test, if they didn't do something,

00:25:56.540 police would be there within hours and they would be taken away. And that was different from other

00:26:00.480 places that didn't have as consistent enforcement. And that was what, you know, that was what was

00:26:04.180 really necessary for something like that. You need, you need, you need punitive laws that effectively

00:26:08.680 deter the behavior and you need, you need consistency of enforcement for illegal behavior

00:26:12.120 too. Now you certainly need consistency of behavior and we're coming up on our second break

00:26:16.700 right here, but on the next one, I want to get into this question of what is the best punishment

00:26:23.780 for crime are prisons, what we need for what we need to do. Should we have more prisons? Should we

00:26:29.180 have less prison? Why do we have prisons? Where did prisons come from? Where did this idea come from

00:26:33.340 that if you do, if you commit crimes against society, that you have to go sit in a room for

00:26:38.540 a certain period of time? Uh, we're going to get into that because what's interesting for

00:26:42.920 people that they may not understand is that the history of prisons isn't quite as old as they

00:26:48.260 might think. Well, did you know that they censored Aladdin? Remember Aladdin, the movie, the Disney

00:26:53.300 movie? I watched Aladdin all the time. I used to watch that used to be the movie that I would annoy my

00:26:58.780 parents by watching over and over and over again when I was like six years old. So I'm sure you

00:27:02.180 remember, you remember the line, um, where they cut off your ear if they don't like your face

00:27:09.180 is the original songs, the traitor who at the end or whatever is, is singing that song. You know,

00:27:16.480 that line was changed. It was, why is that? It was. And then they say it's, it's barbaric,

00:27:22.240 but Hey, it's home. Um, so this line was considered racist even in the 1990s by 90 standards,

00:27:28.560 sort of like when America had our first dabble with political correctness and like the OJ case

00:27:32.540 came up, um, which was the first time America just decided to let someone off of, uh, off from,

00:27:37.900 from punishment for murder because of the color of the skin and because he was famous, um, that they

00:27:43.300 changed it to it's, it's hot and intense rather the land is flat and hot and intense. It's barbaric,

00:27:51.420 but there are tones. Of course the line doesn't make any sense. And then the Will Smith version,

00:27:54.460 it's further changed for 2019. And they also took away the line of what I actually, I don't know why

00:28:01.400 I went down this rabbit hole, but I absolutely had to. Um, because it's like, wait a minute,

00:28:04.880 this was in like an Aladdin movie, right? If you know, when he says, I'll have your hand,

00:28:09.100 street rat, you know, and it's the great voice actor, Jim Cummings, who's screaming that because

00:28:13.120 he's referring to the practice of chopping a thieves handoff. Um, that line is totally gone from the

00:28:19.100 Will Smith version that came out in 2019. Just gone completely. And it is too bad. And so when I

00:28:24.720 wanted to mention the, the history of prisons, because I found an interesting, an, an interesting

00:28:32.240 article, uh, about this when I was just doing research and, and, and show prep for this.

00:28:39.540 And, and that article was called in defense of flogging. And, and it said, and, and to go through,

00:28:47.520 it was, it was written by, by a prison reformer, a guy who had been a former police officer in the

00:28:51.300 city of Baltimore, which, you know, just a paragon of safety and peace, Baltimore. Um, you know,

00:28:56.860 if anyone has seen the wire, we just know how, how wonderful and utopian, I mean, you know,

00:29:00.820 Baltimore is probably the American city that's closest to Singapore, as far as I'm concerned.

00:29:06.520 Yeah. Yeah. Very sick sarcasm there. Um, that he writes, so here's what's interesting.

00:29:12.180 He writes that it was the progressive reformers of the past two centuries,

00:29:17.180 are responsible for the fact that we have the prison system today. And the prison system

00:29:23.160 originally came about in the 1800s, early 1800s, uh, around this idea of their penitentiaries and

00:29:31.400 reformatories. One of the reasons for this, uh, Michelle Foucault, of course, is a huge proponent 1.00

00:29:36.740 of, of this type of the rehabilitative act. And it's a very progressive, um, idea that you can take

00:29:44.240 someone and rehabilitate them through, through prison, through the use of, of holding someone

00:29:50.900 in a cell for an indefinite period of time, or, or even a definite period of time that you will

00:29:55.300 somehow change their nature. And he writes, he goes, this in the, this in the, uh, Chronicle of

00:29:59.520 Higher Learning prisons today have all but abandoned rehabilitative ideals, which isn't such a bad thing.

00:30:05.120 If one sees the notion as nothing more than paternalistic hogwash. And he wrote, he then wrote

00:30:10.400 for those who are, who are opposed to the penitentiary system, all that's left then is

00:30:15.420 punishment. And we certainly could punish in a way that is much cheaper, honest, and even more humane.

00:30:21.660 We could flog. We could flog. That's an amazing article. I think, I think he's onto something there.

00:30:27.500 You know, there are a lot of different purposes to punishment. Um, and there's deterrence, the idea

00:30:32.420 of deterring other people from committing crimes. Uh, there's re there's, uh, in incapacitation,

00:30:37.900 namely just taking someone who's just can't help, but engage in criminal activity and keeping them

00:30:42.680 away from the public. Um, there's about a statement of values about the value of victims and the rights

00:30:48.520 of victims, because, you know, if a victim's life is taken away, it's not, you're almost saying as a

00:30:53.160 society that that life wasn't meaningful, if you don't inflict severe punishment on the perpetrator.

00:30:57.700 And then there's rehabilitation. And it really is like the least important thing when it comes to

00:31:02.080 criminal justice, criminal justice, isn't for the good of the criminal criminal justice is for the rest of

00:31:07.140 us. And rehabilitation is something that you sort of, you know, maybe it's something you add on at

00:31:13.700 the end. And it's like, you know, if the other goals are being met, then sure, help rehabilitate

00:31:17.500 people who are going to get out of jail. That's again, probably good for the rest of us, but

00:31:21.920 that's not the focus. That's not why we have the jails in the first place. They're not,

00:31:26.580 you know, this, these aren't therapy sessions. Um, they're places to incapacitate you and deter

00:31:31.380 others from committing crime. Right. And so what people need to understand is that the current system

00:31:36.180 of the penitentiaries that we have today, it's only been around for about 200 years,

00:31:40.000 uh, for thousands of years that, and everyone can say, well, wait a minute, I've, I've seen,

00:31:44.340 you know, game of Thrones and I've, I've seen old, old books and they all talk about dungeons and

00:31:49.320 people being held down there, et cetera, et cetera. Well, the dungeon or, which of course comes from,

00:31:54.280 from French word for keep, uh, which, which is also the same word as a tower. You'll be locked in

00:31:59.020 the tower, you know, tower of London, et cetera, that, uh, we all know what the tower of London was

00:32:03.380 about. And most people didn't say that for far too long. Um, especially those princes, um, that

00:32:09.380 if you were awaiting trial or you had finished trial and you're awaiting your punishment,

00:32:16.960 then you were held in the jail or the gal. Uh, this was not, there was no sense that you would

00:32:23.660 be held there for an indefinite period of time, uh, or that would be your punishment. It's that you

00:32:28.860 were, you were there while you were waiting for your punishment to begin or while you were, you

00:32:33.740 know, that logistically needed a place to hold somebody where they couldn't run away to escape

00:32:37.320 trial. That was the whole point, but it's only about 200 years ago, which in, in terms of human

00:32:42.740 history, isn't that long that they came up with this new idea that what if we take away these,

00:32:48.660 this idea of punishment, what if we take away, which, which prior to that, uh, forced labor, I mean,

00:32:53.220 forced labor goes all the way back to the Roman empire. Um, you know, home, they used forced labor. I

00:32:57.860 mean, build the aqueduct, build the road, you know, you always need someone to do that. Um,

00:33:03.080 paying your debts, uh, transport, of course, which of course is, as it goes back to the,

00:33:07.340 the founding of Australia, Botany Bay, uh, punishment by transportation was, uh, huge in

00:33:12.720 the British empire because, well, we have colonies that need building and you're going to be sent down

00:33:16.080 to build those colonies. This building colony sucks and it's hard work and nobody likes it. Um, 0.97

00:33:22.920 you, you hear the, the, it's kind of, that's another debate on Twitter right now, the ruralist

00:33:26.720 debate and say, Oh, just, you know, just go, go live on a homestead and be a peasant. I said,

00:33:30.820 why are you glorifying the peasant lifestyle? That sounds awful, you know? And, uh, you know,

00:33:35.680 there's a reason we have society the way we do today. And we've, we've built upon it. We're

00:33:38.780 trying to fix society. We're not necessarily trying to return to peasantry and, and husbandry

00:33:43.780 and, and, and hunter gathering that, that, not that I have anything against hunter gathering,

00:33:47.520 uh, by me, but, but, you know, I was about to go hunt somebody on the streets of Arlington.

00:33:52.840 I was looking for a deer. I don't know. Clarendon doesn't really have many deer. It's too bad.

00:33:57.720 No, not really. No. But you know, we have this nice thing called supermarkets. Um, yeah,

00:34:02.740 but venison good. Excellent. So it's, it's, so the, the first state prison in England was

00:34:07.740 Millibank prison. It was only opened in 1816 and prison, the prison system is not old. It's not old at

00:34:14.640 all. And so the question I would have is, you know, and then let's go back to Michael Fay and

00:34:18.520 let's go back to Singapore because that's the overall discussion here is would you, or could

00:34:23.300 you even think of anyone who, if they were offered the chance between, so he got four lashes, right?

00:34:29.460 He was sentenced to six. He ended up getting four. Would you take four lashes or would you rather

00:34:36.500 sit in prison for four years, four years of your life? I mean, I think any criminal and any person

00:34:40.660 would rather take the lashes, right? You don't want to lose four years of your life.

00:34:44.640 Um, I think what Singapore gets right is interesting is it's not an, they don't see it as an either

00:34:49.560 or though they do both. Right. And they're, and both have different aspects of effects on the

00:34:55.260 potential criminal, right? Like maybe some criminals aren't that scared of prison or they, you know,

00:34:59.840 say, okay, whatever, the risk of prison isn't that bad, but they're particularly scared of

00:35:03.220 corporal punishment, um, or vice versa. So they just, they don't, you know, I think what Singapore

00:35:09.580 gets right is they do both. They, they do both. And, and it's, and it's good and just to do both.

00:35:13.940 It's, it's the right thing to, to punish truly awful behavior. Um, it's not, you know, it's

00:35:19.820 not beyond the pale to say, to use as the Singaporeans do caning.

00:35:24.920 And, and that, that is an interesting piece for us that we, as a society, when we do talk

00:35:29.940 about this and then the fact that America has got, we've got more people in prison right

00:35:33.140 now than we have in our entire, uh, military. And so my question is, is this something where,

00:35:39.840 where the right and the left could actually come together a little bit to say, Hey, no,

00:35:43.640 it is kind of silly that we're just shoving people in prison, assuming that's going to help.

00:35:47.100 And by the way, I've, I know people I've, and you can read studies about this where, uh, people have

00:35:54.180 said that, you know, hitting rock bottom, uh, getting that, you know, scared straight, uh, experience

00:35:59.600 is actually quite useful for them to say, you know what? Yeah, I had my brush with, with that.

00:36:04.300 And I definitely don't want any more of that whatsoever. And so the question though is,

00:36:09.320 so it works for some people certainly, but what about people who are repeat offenders who don't

00:36:14.220 have anything left to lose? I mean, what, what really is prison for them? Then you also have

00:36:19.460 the problem of, um, who's the guy in, uh, you know, uh, uh, in Shawshank, he, you know, he comes

00:36:25.700 out after being spending entire, his entire adult life in prison, then he commits suicide because he

00:36:30.300 doesn't know how to live outside an institution. Yeah. And in a way, prison is, is a way to sort

00:36:35.980 of take criminal justice and put it out of sight, out of mind. Uh, it's a way to make it something

00:36:41.620 we don't think about and see compared to, you know, other forms of punishment. I think that the

00:36:45.820 analog is to capital punishment where we, where we use things like lethal injection to sort of

00:36:50.560 medicalize, um, capital punishment when it's, when it's an execution. And I think there, Alex Kaczynski,

00:36:57.120 Judge Alex Kaczynski in California, um, you know, he, he long, he's a very, a libertarian and,

00:37:02.640 and definitely not somebody who was just a, a reflexive authoritarian by any means, but he said,

00:37:07.040 we should go back to firing squads. Um, they're more humane because it happens quicker. There aren't

00:37:12.660 any mess ups and they don't, they stop us from pretending that what we're doing isn't capital

00:37:16.760 punishment. And I think the, the analog here is, uh, when you're, we shouldn't pretend that criminal

00:37:22.680 justice isn't really criminal justice and that we're better than caning and that that's somehow

00:37:27.760 less humane or more humane than, you know, putting somebody in a, in a cell for 30 years.

00:37:34.760 Yeah. And I don't think it's humane at all. And it, it, it, maybe it makes us feel better. Maybe

00:37:39.000 it makes people say, Oh, I'm not sure. You know, I hear people, I hear other people say like, Oh,

00:37:43.940 the, the, you know, life sentence is worse than death penalty. And I don't think so. I certainly don't

00:37:48.640 think so at all. Um, no, I think the death penalty is definitely worse. That's why people are against

00:37:52.740 it. You know, that's why, that's why the reformers hate it so much. Um, but this, you know, three hots

00:37:58.100 and a cot for the rest of your life. That's not bad for some people depending on where they're coming

00:38:01.360 from. So that is something that I'd like to get back into. And we're talking about corporal punishment

00:38:06.760 in general, as well as other forms of punishment that aren't necessarily prison, which is what Singapore

00:38:11.440 is doing. They're saying, look, we're you, you have broken our laws. You've broken our trust.

00:38:16.240 You've acted in willful defiance of our system and our system matters. And if you have done so,

00:38:22.260 we are going to correct you. We are going to correct you in a way that's going to make sure

00:38:25.740 to get it across. And by the way, we don't spank in our house for my two boys. You know,

00:38:29.780 we don't spank at all, but you know, we, you know what, maybe just maybe for adults, maybe they, 0.82

00:38:35.020 what, what they need is a good adult form of spanking through a flogging or a caning. 1.00

00:38:40.420 And what cousin Singapore, guess what? It works. Now, Will, I'd like to read a quote for you 0.94

00:38:44.460 from one of the, the, the great death penalty advocates in, in the world. And that of course

00:38:51.780 is Pope Pius XII of the Catholic church said, Whoa, wait a minute. I thought the Catholic 0.83

00:38:56.980 church was against the death penalty. Well, Pope Francis is against the death penalty. But prior

00:39:01.800 to that, there's a little something called the entire history of the Catholic church. And it's,

00:39:07.080 I think it would be, it would be kind of silly if you know anything about the history of the Catholic 1.00

00:39:10.320 church to say that the church has always been against the death penalty. When I can point to a lot

00:39:14.360 of instances where that's just quite not the case. Um, but here's, but, but the church has always

00:39:19.620 stated, and this, this is something with, I will be serious about that, that, that is up to the state

00:39:24.000 that it's always been up to the state. And here's what Pope Pius says about this. He says,

00:39:28.960 even in the case of the death penalty, the state does not dispose the individual's right to life.

00:39:35.820 Rather public authority limits itself to depriving the offender of the good of life in expiation for his

00:39:44.220 guilt after he threw his crime deprived himself of his own right to life. We'll unpack that for us.

00:39:53.760 What does that mean? Well, I mean, it, it means that, you know, that the idea that it's like somehow

00:39:59.860 an immoral or unlawful killing is just wrong. I think that, you know, people often say at least

00:40:05.420 to Catholics that it's like, Oh, you're pro-life. Well, then you can't be for the death penalty. 0.54

00:40:09.280 It's like, no, the death penalty is, is appropriate in certain circumstances because it's about

00:40:13.820 respecting the fact that, you know, they have violated someone else. Generally it's because

00:40:17.640 somebody killed someone, um, or they did something so against the moral order that it was responsible

00:40:22.480 for other people's deaths. So it's the idea that you have violated, you know, God's law. Um, you've

00:40:28.180 deprived yourself of your own right to life. And, and that's the, the state is just ensuring that you

00:40:32.500 don't get something you don't deserve.

00:40:34.020 I've seen you, uh, you use on Twitter and I've definitely adopted it, but all credit to where

00:40:39.060 it's due that you've used on Twitter, that the death penalty is pro-life.

00:40:42.980 Yeah, I think, I think the death penalty, yeah, definitely is pro-life. I think there's a great,

00:40:48.520 another borrowing from Kaczynski again, when he talked about, um, that he had something very,

00:40:53.360 very interesting to say about the death penalty, which is that, you know, people say it's like,

00:40:56.460 Oh, how could you? That's so inhumane. And it's like, if you actually read the briefing,

00:41:00.140 he says like, you could hear the piercing cries of the victims in between the lines of the dry

00:41:04.840 legal text, like what the cases where the death penalty is brought up, you know, involves such

00:41:09.300 incredibly appalling and horrifying behavior that it's like, there's no other, there's no,

00:41:14.360 no other worthy punishment. And, um,

00:41:17.040 And by the way, we're talking about horrific rapes. We're talking about, uh, the violation of

00:41:21.900 young children. We're talking about, um, just, just cold blooded murders in many, many instances.

00:41:30.420 Walk me through a little bit, you know, the, the question of what, what about when the state gets

00:41:34.240 it wrong? So, and I always hear that argument come up. What about when the state gets it wrong?

00:41:38.320 What about DNA? What about when people are exonerated?

00:41:40.940 Absolutely. People should have access to DNA evidence to prove their innocence or to overturn

00:41:44.880 prior convictions that may have been wrongful, but that doesn't mean that the death penalty isn't

00:41:49.780 still called for when somebody is clearly guilty of the crime.

00:41:52.780 That's kind of a double short, isn't it?

00:41:54.880 Yeah. I mean, yes, it means that on occasion, the state will execute someone that is innocent.

00:41:59.280 I mean, you, but that's, I mean, I, I don't think that's an indictment of every form of

00:42:04.120 criminal justice that there is. I mean, it's basically saying any, you know, there's always

00:42:07.820 the possibility of wrongful punishment when you're running a criminal justice system.

00:42:11.120 Um, is that with the technology that we have, that everyone should have access to it to prove

00:42:16.620 their innocence, but the state also has greater access to highly advanced technology to prove

00:42:21.600 guilt. And that is the type of evidence that comes out on appeal after appeal in court after court,

00:42:29.560 after court that in, even in our system, we don't know. And I think we all know this,

00:42:35.380 that because we don't really, even in states with the death penalty in the United States,

00:42:39.240 I suppose with the exception of Texas, even though Texas has gotten a little wobbly on this,

00:42:42.860 if you look at the Rodney Reed case, um, which I've been covering for years, um, where it's a guy

00:42:47.860 that, I mean, they got him dead to rights. They've got, they've got semen, they've got blood,

00:42:51.340 they've got saliva, they've got everything. And yet they keep trying and Kim Kardashian gets involved

00:42:56.740 to, uh, find a way to, you know, to, to get this guy off. Meanwhile, these, they've just got him dead

00:43:03.720 to rights. Yeah. Um, that's, I, that's actually the, I mean, if anything, the, the problem with our,

00:43:11.620 our system is that it's, it's a little bit too, there's a little bit too many opportunities for appeal.

00:43:16.940 And, and as a result, the, the process for getting through and death penalty law has been

00:43:21.580 made very convoluted by the Supreme court. Um, and as a result, you end up with people on death

00:43:25.960 row for something like 30 years and that's not justice for the victims. Uh, and also those

00:43:30.280 extraordinarily expensive and, and arbitrary. And it also leads to very perverse outcomes where

00:43:35.320 it's like, it really does suddenly depend on the quality of your legal counsel, whether or not

00:43:38.840 they actually go through the conviction, because if you have quality legal counsel, you can just

00:43:43.280 delay, delay, delay, delay, and avoid it. So that's not just on an economic

00:43:46.820 grounds either. So there's, there's all sorts of problems with the way our system works in,

00:43:51.640 in, in reality. But I think people, you know, liberals often use the troubles, the difficulties

00:43:57.460 of our legal system in reality to make objections to the death penalty in total. And I don't think

00:44:02.920 they undermine the basic moral case for the death penalty, which I feel is fairly, fairly 0.97

00:44:06.500 strong. It seems as though the primary deterrent is that death row is just, is such a worse

00:44:11.020 form of imprisonment in the sense of the way you're treated by prison guards on death row,

00:44:15.260 the, and the type of amenities you get as a prisoner are much, much, much worse.

00:44:19.900 And so that, that almost is the deterrent. It's like almost, you don't have to, you don't expect

00:44:24.760 to be executed. You expect to have a much worse experience when you are in prison. That's not

00:44:30.320 quite what we're going for. I think, I think the idea of the death penalty is that some crimes

00:44:35.000 deserve the ultimate punishment. And we're not really getting that out of our current system.

00:44:39.340 And it is about respect for the society. And as you said, the respect for the life of the

00:44:44.220 individual who was either, I mean, there's this case, this horrific case that Mia Cahill over

00:44:48.920 a town hall has been discussing in and reporting on and really revealing down in Atlanta, Georgia,

00:44:54.680 where two pedophiles were able to adopt two boys and, uh, repeatedly raped them over a period of 0.80

00:45:01.100 several years. And we're pimping them out on Snapchat and other, uh, internet functions. And I, 0.77

00:45:06.600 I look at that and I just say, death penalty, just, just death penalty. I don't even want to

00:45:11.160 get horrified. You know, that's what, that's what it exists for. Horrifying crimes like these,

00:45:14.880 the sexual abuse of children. Like, no, we don't tolerate that in our society, period.

00:45:19.300 And stop. You do that, you die. That's the proper attitude to have. Um, and yeah, it has to be proven 0.95

00:45:24.980 beyond a reasonable doubt. And the victims are, you know, the criminal defendants are entitled to

00:45:28.860 due process. All that is still true. But after the due process has been had, it's, you know,

00:45:34.560 this is something we shouldn't tolerate at all.

00:45:36.480 Due process is not endless process. There's a right. And I, you know, criminal justice reformers

00:45:41.760 are saying, oh man, the punishments are just too draconian. It's like, no, they are not. They need

00:45:46.120 to be more draconian. You're not talking to anybody outside of your little bubble.

00:45:50.360 Those, those, by the way, those, those child rapists down in Georgia, uh, you know, they have

00:45:54.320 iPads right now while they're in prison. Yeah. They have iPads that are hooked up to the internet.

00:45:59.380 Yeah. This is the level of our prisons. I mean, it's, it's ridiculous. These are like country club.

00:46:03.200 Uh, yeah. I mean, they haven't been convicted, so I can sort of see their argument like, well,

00:46:08.840 we haven't been convicted yet. So, cause the purpose of imprisonment before judgment is to,

00:46:13.380 you know, incapacitate, just prevent you from doing anything in the short term because we think

00:46:17.200 you're dangerous to the public. But, you know, I think, you know, hopefully those get taken away.

00:46:22.680 I, so I haven't mentioned it much here, but my, um, my prison experience was spending a year

00:46:29.320 deployed at Guantanamo Bay. So I've been inside the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. I've

00:46:34.680 interacted with detainees, uh, when there were, there were almost 200 detainees when I was there

00:46:39.260 2012, 2013, um, under the Obama administration. And, uh, it was fine. It was totally fine.

00:46:47.200 Yeah. There's these stories about torture and these stories about, um, uh, you know,

00:46:52.880 calling, calling enteral feeding torture, by the way, which is when they, you know, they,

00:46:57.080 when, when people go on a hunger strike and president Obama ordered us to not allow the

00:47:01.620 prisoners to cure the detainees to kill themselves. So what the medics would do, and I got to see one

00:47:06.100 of these, what the medics would do was place a, a catheter, sort of like a lubricated catheter down

00:47:12.040 the nose through the throat into the stomach. And then, and basically take, you know, those like

00:47:16.940 ensure, um, like the protein shakes and then just pour that down. And this is a basic medical

00:47:22.460 procedure that's done to accident victims in the United States, car accidents, trauma,

00:47:27.360 people going through surgery, um, every single day. And they, they turned around and called that

00:47:31.940 torture. Um, they go after DeSantis for this a lot, by the way, because he was a Jag, um, who was 1.00

00:47:36.420 stationed down there at one point as a lawyer, you know, you know, in all of this, but you know,

00:47:40.220 I'm sitting there looking at it and say, this is a medical procedure. It's not torture at all.

00:47:43.520 None of these things with torture. Um, yeah. Like why are you, why are you entitled to the right

00:47:47.200 to hunger, strike yourself to death while you're in prison? We don't, we don't agree with that as

00:47:50.640 a society. Like, right. And, and, and when it comes to those guys, by the way, you know,

00:47:54.960 there were some, I know as an intelligence officer, of course I, I did certainly enjoy

00:47:58.560 the perspective of being able to, to have them available for interrogation and intelligence

00:48:04.060 collection. But then again, prisoners of war are slightly different than, you know,

00:48:08.220 a domestic prisoner. Um, sure. The argument for a domestic prisoner, like say a domestic 0.99

00:48:13.000 prisoner goes on a hunger strike, you know, does he, does he have the right to that argument would

00:48:17.560 ultimately justify like applauding the prison guards who allowed just Jeffrey Epstein to kill

00:48:22.080 himself. Right. Like, you know, that's, that's, that's, thank you for surfing for surfing eBay

00:48:27.180 and not, uh, not fixing the cameras. Thank you so much. Right. Yeah. Good. Good for letting him kill

00:48:31.920 himself. He had the right to do what he wanted with his own life. No wrong. He did not. He forfeited 0.99

00:48:36.660 that right. He needed, he needed to face justice. Well, I do think though that, and as, as we're

00:48:41.380 about to wind down here, I do think that this is, it's a hot debate. I think that as the new right

00:48:46.380 is kind of defining what it is and what it stands for and what it doesn't stand for. I think this is

00:48:52.000 really something where the reformers, the criminal reformers, the just us reformers in the Kim Kardashian

00:48:58.960 types of the world, you're just losing because we're trying to, and it ain't working and people

00:49:03.940 are dying. If we're going to talk about the prison issues, we need to bring back a little

00:49:08.080 something called corporal punishment. Will Chamberlain, where can people find you?

00:49:11.980 I am online on Twitter, primarily at Will Chamberlain on Twitter.

00:49:15.560 All right. At Will Chamberlain on Twitter, former colleague here at human events and the senior

00:49:20.640 counsel at the internet accountability project. Ladies and gentlemen, as always, you have my permission

00:49:24.920 to lay sure.

Human Events Daily with Jack Posobiec - December 01, 2023

EPISODE 617： THE SINGAPORE OPTION

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