Exclusive: Veteran radio talker Bob Just issues urgent call to moderate Dems
By Bob Just
I’m glad legendary talk-show host Barry Farber didn’t live to see leftist/anarchist mobs defacing or tearing down statues of men like Washington and Lincoln. I’m glad he missed seeing feckless state and local officials passively accepting these actions, or even approving them.
Farber died last month after many decades on the air influencing young minds – I listened to him as a teenager and later became a regular guest on his show. He was a true Cold Warrior when freedom’s fate was on the line, a man who reviled communism and loved America despite its flaws.
And he actually remembered a time when both political parties felt the same way he did. Those days are gone – and that should matter, especially to us mainstream Democrats who are losing our party to something very dangerous.
Barry always sympathized with my effort to blow the whistle. The American left was not a new topic for either of us, despite our different party affiliations. Back in the summer of 2000, Barry praised a WND column I wrote warning Democrat leaders about the increasingly tyrannous nature of our party.
It was my first column, and it needed to be good since I planned to email it to all the Democrat U.S. Senators. It was addressed specifically to the moderates among them. Our party was in real trouble.
Although I used phrases like “cold civil war” and “new fascism” to press my point, I made every effort to unfold my thinking carefully, using mainstream sources like Newsweek’s famous “Thought Police” cover story (Dec. 24, 1990).
The magazine had sounded an alarm about a dangerous “Marxist” hybrid called political correctness, or PC, that was dominating college campuses and stifling free thought. “When PC reigns,” Newsweek warned, “one defies it at one’s peril.”
I explained in the column that with the rise of the Clintons two years later, this anti-American Marxist hybrid started taking over the party and corrupting the executive branch of government, its institutions and traditions. There was nothing mainstream or moderate about the Clintons when it came to the culture war. (Almost 25 years later, Hillary Clinton was headed toward completing the process when Donald J. Trump came along.)
During the 1992 campaign, I was on the air locally and often warned my listeners that the Clintons actually represented the worst, most rebellious element of my Baby Boom generation. Finally, I had the chance to write about it.
Barry’s excitement over my column, titled “Fascism, corruption and my ‘Democratic’ Party,” was the key to publishing it as written, and not just because he was a solid political thinker. His cultured and temperate personality was as mainstream as you get. Back then, no one was using phrases like cold civil war, but Barry saw it was true – and loved that I said it!
I knew I was really on to something when Sean Hannity, an old friend, also read it and said that soon I’d be giving speeches about it as a whistleblowing Democrat. He gave me the opportunity more than once. Sean was already a Fox News star, but about a year later, his WABC local show went national, and he quickly became a media phenom, a true double-barrel threat to the PC left.
Sean also listened to Barry Farber in his youth, something we would often talk about. We both understood the unique impact talk radio has on young people who seek to understand the political arena. We lived it! Sean regularly mentioned Barry on the air and what a powerful influence he was.
The nature of talk radio’s impact on the young is underestimated by the PC left, especially in the era of podcasting. They’re used to controlling the “faithful” by preventing free thought.
Yes, they fear conservative talk and continually demonize it (including Fox News, of course) to scare Democrats away. But they do not understand the appeal of what happens on the air every day in America in the privacy of our cars or hidden within our earbuds. Conservative talk in whatever format is distilled free-thought, and untold millions are inspired and transformed just as Sean and I were by listening to thinking people like Barry Farber.
At the time of my “Fascism” column, Farber and I were hosts for the same radio network. I couldn’t believe I was getting to know this great man in person. We had a lot in common, including Jewish heritage, our love of New York City and our contempt for tyranny in all its forms.
But clearly, his response to my perspective proved we had something more in common – a genuine fear of the PC left in America, and a deep concern that too few of our fellow citizens understood the threat or were willing to speak out if they did. “When PC reigns one defies it at one’s peril.”
This “peril” can take many forms, but in essence it’s about intimidation, whether rioters in the streets, mobs at your door, or false accusations of racism. The goal is to terrorize you into submission, or at least to silence you.
Whether Democrat or Republican, we all have a whistleblowing responsibility when it comes to tyranny – and labels don’t matter, fascism, Nazism, communism, socialism or “the Green New Deal” – it is their behavior that tells us everything. The idea of Antifa being “anti-fascist” would be laughable if it weren’t so dangerous. The devotees of a PC belief system that Newsweek called “totalitarian” back in 1990 are in fact an active threat to America’s survival.
Riots no matter how destructive and horrible come to an end in a civil society, one way or another. But what do we do about ever-present college mobs that bully students who seek only to hear other points of view? And what do we do about violence against outspoken campus conservatives or the speakers they invite to encourage dialogue? For a free people, these are existential questions.
Thanks to over three years of “no rules” political outrage directed at the 45th president, the public is coming to see that all those campus troubles were an indication of something much worse. The self-righteous anger of the PC left has gone far beyond campus intimidation, tearing down statues, or lawless street mobs that “hate the system.”
The public is fast learning the left has no limits on behavior or respect for the system even at the highest levels, from the Department of Justice to the CIA to the House Intelligence Committee. It will do anything to sabotage an opposing administration. Together we watched the process, a flood of lies, false accusations and malicious leaks, usually coordinated with an equally corrupt PC media.
“What if such people got complete control of one of our two major parties?” I asked in my column months before the 2000 presidential election. “I say they are very close to doing it. But more, let’s say they succeed. What if these New Fascists go on to corrupt our military, our police, our courts, and even our Congress and our governmental agencies with this same anti-American ethic? If that happens, then by any analysis we will no longer have a ‘culture war’ in America, but rather a ‘cold civil war,’ ready to heat up the moment government establishes laws that tyrannize the American conscience.”
Younger Democrats may be shocked to read this considering it was written so long ago, and by a fellow Democrat. They should take a hard look at the angry faces of our party leaders and ask themselves: Is this what we want our future to look like?
They need to join the national conversation on talk radio, listen to the arguments and get informed. That’s what free-thinkers do. And then – quietly if necessary – they need to vote Republican. If they do not, they won’t have a future that is recognizably American.
Imagine that we really did “defund the police” as Black Lives Matter demands. Now ask yourself who would be the “new police”? The Seattle “autonomous zone” is only a hint.
Conservative media know the totalitarian instinct is never satisfied with limited control – because power is addictive, and increased control is vital to that deeper need. It will stop at nothing to get its fix. As we saw during the Cold War against global socialism, this lust for power and control is parasitic in nature. It draws energy from productive citizens to build giant bureaucracies that regulate everything but produce nothing. We are living this addiction now in America. For socialists and their street bullies, enough is never enough.
Republicans can’t be the only ones to cry foul. Yes, thanks to talk radio and Fox News, there are massive numbers of conservatives, led especially by Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, who speak out on their powerful media platforms educating Americans about current political dangers.
And yes, now President Trump has galvanized a huge and loyal grassroots movement – including many Democrats – to reject the PC elite and their global priorities. But we need millions more regular Democrats of every race, color and creed to stand with us against those who do not put America first.
Democrats can actually save our party by voting against it. How else can we turn our leaders away from their dangerous “party first” behavior and life-draining policies? But first we must be willing to see the truth. This election won’t really be about President Trump’s “character,” although my party will try to make it so. It will be about the character of the Democrat voter.
If we can watch our party leaders and their toadies in Washington break every imaginable rule of conduct – baseless investigations, lying accusations in public (contradicting private testimony under oath), framing an innocent man to protect their political power, leaking classified documents to subvert a presidency and disgracing us before the whole world with a pathetic political impeachment – and despite all that and much more, like hiding key evidence and breaking privacy laws, if we still vote Democrat, then something is terribly wrong, and not with Republicans.
This is not who we are as Democrats – and we must not accept it – or vote for it!
As I warned 20 years ago – and am warning now – our party is on a “no rules” totalitarian path, one that will end in the destruction of our constitutional republic unless we all blow the whistle together – rural and urban, Blue state and Red. It’s about survival. If police stations can be attacked, so can polling stations.
In 2018 the Democratic National Committee chairman was serious when he said that a “Democratic Socialist” was the future of the party. But labels don’t matter. If someone offers you poison, you don’t ask what brand.
The only question is, do the actions of the Democrat left destabilize the core underpinnings of our society – like open dialogue and peaceful streets – and what are mainstream Democrats going to do about it, especially millennial Democrats?
The youngest millennials are now reaching their mid-20s, a time when the brain is fully mature; the oldest are hitting 40. That generation alone could save this country by reevaluating the opinions of their youth as many Baby Boomers did. They will live the dystopian future we are all making right now, and if they do nothing, the party they grew up with will cease to exist. Because parasites die with the host.
Whether you call this thing that’s slowly killing America a Marxist hybrid or a Fascist hybrid matters less than “calling it out” as our conservative media do regularly (if Democrats will only listen). The “Green New Deal” may be ridiculous and unworkable, but the people behind it are no joke.
We can leave the labels to history – corruption is corruption, tyranny is tyranny, and we are now watching it unfold in our state capitals, in our great cities and at the highest levels of PC power in Washington, D.C.
As the struggle continues, one thing is clear: If my party does finally return to constitutional Americanism, it will be because younger Democrats started seeking reliable news sources and started listening (as I did) to great talk show hosts who love truth and thrive on reason.
They are everywhere – both local and national – hosts like Barry Farber, a man who influenced so many fellow fighters and who faithfully stood his ground against tyranny on the air, right to the very end at age 90.
Rest in peace, Barry Farber, a great man, an honored radio colleague, and a valiant freedom fighter. We’ll take it from here, my friend.