Abolish the FBI?
Harvey Silverglate on the Inadequacy of Reforming a Broken Institution
Whenever the government finds itself in an embarrassing scandal, we hear calls for reforms. The word “accountability” is thrown around – as if it meant something– when we all know to expect more of the same ineptitude and corruption.
Talk of “reforming” law enforcement agencies like the FBI is even more ridiculous in light of their seeming immunity from criticism – even after being caught lying in case after case (look no further than the Whitey Bulger case for proof).
Harvey Silverglate – co-founder of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) – has been critical of the FBI for decades. His most recent article for Compact Magazine argues that since reform seems like a non-starter, we might as well go the whole nine yards and abolish the agency once and for all.
“We need an entirely new agency and a director who has no history of having worked in or with the FBI,” Silverglate says. He joins me this Sunday to explain how the agency has gotten away with murder – in some cases literally – and regularly robs citizens of their rights through its weaponized interview process.
Did you know that FBI agent are forbidden from interviewing a witness in the presence of a tape recorder? Find out why, this Sunday, on the show of ideas.
ICYMI: How the World Lost Its Mind Over COVID-19
An excerpt from my recent interview with Justin Hart, author of Gone Viral: How Covid Drove the World Insane:
Bob Zadek: During COVID, when I was going out of my mind, I took a vacation. We went to Hawaii. I went for a walk one morning and this hotel in Hawaii had a golf course. There, in the middle of the golf course early in the morning, was a gardener picking weeds by himself in the middle of a golf course wearing a mask. And I said, "Wow, he's making sure the dandelions don't get COVID."
Justin Hart: It drove the world insane. I have two older stepdaughters and they went to a private, classical Christian school here in San Diego. I won't mention the name, but this is a school that's built on the pillars of rhetoric, logic, and reason. And yet, my 14-year-old daughter comes home and she says, "You won't believe what happened at lunch today. I'm sitting there and the lunch attendant comes to me, she says, ‘You're going to need to sit perpendicular to the bench.’
‘Well, why?’
‘Because we don't want you facing your fellow students while you eat lunch.’
Because COVID only spreads in one direction?
You think about this one picture. It's always seared into my mind, Bob. It's a Catholic priest and he's performing his duties of baptizing an infant. The mother is 6 feet away holding the infant in the air. Between them is the font. But the baby's not going to make it to the font, because the priest is using a squirt gun to baptize the baby, I kid you not. It's right there at the top my Twitter feed. You'll be able to see it.
