By Lucy Komisar
The invite was to a play featuring Judge Andrew P. Napolitano in “Why is the Government in My Soup?” promoted as an evening of political humor and insight. Sounded interesting. I haven’t seen a clever political comic I liked since Mort Sahl. This wasn’t it. But there were some surprises.
It was a lively college-style lecture by a guy who got famous by appearing on Fox News. It featured large placards of statements from the Bill of Rights he highlighted with an electric red light spot pointer. Nothing funny or insightful, unless you think that comments about the Constitution and its amendments that have been repeated by oh so many others are insightful. Right to happiness vs right to property explained by slavery, interesting. My disappointment was the lack of humor.
But people show up because Napolitano is famous via his appearances on Fox News. He emphasized how connected he is by repeated name-dropping, Trump (he had dinner with him) and others.
For me “Why is the Government in My Soup?” should be why aren’t you bringing up major serious issues instead of repeating what everyone has already heard? Yes, glad he talked about U.S. intel spying on us all. It’s even been in the mainstream press.
I showed up, because I have seen his video interviews with former U.S. Colonel Doug Macgregor on the non-Deep State take on Ukraine. (The U.S. started the war and is losing.) He didn’t mention that.
To go all the way over to 42nd Street and 11th Avenue in winter cold, I want something more than what I can get on cable TV. Even if It’s not funny. I didn’t get it. But after the standard 50-minute college lecture, Napolitano took questions. So, I asked about Macgregor. And his answer was courageous for our times.
Q I have heard your online interviews on Ukraine with Col. Doug Macgregor. What is your takeaway from those interviews? Do you think he is credible? If so, why do you think the mainstream media is not reporting that? (Macgregor says the U.S. caused the war in Ukraine, a proxy war it is waging against Russia, by moving NATO to Russia’s boundary and backing the 2014 coup that overthrew the elected pro-Russia government in Kiev.)
A “The mainstream media is not advancing this argument because the mainstream media is embedded with the CIA. Because the CIA feeds information to the mainstream media in return for which the mainstream media gets the government’s arguments out there.
You can see Macgregor on my podcast which grows about a million three a week. Macgregor was the military advisor to Ron Paul. He was also a theoretician in the Trump Department of Defense for the final two years of Trump’s term.
His argument is that under the Constitution — I make the same argument — we have no right engaging in any war unless it’s a defensive war, that we can’t go around the world looking for monsters to slay. If we do go around the world looking for monsters to slay, there will be no end to our search and instead of promoting democracy, all we do is export violence.”
Well, that’s something most of the people in the mainstream-drowned audience haven’t heard!
Then, though one of his big placards about “the issues” cited Twitter, he hadn’t mentioned the government use of the blue bird for massive censorship of opinions that challenge official narratives, so I asked him.
Q I think the surveillance agencies are using Twitter and Facebook and Google to suppress free speech. Isn’t this wrong? Isn’t it criminal and shouldn’t something be done about it?
Again, a strong reply.
A “Well, it’s a crime in that it’s misconduct in office. That’s the crime. The people who do it should be fired. If they are lawyers, they should lose their licenses to practice law. The New York Times from time to time does coverage, but they don’t share your outrage or my outrage at this. If I think I’m dealing with an FBI agent and this FBI agent knows what to expect from me, because they have been capturing every keystroke on my iPhone and listening to my phone calls, we’re back with a Stasi and he’s Germany. It’s not free any longer. These are not privileges. These are rights that every human has.”
He went on to explain how this goes back to America’s origins.
“This is the second sentence of the Declaration of Independence enacted by the first Congress in the United States. The argument is our rights are in inalienable, because they come from our humanity. So, life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.
How did life liberty and pursuit of happiness become life liberty and property? Because Jefferson’s original draft says the inalienable rights are life liberty and property. And then some of his colleagues said this is a horrible thing, but it was true. There is property in human beings. Do we really want to put that in the Declaration of Independence when we’re claiming that the king is suppressing our rights?
They put in pursuit of happiness. Then thirteen years later after they had won the Revolution and wrote a constitution, they went back to life liberty and property.”
So, Napolitano wasn’t funny, but such remarks were right on the mark.
“Why is the Government in my Soup?” Written and performed by Andrew P. Napolitano, directed by Eric Krebs. Theater555, 555 West 42nd Street, NYC. Runtime about 1 ½ hrs depending on questions. Mondays, opened Jan 9, 2023, closing Feb 13, 2023.