conservative movement. was just a small but also large correction it actually wasn't hume it was a jurist by the last name of hail actually. yes yes you're right and you know and he didn't like hale either i'm sorry nixon. ok i didn't i didn't want to lay that on poor david hume's tombstone. but matthew hale was a jurist and he came up with a doctrine about that involves the question of sexual consent in a marriage and the doctrine that he formulated and it proved to be extraordinarily influential and as you said lost it for many centuries was that essentially when a woman consents to marry a man and she has to consent to that it's very important that she does consent to that that she's essentially consenting to give him sexual access to her body not just at that very moment but for the for the perpetuity of their marriage and this

became a notion of basically it was called implicit consent so that throughout a marriage if a husband or a man ever wanted to have sex with his wife he essentially did not have to get her say so he could have it and therefore if he raped her by definition it wasn't rape because she had given her consent at the moment when she consented to be married and what's you know what's astonishing about that argument is not just the argument itself but what's really is that it lasts and endures as a principle of common law in the united states up until the one nine hundred eighty s. in the book i cite a legal textbook in the one nine hundred fifty seven i believe it was and i remember one nine hundred fifty seven that is the heyday of the warren court and when we think of the triumph of the modern liberal jurisprudence in one nine hundred fifty seven a textbook would say that basically a man legally cannot be held. to have raped his wife because of this principle and

it took an extraordinarily long time and again it wasn't until about the one nine hundred eighty s. that legislatures and courts began overturning this principle now the reason why this matters and the reason i talk about it in my book is because it points to the persistence of these private forms of domination in what we call the private sphere of the family or the workplace and that it has been the job of the left in this country and elsewhere to try to use the power of the state to overturn these private relations of domination and these have been extraordinarily ferocious struggles that have prompted the resistance of husbands of employers of slave holders and that conservatism is really the theoretical voice of that resistance to these movements and again you see this in burr looks the french revolution he sees many things but one of the things he sees in the french revolution is this effort

by commoners to overturn the power of their superiors in the private sphere and he predicts that the french revolution is going to emancipate lead to the revolution of the slaves in haiti which of course eventually did and so on and so forth and so i think in the end that's really the struggle between the left and the right it's whether or not people in their private life are going to be able to live lives of equality or not and the left has tried to make that the case and the right has always consistently resisted that effort and i think probably the most important of those areas right now is the workplace we're seeing an assault with in wisconsin indiana you know across the absolutely absolutely i mean i say this at the end of the book that in the two thousand and ten election immediately following that when you had this wave of tea party victories what was the two areas where these. republican governors and legislatures state legislatures were most active

the first was on the question of workplace rights as you just pointed out and that was a fundamental bottom line and it continues to be and the other was on the question of reproductive rights there was a real effort you know just of seen this past week. begin to go back to two thousand and ten to defund planned parenthood because these these two spheres reproductive freedom and labor freedom the right of workers are really i think the front lines of the battle between left and right today russell russell kirk in one nine hundred fifty one hundred fifty three when he wrote the conservative mind. started out with burke but around that time he had given an interview in which he had basically predicted the sixty's as suggested that if the middle class america became large enough and powerful enough if if the average person the people that john adams of america's first conservative president arguably used to refer to as

the rabble if those people were given enough power you would see riots in the streets and in the one nine hundred sixty s. william f. buckley on his program firing line would frequently cite that i used to watch it and say see we're seeing the fulfillment of kirk's prediction these people have been given too much power the blacks are rising up in demanding power and now the women are burning their bras the young kids don't want to go off to war they're saying no to authority figures this is a society that is disintegrating because we've given too much power to the middle class and the subtext it seems to me of that in retrospect is we have to take that power away from the middle class in order to stabilize society in order to make it safe for american america you know assuming the very best of intentions on the part of buckley it would you agree with that with that analysis and if so how far are we into that process of stripping the middle of their power. or certainly the economic

portion of their power and the political power and and you know where are we going with this and how might we stop it assuming that you agree with that analysis. yeah i mean i think i would just slightly tweak it which i think that the conservative movement of the twentieth century was really about restoring power to employers and restoring power to husbands in the case of the women's movement and restoring power to white people and that the those to the latter to the women's movement and civil rights movement cuts across certain class lines and it's part of the reason why conservatism has had such appeal across class lines and has been able to build a majority coalition but as i say i my reading of things today is that that project has really run its course and it's been so overwhelmingly sex is successful i mean you see these numbers that come out daily about the levels

of inequality in the country i mean there are mind boggling. but until there is a left that really is serious about doing something about those numbers and i just i don't quite see us there yet i mean you see stirrings of course as you mentioned with occupy and in certain parts of the democratic party but we're nowhere near where we were in the one nine hundred thirty s. of the one nine hundred sixty s. until you start seeing a movement like that i think we're going to be in a bit of a holding pattern and and. it'll it'll persist for a bit it could persist do you think it could go even more conservative i mean at the time of the american revolution there were actually maximum wage laws in england it was illegal to pay a worker more than a maximum amount because the people in power did not want a middle class to emerge they wanted there to be small riches small mercantile middle class and a very large class of disempowered working poor we seem to be moving in that direction. when are we how much farther do we have to go before there's a a a

a liberal reaction or a progressive reaction that actually can push back against. well this is an interesting question i mean i don't know the answer and i don't think anybody does and the reason that we don't is that when the left or liberals whatever you want to use the term it's always the most unpredictable thing in the world nobody predicted the civil rights movement nobody predicted the labor movement nobody predicted the women's movement nobody predicted the abolitionist movement the left is a politics of initiative and is on no particular timetable and so we really have no idea you know sometimes i think occupy is the first shot across the bow and it may become something quite big or it may fizzle out and this is just you know we just have no way of predicting that question it's going to be we're going to have to keep an eye on our politicians as it were and keep a lot of wind on their backs to move this thing along dr corey robin thank you so

much for joining us tonight. thank you it's a pleasure an honor to have you with us to watch this conversation again as well as other conversations of great minds go to our website of conversations of great minds. as the big picture for tonight for more information on the stories we covered visit our web sites of thom hartmann to free speech dot org and. also check out our two youtube channels there are links to thom hartmann dot com this entire show is also available as a free video podcast on i tunes and you can visit our marvin dot com to download the audio podcast of our daily new three radio show and we have a free tom our of an i phone or i pad app at the app store he said his feedback on twitter a top underscore hartmann on facebook at tom underscore arbonne on our blogs message boards and telephone comment line at tom hartman dot com and don't forget democracy begins with you get out there and get active tag you're it.

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h. welcome to the ilona show where we get the real headlines with none of the mercy come alive out of washington d.c. now it's not going to speak to jeremy scahill about his new piece on yemen and how our counterterrorism policies have backfired then jason leopold joins us to tell us why he's suing the f.b.i. the cia a number of other government agencies all for failing to follow the rules when it comes to for a request and giving you the feeling the ads are following you wherever you go and

we're going to spectate speak to trevor tim about the trail that companies and websites are collecting on you are you have all that and more future night including a dose of happy hour but first take a look at the mainstream media has decided to miss. all right so it's friday the week isn't quite over yet there's still a lot of news happening in the world today but the mainstream media is basically checked out and they are going full force and what tomorrow will bring. police in new jersey are preparing to shut down streets and new work ahead of tomorrow's private funeral for whitney houston the parking lot behind me is the one where it is believed that these celebrities and all the invitees some fifteen hundred people it's one of the parking lots they'll be using among those preparing to pay respects to whitney houston then they'll washington mel gibson jamie foxx and janet jackson to name a few also we just found out the darling who is whitney's godmother will be performing

but now they're talking about maybe the drugs affected the organs and there was failure over time we don't know yet this morning we're also getting a clearer view of some photographs never seen before of whitney as a young woman you know the first thirty six hours were very respectful of whitney you so much for spears thing to do would be to stay home and watch the service on television it is going to be aired over all the network channels and that would be the best best place to see it. are let me just make one thing clear here i am and always have been a huge whitney houston fan not kidding i listen to the bodyguard soundtrack on repeat nonstop when i was a little girl so the news of her passing saddened me and i think that she deserved to be commemorated celebrated as a groundbreaking female artist with an unmistakable voice that makes everybody get the chills just listening to it but having said all that i'm also going to go ahead and say what i think needs to be said when i'm sure many others out there are thinking of the coverage coming from the mainstream media is

a little bit overboard i mean we have entire channels dedicated to entertainment news but what happens when every supposedly real news channel just whiffs which is entirely to entertainment coverage well let's see they stop talking about the economy over fifteen percent real unemployment they stop talking about our war in afghanistan in which men and women are still losing their lives on a daily basis they stop talking about our civil liberties being a road it thanks a lot makers they have taken advantage of fear the word terrorism stopped talking about the civilian deaths the perceptions of the u.s. abroad. due to our policies i guess you could say or hey let me know they don't really cover those things on a regular basis either even when there isn't a celebrity story to cover and ok you have a point right maybe saying if they stop isn't the right word to use maybe it's more like continue to find an excuse to ignore this story or that but it's worth pointing out right so let me just give you one more story that i think deserves some attention but hasn't and will not get it. citigroup has agreed to pay one

hundred and fifty eight million dollars in a settlement over bad loans the bank passed on to the federal housing administration to insure now we know all about this thanks to a whistle blower now that rare breed right that often is forced to sacrifice their career risk attack on their character the destruction of their personal life to point out wrongdoing the kind of person that should be held up and shown support but which this administration instead has seemed to wage a massive war against something the mainstream media also doesn't cover but here we have a case that was actually a success for the whistleblower in the sense that it led to citi group having to pay a fine once again just like with the massive fraud foreclosure settlement that was just reached between forty nine states and the five biggest banks settlement itself pretty much a slap on the wrist let's not forget that this is the same citi group the received forty five billion dollars in bailout money and yet for knowingly passing on bad loans the f.h.a. actually encouraging their employees to do so causing millions of dollars in losses in taxpayers insurance claims and profiting off of it all they have to pay one

hundred fifty eight million dollars in a fine let me just remind you that just in the fourth quarter of two thousand and eleven citigroup net income totaled one point two billion dollars that is just in the fourth quarter and those are considered to be dismal earnings so now let's go through a couple more details of what exactly this lawsuit exposed at that citi group was up to pro publica is it a nice job of pointing out the juiciest bits for us today the quality control unit in charge of reviewing the mortgages the bad ones that they were selling they have marching orders to pass questionable loans by brute force how the company even started basing compensation for some employees on how many loans got through quality control and those who pushed through the bad loans were rewarded and at the awards ceremony those that actually do the quality control work were humiliated according to this whistleblower how to top it all off at one point citi erased the records of nearly one thousand potentially fraudulent loans and for. all of this

they don't get any criminal charges they just have to pay a fee so of this is the way the justice is done and the system is never going to change once again the mainstream media didn't even touch the settlement they've got bigger things going on that informing the public of massive fraud on the part of the biggest banks in the country there's a celebrity death they go all out and all other news they choose to miss. well two months after nato strikes killed twenty four pakistani soldiers after an official pentagon investigation reports say that the obama administration is actively considering issuing an apology or at least an expression of contrition it would be a rare move and it makes us think of the many civilian casualties of u.s. drone strikes for which there are no apologies let alone figures released considering that the cia doesn't publicly discuss its program but the civilian toll is not only felt in pakistan but other countries where we wage shadow wars as well

so today let's talk about yemen and a new piece for the nation magazine jeremy scahill takes a look at internal conflict in yemen and how u.s. counterterrorism policy has not only been taken advantage of as a cash cow for the saudi regime but how it's also strengthening the very threat that it seeks to eliminate al qaeda in the arabian peninsula so joining me to discuss is jeremy scahill national security correspondent for the nation magazine jeremy thanks so much for joining us tonight and i guess i'm just going to start with the way that you start off your piece you start by focusing on an area called zinjibar and you say that really the yemeni forces attempts to take it back was a turning point a very incredible important test for regimes that tell us why is it that holds so much significance well let's remember that president obama began bombing yemen less than a year into his presidency the first u.s. airstrike authorized by obama was in december of two thousand and nine and it was not a drone strike actually it was it was a cruise missile strike launched from the ocean and it slammed into

a very poor remote bedwyn village and it was allegedly aimed at al qaeda members but in reality the people that were killed were forty more than forty who are bedouins that lived in this very remote area and in fact this was this episode. became somewhat infamous around the world because in the wiki leaks cables it was revealed that general david petraeus who at the time was the centcom commander actually went to yemen and met with president ali abdullah saleh after this missile strike and the two of them conspired to cover it up in fact salis said will continue to say that the bombs are ours and not yours and so what with that kicked off a string of air strikes that president obama authorized some of which hit the intended targets and others hitting civilians or killing important tribal leaders or opponents of solids regime so i put all of that out there in response to your question because you have to understand the context of what we're going to talk

about when we talk about what's going on in zinjibar in the south of yemen right now is three years of sustained airstrikes where a lot of civilians have been killed and even in cases where the so-called right person has been killed yemenis don't like the fact that the u.s. is bombing their country and so in may of last year a group calling itself. the supporters of sharia law essentially marched into town in zinjibar which is the capital of abi on province and they chased away the local authorities and they declared themselves the rulers of this town and they did it in a number of areas and when when the u.s. funded units who were responsible for fighting counterterrorism were confronted with this group coming in they simply fled and they left behind their weapons that the u.s. had provided them and then when the yemeni military not trained by the united states not supported by the solid family was tasked with trying to clear the city these militants for months are all shari'a took the u.s.

weapons and started to shell the yemeni national forces and some analysts that i spoke to in yemen believe that the saleh regime allowed these guys to come in and take the city to sort of send a message to the united states that if you allow me to leave or if you push for my departure and i'm talking to you from new york right now and i'll have. well it's always in new york at the ritz carlton hotel he was trying to basically say the united states i'm the only guy who can fight terror in yemen and it's without me this is what's going to happen across the country the problem is for that from a u.s. perspective this is really blowback whether or not follow allowed it to happen whether or not under all shari'a is actually just a crude sort of front for al qaeda in the arabian peninsula has become irrelevant because the political ideas of entourage shari'a very conservative islamic ideas shari'a law imposed with with violence on a population has brought law and order and has gained support of tribal leaders who are quite simply fed up with u.s. airstrikes in the u.s.

support for the the sollie kapok prosy and all the brutality that comes with a break in here for a second to right because you're talking about sol a who wants to send a message to the obama administration to us that we can't do this without him but do you also think that those u.s. trained forces are taking advantage of the u.s. has only come from higher up and is also work on a lower level that they were right about this in your piece that this is perhaps a cash cow that they're exploiting this and letting the situation get worse on purpose. right i mean well let's let's remember too that it was under president bush's. you know time in power that the united states began funding arming and training these so-called counterterrorism units that are run by his son who's the head of the republican guard and then yeah it was the head of the counterterrorism unit the idea behind it was at these forces were going to fight al qaida and they were going to work with the united states and that's where they were going to be given all this funding and all this weaponry and all of this training many people

in yemen say they've never actually fought any terrorists that what their entire purpose is to defend the regime and so yeah i think that you know it's to their benefit to have the perception that there's this huge problem with terrorism and terrorists in yemen but i also think that it's i think you're right in what you're saying but i also think that they they kind of played the united states and they played the terrorism card you know there's been more you know prison breaks in yemen then there were you know then that crew from that fox news show prison break broke out of prison i mean michael scofield the big character of that show must be working for al qaeda because they're breaking out of prison like every week and lo and behold they break out of prison as soon as the yemeni government wants more counterterrorism funding so you know this is a very complicated game and i think that you know american officials are quite arrogant when they meet with the leaders of very poor countries and i think they always thought they were smarter than sully and he's a better chess player than john brennan and the other american officials he deals

with well what do you think at the end of the day right because a lot of this has to do and i being a vicious circle right they don't like the fact and i don't blame them rightly so that u.s. airstrikes are killing civilians and wreaking havoc right in yemen on local populations at the same time they see sol a allowing this to happen backing it and so they end up going elsewhere for now might think going to the al qaeda in the arabian peninsula but do you think that if the u.s. had no presence there at all clearly better off. well that's certainly what a lot of yemenis told me including yemenis that are very pro-american and at the all they say that if the u.s. had just left us alone we probably have less terrorism in yemen than we do today i mean i certainly think that while the united states or the obama administration may be very proud of the fact that for instance they killed anwar a lot t. who's of course a u.s. citizen and samir khan who was killed along with him was also a u.s. citizen let's remember that two weeks later they the u.s.

military and cia forces killed sixteen year old of the raaf mana locky who was unaware a lot he's sixteen year old son also a u.s. citizen so we've killed three u.s. citizens in a two week period and when i would ask yemenis about that they would say to me well what about the forty something bedouins that obama killed or what about the governor of mara province who was killed in an airstrike and then there's a euro you all focus on the americans we're focused on our people that you're killing you say that these guys are terrorists we say your drones are terrorism so you know i do think that the united states names needs to back away from this idea that you know you can engage in this cruise missile or drone strike fueled war of attrition and kill the finite number of bad guys in the world because that's just not the way it works we're creating more enemies so at the end of the day i think the yemenis who say there would have been less terrorism at the u.s. not than this or are they're probably right and i think that that's a i think that's a defensible position and it should inform some u.s. policy going forward we don't learn from our from our horrid mistakes i mean look

at the disaster in afghanistan right now what's the end of that going to be the taliban have to be brought to the table because they have indigenous support in some of these areas the u.s. is so afraid of the word islam that they are pushing aside perhaps the only political forces in these countries that could stabilize them these are religious countries there's going to be some religious form of governance in it that is indigenous to people so you know that the u.s. needs to back away from just thinking being kill your way to peace and start negotiating with the people that actually can bring some form of the bill. that in these countries when you bring that up to you and in your piece you're talking one of the tribal leaders there who says that why don't we get paid by the u.s. they paid after the lockerbie bombing and so why can't we get some kind of compensation for that do you think that that's a good idea you know what that fix anything or what is the way forward now i mean you know it's kind of funny and you know you and i have talked about a variety of countries that sort of dot the landscape of these undeclared wars that the obama administration is waging in every country that i've sort of been in the

last year or so in afghanistan in somalia and elsewhere and sometimes people think i'm a cia person and they want to sort of cut a deal with me or ask me why i stopped paying them or they want to you know send a message and in yemen it was no different where you know i met with several tribal leaders who said why doesn't the u.s. put us on the payroll like they did with the awakening councils in iraq you know as a people study history they see what happens elsewhere and you know everyone's running their angle but you know that's that that i think is a very dangerous that you can start falling down back in one nine hundred eighty s. you know style contra stuff where you start arming all these local forces and you know the u.s. doesn't doesn't have any credible intelligence on the ground in yemen and the last thing they need to do is start putting a bunch of bunch of shakes on the payroll and they don't know where their weapons are going to go or where the money is going to go i guess they get out of it he wants the money the right one they've seen the examples from the past though but so you mention the fact that you know we we need our government leaders we need our military officials to actually pay attention to what they're doing but how do you

get average people to also be interested the average american right if what you're laying out here and it's not something that has not been argued before is that our counterterrorism policies are in fact only making things worse than how do you get the public to pressure on it you know there is this poll last week that says that majority of americans actually support the obama administration's use of the drone program they also said that in the case of going after american citizens but if they knew this information will they still feel that way. i mean it's not just a majority of americans it was eighty three percent of americans you know including seventy percent seventy seven percent of people that consider themselves liberal democrats so what that says to me is that this administration has normalized assassination as a staple of u.s. foreign policy you know for a whole generation of liberals and the fact is that the poll numbers drop only slightly.