The Listening Tube with Bob Woodley -- U.S. Congressman Barry Loudermilk of Georgia

SPEAKER_00 0:00

This is the listening tube.

SPEAKER_01 0:09

Well, hello. Thank you for putting your ear to the listening tube. I'm your host, Bob Woodley.

SPEAKER_00 0:15

He's in the job, but he's still showing up.

SPEAKER_01 0:17

On this episode, I'll have a conversation with Barry Loudermilk, a U.S. Congressman from Georgia. He's not running for re-election, so I'll ask him if he has any hobbies.

SPEAKER_00 0:29

But first, not the headlines.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

There are a lot of headlines about the recent Supreme Court ruling that's redefining the way congressional districts are created. The whole thing started in Louisiana, where two congressional districts were created to give voice to the majority black population in those districts. People who aren't black said.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Well, that can't be right.

SPEAKER_01 1:04

Because if congressional districts are created for a particular race, that's an illegal racial policy. So they sued the state, and the U.S. Supreme Court agreed that we can't have congressional districts created to favor one race. As it turns out, the Voting Rights Act was in part created to do just that. And at the time, it seemed like a good idea. There was a lot of racism at the time, and a lot of underhanded tactics to deny black people the right to vote. The Voting Rights Act remedied a lot of it. But that was 60 years ago. We're different now. Racism, while it still exists, is more prevalent in our government than most anywhere else. It seems the Southern Poverty Law Center had to manufacture the illusion of racism and bigotry in order to remain relevant. While most Americans don't care what race somebody is, our government continues to divide us up that way. That leads to programs and policies that may favor one race over another. The Supreme Court ruled that we need to put an end to that. The Supreme Court confirmed that we are all equal, and parts of the Voting Rights Act were in conflict with the Constitution of the United States. Since the Supreme Court's decision, some are claiming that the Voting Rights Act is being gutted. The Supreme Court asked, is the Voting Rights Act gutting the Constitution? After all, the foundation of our nation is the Constitution, not the Voting Rights Act. Ironically, Wikipedia describes the Voting Rights Act as a landmark federal law that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. The Supreme Court reinforced that sentiment. The trouble is that there are people who have not yet recognized that racism in today's America isn't confined to only black people. Black people are racist too. But all of the criticism of the court's decision screams racism when it claims the decision specifically hurts black people. There's no proof that it'll hurt black people. The claim is that it will eliminate black majority congressional districts. Here's a question: Why should there be such a thing as a government-mandated black majority congressional district? There's no such thing as a government-mandated Hispanic majority district. There's no such thing as a government-mandated white majority district. The Voting Rights Act was made to ensure that anyone eligible to vote could. Mission accomplished. It's so easy to vote in America today that we now have to take measures to ensure only eligible voters actually vote. Yes, this court decision will have an effect on how congressional districts are drawn, and the system is an argument for another time. But the Supreme Court is right for taking the racism out of the equation. Quite frankly, I'm surprised it wasn't argued back in 1965.

SPEAKER_00 4:41

More Democrats opposed the Voting Rights Act than did Republicans, and the Supreme Court in 1965 had a 5-4 Democrat majority.com.

SPEAKER_01 5:10

Elected to Congress in 2014, he serves a district in the great state of Georgia, which is where he was when he spent some time with me in the listening tube. You are not running for re-election, correct? That's right.

SPEAKER_02 5:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:27

Okay, now I I I read that you one of the reasons is that you just want to spend more time with your family.

SPEAKER_02 5:33

That's that's one of the primary reasons, too. I have uh eight grandchildren. I had one when I first ran for office. And uh she was only six months old. And uh in the 12 years, well, I should say since I ran for Congress, I was in the state legislature before Congress. But uh six months before I actually won the election, I had one uh granddaughter born, and now I have eight, and they're kind of the age they need to see a little more of the grandfather.

SPEAKER_01 5:59

So uh what else do you plan on doing? I mean, you'll you'll need a hobby or a another job, right?

SPEAKER_02 6:06

Well, uh right. I'm not going to uh totally retire. This is more of a shift in focus. I still want to be involved, engaged in uh policy, and uh trying to save this country. And uh I just think there's some better ways of doing it these days that doesn't have so many restrictions. Uh being in Congress uh gives you uh you know a level of authority of and ability to do some things, but also with it comes a significant number of restrictions on what I can and cannot do, even in my own private time. The doors open, I'm looking to do more speaking, more of this type of thing, more podcasting, you know, be involved in in some policy, maybe some research. I'm not necessarily looking to go into lobbying, is what most former congressmen do, but uh I want to be engaged in some shape, form, or fashion. But whatever it is, I want to be able to be a little closer to home and not travel so much.

SPEAKER_01 7:01

Well, if you're going to be spending more time at home, allow me to share some wisdom with you. My wife lets me talk to her almost as much as I want.

SPEAKER_02 7:16

That's good. Yeah, it's uh I know my wife, she spent she usually goes to Washington, D.C. with me. Um, and that's one of the things I think is very important if you're going to be in elected office, especially in Washington, D.C., with all the pressures and and everything that's thrown at you, you got to have a good foundation. And part of my foundation is having my wife with me, not just you know, just for companionship, but it's also accountability. You're very well aware of a lot of the shenanigans that go on in Washington, D.C. is they tend to make headlines. Um, but there's also uh false accusations that are made against people. And uh I've got a colleague that's uh uh going through that right now. But when you have full accountability and your wife is there with you, you know, it uh uh it it tends to thwart some of the the false accusations and also speculation by others. But with having more grandchildren, she's not able to go as much anymore. And so that's another another aspect of it is uh just having having more family time.

SPEAKER_01 8:16

Now, what has more than a decade in the United States Congress taught you about how the American government works?

SPEAKER_02 8:27

I guess it's more of on-the-job training. I knew a lot. I before I ran for Congress, I did a lot of public speaking, been a historian. My dad was a World War II veteran, was then on the D-Day landing, was into France during the Battle of the Bulge and on into Germany and the late comer. My brother and sister, 15, 16 years older than me. I my dad was in his uh 40s uh when I was born, but he was of that greatest generation, was a huge, uh, a huge patriot, very uh uh a devout Christian, uh, but very wise and knew a tremendous amount about history. He loved history, especially American history. So I grew up in a family that was engaged, involved, not necessarily in party politics, although my dad growing up in the South, he was one of the few Republicans uh that were around, especially during the Jimmy Carter era. But uh I had a working knowledge of the way government is supposed to work. What I've learned during the time I've been in Congress is Congress doesn't exactly work the way it's supposed to work. It is inefficient, which it's designed to be. The founders designed us to be inefficient. They didn't want us uh legislating by emotion, uh, they didn't want knee-jerk reactions to issues. We're not a democracy, we're a representative republic constrained by the boundaries of the Constitution. But I think the biggest aspect and the thing I've worked hardest to try to change there in Washington, D.C. is to actually follow our own rules, our own regulations, and our own laws. We have not passed a budget and appropriations according to law since I've been there in 12 years. And we've there has also been a massive shift in, I'd say, the past couple of decades, to where the authority in Congress has been more centralized in leadership than it ever has in the past. It really minimizes the voice of the individual member of Congress. I know the current speaker is trying to make changes to that, trying to shift it back to where more of the decisions are made by a majority of the members uh instead of just uh three or four handful of members of leadership in the House and the Senate. Uh, but that change is slow. But also over the past several decades, we saw a shift away from the authority of Congress. Well, Congress abdicated a lot of their constitutional authority to the executive branch. And so I've also worked during my time that I was there to try to reshift that. There is a a misnomer, uh, and and it's taught in schools that there are three co-equal branches of government, but if you study the constitution, that is not the case. The Congress is the most powerful branch of the federal government. The executive is next uh most powerful. And the third, the weakest, which the founders referred to as the inferior branch, is the judicial branch. And so uh this modern idea that there are three co-equal, they're not three co-equal, they are three separate with their own set of powers. But because we are a government of the people, the legislative branch that is elected directly by the people uh is the one that was entrusted with most of the powers.

SPEAKER_01 11:48

So what a a lot of times we see the executive will create uh uh say a new a new department or whatever, and then they they go on to create rules and regulations which are then uh interpreted as laws, even though the legislature had absolutely nothing to do with it. Is that part of what you're talking about?

SPEAKER_02 12:08

Absolutely, and we've made some victories, we've had some wins in the last couple of years in this front. I started with I I guess it was 2017, 2016. I started the Article I caucus uh with uh it was joint House-Senate caucus of members who wanted to rebalance the powers of the three branches of government according to the Constitution and was to start bringing back some of that authority that would have been lost to the executive branch. And uh we worked for quite a while on that, and then a couple of the issues that we were fighting for, we actually won in the courts. The Supreme Court made a couple of rulings in the last couple of years that have gone a long way to rebalance that authority. And one was it was called Chevron Deference, which was a very bad ruling by the Supreme Court several years ago. And basically, Chevron Deference said that if a regulator in the executive branch, uh say the EPA, for example, um it allowed them to reinterpret the law, not just what Congress intended, but if there was any ambiguity, then they got to determine what that law meant, and then they could regulate via that. If we gave certain amount of powers to the EPA, they could, and we intended that to be the limit of their powers, they could reinterpret that saying, oh, but now that you've given us the ability to regulate carbon levels in the atmosphere, we can do whatever we want to as long as it's associated with carbon. It's not just limited to what you did. So the Supreme Court ruled that that isn't the case, that if they want to reinterpret something, it happens to come, it has to come back to Congress and Congress has to agree with it or we can veto that that regulation. The other big win we had was directly tied to the EPA and the Clean Air Act that was passed under Obama. That really cut at what you were getting at is what is regulation or yeah, regulation versus law. What's a rule versus law? Well, our founders were clear. Law is something imposed by government that if you violate, you can lose your property or your liberty, right? So law is if you you kill somebody, you can go to jail, you can be fined, you e you could even be put to death. Rules are those that are imposed by the administration that aren't necessarily backed by law. Those are like, you know, what are the clean air standards that they can set because Congress has extended that authority to them. Well, during Obama, they went even further with these rules and regulations and started imposing fines and penalties. Well, that elevated them to the level of law. And so there was a Supreme Court decision, it happened a few years ago, it came out the same time as the Roe versus Wade decision, but because that got so much uh press attention, no one really heard about the other decisions that were made. But that actually went a long way to rebalance. Now it was focused directly on the EPA, but the precedent was set. So immediately many lawsuits started being filed with the courts, challenging other rules and regulations that really were beyond regulatory precedents but had elevated to the punishment of law. Fortunately, when the Trump administration came in, they started voluntarily removing a lot of those and changing those. So we've made a lot of strides, but we still have a long way to go.

SPEAKER_01 15:43

I sincerely believe, and I want to believe, that most, if not all, candidates run for office with the hope of making positive contributions to our nation. Do you also believe that?

SPEAKER_02 15:59

In most cases, well, let me say when I first ran, I believe that most people came in for that reason. Is we all shared this common view of what America should be. We just may differ on the best way to get there. But since I've been in Congress, that has drastically changed. Um there's different categories of people there. You have those that are really on the far left right now that do not even share the same vision of America. They have more of a socialist or communist view, and that's that's their priority, is to push us towards that. We also have some that came in during the populist movement, that populism is unique, especially on the Republican side, because we've had very few populist movements on our side, most of them have been on the left. But with folks that came in for the populist movement, it was more based on feeling than it was uh constitutional conservative factors. And so a lot of those came in to basically be loud. In fact, I had one tell me who was uh came in, I uh started working with him. I was I was supposed to be the mentor of this individual. And uh I was told straight up, I don't need mentorship. Um I've served in my state legislature. I said, Yeah, but things were a lot different here. If you need help with legislation, he said, I'm not here to pass legislation, I'm here to be a celebrity. And so there was that element that came in during the 2020, 2016 election of a lot of people that came in to some were just angry. They came in and their idea was I want to fight. I really don't know what I'm fighting for, but I just want to fight. Uh uh and and they gained a lot of popularity because people were afraid. People were, especially right after COVID, people were mad, they were afraid, and they wanted representatives that they believed were just as mad and just as afraid as they were, but they really didn't have a plan on how to do anything. So we've seen a lot of those move out. I think we're in a period right now where we're going to be seeing kind of a separating of those who are there to accomplish, there's who want to get something done, versus those who are there for attention or perks.

SPEAKER_01 18:16

Is there a difference then between representing your constituents and representing an agenda?

SPEAKER_02 18:23

There can be. It depends on your district. And this is one thing I remind a lot of my colleagues, especially those that came into the populist movement, is under our form of government, when we take the oath of office in Congress, it's basically the same oath that I took and when I went into the military, is you only swear to uphold one thing, and that's the Constitution of the United States. That is the only thing you swear to. You don't take an oath to do whatever your constituents tell you to do. Because if you try to do that, you're not going to do anything because the constituent base is so broad. Um so I tell people, look, my job is to be there, to abide by the Constitution, to protect the Constitution, and make sure that anything that we do is constitutional. It isn't just to do what my constituents tell me to do. And so there is an element in Congress that that's all they do is listen to the constituents. And they tend not to last as long. They usually lose an election because they just kind of go with the wind on whatever seems to be popular at the moment.

SPEAKER_01 19:28

Aaron Powell What kind of pressure is there to turn your backs on your constituents and instead become tools for special interest groups or beholden to lobbyists?

SPEAKER_02 19:40

Aaron Powell There's always that pressure. It doesn't matter where you are and what level of government, you're always going to have special interests out there. You know, I'm not against the lobbyist crowd. Um, many of them are great resources because we're expected to be jacks of all trades. I mean, that's one of the pressures when you're in Congress, is we all have different backgrounds and knowledge. Uh I I come out of a construction and an IT background. So those are areas I know pretty well, but also uh serve on the Financial Services Committee, which has to deal with banking and banking regulation, right? And it's it's it's I thought we had a lot of acronyms when I was in the Air Force, but the the financial services has many more than than that. A lot of times these lobbyists for different industry groups are a great resource of information, right? But they also have an agenda. And the the challenge is what out element of their agenda lines up with your philosophy or your principles. I've always gone by uh I will negotiate my preferences, but I will never compromise my principles. So you got to know what your principles are. So my principles line up with our founding documents, uh, me personally with the Bible and uh with the Constitution of the United States. That's my where my principles come from. Now the rest is preferences. I have preferences of how I would like to see government run, but there's cases I may need to negotiate that. So there is a lot of pressure from special interest, but there are special interests all over the board. There's special interests on the left, there's special interests on the right. I think the ones who do get in trouble and don't do their job well is when they let the special interest pressure them, either through uh financial contributions to their campaign or through threats. You know, uh uh I've seen special interests who make veiled threats as hey, we're gonna come in and and lobby against you back in your district. We'll take out ads against you. And that's where you really have to be well founded on what you believe. And as my father always told me, it's it's important to know what you believe. It's more Important to know why you believe what you believe. Because if you know why you believe it, then you can defend it at any time.

SPEAKER_01 22:06

Now, your website says that during the current session of Congress, you're a member of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, which is responsible for making sure that federal financial regulators are held accountable for their use of taxpayer funds. I think a lot of people would be surprised to discover that such a subcommittee exists, considering all the news we hear about fraud and how little we hear about anyone being held responsible for it. What can you share about what is being done and who's being held responsible?

SPEAKER_02 22:47

Well, there's there's several elements of that. Um during after the 2008 financial crisis, um there was a uh a series of uh bills that were passed, one specifically called Dodd-Frank, which was devastating to consumers uh to the marketplace. It it I believe that less government is better government. We have to have more responsibility. Government is specifically limited to certain things. And I believe unconstitutionally, Dodd Frank went way outside of that. That's where we also saw the bailouts for big banks come in. But it also gave it created a new organization called the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, CFPB. And it sounds good that they were there to protect consumers. And one of the things they should be doing is protecting consumers against all this massive fraud. But the way that the CFPB was developed, it had no accountability. It wasn't even appropriated by Congress, it got whatever money it needed from the Treasury, directly from the Treasury, had no accountability, even from the executive branch. And so they basically became a name and shame organization for whatever industry they wanted to politically go after at the time. So one of the things that we've been doing is really working on reforming the CFPB. And one of the things I've always pushed at them is if you want to do something, start working on fraud instead of going after industries that you you don't even have the legally, you're not even allowed to go after. And they would. They would push the envelope and go after like uh automobile industry. There is nothing in their founding documents for the CFPB that gives them even one iode of authority to go into the auto industry. But because they had no accountability, they would wreak havoc upon uh automobile lenders and manufacturers. And so we've been working to rein that in. And I've been trying to focus them on let's why don't you focus on fraud? All of the, I mean, uh seniors that are falling to these scams and losing their entire entire retirement funds. And so we are working on reforming that right now. Most of one of the problems in Congress is our oversight and investigation responsibilities became a political ploy for years. Basically, you would go in to investigate something, you would call in witnesses, have a series of hearings, write a report about it, and then nothing ever happens. And so uh chairing a couple of uh investigative committees, uh, as one journalist told me, he said, You have rewritten the book on how to do oversight investigation and start holding people accountable, even though Congress doesn't have the ability to hold accountable. In other words, we cannot do any law enforcement, but we can make recommendations to the Department of Justice or the executive branch saying, this is what we found out in our investigation. And now if there's something criminal, we can refer it to them. Otherwise, I mean, if we find that there's uh waste of taxpayer money, sure enough, we can go in there and we can eliminate that department, we can eliminate that program. That's something that Congress is just now starting to become more aggressive at doing. And I think a lot of that is because of what we saw out of Doge when Trump came in and started really attacking the wasteful spending in the country, and that kind of prompted uh Congress to do more.

SPEAKER_01 26:16

Well, it's like uh I I believe it might have been Harry Truman who said there's there's nothing more permanent than a temporary government program.

SPEAKER_02 26:23

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 26:24

So there are probably a few we could get rid of. Uh and uh and I'll look forward to that because I think the American people uh do expect accountability, and we haven't seen a whole lot of it, you know, over the past uh five or six years. So we'll I'll I'll look forward to that. Now, are there forces inside our government that work to perpetuate rate waste and fraud with our tax dollars?

SPEAKER_02 26:52

I would say yes, um, not necessarily intentionally just to to to commit fraud, but money is a power in Washington, D.C. And the best way for an agency to not fall to the direction of Congress is when they don't have to rely on Congress for certain funding. All right. So what you'll see is there are programs that were temporarily established that were funded. And I've seen some that had had ceased. No one even works in that small department within some random agency uh because it ceased operating in 1984, but buried in the appropriations is still the funding for that, right? And it's so massive, it's hard to find those things. And so we did an exhaustive search uh back 10 years ago, and we found several programs that were still being funded. Well, when you go and you try to stop that, then you get to push back from the executive branch because that's their little slush fund. Yeah, they don't have that program, but they can use that and move it into other programs. So if you ever get into a situation where Congress is trying to restrict a certain agency from doing something and we cut that funding, they can find those little pockets to still fund some of the things that they're doing. That's that's a huge problem that we've had. Another problem is the ability for the executive to uh shift monies from one area to another. Uh Obama did this a lot. Uh he moved money from border security within Homeland Security and created a climate change committee or commission within the Department of Homeland Security. And started and did that in basically every agency and started moving monies that were critical for border security or national security into climate change research. So that's another area that is uh you you have to give the executive some flexibility to do those things. I mean, Trump is is doing some of that right now. That's he gets a little creative and he finds money that he can temporarily move over to pay TSA, but under law, he's got to move that back at some point. So once we we we get the funding in, he'll move that money back. But what Obama would do is move that money over and it would become permanent and uh focused on climate change instead of border security.

SPEAKER_01 29:17

Now, in addition to being a congressman from Georgia, you're also an author. And you have a book called And Then They Prayed. Now, I get the impression that this book is kind of like the opposite argument of the separation of church and state. Tell me how how you interpret it.

SPEAKER_02 29:38

Well, it's it's not the argument of that statement. You know, that statement was made by uh uh Thomas Jefferson in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association. What he was arguing is what I agree with, is that the federal government is to not have a denomination, but we're there to uh ensure that the freedom of any denomination um or uh religion has the freedom to worship and evangelize in the United States of America. It wasn't a prohibition on religion because if you go back and you study our founders, the broad majority of them were Christians in some element of some denomination. Some may have been theist, but they all had a basic foundation, which they drew from the common moral code that this entire nation was built upon, was the Bible and a biblical worldview. And there's evidence of this throughout history. But if you go back to the founding of our nation, there are numbers of books out about acts of divine providence in our founding. It's written in our founding documents. If you go to the last line of the Declaration of Independence, uh Thomas Jefferson wrote in support of this declaration with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence. They believed that God was going to protect them in doing what they were doing. He even later said that the inspiration for that statement came from the book of Daniel in the Old Testament, the story of the three Hebrew children, that they they believed God would protect them when they were thrown into the fire, and uh they would not bow down to the authority of the government because they believed that it violated God's authority. And that was uh the inspiration for Jefferson. George Washington, first president, first act as our first president was to pass a proclamation for a national day of fasting and prayer, specifically to give honor to God for the many acts of divine providence that were witnessed during our war for independence. At the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin stood up, and this is uh being portrayed in the uh movie right now about George Whitfield. He stood up and he talked about during the war for independence the many acts of divine providence that happened. So it was common knowledge that there were miracles as a result of prayer during the founding of our nation. But I know from my father telling me a lot of stories of things that happened throughout our country that those acts of divine providence weren't just limited to the founding of our country. They happened throughout and they're still happening. And so this is 14 stories where the people who were engaged and and who were basically facing insurmountable odds, after they did everything that they could, they prayed and God moved and they gave God the credit. I mean, even including George Patton. And it's George Patton is actually credited as the inspiration for the title because he was uh frustrated because it was near the end of World War II. He was in France, uh, the weather was terrible. He wanted to be in Berlin already, so he called his his chaplain in and he told him, Look, these we should we should already be in Berlin, but these immoderate rains are keeping us from moving forward. Do we have a prayer for good weather for battle? An official army prayer. So the chaplain goes in, he looks for the army prayer book and says, We don't have one. So Patton tells him, I want you to write one. And so then Patton goes in to tell him that he does this monologue, it's almost like a sermon on the power of prayer. And he says, Look, when we go into battle, there are three things that must take place planning, working, are the first two plan. But the third element is the one that really determines victory or defeat. And that third element is prayer. And he said that it's like taking a current of power is what happens when you when you pray, is engaging that. So he goes on about the power of prayer, and and he's and so as I started looking through history, I can see that pattern is whenever we faced insurmountable odds, those who were there, the leaders and heroes of our country, they planned, they worked, and then they prayed. And so this is from 1746 in Boston, Massachusetts, all the way up to the Apollo 8 space mission in uh in the 20th century, it's 14 different elements. And it's just not the prayer, it's about the courage and the fortitude of the individuals that is unique to America. It's about American exceptionalism, but it's written in story form. It's not you're just learning about George Washington at Valley Forge. You're there at Valley Forge with George Washington, observing it. That's why it took so long. It took 10 years of research just to write this book because I couldn't I couldn't just research George Washington. I had to research everyone who was with him and get their journals and compile those. And several stories from World War II. We have stories from the Civil War and especially and the revolution, and I said, all the way up to the 20th century. And it is whether you're a history buff or you just really never get history, we the feedback has been phenomenal. That it is a it's an enjoyable read, it's exciting. And more importantly, I think it's uh especially celebrating our 250th uh year, it's important to understand whether whether you're a person of faith or not, is how the our national heroes relied on their faith at times that were the most critical.

SPEAKER_01 35:13

I get the impression that most Americans don't have a problem with the religious basis of our laws, but there are a few who object when you point it out. So maybe if we just didn't point it out as often, uh people would people would be more accepting of it. I've asked this question of a number of people. I've never gotten an answer, and I want to ask you, as a religious man as well as a conservative, I'm sure you're against abortion. Yes. What do you think would happen if the United States Supreme Court were tasked with determining whether or not a fetus has constitutional rights?

SPEAKER_02 35:59

Well, that has been the argument of the pro-life movement since I've been in elective office. Basically, what it comes down to is when does life begin? Because it's clear that the one of the predominant roles of our government, as laid out in the Declaration of Independence, as Thomas Jefferson said, life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, which came directly from uh Sir William Blackstone's writings, uh, who was a British uh jurist and a philosopher, and he wrote the commentary on the common law, which is still used in the U.S. today. If we don't have a specific law that covers something, they go back to Blackstone's commentary on the common law. And basically he said there are three fundamental rights life, liberty, and property. And so when you looked at the time in America that that we were founding it, we were not building it up on an aristocracy, right? Uh here it was anybody could do anything. And property was the that was the the thing in England that showed you the more property you had, the more power you had. But according to our philosophy, all of your rights are given by God, not by government. So it doesn't matter if you have property or not. So uh whatever makes you happy is what your your rights and liberties should be. And so that was kind of a change that they made from life, liberty, and property, life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. But Blackstone wrote that the government's responsibility is to protect life, that is its number one responsibility because those rights were listed in a hierarchy: life, then liberty, then property. He said that is the number one role. And he wrote in his commentary on common law that protection begins at quickening in the womb, is the words he used, which means the first evidence of life. That's when the protection of government, of taking of that innocent life begins. Back in that time, uh people were prosecuted for infanticide. If a man beats a woman who loses that child, then he's guilty of murder. And so now, if you fast forward time, we have the science that that can show that life under that same philosophy begins even earlier than the mother detecting a child kicking, right? That quickening is is is actually a uh a term that was used in the Bible as when life is breathed into someone. And so we know now that basically that life begins at conception. So if a state was to ever pass a law recognizing that life begins at conception, then uh the it's that's a game changer across the nation because the government's responsibility is to protect that life, then.

SPEAKER_01 38:57

I have one more question for you. What parts of your time in Congress do you think history will remember a hundred years from now?

SPEAKER_02 39:10

Well, uh, there's a lot of things I hope that it will remember, but probably the most prominent thing that I've worked on that's gotten the most attention and and uh will be remembered is the investigation that I've run into what actually happened on January 6th. And uh we've uncovered that the select committee on January 6th, uh, and that was the committee that Pelosi put together. Um, it it basically had a predetermined narrative. It did not seek the truth. Um, in fact, went to great extents to hide evidence, change evidence, manufacture evidence to indict the president and many Republicans. And so we've uncovered a lot of that. Um I've actually we talked about making criminal referrals. I've made some criminal referrals to the uh to the Department of Justice for perjury by people who knowingly lied to the select committee. Unfortunately, the select committee just took their lives and ran with them without even corroborating them. So that's probably the one thing that I've made most of the headlines for. But I hope that history will remember me as someone who stood by the Constitution, uh, stood by my faith, and more importantly to me was to serve as a statesman. And so that's what I hope my grandchildren read about in the history books.

SPEAKER_01 40:25

All right, Congressman Loudermilk, I really do appreciate you spending time with me in the listening tube today. I've enjoyed the conversation, and I hope you have as well.

SPEAKER_02 40:34

I have. I appreciate that. And if don't mind if anybody wants to connect with me, they can just go to my website at barryloudermilk.com.

SPEAKER_01 40:42

The website again is BarryLoudermilk.com. You can also learn more about Barry's book, And Then They Prayed, at and then theyprayed.com. The Congressman tells me President Trump endorsed it. Thank you to Congressman Barry Loudermilk for spending some time with you and me in the listening tube. The listening tube is written and produced by yours truly, copyright 2026. Shout out to some new places checking in. Repentigni, Quebec, Mantineo, Illinois, and Temple, Pennsylvania. Thank you for putting your ear to the listening tube. I'm your host, Bob Woodley. He's the worst thing to happen to old people. For thou ad infinitum.