How Transparency Weakens the Deep State
The Radio Free Hillsdale Hour
Hillsdale College
4.8 • 650 Ratings
🗓️ 7 March 2025
⏱️ 54 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Guests: Khalil Habib, Kevin M. Shipp, & Brent Cline
Host Scot Bertram talks with Khalil Habib, associate professor of politics and Allison and Dorothy Rouse Chair in Politics at Hillsdale College, about how examples of statesmanship in the Roman Republic can teach us about good government. Kevin M. Shipp, former CIA officer and anti-terrorism expert, lays out the history of the CIA and gives an overview of his new book Twilight of the Shadow Government: How Transparency Will Kill the Deep State. And Brent Cline, associate professor of English at Hillsdale College, continues a short series on the Harlem Renaissance. This week, the life and work of writer James Weldon Johnson.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | From the historic campus of Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan, where the good, the true, and the beautiful are taught, nurtured, and honored, this is the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour, bringing the activity and education of the college to listeners across the country. |
| 0:24.7 | The CIA has gotten way out of control. It has now, and has always been, an unconstitutional agency. |
| 0:31.1 | It controls congressional hearings by withholding documents and testimony from Congress and Senate. |
| 0:36.1 | It blocks Congress from covert programs. |
| 0:38.5 | It's funded a lot of those programs through drug running and illegal activities. |
| 0:42.8 | This is your host, Scott Bertram. |
| 0:44.7 | Welcome to the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour, part of the Hillsdale College Podcast Network. |
| 0:51.3 | That was Kevin Schip, a former CIA officer and anti-terrorism expert, also co-author |
| 0:57.3 | of the new book, Twilight of the Shadow Government, how transparency will kill the deep state. |
| 1:04.2 | We'll talk in depth with Kevin about that book a little bit later on in today's program. |
| 1:09.0 | First, we're joined by Dr. Khalil Habib. He is |
| 1:12.1 | Associate Professor of Politics and Allison and Dorothy Rouse Professor in Politics at Hillsdale |
| 1:17.8 | College. Dr. Habib, thanks for joining us. My pleasure, Scott. It's great to be with you. |
| 1:21.7 | Talking today about Roman role models for our present Republic. First, we have to go back before we move to the present, of course. |
| 1:30.3 | How did the Roman ideals of civic virtue influence their republic's stability and their republic's |
| 1:37.5 | governance? |
| 1:38.7 | Yeah, that's a tricky question to answer, because if you read sources like Machiavelli, |
| 1:43.3 | who wrote extensively on Rome or Montesquieu, |
| 1:45.8 | who also wrote an entire book devoted to Rome, you would think, based on their telling, |
| 1:50.8 | that Rome's success was completely derived from their civic virtue and their institutions. |
| 1:56.2 | But if you actually go back to Roman sources themselves, like Livy, for instance, you'd see that their civic virtue, which ostensibly means their duty to family and to the state, their sense of gravitas, dignity, and their seriousness, all flowed from their religion, actually. |
| 2:14.5 | From our standards today, you'd almost say Rome was a theocracy. |
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