Book Event: Neal Boortz Visits Charlottesville with 'Somebody's Gotta Say It'

On March 21, 2007, at the Omni Hotel in Charlottesville, syndicated radio talk-show host Neal Boortz spoke to about 200 fans and signed copies of his then-new book, Somebody's Gotta Say It. Boortz was on the fifth week of a six-week book promotion tour.

Boortz – co-author of the earlier New York Times best-seller The Fair Tax Book -- drew an overflow crowd that night at an event cosponsored by the Virginia Festival of the Book and WINA-AM radio.

Joined on the dais by WINA radio show hosts Jane Foy and Rob Schilling, Boortz entertained the crowd for about 30 minutes with anecdotes and quips before autographing copies of his latest book, Somebody’s Gotta Say It, which is based on the program notes from his daily radio show and addresses a wider range of issues than his earlier book, which dealt only with tax reform.

“Charlottesville,” Boortz began, “is one of the radio markets I’m in that I get unbelievable support, which is amazing because it has to be the bedwetting capital of Virginia.” (The home of the University of Virginia is widely known for its liberal/progressive/socialist populace.)

Joking with former City Councilor Schilling, Boortz said, “All men are born with the same number of hormones; Rob has been using his to grow hair.” Retorted Schilling: “I am a hair libertarian.”

Replying to that in words that would be echoed at the Cato Institute the next day, Boortz suggested that “most people are [libertarian] but they don’t recognize it.”

Moving on to the topics of the day, Boortz proclaimed: “I am a global warming denier. When somebody explains to me how our carbon emissions are causing the ice caps on Mars to melt, I’ll start listening to Al Gore.”

Boortz explained that his new book was started over three years ago, even before The Fair Tax Book (which he wrote with Georgia Congressman John Linder, who has introduced the Fair Tax legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives). As published, he said, “the book is 100,000 words long – pared down from 250,000.” The original manuscript, if it hadn’t been edited, “was going to take 800 pages” (about the same as Brian Doherty’s Radicals for Capitalism, as it happens).

On another issue – his opposition to the war on drugs – Boortz said that “this is one of the good things about the Libertarian Party and one of the worst things.” It’s one of the good things, he said, because the LP recognizes that “we would save tens of thousands of lives and billions of dollars by treating drugs as a public health problem rather than as a law enforcement problem.” It is one of the worst things because, when the average American is confronted with the Libertarian platform, his first response is, “You’re the guys who want to legalize drugs” – as though that was the only principle on the LP’s agenda.

If we ended the war on drugs, Boortz explained, “you wouldn’t have the criminal element. We arrest 800,000 people a year for using or possessing marijuana,” which is safer than cigarettes or alcohol. “There is not one known case,” he continued, “of a death from an overdose of marijuana.”

In addition to these costs, he added, there is the “misery we force on people by denying them access to medicinal marijuana” to reduce the pain and suffering from terminal cancer, for instance.

Commenting on life in Charlottesville, Boortz joked that there should be a sign at the city limits that says: “Entering Charlottesville: Suspend Reality.”

Reality, he said, “doesn’t exist in a university town,” because when school is in session, the town is comprised of “people at the age who know everything and have all the answers.”

Asked how we can get Congress to pass the Fair Tax, Boortz related a story he heard from former Majority Leader John Boehner, who had told John Linder that at 27 townhall meetings in 17 states in the run-up to last year’s election, either the first or second question asked at each meeting was about the Fair Tax. “Across the country,” Boortz said, “we have to get people to hammer the subject” to their legislators, who do not like the Fair Tax because it takes power away from them and returns it to the individual.

Boortz asserted that the Fair Tax is the “most researched piece of legislation ever put before Congress,” and noted that “in order to criticize it, people have to change its terms” by, for instance, saying there should be exemptions or the percentage of the tax should be higher or lower.

The Fair Tax, Boortz said, “is a tax plan not devised by politicians. They’ve had their chance, and they screwed it up.”

Relating a story about a Brazilian politician who wanted to talk to him about the Fair Tax, Boortz warned that some other country “is going to do this [adopt the Fair Tax] and become the world’s number one tax haven, and the United States will have to play catch-up.”

Jane Foy asked Boortz what the most controversial chapter of his book has been, and he answered that it was his complaint that “teachers’ unions are a greater threat to the United States than Islamic terrorists,” which attracted quite a bit of media attention about a month ago.

Boortz went on, however, to talk about his view that “there is no right to vote in this country” – at least no constitutional right to vote in federal elections. There might be a right to vote in state constitutions, but not in the federal constitution, he said. Referring to the members of the Electoral College, Boortz suggested that “the state of Virginia could decide that the 13 best-looking Hooters waitresses in Virginia could be [our presidential] Electors.”

The question, Boortz said, is “who are we going to keep away from the polls.” The answer, he said, is to “limit the vote to people who know what the hell is going on.”

(This article is excerpted and adapted from an earlier blog post published on March 22, 2007, on Rick Sincere News & Thoughts.)

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