ustxtxb_obs_1992_01_17_50_00026-00000_000.pdf

Duke: I leave that option open, but I’d rather not. I’d rather see George Bush come more our direction, the Republican Party more embrace the middle-class working Populist Republican position on these vital issues. Dugger: You told Zatarain that if the deterioration of the white middleclass continues you’ll be elected President. How would you describe that continuing deteriorationwhat would happen? In other words, what are the elements of it? Duke: I think what we’re witnessing in America is the decline of a great country. We’re in decline, and that saddens me. We passed from one of the best education systems in the world just three decades ago, to the last place in the Western world in educational standards. We passed from a country that was one of the safest in the world, one of the most law-abiding in the world, to a nation that has the highest crime rates in the Western world, the highest drug rates in the Western world, some of the highest illegitimacy rates in the Western world. We have gone from one of the best per-capita manufacturing nations in the Western world and one of the highest standards of living to about mid-range in standard of living and certainly no longer pre-eminently the manufacturing giant that we were. We’re really losing it in our society. I don’t know if I’ll be president, necessarily, if the decline of the middle class continues, but I hope that we can effect change…. II: Racism Against Whites Dugger: Affirmative action is defended as government policy to correct historical wrongs against minorities. You believe it’s racism against whites, right? Duke: I absolutely think it’s racism against whites, it is racism against whites, clear racial discrimination. If you notice, tyrants, I guess governments, always give good reasons to suppress, good reasons to deny rights. But denial of rights is simply denial of rights. If racial discrimination is wrong or evil when exercised against blacks or other minorities, then it’s my contention that it’s just as evil or wrong when exercised against white people. Whites have feelings, too. Whites have aspirations, too. There are whites who are poor as well as blacks who are poor, there are whites who have broken families as well as blacks who have difficulties in their lives. Human rights must be for everyone. If someone wants to tell me that we should have programs to help the poor, I will say fine, good, we candohave many training programs and other programs to help the poor. But those programs should be color-blind….You have a black that, comes from a middle-class family, a lot of opportunity, being given preference over a white who comes from a broken family, a much poorer environment, and who’s actually working harder and studying harder and scoring better. I mean, how can anybody justify that?…That is one reason we are having this decline, because we’re retreating from excellence in America. Dugger: I read that you’re for abolishing the IRS and having a flat income tax rate of eight or ten percent and a national sales tax. Wouldn’t that amount to a transfer of wealth from the poor and the middle class to the rich? Duke: Not at all. In fact, I would exempt the poor or those in poverty from any taxation along those lines, which also would help them continue to go forward. Plus the truth is with the trusts and all the other loopholes that we have in our society, the people with lots of money get out of paying taxes anyway, there are so many different ways to do it, corporately and privately. So I think everybody ‘d pay a fair share, and I think we could all live in this country with a teri or 12 percent tax rate. [A House committee of] the United States Congress investigated the whole process, and they found that a flat rate of eight percent would bring the same government revenue as the current graduated progressive tax system does with current exemptions. If you made that to ten percent, you could take the two percent extra and use that to exempt all poor from any taxation at All the studies have shown that somewhere in that range between eight and 15 percent would cover all present revenue. If that’s true, we could probably have like a 15 percent national sales tax in America with a rebate for the poor,. some sort of a system where they would be exempt. You could use a credit-card system for them, and some sort of an electronic card, or whatever, when they make purchases. But a 15 percent sales taxand you eliminate income tax altogether, and that would be a tremendous boon to this country…. Another aspect of that national sales tax would be, we’d finally find a way to tax organized crime operations, the gambling operations, because everybody makes expenditures. Dugger: But wouldn’t you have to have an ID card for the poor there? Duke: Well, we already dothe poor already are identified because they qualify for welfare and other aspects. I don’t think that’s a civil libertarian problem…. 3 Dugger: You said in Florida, Ban immigration from Haiti, and maybe severely limit it. I wonder, do you have something in mind like banning all Third World immigration, or what about Israel, or what about Europe. Duke: I would sharply curtail all immigration, period. We have more pressure on our natural resources all the time. I don’t want to see us become a crowded land. Our options are limitedright now we can’t even fit into some of the national parks because of the crush of people. We have severe water problems in the Southwest, and the state of Florida, for instance. big pressures on our natural resources, our fossil fuels and our oil resources. Dugger: But how would you distinguish, would you just have a general prohibition or would you have national quotas? Duke: There’s gotta be allowed some degree of immigration. Every nation in the world has a degree of immigration, and there are some special cases of political persecution or some special reasons to have some immigration. That’s not a problem. Or family members, a person goes overseas and marries, or he’s got relatives overseas that come over. I think that’s allowable. A certain amount of immigration is permissible, and I think we should return to the levels we had in the middle part of this century, which were sensible and decent you know, a couple of hundred thousand a year is plenty good. But we’ve got, to really act and defend our borders and stop the illegal immigration. Dugger: You mean, especially the southern borders? Duke: Absolutely. Dugger: I know you did a Border Watch. How would you do it now? Duke: Well, first of all we only have about 3,000 agents on the Mexican-American border, and that’s ridiculous. I think we should at least double that, maybe triple it. Along with the electronic devices, that we now currently have available, not even counting a fence I’ve talked to many people in INS about itwe could probably stop the flow to a trickle, just by those two actions. It would cost a few million dollars, but you would save billions of dollars in terms of social welfare, education, and medical costs that are incurred by the whole process…. Dugger: Would you just talk about Western and Christian values as part of the American idea or the American idea or the American ideology? Duke: I think it is part of our ideals, let’s be honest about it, and I think that we’ve got a crisis about that today. Jesse Jackson goes to Stanford University and says, Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho, Western Culture Has To Go. All the immigrants that come in today just don’t share the basic values that we have. That’s just the reality of it. That to me is a great danger for the country in the future….We were wide open, we needed 26 JANUARY 17 & 31, 1992 4,401…*~,…..4411,5,4101F. 1.4.11111.~01,40.4011ROKIpr~V 1.1.1,,.. ,1.,4.0.111.11.–A41,1,01!,.04v..trAdow ,~ 4*****/.4.0044040,-.1g… ..www,wiriwooelbaowomomw oirok o.r