U.S. House District 7 covers Springfield, Joplin, Branson and much of southwest Missouri. The following is a transcript from Ozarks Public Radio's interview with Richards recorded on July 23.
I'm Chris Drew and I'm talking today with Kevin Craig, candidate for the seventh Congressional District. Thank you for joining me today.
“Thanks for the opportunity I appreciate it.”
So, we'll just jump right into the questions. If you are elected to represent Southwest Missouri in the United States House of Representatives, what will be your top agenda items?
“Well, I'd say number one, to at least audit the Federal Reserve. If not, abolish it entirely. Second of all, to say no to the Wolfowitz Doctrine, the doctrine of US hegemony over the world, and to end the wars that the US is currently prosecuting in Asia and Europe. And then I would also say that we should follow the Republican Party national platform, where it has suggested that we should abolish unconstitutional bureaucracies and administrations, which they've been promising for decades and never have kept the promises, for example, to abolish the Department of Education. Congressman Thomas Massie from Kentucky routinely offers a bill to abolish that unconstitutional and harmful agency, and nobody ever takes action on it. So, I would just start with the Republican platform promises that have never been fulfilled.”
Abortion is a hot button issue right now with several states facing ballot issues on the subject. What are your views on abortion and a woman's right to choose?
“Well, my views on abortion are pro-life, and I would call myself an advocate of the personhood idea that a person begins at conception. But abortion is not a federal issue. The federal government should have no say or input on the matter at all. And for all the talk about Trump having appointed the Supreme Court justices who overruled Roe versus Wade, I doubt that that decision has saved a single unborn life. So, it's a lot of talk and a lot of smoke, but not a lot of real action. But my position is pro-life.”
The voting process has been a key topic of discussion both at the federal and state level. How do you think the US can ensure fair elections, while also ensuring that everyone has an equal chance to cast a ballot?
“Well, I think two things come to mind. First of all, the question of the jurisdiction of the federal government is important to hash out because a lot of the voter laws were passed by individual states, and it's not really clear where the federal government has the right to tell states how to run their elections. But overall, I think there's a lot of mythology about elections.
Um, first of all, the influence of money in elections is, I think, more powerful than simply you're going to the polls and marking your ballot. There's so much more that goes into how we choose our candidates. If you go to the ballot in November or even in the primaries, you're facing candidates who have been sort of preselected for you by the powerful interests. And so, all the questions about voter integrity and stuff like that, they're secondary because the process is already, it's already chosen for you. But then we have a lot of questions about voter ID, for example, should is voter is a requirement for an identification card a racist requirement. And I saw a great, um, YouTube video. The comedian's name was Ari something, and he went around interviewing blacks and asking, do you have ID? Do you know anybody who doesn't have ID? And that really isn't an impediment to vote when for everyday life you have to have an ID in so many areas. So there's a lot of again, smoke and mirrors, that doesn't really change how our elections operate and who gets into high office.”
What do you think should be done to address illegal immigration issues in the United States?
“Well, the whole question of illegal immigration, and again, I keep returning to this because the Constitution, when you become an office holder, you're supposed to take an oath to support the Constitution, and it's utterly ignored. Nobody really follows the Constitution, and a lot of political scientists have said the Constitution is pretty much meaningless. But the federal government has no right under the Constitution to tell Texas, for example, who Texas can admit as a resident into Texas from, say, Mexico. So, all immigration rules in that respect are unconstitutional. The states should be able to decide who they want in.
My personal belief is on the open borders side. Now, 300 years ago, when America was a more of a Christian nation than today, the European nations were literally opening their prisons and putting all the prisoners on a boat over to the New World just to dump them over here. But all those prisoners were met at the border by an army of voluntary associations, which were there to train them and teach them how to read, teach them English, teach them how to how to have a job and work with them on a moral and spiritual level. And so that wasn't a problem back then. Immigration was something, in fact, that the Declaration of Independence complained that George the Third was restricting immigration. So, there was no way that they would be restricting immigration because that was one of the problems under the British government. So, we have a lot of rethinking to do about our entire culture.
I think we need to be more open to people who are coming here, especially when they're victims of US military violence in their own country. And we should have a more hospitable Christian attitude toward immigrants.”
Do you think the United States should continue to fund the war in Ukraine? Why or why not?
“It’s been about 40 years since the fall of communism in the Soviet Union, and that should have ended the Cold War. It should have ended NATO. It should have ended U.S. involvement over there. The original ideal for America was peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations and entangling alliances with none. But the United States, what we call the deep state, had a doctrine sometimes called the Wolfowitz doctrine, sometimes called the American Greatness Doctrine, that America should, after the fall of the Soviet Union, be the only superpower on Earth. And forget China. Forget Russia. Forget any other country that aspires to be great. America alone should be great according to this deep state doctrine. And so back, far back into the 1990s, these people, these architects of our foreign policy were saying we need to bring Ukraine into NATO so that we can, you know, possibly engage control over Russia, regime change, if necessary, but the United States wants to control Russia.
And so, the United States is using Ukraine as a pawn to engage in aggression against Russia, because the United States does not want any other nation to become a superpower. And so, 500,000 Ukrainians have died because the United States wants global hegemony. And the United States, I believe, needs to face the fact that there are other countries in this world who also want to be great, China and Russia, and their governments, in my opinion as a libertarian, are not really qualitatively worse than our government is today. A lot of Americans don't want to hear that. We want to think we're exceptional, but we're just another oligarchy like Russia and China. So, we need to completely close off all of those wars, all of American militarism and return to a military which is actually designed to defend America's homeland and not aggress and defend corporate interests abroad.”
So next one, a little bit, a little similar. What are your views on the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas?
“I believe Israel is committing a kind of genocide against the Palestinians. I certainly don't support Hamas. They're a terrorist organization, ugly. But what's going on in Palestine, as far as I hear, is the destruction of not just Hamas, but also of a lot of Palestinians, perhaps 100,000 or more buried under the rubble. The infrastructure, their civilization; their society is being destroyed. And it seems to me that the high-ranking Israeli government treats them like the Old Testament character Amalek, and people who just can be destroyed in a genocidal way. They want to clear out all the Palestinians and use that land for their own benefits. Now, that's not antisemitism, because there are left leaning Jews who oppose the policies of the right-wing Netanyahu government. It's just a question of politics, and I would also say a question of morality, because Jesus, who was a Jew, gave us the parable of the Good Samaritan. And I think today, if he were on earth, he would give us the parable of the good Palestinian. And he would say that we are to treat people with care and compassion. And yeah, we need to respond in some way to the terrorists. But they're not just responding to Hamas. They're killing off Palestinians and destroying their society. So, this is a very problematic issue because the United States is giving a lot of foreign aid and military aid to continue this genocidal prosecution. And I think all of US foreign aid needs to be cut back, and the United States needs to become a peacemaker in the world instead of a war maker. War maker, however, is a profit maker. So, we have that problem. But we should be a peacemaker nation and not a war maker nation.”
You are a representative of a of a third party. If you were elected, how would you caucus or otherwise work with the major parties?
“Well, that's a good question. Um, the first question, the first question is whether I could even be elected because I'm a Christian and I'm from California, and I studied law, passed the California bar exam, but the federal court in Los Angeles told me I could not take the oath to support the Constitution because the apostles said in acts chapter five, we must obey God rather than men. And if the government ordered me to kill Russians or Jews or Muslims or homosexuals or anybody, I would have to say I must obey God rather than man. I wouldn't obey the law. And so, the Federal court said, well, then you can't take the oath to support the Constitution. You cannot become a public official because you don't really support the Constitution you support God. And the federal court in Los Angeles pointed out that the United States Supreme Court has held that your allegiance to the government cannot be qualified with a higher allegiance to God. So, if I were elected, if I won the vote, I'm sure the Republican Party would immediately file in federal court to get an injunction to prevent me from taking the oath and holding office. Now that, I think, reflects the kind of party power grab that they would rather have, you know, they would rather use federal courts to keep a libertarian out of Congress. And caucusing would be… I mean, it's like I don't think it's going to happen. Like I pointed out initially, there are a lot of planks of the national Republican platform with which libertarians agree, because Republicans have been promising to cut unconstitutional and wasteful bureaucracies for decades, so I could easily caucus with Republicans on that point. Ron Paul was able to work with Democrats like Dennis Kucinich to try to roll back U.S. militarism. So, it's an issue-by-issue kind of a thing. I'm not sure how it would work in a party versus party thing, but I'm happy to work with any politician in Congress who wants to get back to the Constitution and wants to get back to the original ideals of America.”
Last question. In your opinion, what makes Southwest Missouri's seventh district a unique place, and what can our elected representatives contribute to leadership discussions in the nation's capital?
“Well, I think the discussions need to be about topics which are not widely discussed. And we've just talked about a few of them in this interview. Genocide against the Palestinians, killing off Ukrainians in order to try to execute regime change in in Russia and getting back to the whole idea of following the Constitution. Everybody takes a religious oath, they raise their right hand toward God in heaven, and they put their left hand on the Bible, and they swear they're going to support the Constitution and that's a complete myth. If the framers of the Constitution could travel through time, they would say, this has nothing whatsoever to do with the Constitution. So, it's these big issues that I think need to be talked about, and they're not talked about in Congress at all. Congress is, I think, kind of a game. I represented Orange County, California, in the National Student Congress Championships when I was in high school because I was big into politics and big into student government and that kind of things. And I think there's it's a game they're playing. They're playing a politics game. Its fun being a congressman. I think it's just a game. Um, most of the laws in this country are made by regulatory agencies and bureaucracies. Congress only passes maybe a couple of hundred bills, and they appropriate money for all these bureaucracies, but all of the rules that really change our lives, govern our lives, are made by bureaucrats. And this is why political scientists say that we're no longer under the Constitution. We are an administrative state. And this the whole the whole structure of our government needs to be rethought. And one way I would do this is, would be by abolishing the Federal Reserve, because that's where a lot of this money comes from. It's printed up and we're $30 trillion in debt. That's astonishing, if not insane. So big issues here need to be talked about, rather than simply tinkering around and playing like we're governing officials. It's largely a myth.
All right. Thank you very much. Thank you for making time and talking with me again. That's candidate for the seventh district, Kevin Craig.
“Thank you very much.”