Speaker 1: Let's go to Dean from Dallas, Texas. Dean, welcome to
the program. What's on your mind today? Speaker 3: Hey, David, can you hear me?
Speaker 1: I can. Speaker 3: I was wondering, are you
familiar with South Korean politics at all? Speaker 1: Only in passing.
Speaker 3: So South Korea has kind of had a historical problem with their presidents.
They've sent Lee Myung bak for embezzlement and bribery. He's gone to jail for a long time. Park
in here is a female president, and she's been to jail for her abuse of power, bribery, coercion,
leaking government secrets. Even the former President Moon, he's under investigation. He
could go to jail. My question is to why a democratic country like South Korea has no
issues prosecuting and jailing former presidents and politicians. Politicians, but the U.S. can't.
Do you think culture and tradition trump law? Speaker 1: I do. I do. And you know, if you go
to my birth country of Argentina, you'll see there is also a long tradition of corruption
and arguable criminality from presidents and leaders. And the last one, the previous one seems
almost always to be under investigation. And the dynamics within countries, I think sometimes maybe
the right term is that there are these over time implicitly. It's not like people sit down and say,
here we jail former leaders, and then in another country, people sit down and say, here we do not
jail former leaders. I believe that it's small decisions over time that are a combination of
how the judicial system and court system, the judiciary is set up,
how judges are chosen, cultural attitudes towards misdeeds by elected officials. All these little
things together lead to some countries where it's completely typical that you jail former leaders
and others where you don't. It also exists in the U.S. at the state by state level, I mean,
look at New Jersey's history of prosecuting former governors, which I mean, you could say,
well, they've had a lot more criminality among former Jersey governors compared to another state.
But there also seems to be something there about expectations. So I think it's all of these things.
Speaker 3: Okay. So you think like the fear of public retribution
or violence impacts our justice system? Speaker 1: That I don't know specifically.
It's possible. That's possible. But we'd really have to ask more to understand people's attitudes.
But I think there is a cultural component and there's also a sort of cumulative
component over time related to expectations. Speaker 3: Okay. Well, thanks for taking my call.
Speaker 1: All right. Dean from Dallas, thank you very, very much for the call.