Part Of The Problem - Liam McCollum

Episode Date: August 15, 2024

Dave Smith brings you the latest in politics! On this episode of Part Of The Problem, Dave is joined by young libertarian, Mises apprentice, and co-host of Human [Re]Action, Liam McCollum! Tu...ne in for an in-depth discussion on how Liam's college professor got him interested in the party, Donald Trump's chances to win the votes of libertarians, and how republicans have taken LP talking points in order to sway voters.Part Of The Problem is available for early pre-release at https://partoftheproblem.com/ as well as an exclusive episode on Thursday!Support Our SponsorsMoink - https://www.moinkbox.com/potpMy Patriot Supply - https://www.preparewithsmith.comProlon - https://prolonlife.com/ptpLiam McCollum:http://youtube.com/@liammccollumhttp://liammccollum.substack.com/http://instagram.com/mliammccollumFollow the show on social media:Twitter:http://twitter.com/ComicDaveSmithhttp://twitter.com/RobbieTheFireInstagram:http://instagram.com/theproblemdavesmithhttp://instagram.com/robbiethefireSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 What's up everybody? Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem. I'm very excited for this episode. Just a quick reminder, tomorrow, Stamford, Connecticut, me and Robbie the Fire Bernstein will be out there at New York Comedy Club. Last I heard there were still some tickets available. So if you want to come, go get them now because it does look like it's going to sell out. So grab them now if you can. And then I'm coming all over the place comic dave smith comm For all of my my ticket links and stuff for road gigs All right very happy to be joined today for the first time on the show by Liam McCollum who is
Starting point is 00:00:41 really one of the the brightest young minds in the Liberty Movement one of our rising stars and he is a libertarian he we were hanging out at the Libertarian Convention just a few months back in Washington DC and he spoke to my wife for about 15 minutes and then she came over she goes I really like that Liam guy and to have a libertarian who can talk to a pretty girl for 15 minutes and leave with her liking him is that we, let's just say we don't have a very deep bench in that department. So, uh, so you're, I'm saying the nation's hopes are pinned exclusively on you.
Starting point is 00:01:16 So thank you very much for joining us. How are you, sir? I really appreciate it. Thank you. I've been a fan for years. And actually on the way to this interview, I was listening to your interview with Tucker Carlson and right before that, I tuned into your interview with the young Turks. And I just got to say, like, it's been phenomenal to see you kind of, you know, be like the force in this populist movement that is somehow united, uh, the left and the right to where Tucker Carlson and
Starting point is 00:01:45 shank love you. And, and it's, it's just great to see. Candice Owens, you know, the former daily wire girl likes you and you're kind of uniting these forces is it's just amazing. Well, thank you very much. I mean, it's, it's kind of the, it's the advantage that us kind of, uh, Ron Paulian types have is that we're good on stuff and we're as, as Scott Horton always says, we're kind of better than the left on the issues the left's good on and better than the right on the issues the rights good on. So, you know,
Starting point is 00:02:15 it's always been, it's always kind of come natural to me to kind of like be like, Hey, I, I can present these ideas in a way that will be appealing to many different audiences without compromise, without like, I'm not saying anything. I don't believe. So it has been interesting. Anyway, the, one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on today, um, was because so, you know, the, I just did the Tucker Carlson episode and a lot of it because I'm talking to
Starting point is 00:02:44 Tucker and his audience was kind of my advice to the Trump populist movement. Um, and you just wrote this piece, uh, which was also kind of in a similar vein. Um, so I want to get into this, but before I do just because I'm curious about this and I don't think I've ever asked you how did you, I know you're, you're a younger guy. a younger guy you've you've risen up in this world over the last few years and I'm just really curious because I'm always curious and people's kind of like origin stories so like how did you become this guy who's like this libertarian figure out in Montana there what brought you into this world yeah so
Starting point is 00:03:21 you know growing up in 2016 I was 16 at the time, and that was kind of my entry point into politics. Uh, I like, I was a huge Trump supporter. Uh, I actually went to a costume contest and wore a Trump mask on Halloween and won, and I would wear MAGA hats. I was like, just, yeah, I was annoying. And, and so I, my senior year, I registered for this honor civics class and I was like, listening to Ben Shapiro every day, getting my advice on foreign policy from him every day. And my teacher at the time, Lee Deming, Mr. Deming, he said something bad about Obamacare. And so I went up to him after class and I was like, huh, like I'm going to fish here, see what his politics are. And I was like, do you listen,
Starting point is 00:04:10 listen to Ben Shapiro? And do you have any recommendations on who to listen to? And he, he's like, yeah, you know, Ben Shapiro is good, but you should check out Tom Woods. And so that kind of sent me down the rabbit hole. I, I ended up finding, uh, uh, Lysander Spooner, who was the first, like libertarian anarchist, uh, attorney that I had, had read. And, and then, um, the funny enough, and it kind of like ties us to the topic you invited me on to talk about today. Uh, lead emming, my, my teacher, he went on to run for office in Montana and is now a representative for my hometown.
Starting point is 00:04:51 My senior year, I introduced him to the idea of the Defend the Guard Act, and he is now the sponsor of it in Montana. Last year, I got to work with him by his side as one of the main activists pushing this bill. I think we were the first state last year of all time to get it passed through a committee and get it actually debated on the floor of the House. I just became a pretty big activist in the world of the Defend the Guard Act and have helped people around the country with advice on how to promote this in their state. So I've become friends with like
Starting point is 00:05:34 Dan McKnight and Diego Rivera, the great guys over at Bring Our Troops Home, and everyone should follow them. Everyone should go to bringourtroopshome.us. But yeah, yeah, so that's kind of where I'm at now. And I'm also, you know, I'm a member of the Montana Libertarian Party, the Mises Caucus here. I was a Mises apprentice with Tho Bishop at the Mises Institute. We just got done with Mises U a couple of weeks ago. And I also was an apprentice, it was a Hazlitt fellow
Starting point is 00:06:04 for the Foundation for Economic Education with Dan Sanchez a couple of years back. So yeah, I've kind of had an opportunity to have like be surrounded by a lot of great mentors and I'm very thankful for you that you've kind of, I've been able to add you to that list. It's been awesome. Well, thank you very much, man.
Starting point is 00:06:21 That's incredible and what, oh man, it's like what are the odds that you'd be like a curious youngster and your teacher listens to Tom woods. That's just so great. That's a great, like couldn't have pointed you toward a better person. And go ahead. And it was in public education. So that, that's the coolest part is that I was just like lucky. Like he's a public, public education, high school civics teacher who was a libertarian. A story I like to tell is I didn't know this at the time, but in front of me, every single day was a
Starting point is 00:06:53 portrait of Ron Paul. I didn't know who he was. I knew who Rand Paul was, but in his class, he had Ron Paul as a portrait. Then one day I walked in and there was a photo of Abraham Lincoln and it was in front of class and it normally was on the side and he had written on the whiteboard, Lincoln was the worst president and an arrow to the portrait. So I later he introduced me to like Tom DiLorenzo and yeah he's great. Yeah those are all great people. By the way if people haven't read uh Tom DiLorenzo wrote two books on Abraham Lincoln that were both really phenomenal. He's the, um, the president of the Mises Institute now. Yeah, I have not been, I went twice to a Mises university, but I haven't been back.
Starting point is 00:07:35 I haven't been there since I think maybe 2017 or 2018. I mean, I gotta make, I gotta get back there soon because it's just, so it's, it's really awesome. It's really like, uh, it's like that and the, uh, the young Americans for Liberty, uh, stuff, like, um, I forget what they call it, the revolution or summit or something like that. Um, but it's just like, when you go there and you see like really young people who are really passionate and really well versed in Austrian economics and libertarian theory and stuff.
Starting point is 00:08:02 And it's like, it does kind of like recharge your soul a little bit when you're, when you're my age and you're like, oh, okay. All right. There's, there's like a new crop of talent coming up. That's good. And it's like, like when you're the smartest guy in your hometown and when you can promote Austrian economics and you know your stuff, and then you go to the music Institute and you have this 18 year old kid who wins the award. Like there's an exam at the end of the week and he ends up winning and it's like, wow, this is phenomenal. So it's just, it's great to connect. And I would highly recommend though. Bishop was, is the guy who runs the apprenticeship. If you're a young guy and you're getting into
Starting point is 00:08:36 these ideas, um, we were in the second cohort, I believe, um, this was the second year they had run it. And if you want to get into these ideas, I would, I would definitely apply for the Mises apprenticeship through the Institute. Yeah. Though, though has been a really, uh, uh, really, um, valuable resource for me over the years. I literally just the other day, I was, uh, I asked him something. I can't even remember what it was. Something. Oh, it was something about what Rothbard said about one of, um, high X books. And I was like, what did Rothbard say about this?
Starting point is 00:09:10 Wasn't it something like this? And like, I mean, it was like, it was comical. There's like, he responded to me like 30 seconds later with like the full text of the paragraph. And I was like, how is it even possible? You found it this, how did you copy and paste this quick? Um, but he's like an unbelievable resource on all types of you know, like the kind of like like probably the best historian on Rothbard and Mises and Hayek and all these guys that that we have so yeah, just and a great guy on top of that Okay, so that you wrote this piece for the Libertarian Institute the other day. Tell me about that. That I kind of alluded to it before, but it's about defend the guard
Starting point is 00:09:51 and it was advice to Donald Trump. And so take it from there. Yeah. And I should say for people who don't know what it is, the Defend the Guard Act is state based legislation that would prohibit the National Guard from being sent to overseas wars if Congress has not first declared war. And I don't know if you know this, but a couple of weeks ago, well, actually, I think just a couple of days ago, the Oregon National Guard was sent to Iraq and Syria.
Starting point is 00:10:16 And it was just a couple of weeks ago, the Georgia, I think there were two Georgia National Guard soldiers that were killed in non-combat situations. But it was in the same month that National Guardsmen were fired upon because of the conflict in the Middle East right now. And earlier this year, National Guard troops were on the border of Syria and Jordan, and three National Guard members from Arizona, I believe, were injured in that strike and then a few people in other branches of the military died.
Starting point is 00:10:53 So that's kind of the context for why this bill is necessary. It's not about some future war, even though that it's more necessary now because this war in Ukraine is now bleeding over into Russia. It looks like people are striking in Russia now. So it is to prevent National Guardsmen from being sent to future wars in a hypothetical situation, but it's happening right now is what I want to stress. Soldiers are at risk currently. And so this bill, it was sort of, I think the reason we started pushing it and the idea behind it is that repeatedly, people were calling on Congress to repeal or reform the authorization for use of military force that was passed in 2001. that all of these conflicts are currently based off of. Like, you know, they axed the 2002 AUMF a couple years ago, and Mark Milley at the time said,
Starting point is 00:11:49 "'Okay, this one's fine to get rid of "'because all of the wars, we base it off of this one.'" And I actually got the opportunity to talk to Matt Gates about the Defend the Guard Act, and when I told him about it, he said, "'Well, why can't I just pass this at the federal level? I said, well, I'm a big fan of yours and the fact that you keep introducing these war powers resolutions to withdraw from Syria, to withdraw from Somalia, and to withdraw from Iraq, but how many people vote for them? It's all these usual suspects. It's Matt Gaetz, it's the Freedom Republicans,
Starting point is 00:12:26 it's my representative, Matt Rosendale and Thomas Massey, but that's it. And my own state legislature passed a resolution, I believe two years ago, calling on our own delegation, and we only have four people in our delegation from Montana, to vote against this AUMF. Only two people in the legislature voted against that resolution. So almost unanimously, the state called on these guys to repeal the AUMF and the entirety of the delegation voted to uphold the AUMF. So what this bill is,
Starting point is 00:13:05 is it's essentially acknowledging the political reality that if we want to end wars, we have to have the states do something about it. So this is a state led movement that essentially imposes itself that says, look, we want to end these endless wars. We will not send our National Guard troops, which are the state militia, to these foreign conflicts
Starting point is 00:13:28 unless you declare war as the Constitution requires first. And in this article, I kind of make the case from both a conservative and a libertarian perspective. I think Trump was very, he was open to coming to our convention at the Libertarian Party convention in DC, and clearly he's open to having a conversation, or at least people on his campaign were. In this article, I'm trying to make the case that if you want to win over Libertarian voters, I can't guarantee you that the party will nominate you as the presidential candidate
Starting point is 00:14:02 like he tried, but I can give you the talking points that can win libertarians at large. And I will say, so I uploaded this or I published this article on Monday and I went to the Trump rally in Montana on Friday with our libertarian candidate that's running for US Senate.. I met with the Senate candidate, the Republican Party is pushing in our state, who's running against our guy. I gave him an advance copy of this and just said, hey, this is something we care deeply about.
Starting point is 00:14:37 Some good news that's already come out of this is the following day, he was at an event, it was a Republican event on the eastern part of the state and Lee Deming, my teacher, the sponsor of the bill, asked him point blank, do you support this bill? So like literally the day after I gave him this and talked to him and he was in front of a crowd of like 60 people and had to look him in the eye and gave the best defense of it I've heard. And if he got elected, he would be the second senator to endorse the bill in the eye and gave the best defense of it I've heard. And if he got elected, he would be the second Senator to endorse the bill in the entire country.
Starting point is 00:15:10 The other ones ran Paul. So yeah, so I guess I'm just trying to make an appeal from a conservative and a libertarian perspective why like this is a very popular issue and that if Donald Trump gets behind it, he could probably win over a lot of support from libertarians. All right guys, let's take a moment and thank our Donald Trump gets behind it, he could probably win over a lot of support from libertarians. All right guys,
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Starting point is 00:15:59 So you choose from rib eyes, chicken breast, pork chops, salmon fillets and much more. Plus you can cancel anytime. I love Moink. My family loves this company. It's a great way to get grass fed, grass finished, actual quality meat from local farms and not just have to rely on like supermarkets, which have all types of bad stuff in there. So keep American farmers going by signing up at MoinkBox.com slash P OTP right now and listeners of this show will get free bacon for a year that's the best bacon you've ever tasted for a year but only for a limited time when you go to moinkbox.com slash P OTP. Alright let's get back into the show. Yeah no question
Starting point is 00:16:39 and I do think also as I was trying to make the case on Tucker's show, that I think also just, there's two things. Number one, I think a lot of Trump supporters would get behind something like this, particularly if you said it the right way. And then number two, Trump can make the rest of them get on board with that. You know, I remember, I debated kind of infamously in libertarian circles. I debated the former chair of the Libertarian Party years ago at the Soho Forum. And one of the things and then I had my podcast, I can't remember whether this was at the Oxford Debater on the podcast, but he said at one point, something like, you know, you can't be talking about
Starting point is 00:17:23 monetary policy and these things like people don't care about that, you know, you can't be talking about monetary policy and these things like people don't care about that, you know, and I was like, No, that's our job. Our job is to make people care about that. That's what Ron Paul did. It's not like there was any focus group that said, and the Fed is going to get these huge, like, cheers. It was just like, he explained it in such a compelling way that for people like me, because I was young at that time, I didn't really know anything about the Federal Reserve. I'd like heard of it, but I didn't know how it worked.
Starting point is 00:17:50 And then he explained it and I was like, what? That's an outrage. And then I read up about, and then it's like become like my biggest issue that I care about or up there. And it's like, yet Donald Trump, if he says this in a compelling way, he can decide that Trump supporters care about this. Like he, you know,
Starting point is 00:18:08 in the same way that he decided they were against the war in Iraq, and then they were like, I sure does sound right and went with it. So the value that, you know, could be added by Trump getting behind something like this is, is enormous. And it could really help him too. And in some ways I think, I don't know, I'm curious your thoughts on this, but I do think the one thing that's really positive about Joe Biden getting out of the race
Starting point is 00:18:34 and now not having an old senile man running against him and the polls tightening and kind of the big money going behind Kamala Harris and all of this kind of media attention. And I will grant, I think a lot of it's fake, but they're saying like, oh, she's winning in a lot of these polls. The polls certainly are much closer.
Starting point is 00:18:52 The benefit now is it's like, hey, Donald Trump, you don't get to just coast to victory. You actually have to really appeal to people. And I think something like this is a great place to start. I would agree with you. I was actually listening to your podcast where you made the case, I think you were talking about maybe Kyle Rittenhouse and how he had came out and said that he was going to write in Ron Paul in November and how you've just been making the case that like, no, this is the time where the base should be asking for their
Starting point is 00:19:22 candidate to be great on all the ideas. And the answer to that wasn't to criticize Kyle Rittenhouse. It was to say, how can we get Ron Paul on Donald Trump's campaign as an advisor so that you can win over all of these people? Because it is a problem. I mean, it's a problem for him. I mean, I love it, but like people, thousands of people write in Ron Paul every November. So how can he warm up to those people? And so because he has been a willing participant and because he has come to our convention and what I think is a historic thing,
Starting point is 00:19:56 he has demonstrated maybe unprecedented humility and really a beautiful thing that he's willing to sit down and talk to libertarians. And so I just hope he's listening. And I do think that this is a right wing thing. So like the majority of Republicans in Montana voted for this bill. The people who opposed it were Democrats. Only two Democrats voted for this in the House. It was the establishment Republicans who oppose this bill. And what I think would happen if he endorsed this is I would be able to go to all of them and say, well, your guy, like the guy of your party, like the lead guy has endorsed this bill, how are you going to say no against this? And that's also the value in having Tim Sheehy, our senator from, or the Senate candidate from Montana, endorse this over the weekend, is I get to go to them with this video and say, look at what he said.
Starting point is 00:20:48 So I think, you know, that's sort of the value that I see with the Libertarian Party going forward is, is trying to sit down and, and say, like exactly what I told to Tim Sheehy, I said, you know, I can't guarantee you that the Montana Libertarian Party will support you. You know, you've said some things about the Montana Libertarian Party will support you. You've said some things about Iran that make us believe that you want to go to war with Iran and that you'll be a war hawk in there, but I can tell you the things that libertarians need to hear.
Starting point is 00:21:17 And I challenge you to be the most libertarian. I challenge you to be more libertarian than our guy. And if you're curious about how to do that, call me up. And so I kind of think that that's what we should be doing with Trump. And I'm glad that he's willing to and that it sounds like he has a relationship with the Libertarian Party at the national level. Yeah, no question about that. And I think, look, I think libertarians have to be realistic about what we, what we can achieve. Of course, as I'm sure you're well aware, there's a lot
Starting point is 00:21:50 of purity spiraling in the libertarian world. But we are also, we have to recognize that we're in a very unique moment right now. And what, and don't get me wrong. I mean, there's a lot of things to be frustrated with about Donald Trump. I think I was talking about a lot of these on Tucker show the other day, but so much of what we really believe in is so appealing right now to Trump supporters. So you've kind of got this moment where it's like, hey, you could just be really good on these issues and really win over forget just the libertarians. I mean, that's a that's a an important enough block too, but that like, you know There's with all of the wars right now I mean I shouldn't not with like say Iraq and Syria and things like this but with the the
Starting point is 00:22:39 Conflict in in Ukraine and now I guess in Russia is by the, Dave DeKamp, I was just reading before we came on, had a great piece on this over at antiwar.com today. But, you know, this, okay, Mitch McConnell and guys like that, you know, support all the wars, but there's, this doesn't really have Republican fingerprints on it. These are all conflicts that started under Joe Biden. And so it's kind of like what happens a lot of the time is that you're requiring one group, like one political party to kind of disown their own person who they got behind. Now, Donald Trump was able to do this. Part of it is because he, he was, he is this like cult of personality type figure that has such a, uh, you know, devout, uh, fan base. this. Part of it is because he was he is this like cult of personality type figure that has such a, you know, devout fan base. But also and also it's because he was running against
Starting point is 00:23:31 Jeb Bush. So he was able to say, Hey, your brother lied us into war. And he was able to get people who like, enthusiastically supported George W. Bush to be like, yes, not only was he not what I was saying he was but screw him That's kind of difficult But right now it doesn't require any of that all you have to do like the social psychology of the thing is just to say That Joe Biden is a fool who's had this crazy reckless policy that's resulted in nothing but disaster and we're against that It isn't this like such an easy talking point to hand to Donald Trump? Now, obviously he's not going to go there with Israel, but certainly this is a great
Starting point is 00:24:11 like defend the guard. That's easy for you. That doesn't even necessarily piss off. Well, maybe it does piss off APAC, but whatever. Like it's you could say that and still be Trumpian about it. So I think it's like the perfect opportunity and the perfect thing to push for him. I agree. And I really think that the, the role that we should have is, is, you
Starting point is 00:24:31 know, I think the America first, like motto, like America first, as an identity is largely like an unchecked box. Like no one really knows what it means yet because it's, it's like got this populist energy, but it's not grounded in principle yet. And I think what we have the opportunity to do is surround him with people who say the right things and at least give him alternative explanations for how to avoid war. Because, or America First is defined by Nick Fuentes or Tom Cotton. Those are our options. It's either Nick Fuentes, Tom Cotton, or paleoconservative or libertarians like Tucker Carlson and you. So I would rather him listen to Tucker, Candace, and yourself.
Starting point is 00:25:17 The way that Tom Cotton is spinning all of this is that, well, America First means that Donald Trump is strong and we lead through peace through strength. And well, actually, we would have avoided this war in Ukraine if Donald Trump was in office because he would have given even more aid. He said this in an interview with Sean Hannity, and he says that Trump's actually stronger than Biden because he gave the first weapons package to Ukraine. And so we have to resist against that and say, like, I think you've
Starting point is 00:25:46 mentioned this before, that it seems like Donald Trump has these instincts where he's right. He came out and said that Jeb Bush, his brother lied us into the Iraq War. That was the best moment he ever had on the campaign stage. And even today when he talks about Israel, like he celebrates the Abraham Accords, but then like in the same sentence, he goes, but I'm not an enemy to Iran. Like we were very friendly with them and like we struck them a couple of times. And so like part of me, and maybe this is naive, but part of me is trying to be really optimistic and hoping that Trump just hates war. And, you know, he came out and he says he wants to stop the dying in Ukraine.
Starting point is 00:26:31 And so maybe he just has surrounded himself with people like Tom Cotton who are saying, well, the way you avoid war is by doing what we've done in the past and whatever. But if we can propose alternative solutions to this, maybe he'd listen. And I think you're doing a great part in amplifying that. I mean, I remember very early in the Ukraine war, like I was on my college campus with my student group. We would go out on campus and we'd have posters and we'd ask, do you support the war in Ukraine? And we'd try to have a dialogue. And at that time, very early in the war, it was hostile out there. And I truly believe libertarians and yourself had
Starting point is 00:27:11 a very strong influence, and it's hard to measure, but a very strong influence in pushing the needle. You went on the largest platform, Joe Rogan's podcast, and you were talking about how this war was provoked by the United States with the 2014 coup. And so I think, I think we shouldn't take that for granted and we should use our platform to try to get these candidates to accept our views or at least entertain them. Yeah, it was, it was an interesting experience because this was like, it was still the old Twitter when the first episode of Rogan, where I went on, it's like I was on like right before Vladimir Putin invaded.
Starting point is 00:27:53 And then like the next time I was on was like a few months into the war. And the clip of me talking about it went like super viral. Um, and you know, his show is just as such a huge audience. And it was still old Twitter. And I got like, I think I've never gotten before or since, like it, the amount of blue check journalists who were like furious with me and all types of, you know, like name calling and stuff. And, uh, you know, other than the puppet of Vladimir Putin, and I'm spewing Russian propaganda and
Starting point is 00:28:26 like like Joe Scarborough and all these people were like coming after me. And I do remember thinking like even at that moment being like, OK, like they're freaking out because their position is so vulnerable here. And the truth is that it's something we all got to keep in mind, particularly for people who listen to this show and for people just in our world, like the people who listen to Tom Woods and Scott Horton and stuff like that and read their books, is that there's still so many people
Starting point is 00:28:55 who this has never been explained to. And it's this weird, it's not like there's anything that, like I happen to have these relationships and I get on some of these big platforms, but it's kind of easy in a weird way because it's just like so many people just don't know this story. And it's a really interesting, really compelling story. Once you like just tell it to people, it's actually very hard to argue with. Um, but yeah, I think, I think,
Starting point is 00:29:18 and certainly I'm just a small part of it, but I do think you're right that, um, a lot of people on our side of this conflict were able because unlike with previous wars, like the internet platforms are just so much bigger and they're so much less controlled by three letter agencies that we were able to kind of get our side of this story out in a way that just wasn't true with, with earlier wars, like where it just didn't get out until much, much later.
Starting point is 00:29:48 And the disaster was so apparent. But now I do think the war in Ukraine and the needle moving, and there's a lot of people who played major roles in this. I mean, Glenn Greenwald was incredible and like a lot of other people like that. But yeah, I do think after the story kind of got out, you saw a lot of people move in a direction of being much more suspicious of the conflict. Yeah. I mean,
Starting point is 00:30:11 and I think that that's why you've been able to reach like the young Turks and people on the left as well as like, like you were so right about Ukraine to right wingers and it was so obviously a bad war to right wingers. And now this war on Israel's popping off and it's so obviously a bad war to right wingers and now this war on Israel's popping off and it's so obviously wrong to left wingers. So you've been able to kind of bridge the gap and you've been able to like communicate that like this is the consistent libertarian position. And I think you're absolutely right that people haven't heard these ideas. After I went to the rally, the Trump rally
Starting point is 00:30:44 on Friday, I came back and I was like telling the whole story. Cause Donald Trump called out us at the convention. He said, there's a great libertarian standing over here. Why don't you stay? Yeah. And, and our candidate stood up and he was like, yeah, this great guy. We're all libertarians here.
Starting point is 00:30:59 And so I came back in my, my family, uh, asked like my grandpa, he's a big Trump supporter and my cousins, they were like, well, what is the libertarian? And I said, well, you know how like conservatives, they claim to be for limited government, like just apply that to foreign policy, you know, like we shouldn't be sending money to foreign countries when our country's struggling. And they're like, they're just nodding along. Like they haven't heard this. And I, you know, there's this tendency in libertarian circles to feel like we have to like water down our message to get elected or whatever.
Starting point is 00:31:30 And I really think that we need to follow the Ron Paul model, which is like he went up on stage and said something extremely unpopular. He told people what blowback was. And I'm sure people in the audience at the time were like listening and they were like really grappling with that. They were conflicted because they had heard a story completely opposed to that their whole life. And then over time, they actually contended with those ideas and were converted.
Starting point is 00:31:59 And that's how Ron Paul became who he is today and why he has millions of followers. So I think we should, we should use that model and not look at data, like not look at voter data and what people believed yesterday and what they were polling and polling in the political polls and what they cared about yesterday, but like try to anticipate what they might care about in the future and, and, and try to convince them to care about these ideas.
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Starting point is 00:33:30 but only for a limited time when you go to moinkbox.com slash P OTP. All right, let's get back into the show. So yeah, I couldn't agree with you more. And like in terms of the Defend the Guard Act and its popularity, like Donald Trump would be reaching Republicans around the country. I don't know if you saw this, the Republican
Starting point is 00:33:52 GOP in Texas, they sent out an internal, I don't know what you call it, an internal resolution or an internal poll on their ballot to see whether their supporters support Defend the Guard. And I think one point, I think it was like 1.8 million people voted on it. And they came back with 80 some percent supporting the bill. And that's like one of the largest Republican parties in the country. They said they support the bill. And the larger context of that is that they're also having a standoff with the federal government regarding their southern border. And they were trying to deploy national guardsmen at the southern border to put up fences and stuff to prevent what they perceive to be an invasion.
Starting point is 00:34:41 And so I wrote this article with that in mind. And I tried to have some intellectual honesty where I was saying, you know, this is the libertarian argument for it. We're, you know, we're, I think you put it this way that we're bleeding heart libertarians, we care about war, we care about foreign policy. But if you care about the border, and that's your biggest issue, you need to get behind the Defend the Guard Act because the constitutional vision of the National Guard is that they are the state militia. And the constitution sets out that there are only three purposes for which the federal government can federalize National Guard, and that's to respond to an invasion, respond to an insurrection, or enforce the laws of the union.
Starting point is 00:35:23 And currently, these endless wars are unconstitutional. They have not been passed by like an official law of the union. So they're unconstitutional and the states retain authority outside of that. So that would be the kind of conservative argument for this. And there are many cases where deployments of National Guard overseas conflicts with the state's interests. During Hurricane Katrina, 3,000 National Guard troops were over in Iraq and Louisiana, and they had to bring National Guard troops from other states to come help. There was a similar story with the Florida National Guard. During the Ukraine War or like right before they started going to Ukraine to train Ukrainian soldiers at the time that there were hurricanes in Florida. So I think the most recent case is this border crisis where a lot of conservative red states perceive them there to be an invasion and like a disaster that we should be focusing on at home, but
Starting point is 00:36:33 instead they're over in Syria and they're being attacked and they're being injured. So that's the conservative case for this bill. Or just like how much as you're saying this, it's is that not just the antithesis of America first, like the idea that we have these major problems here, but sorry, we can't deal with them because we've got our boys helping prop up some government in a faraway country that we're trying to install there. It's like just it's the definition of America first would be opposing that and supporting this. And, you know, to your,
Starting point is 00:37:05 to your point about what Ron Paul was able to do by kind of saying some unpopular things. And it's look, I've, I've experienced this in my career and a lot of it's just because I learned the lesson from him. I remember hearing a Dan McAdams said once, and he was kind of talking about, I believe the topic he was talking about is like when the Ron Paul revolution energy kind of died down and the Trump movement kind of picked up. And it was like, he was like, you know,
Starting point is 00:37:36 what Dr Paul always says is like in these moments when there's kind of the, you're in a storm here, it's like you just hold on to your principles and tell the truth about what you're seeing in front of you. And I remember being like, yes, because I was at the time, I was just starting to like get a little bit of an audience going and just starting to get some traction with my podcast. And it always felt to me like it was like, you know, I started I believe I started this podcast in 2012. I took a break from it for a little bit
Starting point is 00:38:07 and then came back in 2013 and I've basically been going ever since. But so there was this weird timing where like the Ron Paul revolution ended and then I started and it was kind of like, oh man, am I like preaching this thing that's already had its heyday and is now over? And like, I was a little nervous about that. Like, well, what do I do? Like,
Starting point is 00:38:27 I don't know. Is there going to be an audience for this? Is it just dwindling down more and more? And then like what, you know, what's the future going to be like for me? And that, that, when I heard him say that, that really like, I was like, yeah, okay, that's right. I just tell the truth, just do that. And, and what's happened over the years is that it's kind of like a thing where it's my advice to people who are in this world, to you, to other people like you in our world, where it's like a low time preference thing.
Starting point is 00:38:56 It's like the thing is that what happened with Ron Paul is that when he blew up in 2008 and the internet was kind of blowing up with him, you could go back and look at all these like video montages of all the shit he was saying in the seventies and the eighties and that, and they aged so well. They all, it was like, Oh man, like he was talking about how like we're going to provoke like a hatred against us and we're going to be dealing with blowback and terrorism before we were. And then he was talking about how artificially low interest rates were going to lead to bubbles in the housing market. And you're like, oh, this all aged so well.
Starting point is 00:39:29 And so much of the energy I have now, so much of that, the, um, like the, the success that I've had is because people go like, Oh, but look, he was against lockdowns in March and April. And this is like when it was unpopular at the time. People were like, what do you mean you're against lockdowns? Like there's this virus we know nothing about. Like what, and it's just like, whether it was a Russiagate and the war in Syria
Starting point is 00:39:54 and the war in Ukraine and COVID and all this stuff, it's just like, it does pay off ultimately. Like there is real currency in having a track record that you build up over time. And it's, it was very difficult for me in my twenties to see that, in my forties now it's just like, oh, okay,
Starting point is 00:40:16 yeah, yeah, this now it makes a lot more sense. But that's, that's one of the real like values in, in telling the truth too. And again, That's one of the real values in telling the truth too. And again, it's the only strategic advantage
Starting point is 00:40:28 that libertarians have. It's all we have is that we're right about this stuff. That's our superpower and that's it. We don't have the advantage that a lot of others have, which is that like, oh, really powerful, concentrated interests are gonna love this and get behind it. So we don't have that, but we do have,
Starting point is 00:40:44 it's so beautiful in a way is like, what we have is that this is all true. And, and just like, you know, people say it rings true. The truth just has a ring to it. It has a feel that grasps people. And even if you're saying something really unpopular in the moment, it's like, tell the truth. It's going, the truth always ages well. Yeah, absolutely. And like, so when, when the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago, I went to YouTube and I found this old clip of, uh, Ron Paul in 1988. And now I see it everywhere circulating on, on Twitter because of this. Um, but I clipped it and it's Ron Paul talking about how the FBI was used to go after political opponents and anti-war activists. So I posted that on Twitter and it blew up because it was like the night of the raid
Starting point is 00:41:31 on Mar-a-Lago. And it's this weird thing where like the GOP now is, if Ron Paul were running and we didn't have to deal with the Trump factor, like with where they're at right now, Ron Paul would absolutely be the candidate. And you go, and you know, that's ignoring like the inner party politics and whatever, like they might steal it from him. But like, if you go to my grandfather, my grandfather is a huge Trump supporter. And if you go to him and you say, you know, I don't think the FBI should be moved from Texas to Washington, DC, I think you should get rid of it. He would absolutely agree with you. And so, and Ron Paul is like, if you go on Twitter now, it's
Starting point is 00:42:12 hashtag Ron Paul is right. It's trending all the time with like right-wingers. And it's absolutely true. And I think that that's resonating with people. And that's why I think that you've, I really think that the reason libertarians have the power they have is largely because of you and what you've been doing on all of these large platforms. Well, thank you. I mean, I like to think that I've played a part in it, but obviously there's also a lot of,
Starting point is 00:42:41 you know, I'm also armed by so many of our great thinkers, you know, and like I, it's really the truth, like I claim no originality in almost anything that I'm doing. I mean, like, I guess I'm, I'm kind of good at, like, thinking of my own example or my own way to say it. But I'm, I'm armed by Ron Paul and Tom Woods and Scott Horton and, and all of the more and more now these days, I mean, all the Dave DeKamp and Connor Freeman and Kyle, all these guys are just like so great. So they, you know, they, it helps a lot that we have this whole kind of camp. But look, even just another example is just coming to me as we're talking about this, but like Thomas Massey being like the lone voice who was against the crazy spending bills in 2020. And at the time,
Starting point is 00:43:27 Donald Trump sending people to attack him and him taking all this heat, but who, what right winger now is going to like look back at that and not go, yeah, okay, right. He was right about that. This did lead to like this disastrous price inflation that we're living under. And so it's, it's just, uh, we're in such a unique moment. And I know that, uh, there are some people. Like say in the libertarian party who, uh, are a little bit resistant to kind of like the idea of working with, uh, Donald Trump or trying to persuade Donald
Starting point is 00:43:59 Trump, um, but I do think it's kind of like, you know, we're in this very unique moment. We have this, uh, this kind of potential and what you want to just keep doing the same thing. I mean, I'm like, I'm not saying this, that this Angela's kind of maneuvering here is flawless. Um, but it's like, it's something pretty impressive. It's something different than we've ever had before. And what do you, what do you really think the answer here is to have a real impact is to just say vote for Chase and, and, you know, ignore the, the disgust impulse that you feel inside of you when you see his COVID posts or something like that. It's like, I, that doesn't seem to be a winning strategy to make.
Starting point is 00:44:41 Well, and, and like, and I don't want to bash on him too hard, but when Chase Oliver got elected at the convention, he went up on stage and criticized the fact that we even invited Donald Trump to the convention. And then he said something, the effect of no real libertarian would serve in a Trump administration or in the Trump cabinet. And I'm like, are you kidding me? Like if we, if we could get Scott H Horton if we could get Donald Trump to pick Scott Horton to be the Secretary of The state and I'm not I'm under no illusion that this would happen
Starting point is 00:45:12 I'm just saying if we could that would be the best thing that he's ever done ever and like why wouldn't you want to influence his? Policy so, you know, I agree with you there's like this Trump derangement syndrome in the party. And the reason I am willing to talk to them and to appeal to them is because Michael Heiss has put it this way to me, that we're in competition with the right in a way that we're not with the left. Like, the left, we already know where they stand and they're not coming our direction. But like the example of my grandfather is perfect. Like you tell him we got to get rid of
Starting point is 00:45:50 the FBI, he agrees. And so there's a, I think what we're doing here is it's larger than Trump himself. Trump represents a larger movement and when he says good things, they hear it. And that's what matters to me. I'm, I'm under no, like, I don't think that, I don't think that if Donald Trump gets in to office in November, that, you know, all of our problems are going to be solved. That's I, I'm, I do not believe that. I kind of agree with, you know, you've said this in the past that the federal government's lost and we have to focus on the state level.
Starting point is 00:46:25 And so what I care about is influencing the culture. And if we can have people like Trump, who has got the biggest megaphone in the world, if we can have him adopting our ideas, I think that's the quickest way to do it. And, and to your point about like Ron Paul and the truth here, like I think it's in Trump's interest to realize that the foundation and like kind of the background for, for why his movement was so popular is because I think he actually did pick up on this like dissident right wing strain that Ron Paul started. I think Ron Paul, after the time you were talking about the time where the Ron Paul revolution kind of dwindled and it was like, you know, thrown under the rug
Starting point is 00:47:15 for a while, um, we, we had the Obama administration and then they, you know. Yeah. Uh, but, but what happened is Donald Trump comes back and he basically appeals to this populist energy that I think Ron Paul represented. And it wasn't grounded in principle in the same way. But I think a lot of Ron Paul supporters ended up supporting Trump and the GOP. And I know you've talked about this with Tucker Carlson before that like, like if it hadn't been for Trump's 2016 race, we likely wouldn't have a GOP that is opposed to the Ukraine war.
Starting point is 00:47:50 And in the same way without Ron Paul's 2008 and 2012 elections, I really do not think that we would have had Trumpism. And, and so I think Trump needs to realize that like Ron Paul, libertarians are his allies and, you know he should really listen to him because it's in his interest like like with the inflamed inflation issue for instance if if he gets in there and he believes that he has to the way he gets through this crisis is by lowering interest rates I mean that's gonna come back to hurt him so he'll get some like Ron Paul Ian
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Starting point is 00:49:43 Yeah. You know, in, in a way, he kind of got rescued a little bit by losing the election in 2020. You know, because then it's easy to like blame the price inflation on Joe Biden that we all know was coming one way or the other. And so there's something to that. But look, I remember in 2016, just to back up your point, because this is kind of forgotten history,
Starting point is 00:50:05 but I remember it because I pay attention to this stuff, but in the campaign, in the Republican primary in 2016, it wasn't just Donald Trump and Ted Cruz at one point, and maybe one other guy, I can't remember, definitely the two of them started talking about auditing the Federal Reserve. one other guy, I can't remember, definitely the two of them started talking about, uh, auditing the federal reserve. And I'm, I'm sorry, there is no freaking way that comes up without Ron Paul. There's only one reason, but like this had never come up in Republican,
Starting point is 00:50:34 uh, national politics before it was only because they were like, Hey, I do remember that there were like, you know, hundreds of thousands of people screaming and the fed and that's some red meat we can throw in a close race. Every like little constituency matters. And so they were playing to that. And I think that, you know, a lot of the stuff that libertarians really ought to pay attention to also is that, look, Donald Trump started with the birther stuff about Obama not being a real, you know, really born in America and all of this. And like, and he had even like kind of flirted
Starting point is 00:51:13 with 9-11 conspiracies and then certainly flirted with a lot of other conspiracies. And part of it is just that people had been waking up to the point where I'm not saying the birther stuff is true or anything like that. I really don't know anything about it to be honest, but the point is that people were so suspicious of government and they were so suspicious that you could tell them like, you know, it's like, you see this online now. You could tell people that like, uh, this goes, oh,
Starting point is 00:51:39 you know, it's, it's a whole basically ring of pedophiles who are running the government and, and people are like, I'm listening. What do you have on that? And there's something, like if libertarians don't see an opportunity in that, and then some libertarians are even silly enough to like mock people who believe in some of these conspiracies. Like I'm not even saying you shouldn't maybe try to correct them and try to be like, hey, let's focus on this. Here's a really good conspiracy that we have really strong evidence for,
Starting point is 00:52:06 but there is no question that there has been a huge growth in the, um, just lack of, of not even just lack of trust. I mean, that's not, that's like under selling it. It's like the people's understanding of how truly evil the ruling elite are and how much they are against you. How much they hate your guts and are working against your interests. That's a tremendous opportunity for libertarians. And the other thing I would just say to keep in mind on the theme of kind of low time preference here is that Donald Trump is old. And this is it.
Starting point is 00:52:45 Even if he wins, he only gets four more years. He's not, if he loses, he's not running again. That is not going to happen. He's not going to run at 85 or whatever. And there is this real question of like, where the future of this Trumpian movement goes, I certainly don't see the populist streak dying. It's going to be who can kind of pick up that mantle. And so now you start going like, oh, I know a lot of people thought like 2024
Starting point is 00:53:10 was the year, but really, 2028 is really perhaps going to be the year where like we can make some real noise. And if that's the case, you go, who's left to inherit this? You know, like if you ask them, the number one person is Tucker Carlson and he's not doing it. He's not interested in going into politics. At least I don't think so. And so it's like, and even if, and even if he was, I mean, don't get me wrong, I would think it would be amazing if Tucker Carlson would run for something. He'd have my support. But like you do realize that it's like, Oh,
Starting point is 00:53:41 okay, there's this new like coalition forming and libertarians in many different ways have a real seat at this table. So let's, I'm not saying I have all the answers of what we should do, but like, Hey, let's explore that. That seems to be the best prospects for Liberty that we could possibly hope for. Yeah. I mean, if the, if the options between Nick Fuentes, uh, Tom Cotton, or Vivek Ramaswamy defining what, what, what America first means in 2028, like we should absolutely be pushing for Vivek Ramaswamy if, if the Overton window between the libertarian party is, uh, to the libertarian party and
Starting point is 00:54:22 the GOP is, uh, Vivek to you vague to you. Like we're doing really good. And I wanted to go back to another example of where the populist like MAGA base is kind of copying around Paul. Like recently, just in the last like two weeks, the Republican base has been pointing out that Kamala Harris stole Trump's no taxes on tips. And Hunter Dorensis, he's a great guy from the Libertarian Institute and he's great, bring our troops home. He sent me this like business card from the 2012 Ron Paul campaign. And it's on my Twitter feed, where it's no taxes on tips. And he was the guy who introduced this original legislation.
Starting point is 00:55:05 So everything that is popular now, everything that is great, like Thomas Massey's, get rid of the Department of Education bill. That was Ron Paul. Like all of this is Ron Paul. And I think that we have a real unique opportunity when you look at the culture
Starting point is 00:55:22 and just the pulse right now where we have an opportunity to influence it. And I think a real problem in the Libertarian Party in particular is that we have a lot of people who just aren't tapped into political realities at all. They have no idea that, you know, what people are listening to. They aren't listening to your podcast on Joe Rogan.
Starting point is 00:55:44 They aren't listening to your podcast on Tucker Carlson They're not watching people change their minds like actively they have no idea where we're at and A lot of them also believe that they can get a libertarian elected in November So they're just not living in reality and and so that is a real problem but if if you are grounded in reality like I think you are sort of amazed at what's happening and like, you know, you might not like Trump, there might be a lot of Trump derangement syndrome out there, but I think we have an opportunity to at least like help guide it,
Starting point is 00:56:14 guide this America first, uh, MAGA crowd in the future. And I hope to influence it a little bit. Yeah, look, man, I mean, I'm, I, I know that I, I got some, uh, some libertarian guys a little bit angry at me, Yeah, look man, I mean I I know that I got some some Libertarian guys a little bit angry at me, which I do I think that uh Look, I'm not saying this means I'm right about everything But I I think I would not be doing my job if I didn't bother Libertarian sometimes like that's you know what I mean? Like I don't know what exactly my role in this whole thing is, but it's not just to tell you what you want to hear already.
Starting point is 00:56:48 I mean, okay, if we're the group that has, you know, my like worldview, and you know, we share a theory and we're consistently losing while the state is consistently winning, I shouldn't just be telling you what you want to hear all the time. That doesn't sound right to me. But I was down in Nashville and I was doing a podcast and someone asked me a question about something about the Libertarian Party. And one of the things I said was just like, it like disgusts me how obsessed so
Starting point is 00:57:17 many people in the party get over just party issues. And, you know, I mean, like, obviously, like over the last few years, I took part in the caucus wars and I, you know, like went to battle with all this stuff. But if you, like, if you listen to my show throughout any of those years, that was never what I was leading with. It was like, maybe like once every couple months, there'd be an episode. We were talking about like what happened when they tried to steal New Hampshire or something like that.
Starting point is 00:57:46 But I was talking for all of 2020 and 2021, these years where we were in those caucus wars, my shows were about the lockdowns and the COVID regime and like all the stuff that that mattered. And so I'll tell this quick like a story, but I, so I remember in, um, I want to say maybe it was 2022, I think it was early 2022. Um, I was out in Arizona at the state, uh, libertarian party convention and, uh, the two keynote speakers were, um, it might've been 21, but the two keynote speakers were me and Joe Jorgensen.
Starting point is 00:58:23 And so she spoke before me and her, the theme of her talk was lessons from the 2020 campaign. And she just gave this whole speech about how great the campaign was. And it was great because, um, uh, they, if you looked at the budget, you know, the amount of dollars that every vote cost them, you know, Gary Johnson's campaign actually cost more per vote
Starting point is 00:58:52 and therefore they were like the best bang for your buck of every campaign. And she told the story about how they got the bus for a really good deal. And so they could campaign around on this bus and they were just talking about, and it was just all about her campaign and what, and I'm sitting there in the back of the room with Scott Horton,
Starting point is 00:59:08 just like furious and it's not even anything against her. Like I never had anything against Joe Jorgensen. Well, this was before she lied about me on Patrick Bette David show, but I, at the time I didn't have anything against her. Um, but it was just like, Hey, you re you're, you love Liberty and you ran for president in 2020. And not once did you mention anything about what happened to the country that year. Like, how is that not like what?
Starting point is 00:59:35 You're talking about your own like budgetary issues? And I'll tell you, man, and if this like angers some LP members, then that's okay. But watching people over the last month, and there's a few people I'm thinking of who are like obsessively posting on Twitter every day about the latest thing that happened at the LNC meeting and the latest thing about this or that and like, well, I'm leaving this caucus and I'm joining this caucus and I can't stand for this and you're like guys the country has gone through like this insane transformation we have witnessed in assassination attempt and a coup over the last few weeks and you're obsessed with this I mean I'm not even saying like they're not just like I'm obsessed with this
Starting point is 01:00:21 local activism I'm doing like good more power to you if it's that, but over the, the like political happenings of this third party is just guys refocus and think about what actually matters here. And if you're just, if you're just in theory and third party politics, that's just, there's something about that that really seems not right to me. And why would anybody else want to support you when you're like, first priority isn't what's happening to them. What's happening to the nation that they live in? It's just that none of that
Starting point is 01:00:54 makes any sense to me. Well, if I can, I just, I want to make a case to like Mises caucus supporters who were maybe upset at you for not running. And like, I think there were a lot of people who were, became disaffected after Chase won and they thought that it was like we had lost and it was the feed of the takeover or whatever. But you know, like since then I've actually been reinvigorated and part of that is because of I think the, the vision or the potential that I've seen, because of what happened in DC.
Starting point is 01:01:27 I mean, because of the fact that Vivek, RFK, and Trump were there, I mean, we have like real political leverage in this country to influence culture. And we should not be partisans. We should not be social party warriors. I think that's a term that's thrown around. And I'm trying to give, I guess, a model of the strategy that libertarians should be following in Montana and what we've done with the Defend the Guard Act and getting these endorsements. And I highly recommend any Mises caucus member who hasn't read the decentralized revolution vision document to
Starting point is 01:02:06 please do that because this was written by Michael Heiss and it's just phenomenal. And I want to remind everyone that the presidential election was never the primary goal that we were hanging our hat on. The presidential election was always a funnel to redirect people toward this long term vision, which was pointed at issue coalitions at the local level that would build trust with Republicans and Democrats, which is what we're trying to do in Montana. And it's how we were able to get a Senate candidate, a US Senate candidate to endorse, defend the guard is because we are actually going out and we're actually promoting issues that people care about and exercising power and influence as a libertarian party. And so I would highly recommend people to look at what we're doing here and read that document and
Starting point is 01:03:03 realize that if we want to have influence, it's got to be, I do think that it has to be at the local level. And I do think you need to start, like, if you care about this country, like, start actually trying to get things like Defending Guard passed and care about things that matter. I think that's another thing that puts us apart from the Pragues or whatever you want to call them in the party is that, like, they're, they almost forget, like forget the fundamental Austrian idea that people have ordinal rankings of values. So they forget what issues people care about. I think the Austrian strategy or the Mises-Cockett strategy in a sense is paradoxically the most radical and most practical thing because we're, we care about like, you know, Roth, Roth Bardian libertarianism, Hoppe libertarianism, Ron Paulian libertarianism, like the most consistent and extreme libertarianism, but we're only emphasizing the things that we think people care about and
Starting point is 01:03:59 that, you know, we're talking about war, we're talking about inflation, we're talking about like the political corruption, the fact that a presidential candidate was just almost assassinated on live television. And instead, the old guard wants to treat like, oh, well, prostitution is illegal in some states. They want to treat that at the same level, but it's like, we have to understand human psychology here. And the way you reach people is by understanding their preferences.
Starting point is 01:04:27 And, and I think that's what we're trying to do. Well, I mean, listen, I'll say this, we're over time and I got a rep, but it, you know, I don't want to pick on him because it's like a younger guy who wrote the piece, but I don't know if you saw, but there's this piece by Cato the other day about how Kamala Harris should like embrace open borders. And she has this opportunity to defend her immigration track record and, and stand up for the immigrants because after all they commit lower crime,
Starting point is 01:04:54 fewer crimes than native born Americans or whatever. And, and which, by the way, it's not even true, but regardless of that. Um, but I, I was like stunned by it where it's not just, look, you could disagree with me about open borders and you could be on the open border side or whatever. I disagree, but, but you're like, you're really going to dilute yourself to think that that would be a political winner. Like, why do you suppose she's not doing that? It's like, yeah, because she knows this would be a nine. And it's like, no, like
Starting point is 01:05:25 libertarians, you can't, we can't do this. You can't delude yourself into thinking that like the people's priorities or something totally different than what they are. And no, that is not where the American people are. You would not don't lead your campaign with open borders. It would be a, she'd literally collapse in the polls. If she came out, they're giving her advice that would Undoubtedly tank her campaign if she were to do it and it's just it's kind of something to see that and go like okay That that can't be our strategy for sure well and I think this strategy is really just about like facing political realities and then adapting to them like you acknowledge the libertarian party isn't
Starting point is 01:06:01 Gonna get a presidential candidate elected and like, like probably ever. You acknowledge that like, we're not going to get a gubernatorial candidate elected in a really long time. So how can we adapt? And so like, if you are an open border Libertarian, and you're facing reality, you say, Okay, well, this just isn't the time to move the needle on this. You say, How can I use this open border issue to pivot to other issues that are reachable? So you say, for instance, if you care about this immigration problem, you should care about the wars that cause refugee crises, you know, around the world. And then you actually get Republicans ears, and they're like, Oh, well, I care about the border. So maybe I should care about wars, too. So yeah, I think we have a serious problem in the party, but I'm, I'm glad that it seems to be moving in the right direction. Yeah, no. And I think there's a lot of things to be excited about. I mean, one of the things like I'm really excited about is like, uh, you know, just in terms of like the, um, which,
Starting point is 01:06:57 which what a presidential run was always supposed to be was like a speaking tour. And in terms of stuff like that, I do think that it's like, look, man, like, when, when Scott Horton it's like, look, man, like when, when Scott Horton's first book, uh, um, fools Aaron came out was like 2017, I want to say, or something like that, 2018 maybe. And, um, I mean, he had like no platform compared to what he has today. And like when provoked is so good and I can't wait for it to come out this is gonna generate enormously more reach like this is going to be the definitive
Starting point is 01:07:30 book on this war he was not in a position like that when when he wrote enough already and like that's a part because all of us have like kind of come up and like have a bigger following now than we did back then and like there's just there's a lot of stuff to be excited about. I hope people still are. We live in like crazy, amazing times. And yeah, I think the, uh, I think the prospects for Liberty are actually much stronger right now than they, than they were certainly when, when I was talking to you about when I was starting my podcast in 2013 or
Starting point is 01:07:59 whatever, like I'm much more optimistic about things right now. So I, I do agree with you on that. All right, I do have to wrap up there, but dude, we gotta do this again a lot more times. I really enjoy talking to you. Please tell people where they can go find your stuff and where they can support you. Yeah, find me at Emily and McCollum on Twitter and also you should subscribe to Human Reaction.
Starting point is 01:08:21 It's a, I just partnered with them. They're a great new podcast, a great group of guys over there. And they're very new, but they have grown in size exponentially. And the quality podcast, quality conversations, I just partnered with them. I'm going to start producing content with them. And I'd love to have you on as a guest when I start doing stuff. Absolutely. Give me a text message. I'm happy to do it. Thank you so much, Liam. Really appreciate you taking the time. All right, thanks for listening everybody. Catch you next time. Peace. you you

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