The Bulwark Podcast - 'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'

Episode Date: December 27, 2024

Do you have to pick a side in politics? That was the question Reason Magazine, the flagship publication of the libertarian movement, invited The Bulwark to debate. In a panel moderated by Reason features editor and Across the Movie Aisle co-host Peter Suderman, Sarah and Tim debated picking sides with Reason editors-at-large Matt Welch and Nick Gillespie. The debate was sharp, occasionally heated, enlightening, and definitely amusing. The results were . . . resounding. Watch for yourself.

I'm Peter Suderman. I'm going to be your moderator tonight. In full disclosure, I do work at Reason, but I also appear on a podcast that has run through the bulwark. So I'll try to be fair and not take sides. However, that might be a little bit complicated given our resolution, which is you don't have to pick a side in politics. So if I'm not taking sides, am I actually kind of taking sides?

I think that's the sort of thing that's going to come up in tonight's debate. Now, because this is a debate, there will be a winner. And that winner will be decided by you, the audience. The way this is going to work is there are going to be two votes. The first vote, you've either already voted or you should vote right now. And then there's going to be another vote

after the debate happens. And the team that wins will be the team that moves the most number of people towards their position. So if you have not yet cast your vote, please follow the instructions on the screen and vote now. As you do that, I want you to think just a little bit about the resolution before us tonight. What does it mean to pick a side in politics?

We are gathered here this evening in Washington, D.C. where national politics is dominated by two political parties that are constantly asking you to pick a side. When Americans go to the voting booth, most of them pull the lever for one of those two parties, and in the vast majority of races, one of those two parties wins. Fundamentally, voting in a democracy is about picking sides. The very structure of American politics all but forces you to do so.

And if you decide not to, are you throwing away your influence? Are you abdicating your democratic responsibility? Are you just shrugging your shoulders and saying, you know, it doesn't really matter who wins. But then there's the flip side of this. Doesn't picking a side make it harder to hold politicians accountable? It's often said that politics is a team sport.

But if you have already declared your allegiance to one team or another, what incentive is there for politicians to change? Shouldn't politics be about issues and policies and governance rather than teams and partisan victories. There's a reason that people often praise bipartisanship. Americans tend to like it when politicians work together for better policy and better government rather than against the other side, just so that their own team can win. And then there's that old saw about both sides.

Press critics love to trash journalists who engage in lazy both-sides-ing, in creating false equivalences. And look, sometimes that can happen. Both-sides-ing can be an easy way to duck controversy and avoid responsibility. On the other hand, just look at the dismal approval ratings for Congress and some of our recent presidential candidates. In the judgment of the other hand, just look at the dismal approval ratings for Congress and some of

our recent presidential candidates. In the judgment of the American people, both sides are often pretty terrible. So why pick one? To discuss these questions tonight, we have four top-notch debaters. From the bulwark, we have Sarah Longwell and Tim Miller. Tim is a former spokesperson for the Republican National Committee. Longwell is the publisher of the bulwark, where she hosts

the Focus Group podcast. For a reason, we have Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch, both of whom are editors at Larch. So if you haven't cast your vote, time's running out, time's running out. I think it's just about time to start the debate. So we are gonna start with opening statements from each of our debaters.

It's gonna go reason, bulwark, reason, bulwark, the whole night, reason will have the first word, the bulwark will have the last word. And we are going to start with Matt Welch who will be defending the proposition you don't have to pick a side in politics. That was tepid. Thank you everyone for coming out

to this lovely, lovely place and to spend your time with us. It's a bit of an unfair fight, not just because Reason is hosting this, but because of the proposition that you don't have to pick a side in politics. Of course, you don't have to pick a side in politics. We're not Cuba or even worse, Australia. We were not forced to vote.

We live our lives in the way that we want. And it makes sense. If you look all around you there are even at the most five alarm fire of an election like in 2020 one-third of people who are eligible to vote don't in a presidential election. They choose not to. Katherine Maggie Ward's very very happy about that. When people describe themselves to Gallup they've been asking people now for decades to self-describe. Do you sort of feel self-identified as a Democrat or a Republican or as an independent? Independence have won that poll month after month, every month since

2012 and for most of the months before that it usually polls somewhere around in the 40s, the earlier this year, 51% of Americans self-identified as an independent, rather than picking the side of a Democrat and Republican. And if you think about it, even for a half a second, it makes total sense because Democrats and Republicans really suck. They are very, very, very bad at what they do, which is like attempt to govern or manage the monopoly on the use of force through extracted taxpayer money and other

libertarian things but for example of the ways that governance sucks I know you people live in Washington DC so you might have heard that they're doing the annual Cromnibus thing right now or talking about it. This is a tweet from today from former never Trump heartthrob or occasional Mitt Romney, I think Tim worked for at some point, says, What does President Trump want Republicans to do? Vote for the continuing resolution or shut down government. Absent direction, confusion reigns. Can anyone spot the problem with that? Let's just like think about it for a second. This is, Trump is not the president. This is the job for Congress.

Mitt Romney is in that body and yet they don't do things like pass basic budgets. They wait for some scary president to sort of tell them or president elect to tell them what to do. And they've been doing this for year after year after year. When's the last time, Peter Suderman, that they used the Congressional Budget Act to pass their 12 appropriations bills?

There is a punchline to that story, I'm sure, but it's basically never. They don't do it anymore. It's not something that happens. You look around, anywhere you live, or at least anywhere I live, tends to be totally misgoverned by horrible democratic administrations.

I live in Brooklyn, New York, where if you drive down the street, you can like hide an entire Volkswagen in the potholes out in front of your street. And everyone is taxed up the yin yang and nothing works. Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, DC, these are not well-governed places. So it's a rational thing to not want to collude with

or somehow join one of those teams in spending your money really badly to do bad things and violate other people's rights and do it worse and worse year after year. But it's not to say that the inverse of what we're talking about is true. It's not me and Nick or Libertarians General saying it's bad to be in politics. There are perfectly good people on all sides in politics. And I'm glad that there are. I'm glad that there are people who are gonna be doing

good work in the Trump administration. Even the Lord knows I didn't vote for the Trump administration to go in. What I would like to suggest to all of us is that sometimes you can achieve those goals that you'll even those of us were cursed to pay attention to national politics. You can achieve those goals that you'll even those of us were cursed to pay attention to national politics. You can achieve political goals, sometimes better

through the outside, which Nick is going to talk about a little bit more. And you don't have to either apologize for your own side when they do misdeeds or to sit on your hands when you know they're doing something against your own desires. And this is what happens in politics again and again. It's morally corrupting in ways that we'll talk about more. And that is your four minutes.

So thank you, Matt. Well, since you brought up the Congressional Budget Office, I will just say that I am the moderator, which means I have the, which means I'm asking the questions, not answering them, but it has been about 30 years since we passed all 12 appropriations bills. which means I'm asking the questions, not answering them, but it has been about 30 years since we passed all 12 appropriations bills.

Sarah Longwell, would you like to make an opening statement? Step on up to the podium. I don't usually have notes for things, but I do this time. I read this to Tim before we got started, and he told me it was too mean. So I dialed it back a little bit. We'll see.

And actually, look, I actually kind of agree with you that I don't think voters have to choose. I listen to voters all the time. And one of the things I do, anybody who listens to the stuff around focus groups knows that I am a big defender of what people call somewhat derisively low information voters.

Because I believe that people should be able to go out and live their lives and not have to be obsessed with politics all the time, right? And if they decide that a quick scan of the candidates, choosing between them, neither one is going to materially make a difference in their life, then fine. They don't have to choose. But if you're a close political observer, or say, editor of a magazine devoted to politics,

with a clear lens of liberty and freedom, I think you should be capable of an accurate threat assessment with regard to which candidate would do the greatest harm to the freedom agenda. And look, I'll admit, I was always kind of a libertarian myself. I mean, then I grew up. But like I was a libertarian for a while. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Just kidding, just kidding.

And to be fair, I was sort of more like a right leaning independent who thought that I was, you know, nominally pro-choice. I was definitely pro-weed. And I was definitely pro-gay marriage. And I went and got one. So that made me sort of a libertarian when I was definitely pro-weed, and I was definitely pro-gay marriage, and I went and got one. So that made me sort of a libertarian when I was young here in D.C.

And I think where libertarians get in trouble is that they know perfectly well that Donald Trump presents the greatest threat to freedom and the American Constitution we've seen in our lifetime. And I'm just gonna throw a few at you just in case you don't believe me. Tariffs and hostility toward free trade. Corporate subsidies for favored industries,

which is anti-free market. Trump wants to strengthen qualified immunity and bring back stop and frisk. We hate that, libertarians. Deploying the military to suppress opposition and generally trying to crack down on protests. Attacking the free press. He's suing a pollster because he didn't like her poll

and threatening to pull broadcast licenses. Also hate that, libertarians. RFK's nanny state and threatening to pull broadcast licenses. Also hate that libertarians. RFKs, Nanny State and Food and Health. When I worked in Washington DC, we saw call it the Nanny State big brother. We were super against those things, but now we take the Democrats and we install them in our government to do those things.

These guys are, you know, Trump is generally supportive of right-wing culture war issues. Like, you know, we're against drag things. You know, these free expression things against trans people. He's increasing the national debt with spending increases. Donald Trump, everybody, they did the, they looked at it and Trump was gonna double the amount

that he was gonna raise the debt over Kamala Harris. He says he's going to execute drug dealers without trials. I mean, Kamala was a cop, but Trump says we're gonna execute drug dealers without trials, so cool. Letting states ban abortion rights, cozy relationships with dictators who are complicit in global repression,

deporting millions of immigrants being raids, via raids, weaponizing federal law enforcement to go after his enemies. He's doing that with Liz Cheney right now. One-year prison sentence for burning American flags. I definitely thought we were free speech as libertarians. He wants to expand executive power and limit checks on his authority.

Said he would suspend the Constitution straight up free speech as libertarians. He wants to expand executive power and limit checks on his authority. Said he would suspend the constitution straight up and then lied about the 2020 election and tried to overturn an election. So that's just to name a few of things. Other than that, how's the show, Mrs. Lincoln? So I think that, 40 seconds, but libertarians are often tribally of the political right

and they're addicted to heterodoxy for heterodoxy sake, which leads them to plead neutrality so they don't have to defend the side they've actually chosen. And this is my point. They do choose a side. They are perennially anti-democrats, and they're so anti-democrats that even when the biggest threat to freedom is standing right in front of them,

they can't acknowledge it clearly or with the right threat assessment, namely being, this is the biggest threat. Trump is the biggest threat. Nick tweeted recently that he was glad Kamala Harris lost. And so I'm saying you do choose, and when you are an editor of a publication or part of the political elite, you do choose. And when you are an editor of a publication or part of the political elite, you decide who you fire, who you hire, what articles you publish, what articles you spike. And when you make those choices, you choose a side.

And I will just end by saying the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality. Nick Gillespie? Don't step in the back. I told you to step in the back. Step up to hell. I want to say it's a good thing that I don't believe in hell. And I don't think anybody here does. I just want to point out, you know, what we just, what we've heard tonight

is one of the weakest, most pathetic arguments I've ever heard. And I'm talking about your opening remarks, Matt, of course. What I want to make the case for, you know, if you're talking about Trump and Harris, and that's the limit of your horizon, hit the bar now, okay? Because you were already lost in a fog. What I want to make the case for is saying that you don't have, I want to rephrase the proposition, you don't have to be a partisan, you don't have to pick a political party in order to make meaningful impact on social, political, and economic issues. Your right of exit from any given coalition is exactly the thing that helps keep that coalition

or that group or that movement focused on what they're trying to achieve. And I want to talk about that in the context of Martin Luther King, Gloria Steinem, and Bob Dylan. Forgive me, I'm a boomer. I have trilogies that speak to boomers. Martin Luther King Jr. was scrupulously nonpartisan in his political associations

because he knew the minute that he said, I'm a Republican, which would have made sense for a variety of reasons, or I'm a Democrat, which would have made sense for particular reasons, the civil rights movement and the cause that he cared about the most disappears. It becomes part of another special interest group. Gloria Steinem, who helped create modern feminism,

and I hope people here are feminists. Can we have it? Yeah. You know, it's a powerful movement. She pissed that away, maybe standing up, when she wrote her one free grope op-ed in the New York Times. And she said, you know what?

Whatever Bill Clinton does, it's OK, because it's more important that we back him rather than the other side, who was, what, Bob Dole, you know, around that time. And it reduced feminism and the feminist movement to a mere special interest group among Democratic, you know, the Democratic Party. And you lose power that way,

because then you're suddenly, your issue is not that important. And then, you know, there's Bob Dylan. How many of you like Bob Dylan? Oh boy. That's okay. Well, I was expecting a different crowd tonight, but you know, here's the thing.

Bob Dylan is arguably the most significant, certainly the most significant, certainly the most significant artist of the past 70 years, one of the biggest figures in American culture, was part of the civil rights movement, you know, was born again Christian, etc. Does anybody know what his politics are? And there it is, he's still making a huge difference in our lives continues to without being a rank partisan. Because what happens when you become a partisan

is you have to sign on and shut up in order to push the other side in the direction that they want. We might ask, is the bulwark more powerful now that it is so anti-Trump that it's going to align itself with every democratic cause that comes along? Or would it be better,

and I guess you guys were Republicans, right? So you could have stayed in the Republican Party and worked, you know, tried to work from within. I don't know, but you're not making your, your influence does not grow when you join a side in partisan politics for the most part. I think the proper stance is not to choose sides when it comes to Democrats and Republicans,

but to stand for principles and policy, not politicians and not partisanship. Thanks. Tim Miller. Feels like you clapped louder for Sarah. That's okay. I love being at the Howler Theater. I had some great jazz brunches here back in the day when I lived around the corner.

This is an awesome venue. Thank you for hosting us. I also love libertarians, by the way. Libertarians are so cute. They're so cute, you know, talking about the power of the state and all the terms. And I just, I really do. I enjoy libertarians. And I kind of, I was excited about doing this debate because I like to have fun.

And when I heard, when Peter told me about the premise, I was like, this is so silly and frivolous and libertarian. Like, I don't know, I can have a couple of drinks up here and we can talk about this. Because the reality is that grown-ups in politics have to make a choice about things. Politics is not about our self-actualization. It's not about deciding to feel good about oneself.

It is about the process by which we organize our society. We organize our society to best ensure that our fellow citizens are able to live and prosper and achieve their dreams and be free. And that's what we all have to do. We get together and we create these systems and these systems are imperfect and they're kind of broken and often they suck. They suck in Chicago and San Francisco as you point out. I live in Louisiana.

Let me tell you, not knocking it out of the park with the government down there. Potholes not great. So the systems suck. You end up with choices that aren't great. But if you want to have a say in the process, you have to pick a side. It doesn't mean you have to be a tribalist. It doesn't mean you have to unapologetically be on one side. I mean, last year I voted for a Republican that was running for governor of Louisiana

that was obviously going to lose because he was running against a worst Republican. But I chose a side in that race. In the presidential election, we obviously chose a side. And I thought that, as Sarah pointed out, one of the options was very clearly unacceptable. But in local elections, or mayor, for your city council, sometimes you're like, I don't know, I can't tell the difference between these two sides. And maybe it's not worth it to get involved. But most of the time, you make a choice that most aligns with your values and you think best will achieve positive results

for your fellow citizens. That is the whole point of politics. Like that is what we are doing here. And it's, I find it kind of weird that like this is the only area of life where you face two choices, they're imperfect and you decide that the high-minded thing is to say, I'm going to fuck it. I'm going to do nothing. I'm not going to decide. I mean, I think about,

for example, over Thanksgiving, I've got to go to rural West Virginia to see my in-laws. Not great. The in-laws are great. Rural West Virginia, not great. Also, the governing, also, they're not knocking out of the park either. But we can either drive 11 hours or we can fly and pay $1,000 and then drive two hours over the hills that make me nauseous where there's no cell phone service. Neither option's great. It's kind of like Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. It's not going to be like Jeff Landry and Sean Wilson. Neither option is great.

But I've got to decide. I could say no and not go see people for Thanksgiving, not involve myself in society, and that's fine, but guess what? Thanksgiving comes up the next November. I've got to decide again. If you are living in a neighborhood with a bad school district and you have children, you can say, well, I can pay money to send them to private school. Maybe I can afford that.

I can make that choice. Or I can send them to the public school that school. Maybe I can't afford that. I can make that choice. Or I can send them to the public school. That's kind of shitty. Those aren't great choices. A lot of people, that's a challenging choice. You can opt out and say, I guess I'm going to homeschool. But like the reality is you have to make a choice for your family. You have to make a choice that's better for your kids and your grandkids.

And that's what politics is. At the end of the day, you have to make a choice for what's gonna be better for you and the people around you. And it doesn't mean you have to put on a team jersey and defend everything that your choice does, but it does mean that you gotta decide. I flew.

We landed in Roanoke. It was really unpleasant. You will have an opportunity to ask questions of the debaters a little later. But now we're going to move into a segment where the debaters are going to be able to ask questions of each other. However, as the moderator, I'm going to take this opportunity to ask two questions first. And the first question is going gonna go to Matt and Nick, the reason side. So I think the strongest argument, or one of the strongest arguments that I heard

from the bulwark was that in the age of Trump, who is deeply anti-libertarian, and Sarah gave us this incredibly long list of anti-libertarian ideas and policies that Trump supports, don't you have to pick a side against him? Nick, Matt, what do you say to that? of anti-libertarian ideas and policies that Trump supports. Don't you have to pick a side against him? Nick, Matt, what do you say to that? I wrote a magazine cover story called The Case Against Donald Trump.

So I might be a little bit ill-suited or perhaps properly suited to answer the question, which is to say that nothing about the proposition here is that you can't decide which candidate is better or worse. Decide all the time. I vote happily all the time. I make lots of decisions, and I have an unblemished record of never voting for whoever wins as president, and I will surely have that for the rest of my life.

We should just poll you and then find out who's gonna win, but it's somebody else. I agree. My idea... What's the anti-keys? Yeah, I idea- Does Nate Silver incorporate you into his models? I can't speak for Nate Silver. But choosing a side is ultimately, if you have a team that you're carrying water for, that puts you in the awkward position

of saying either that the 2016 election was rigged or sold by social media companies or the 2020 election was rigged or stolen by social media companies, or the 2020 election was rigged or stolen by social media companies, it turns you into a maroon. Okay, so to the whole work. Can I rebut that just briefly? I just think it's a broader point. I don't think that it turns you into a maroon

to have to decide between options and to identify what the worst thing would be for values that you care about, whether it be freedom or something else. Like, again, I gladly chose Kamala Harris. When Joe Biden was going to be the nominee this time, I was going to happily choose Joe Biden. Sometimes you have to pick one that is obviously better, that is obviously preferable.

I think Joe Biden was very selfish to decide to run again. I think he has made some mistakes I really disagree with. But here is where... And yet, it was pretty easy. And I criticized him publicly. I wasn't like, oh, I love everything about him. We said this publicly all the time. Well, this may... I don't know if this fits into the constraints of the topic or what not, but the fact of the matter is, is like, yeah, you can vote for whoever you want. If you decide to be, if you pick a side and you become a tribalist, which seems to be the case of Republicans and Democrats now, that they are like, okay,

I got to buy all in. No, you can't brook the orthodoxy of the party, which is one of the reasons why Joe Biden was running. Even though it was clear that he was past his ability to function. I mean, he is he I guess he's still president. But it you know, if if we actually lived in a world where instead of picking sides and saying we've got to win the next election or else extinction, there probably would have been a different Democratic candidate. And also after he was unmasked as unfit for office, there would have been some kind of Democratic primary or something like that. So to get back to this question of nobody saying like you shouldn't vote or I'm not saying you shouldn't vote. I love voting. Like Matt, I have an unblemished record of never voting for anybody who wins at any level of any election, going back to my third grade vice president election. But it doesn't mean you don't participate and you don't vote and you don't voice things. But it's, you know, one of the reasons this election

was so screwed up is precisely because people pick sides and we're like, no matter what, I've got to beat Donald Trump, so I'm going to stick with Joe Biden no matter how long and how hard I have to drag him into the podium. Yeah. I mean, uh, I don't know that there was anybody who was losing their, you gotta got some bulwark and P people here to the point of much of their annoyance. Nobody yelled louder about Joe Biden deciding to run again than I did, because

it was all over the data that voters didn't want him to. And so the idea, and I mean, it's interesting, I think Matt and I might end up agreeing more than I thought we would, because I don't think what we're talking about right now, or I did not take this proposition to mean that voters don't, can't sometimes decide that they don't like either option. I took it really to mean, what is our responsibility as people who other people look to

for political analysis and judgment? And my beef with sort of libertarians in general is, I think because they have been tribally of the right, they found themselves unable to go hard against their tribe, actually. And I think they got boxed into a place where they felt like they could criticize Trump enough for some CYA, but not to actually say,

and this is where I guess I don't understand your point, Nick, because it feels like, look, if we're talking about McCain Obama, yeah, man, either way, right? Choose who you wanna choose. I think the question is whether or not we decided that Donald Trump was something different, whether or not there was something unique

about the threat that he posed. I would say, and now, Matt, you did do a little bit of like classic both sides of some, because I don't feel like 2016, I didn't have to say that Donald Trump won because of, what did you say? I don't remember, but it's like, it was because of a Russian YouTube operation or Facebook or whatever.

Let's say a novel argument that you just came up with, right? Yeah, we haven't just spent eight years of hearing about Russia all the time, right? That Russian interference is the reason that Donald Trump won or the electoral college or whatever. But this is where you sort of... And those things happen. What?

What did you say? I mean, Russia did interfere in the election, and he did lose the popular vote significantly. So those things happen. Are people not allowed to say that? But also, we weren't there being like, Donald Trump's not president, and none of us nor did Democrats.

I mean, they did hashtag resist, but they weren't like, we're gonna march to the Capitol, storm in there with guns, and carry the banner of our leader Donald Trump while we do it. And so I think that the sort of very weak both sidesism is a plague of folks who are tribally of the right

and who lost the ability to, for the sake of their audience, be able to distinguish between something that was uniquely bad and uniquely a threat to your wheelhouse. Yeah, I disagree with you because I'm not of the right. I recently, I went to an event in Greenwich Village with Donald Trump and badgered him about the amount of money

that he added to the debt before COVID. And that doesn't even get into the fact that his COVID policies were disastrous. He's the reason we locked down. for COVID, and that doesn't even get into the fact that his COVID policies were disastrous. He's the reason we locked down. He disowns the vaccines that he helped produce in record time. I'm not, you know, of the right end.

I'm not covering my ass. Yeah, but so, you know, and Donald Trump presents unique challenges. He's a horrible human being. He is probably going to be something of a disaster, but he is not an extinction level threat. And if that is what we're going to hinge everything on is that Donald Trump uniquely among American presidents is the person who's going to bring it all down. I mean that is on you guys to explain why that didn't happen the first time. Well how do you know he's not an

extinction level threat? I would say this, if we flew back, if we got a little DeLorean and flew back to 2014 and we all came here before Shaw had totally gentrified and we met together at a bar and I said, Nick, I have this photo of you. I have this photo for you. And it was a photo of people, of Trump flags over the Capitol building, smoke above over the Capitol building, cops being just like attacked by people waving American flags, the blue line or Confederate flags. I showed you a series of photos, and I was like,

this will happen in five years from now, if we elect Donald Trump. You would have looked at me like I was an insane person. You would have looked at me and been like, no way. And then I'll say, get this. It'll happen, and then he'll run again, and you won't pick a side. could possibly happen. So you're definitely reaching the plurality

of American voters who voted for him and said, hey, you know what, Tim, I didn't. I'm not trying to convince you, but I'm just trying to tell you what happened, man. I'm just trying to tell you what happened. This is what happened. Okay, so we are about halfway through this segment, and it has been dominated by talk of Donald Trump,

and that's appropriate. I understand, yes. You invited the bulwark. Yes, because we invited the bulwark. That's right. We could have invited somebody else. Could have invited Mother Jones, talked about climate change. I'm so glad you're here.

I'm so glad, Tim. This is exactly the energy I wanted. But I also want to think about this. We could have talked about cancel culture. Oh, man. Let's keep it to the people who are actually on stage. And I want to see if we can shift this just a little bit to thinking beyond Donald Trump.

Again, I don't think it's inappropriate to be talking about him. He was president. He was elected president again. At the same time, this question isn't just about Donald Trump. And one of the things I heard from the reason side of this argument is that Americans obviously don't pick a side in many cases, something like what is a third of Americans don't vote because

they don't have to. And in some ways, that just supports the reason case that the Matt Welch argument here is that the that the resolution is correct. You don't have to pick a side. That's obviously true, simply based on the fact that many Americans do not. Yeah. OK, so let me tell you a quick story. I was in the Czech Republic one time and I was talking to Matt Welch loves the Czech Republic. I drink a lot of absinthe. I lit a bar fire one time accidentally. But when I was there, we got to go and meet some of the senators. Right. And it was I was very young. I was there, we got to go and meet some of the senators, right? And it was, I was very young. I was still a libertarian.

And I was, we were, we were there and I got to talk with a senator and she said, I knew that we had, it was after the Velvet Revolution, but, and she's like, I knew that we had reached a stable place when the number of people who were voting went down. And if you think about it, I move in a lot of democracy circles and they're always like, oh my God, people don't vote and it's terrible. And I'm like, actually voting's as high as it's ever been. Do we think things are going better? No, we don't. Because the reason that people are voting at such high rates now is because they think things are existential at every level across the board. And so I don't think that it's more voting as representative of us being in a better place.

I do think that an unwillingness to admit that Donald Trump presented such a unique threat that it was worth taking aside, sort of is at the center of this debate though. Yeah, I guess, and I'll just say, it is axiomatically true that you do not have to pick a side. So maybe I've conceded the debate already to the other side. So yes, like random people don't have to pick a side.

But what do you do now? Like Donald Trump won. So what do you do now? Well, I think... Do you fight and do you like push your causes? Yeah. So you're on this side of the debate. Nobody here, I haven't heard you, Matt, say, well, Donald Trump won, so now I'm going to become

a devotee of Donald Trump or his coalition. And I'm not going to become a devotee of the Democrats or their coalition. I think one of the ways of thinking about this, you brought up sort of like, what is the role for people who are editing political magazines or who are hyper-focused on this stuff, as all of us are in some way or another.

Um, I, being of a more libertarian mindset, or who are hyper-focused on this stuff, as all of us are in some way or another. I, being of a more libertarian mindset, don't like to tell people what their role should be, but I would like to defend my own, which is to say that it is journalistic. I find I... You have been saying that libertarians are, and like reason itself, is sort of a default right wing. I, like Nick, just reject that. I don't come from that. That's not where I-

I said, do you live in the tribal space of the right? Yeah, I don't. I live in fucking Brooklyn. I mean, intellectually, like your people. But no, intellectually as well. I wrote a book in 2008. There's the safe election to be on the right. I wrote a book called,

or the magazine cover for reason was, Be Afraid of President McCain, was what my contribution to that. As someone who's interested both in ideas and for having a sense of protection, similar to yours in one sense, like citizens should engage in self-defense against the people who would use power against us

or in our name. So that exploration for me is done best if I am open to everyone's experience and I am not inhabiting the role of telling people who they should vote for. I'm very happy and Reason has done this forever since 2004 with like the only publication who does it. We go through who the staffers are voting for,

all their terrible votes. I love that article. It's like, I voted for my acid dealer. Yes. I'm voting for Cornell West. You know, that was the one vote I didn't waste. Yeah. Vermin supreme all the way down.

In a way, it is picking a side. But there is some role to be had when you don't lose your mind all the time in partisan politics and the hysterias thereof. You can keep your wits about you and describe the actual threats as opposed to the imagined threats. And the actual threats many times are worse, but the way that a lot of journalists,

let alone people who are in opinion journalism, have reacted by sort of shrieking. They have dulled the ability to drill down into the things that are particularly threat level from Donald Trump. So I think there is a tactical advantage in having some amount of kind of comport mental neutrality as opposed to like telling people who they should vote for.

Sometimes the times call for shrieking. Sometimes the times call for shrieking. Sometimes the times call for shrieking. I don't know why shrieking isn't necessarily a pejorative. I think that there are a lot of very dangerous things that are happening. I feel like I can both shriek and keep my wits about me at the same time. And I think there are some very, very real and serious threats that face us over the next four years. If we get that absinthe, we can shriek and have our wits about us at the same time with the absinthe next door, I think.

Yeah, I'm voting for my absinthe dealer, not my acid dealer as a cocktail guy. So all right, let's move on to one final bit here for some cross talk. I want to I want you guys to talk about your insults to each other. Right. So, so, well, you basically just said that you're that these folks are kind of hysterical and kind of nutty and you guys have consistently implied that libertarians are childish. So, are libertarians childish? Are you hysterical and way over the top? I believe America is underreacting to the threat of Donald Trump. Deeply underreacting.

And I don't know what you mean by extinction level event. Like, does he have to nuke everything before we react? Or could he just refuse to accept the results of an election and do violence? Not like verbal violence, like the left kind of talks about that, not hate speech, like actually try to overturn an election. Is that not enough?

In which you say unfit absolutely. I would have thought that was a disqualifying action by Donald Trump. Okay, I would have thought the was a disqualifying action by Donald Trump. Okay, I would have thought the majority or the plurality of people. That was a key part of the effort then. Cause that's pro-act.

No, no, no, but what I'm saying is like, you know, he left office, he left office, you know, pathetically he can't admit that he lost in 2020, but he left office and he didn't glue keyboard, you know, keyboard letters down and things like that. But he just won. He sent a bunch of people into the Capitol to try to murder them. But he just won. Cops died. But he just won again in a fair and open election. Sure. And nobody, you don't see the Democrats being like, oh, well, now it's, you know, this was stolen.

Yeah. So what's your point? The point is that there's sometimes things that are worse than other things and you can observe them directly and decide So what do you do? What do you do now? Well, do you keep talking about how it's really a shame that Donald Trump won in the first place and then one Something that I'll do now in front of this audience I'd say look we have a we have a threat in front of us, and that is Cash Patel running the FBI. I think it's probably the most dangerous pick that is out there. He was a key. He's certainly not up to the task.

He's not up to the task, but it's also- Not up to the task. That sounds exactly the right, exactly how I'd describe it. He was a key member of the attempt to overturn the election. He's demonstrated that he wants to act with vengeance against Donald Trump's foes. He said to overturn the election. He's demonstrated that he wants to act with vengeance against Donald Trump's foes. He said so in the book. That goes against fundamentally, against people's freedoms. And look, there are libertarians in the Senate right now. Rand Paul. People should be saying,

you should, you have to choose. You have to pick a side. Do you think that Cash Patel should be the FBI director of this country or not? I would think that a magazine that would supposedly, I would assume would have some influence over the one libertarian senator might want to make some suggestions. Do you think that we want to pick a side here that that person is? I think that they're proactive. Yeah, but I highly recommend reading Reasons Jacob Sollum, who's written three pieces about Cash Patel over the last week, going into, at some meticulous detail,

all of these criticisms. And, you know, the question isn't what we should be doing, because we know what we're doing. We're fighting to limit the size, scope, and spending of government at every point, at every election, in every policy choice. What are you guys doing? And because you chose to be so anti-Trump

in a particular way that you don't have any leverage with anybody now. Oh, yeah. This is my favorite thing that you said, was when you accused us of not having influence as the libertarian. Oh, my god. Sick bird, bro.

Oh, my god. We don't have any influence. I'm living my best life, so thank you. OK, so we've got a whole bunch of really powerful Washington influencers up here. That's what we've established. Everyone on this stage is incredibly important. And that's why we are going to move on to our next segment,

which is incredibly important and incredibly serious. This is a big debate with real important issues, but it's also a reasoned debate. So maybe we're going to approach this in a little bit of a different way. We have asked each of our debaters to pick something, not a side, but a prop, and to make their case via a prop, something that they can show you

that they believe makes their case and they're going to get just 90 seconds to do it. It's basically going to be a tick tock video into their phone, except you are the phone. We are going to start with Nick Gillespie, who's going to go up to the podium and we're going to find out what his prop is. I have no idea what's going to happen here. It's a very, and I guess I'm not sure Nick does either. Yeah, okay.

Do we have a video to start or something? Please hit the hit the video. This is the day of 2004 with your host, Jim Lerner. Welcome to the cable access televised debate between a giant douche and a turd sandwich. We'll start with giant douche and a tit. Come on, let's see it action. We're being to the tits. Big bad turds to the douches.

Which do you love me? So that's a prophecy from a 2004 South Park episode. The question, we know that we are always choosing between giant douches and turd sandwiches. The question is, how do we get to something better than that? And what I would argue is by breaking free and showing the political parties that are shrinking in mind share and market share.

In the latest Gallup poll, 30% of people called themselves Republican, 26% called themselves Democrat, 42% called themselves independent. We need to show our independence in order to get out of this scenario where we are constantly just voting for either a giant douche or a turd sandwich. Thank you very much. Sarah Longwell. Tim?

Rep in Colorado, no. Sarah Longwell, do you have a prop? Oh, I see where this is going. Sarah's just bringing heat tonight. I don't know if you guys recognize these. They're little pocket constitutions. But here's the thing. On the back, it says the Cato Institute,

which is a preeminent libertarian think tank. And now, if like me, you moved in the libertarian-ish movement or the center right here in DC, they mail you one of these, like every year. I mean, and I just grabbed the first four I had, because I got like 12. Because the libertarianarians been sending me pocket constitutions since I was a kid out here. And I watched and this is what it's so funny next clip it's about 2004 when that clip made sense.

Because now we're talking about a shit sandwich with glass and arsenic in it versus like chicken that's not that good, right? That's the choice. And so, I don't know, I think a sentient being can make that distinction. Number one, number two, to have people so devoted to the Constitution that they mail you this thing. And me, liking it so much, I kept them all.

Only to have Donald Trump come in and they went. all, only to have Donald Trump come in and they went. Matt Welch, what's your prop? You have 90 seconds. Is it a water bottle? Let's see. We're also using audio visuals here. Garcon? This is from, so Sarah was talking about the importance of making good decisions as a publisher

and editor. This is, I think, the bulwark. I've heard of this. I'll read it for those in the cheap seats here. It says, what unites Elon Musk and the UnitedHealthcare CEO is their belief that laws do not apply to them unquote there's a class warfare populism out there waiting for someone to harness it what the actual fuck is that it's sort of a rhetorical question what that is is your brain on brain rot politics this is when you're doing either trolling out there

trying to get clicks successfully, whether they're hate clicks or love clicks, or Jonathan Last actually believes that there is a useful comparison between Brian Thompson and Elon Musk. Because we don't like Elon Musk now, and Brian Thompson is dead, is very difficult. I only got to that paywall pardon

and I couldn't go further afterwards. This is what happens to people when you get into a life and death struggle about politics in every breath. It has Elon Musk to show someone here. Has he gotten smarter since he's decided to get into politics? No, has Rob Reiner gotten smarter since he's gotten more involved in politics? No. Has Rob Reiner gotten smarter since he's gotten more involved in politics?

No, this is where people go. They get into this very oppo research type of mentality and it leads you to some dark and morally kind of cretinous places. Tim Miller, you have a bag. I do have a bag. Do we wanna know what's in that bag? You're about to find out who's hungry. Who's the hungriest person out here?

Alright come on up here sir. Come on up here sir. Come join us. Come join us up here on stage. Can we get him up? Let's let him stand right there actually. That's much easier. Here you go. I would like you to hold this. Okay. Here you go. I'm gonna get my sticker. I'm gonna get my sticker. He's got a Sarah's Always Right sticker. I should have picked one of the reason people. I don't believe in health inspectors,

but I do hope that one approved this. Here we go. We've got two. I've got two items for you here. I've got this chicken Vienna sausage can. It expired in 2022. I bought it at the corner store and it's got chicken broth in it. I've also got these peanut butter crackers. Not great, kind of generic peanut butter crackers. I also have some really yummy cookies

over here and they might be pot cookies, we'll see. So you have an option here. We're going to vote. You can choose between the crackers or the chicken Vienna sausage that expired or or Could I interest you in the pot cookies, but the crowd gets to decide which one of these you have to eat. Oh That could be fun. That could be fun. That's that's kind of interesting, right? It's like I don't have to choose I get to have a cookie But then everybody else gets to decide what I want. Which one, what would you like to go with, sir? I'd like to choose.

OK, who would you like to choose? The crackers. Congratulations. Thank you very much. The good news is, the good news is I'd like to give Peter Suderman the Vienna sausage. Oh, thank you. There you go. I will not be eating these on stage, but I will be putting give Peter Suderman the Vienna sausage. Oh, thank you. There you go.

I will not be eating these on stage, but I will be putting them in an old-fashioned later. Okay, so this, maybe a martini. They're super great when you just put weird shit in them. Okay, so this next segment, we are going to bring the audience into the equation. Actually, so you got there first, right? So if you have a question for our debaters, line up in the middle right here. We've got a microphone. You have to come up.

You have to come up and speak your question into the microphone. Can I just ask, is anybody going to get those cookies? We'll see how you got. Not you, Nick. We'll see how you behave, Nick. All right, all right. I see how it's going to be. Nick. We'll see how you behave, Nick. We'll see how you behave. All right.

All right. I see how it's going to be. All right. Let's start with some audience questions here. Sure. My question for the bulwark is, would you change your position if our choice in November had been the South Park choice of Trump versus Biden? My question for reason is is would you change your position

if the LP was a viable political party capable of winning? Okay, start with a bold one. Now you're just in the range of total fantasy and speculation, so. I'll answer very briefly. I would not have changed my position. My loathing and contempt for the selfishness of this, the current president of the United States, frankly has only cost us

subscribers to the bull market. Usually gets people throwing tomatoes at me, but he still would have been vastly preferable to Donald Trump for all the reasons that Sarah Longwell laid out and he had a capable vice president. The world's dreamiest libertarian, if Javier Malay comes down here, he's the current world's dreamiest, uh, libertarian. Uh, I would be enthusiastic to vote for him. I would probably write, uh, nice things about him and I would not take it a side because I'm a journalist. I don't take sides. Next question. How would that work? Can I have a quick follow up?

How would you enthusiastically support and write about somebody that you find really great? I didn't say support. I would be interested in writing about him. I would cheer him along. But it's like I am not telling people who to vote for. Javier, Malay versus Bernie, you would not choose a side in that. No, but when Javier, Malay did something Bernie, you would not choose a side in that. No, but when Javier Malé did something stupid, you would point it out. Okay, but is that the knock on us?

Because we, I mean, anybody who listens to the bullet will tell me, they'll tell you, we do plenty of knocking on Democrats when they do something stupid. It's the deepest theme after Donald Trump is definitely very bad. I appreciate how this has become a kind of joint editorial meeting

Let's get to we have real bad management Right, that's why we got into this job is to have editorial meetings. Let's have another audience question. Hey, what's up? I'm trying to reconcile the thought of You don't have to choose a side But I think I don't remember who it was I'm assuming it was Nick was kind of saying you should stand on your principles. Right. Like reason free Marines, free markets. To me, that that's I feel like this rhymes with choosing a side.

And so I guess is there some way to reconcile like standing on principles and choosing a side, because I feel like the bulwark I'm more of a reason person. But, you know, from what I've heard on stage, that the bulwark is saying, well, we have principles. These principles lead us to, I don't know much about you, never Trump. So I guess, is there some reconciliation made

between these two ideas? Don't your principles pull you to a side? Is the question. Matt, Nick? I think he's struggling now. No, I'm not. I don't really understand the question Matt Nick Is that the answer because we can go on we've got a lot of questions All right, yeah I'm so annoyed that I haven't seen Michael steel when I called a person up here to prefer a prop I wanted to get you know, I'm gonna get you some haven't seen Michael Steele when I called the person up here for a prop. I wanted to get you something, he had a sausage.

I'll share. Hello, I have the privilege, I guess, of being a leader of our local citizens association where there are no parties, there are no sides, and every time an issue comes up, we have to talk about it this way, that way, round and round, more meetings, more meetings.

Kind of, I guess it's a loya-jirga style government. So how would the reason people, how would you have run the 2020 presidential election in your best life? Oh, my God. Would the presidential election have happened in your best life? Absolutely. I mean, that that is such a impossible to imagine. But I just don't understand the difference between we're going to

organize ourselves, there's going to be parties, they're not great, we're going to have to choose one of the other I'm happy there is no organization, there are no parties, we're all going to do what we want to do. I like the sound of your meetings, except for the part where there was meetings in them, everything else sounds really great. So we're just gonna have tribal warfare, and the US being a stick, that's the way we're gonna decide.

No, there are political parties, there should be political parties, and I should not join any of them. That is my view my entire life. So you again will just be left with what everybody else mans up and decides you're gonna live with it. Well, again, I live in this case in Brooklyn, New York.

So I can vote and I do very vociferously as much as I can. And I even sometimes talk locally, even sometimes at those types of meetings. And my vote doesn't really move the needle on anything because Democrats are 95% of my neighborhood. But I vote and I try and I do whatever I do. But I'm not a member of a party. And I don't think that it is,

I think it's perfectly fine to not be a member of a party, to not have a natural inclination to join one, to sit on your hands while your own party does things that are against your deeply held beliefs, which a lot of people who work in professional politics do. Oftentimes people who worked in Republican politics for a long time sat on their hands when there was the gay marriage debate

that Sarah Longwell was talking about earlier, that they just sort of, even though they wanted this to happen, we're not gonna talk about it. I wanna avoid that. I want to reason it's been in favor of gay marriage since it has existed in 1968. I think our first editorial was in 1971 on the issue.

I find it more potent to be talking about those ideas and those policies without worrying, without calculating whose team I am on or I'm not. And therefore my voice is not going to be silenced for even a little bit. without worrying, without calculating whose team I am on or I'm not. And therefore my voice is not going to be silenced for even a little bit. I'm not gonna hesitate. I'm going to be happy to talk to people

who support those things, happy to criticize people who don't. And then on the next issue, we'll change teams again. That's not to tell anyone else. So you're saying to go from side to side based upon what your beliefs are? Issue to issue, yes. Okay.

We have another question. I would have traded Sarah for her, had I known that was an option. Oh yeah, hi, I've got a question. She was good, she nailed them to the wall. I've got a question for the, you don't have to pick a politics side. I might be misunderstanding the proposition,

but for those average Americans who are not, you know, civil rights leaders or musicians or editors of a publication or a think tank, by not joining a political party or registering as a Democrat or Republican in the primary process, are you not actively diminishing your ability to have a say in politics in your local community? And if joining a Democrat, becoming a registered Democrat or Republican is somehow not picking aside how like how is it not picking aside and are you not actively contributing to diminishing your own say in politics?

That sounds like a rush lyric expanded into a bear thing. No, I don't. You know, first off, we are talking about this explicitly only in terms of politics, which is a big problem. I know when I meet somebody, if they define themselves, you say, who are you? What are you interested in? And they say, I am a Democrat or I'm a Republican in the top three. You know, you're in the wrong conversation.

We need to get away from politics to the greatest degree possible, but you're saying like you need to pick a party and then work exclusively through that. That just is a bad way to organize your life, I would argue. And it might mean I don't have as much say in the Republican Party or the Democratic Party, but I still write and I still vote and I still do things that will give me a voice and an ability to express myself and hopefully have some impact on what happens in my communities. But if I may just interrupt Matt mostly,

when you look at issues that matter, things like gay marriage, things like marijuana or ending the drug war and incarceration of people, school choice and things like that, these things operate at a pre-partisan level. And when they become successful and when they become effective, the civil rights movement is certainly like this. They are either pre-partisan or trans-partisan or non-partisan.

And those are the things that change things. Not whether... The civil rights movement was non-partisan? Yeah. I mean, not in these. This movement was nonpartisan. Yeah. I mean, not in these states out of a news to MLK and George Wallace that they weren't picking the sides, there weren't sides on that. Like back then the parties were not assorted the way the parties are now.

So there were people with, there were pro civil rights people and anti civil rights people in both parties. But that doesn't mean that there weren't obvious sides between, you know, nor between Yeah, but they were not partisan. Northern Democrats and like this. Well, they weren't partisan because we're in different partisan times, but people chose a side. I don't know.

It wasn't like Martin Luther King was like, Oh, I'm so neutral on a neutral on this one. Tim, as I said in my opening remarks, it's you don't have to choose a particular party. You stand on policy and on principles. But if you were pro civil rights candidates and anti civil rights running for office, they might have been in different parties in different states. But there were people who were for civil rights and they're running against people who are against civil rights. So Martin Luther King had a side in those races. Yes, exactly.

Okay, I think we've got a bunch of exactlys here and a long, long line of people who want to ask questions. Well, I feel bad because everyone's asking the reason side here, but I have another question for the reason side. But just to address it, I just wish I had a cigarette up here while I was listening to them.

You want a Vienna sausage? I hear they're. So I understand the view that neither candidate can can meet your moral minimum for voting for them. What I can't understand, I think, are some of the smartest,

most well-informed political journalists in the country on stage right now being unable to say that one of them is probably going to make a better president than the other. Like, I can rank the people on stage by who I think would make a better president. Rank us. Probably Peter, number one.

And... Yeah. Thank you, but I do not accept. But so I don't understand being unable, like smartest, most informed, bravest journalist, being unable to say one of these people is going to be a better president than the other. I reject the premise of your question.

I'm, first of all, not smart. And second of all, I wanted Harris to win, even though I didn't vote for her. Yeah. Also the smartest, most informed people on the stage picked a side hard. So, just that way. Ooh. Go all that.

Next question. Do we have one for the bulwark here, I hope? I actually do. Okay, great. So, hello. I'll start by saying, so... Uh, so, yeah, there are clearly a couple different ways to read this question. One, and different questioners have gotten at this.

Like there's, you know, you don't have to pick a particular partisan side. And as more of a bulwark person, I definitely don't agree with that. I think Trump is beyond the pale. But there's also, you know, the side that, you know, reason has gotten at that I definitely agree with that, you know, we're ultimately looking toward a brighter policy future and like we're standing looking toward a brighter policy future and like we're standing on our principles and you know, certainly you've communicated this that not that, you know, certainly the democratic side, you know, doesn't have everything exactly right.

So if I care about something that isn't precisely, you know, within the Kamala Harris agenda, maybe I care a lot about draconian zoning policies that are forcing down the supply of housing. Certainly, Kamala wanted to build three million new houses and that's great, but I didn't see a super clear plan for how to do that. So sure, I believe Trump is beyond the pale, but what's your recommendation for someone

who is ultimately looking toward a brighter policy? Yeah, I've got bad news for you. Life sucks and is filled with bad choices. And like, here's the thing as a former moderate Republican, who's now like an independent quasi Democrat, whatever you want to call me, like I don't, I don't foresee any future where there's going to be a candidate that's like, man, I'm down the line with Tim. I want permanent daylight savings time. I'm a Yimby. I really like gay stuff. I want to cut red tape. Like, you know, I, they believe that America has a great role

in the world. Like that candidate's not walking through the door. All right. Like Jared Polis is pretty good out there, governor of Colorado. But like, besides that candidate's not walking through the door. And so, you know, you can still assess what is, again, going back to my opening statement, like which candidate is going to do the best to allow people to live a life of purpose and meaning. Like that's my North Star. You can, and sometimes you can look at them and say, I don't think that there will be a big difference. But most of the time you'll be able to, and you can choose that side. And then you can still advocate for Yimby housing or whatever else that you do. And you can agitate the person you voted for.

They're probably more likely to listen to you. If you called them up, you're like, hey, I'm a supporter, you got to focus on this. One of the things is don't think about politics. And I guess I could stop right there, but to take it a step further, don't think about politics as, oh, the president gets elected and then they're Caesar

and everything, you know, whatever they want. When Bill Clinton, when Bill Clinton was elected in 92, he had two years where he got to do whatever he wanted and he ended up doing such a good job at that that he elected a Republican Congress for the first time in anybody's memory. And then what happened was an alchemical kind of reaction or transformation where things

ended up working out pretty well. Something like that might happen as well here, and this is where, you know, we're talking about all of this in like a great, you know, implicitly in a great man theory of how the world works. Politics is not that important. Donald Trump does not have to be that popular. It might well be that the Republicans actually man up or woman up or whatever and challenge him on certain things. And if they don't, they're gonna get,

they're going to get re, they're going to get kicked to the curb like they did in 2018. So relax a little bit. I'm so glad we get a zoning question because that's the thing that actually is for the wind. Let's zoning everybody clap for zoning. Huge applause. All

right. Let's buy a wrap for a couple more questions here. Let's let's move along. I am Ryan long term fan first time caller. This question will resonate a little bit better with the boomers on the stage, but, uh, to quote the rush song free will. I'm a stroking out.

So thank you. If you, if you choose not to decide, you've still made a choice. And the arguments that I've heard on this stage tonight, essentially boil down to a choice between partisanship and nonpartisanship. Partisanship is a clearly defined side, but nonpartisanship is a bit more blurry. So this question goes out to the bulwark crowd. If a mass defection occurs from both major parties and then proceeds to vote for no one,

what side have they chosen? I'm not high right now. Could you repeat that? Those cookies are still there. If lots of people decide not to vote, is that choosing a side? Is that in some is that choosing a side? Is that I mean, is that maybe choosing to not choose a side? And what implicate what are the implications of that?

How about if how about if in Nevada, none of the above had won? Right, because that's that's on the. I mean, I would argue that they've again that they've made a choice. Like they've in this theory, they're choosing to engage, but they're choosing to say, I reject both. Yeah, I mean, I guess I would say that technically've made a choice. Like, in this theory, they're choosing to engage, but they're choosing to say, I reject both. Yeah, I mean, I guess I would say that technically, that's a choice within the rubric of this conversation. But look, every election gives you data

that politicians then use to make future choices. And so if suddenly, you know, the vast majority of people were opting out of it, like, people would be like, great, well, now there's this huge pool of voters that we need to go get. And in fact, right now, right, that's, people are looking at this election and thinking, man, there's a lot pool of voters that we need to go get. And in fact, right now, right, that's people are looking at this election and thinking, man, there's a lot more non-college working class voters than

there are college educated suburban voters. We better figure out how to fight for them. Cause the other side just beat us. There's, you know, Republicans just beat us on that. So like, uh, if that happened, you know, we also did see this actually, I'm sorry. We saw this with undeclared. It took me a second to get the question in my mind. We just saw this.

They chose the side. We like, there were a bunch of people in the democratic party that went out and said, no, I'm not, we saw this with Undeclared. It took me a second to get the question in my mind. We just saw this. They chose aside. We like, there were a bunch of people in the Democratic party that went out and said, no, I'm not choosing Joe Biden. And that was a choice. Next question. You want to take a photo of me while I'm... Um, uh, hey, folks. Uh, so not that anyone gives a shit,

but, um, I think one of the interesting background I, uh, been a libertarian. Excuse me? We care a lot. Well, okay. Well, I don't, you know, you can pretend that, but anyway, no, but seriously, just to give the context, is I'm 41, but back when I was 16 and I saw,

I don't know if anyone on stage remembers Harry Brown, I saw him speaking, a libertarian, former presidential candidate. And I was like, Oh my God. And so I've been like small L libertarian for a long time. But so my questions are really basic, but and I voted for Republicans and Democrats, but I just haven't heard. I'm obsessed with the bulwark. I have like an addiction problem. But with you all, I really do respect reason, particularly with the criminal justice stuff.

I'll put that aside. Anyway, my question is so basic, just like, how are you guys cool with like the, I'm old enough to remember when like Republicans gave a shit about free trade and also, you know, like immigration, just free people who, again, not felons or murderers, like going, just how are you guys okay?

And that's how me personally as a small libertarian, I'm just like, I can't hang. How are you guys okay? Yeah, I'm not okay, I can't, I can't hang. How are you guys? Yeah, I'm not OK. I mean, this is like Matt. I was expecting and kind of hoping for Kamala Harris to win with the Republican Congress to buy us some time to get to a better place. Donald Trump's trade policy is idiotic.

And the immigration, his his, you know, promises to do mass deportations is disgusting and vile, and it's something that you will read a lot about in, you know, the pages of Reason magazine, as we did when Obama deported people and when George Bush deported people and things like that. It's just, it's flat out wrong. You were hoping Kamala Harris was gonna win?

Yeah. I said it with the Republican Congress. Sometimes I sound snarky all the time, so I don't mean to snarky, but... Do you think you're followers? You have a lot of social media followers. Absolutely. I said it multiple times in various podcasts and whatnot that my preferred outcome

was that Kamala Harris wins with the Republican Congress. Sorry, can I have... what about the free trade? The free trade. It's bad. Can we talk about free trade? Yes, we'd love to. We can talk about free trade. It's super bad.

We're gonna do that on our podcast in In Reason Magazine. We have time for one more very quick question. Unfortunately, just one more. We are on a clock. Okay, my question is, having grown up around a lot of libertarians in college, they seem to be all the wealthy kids.

So how do poor people be libertarians? They can't isolate themselves with wealth, and they have to pick a side. A lot of the voters in this election voted for Trump because they couldn't afford eggs and they couldn't afford to put food on the table. While I am totally against Trump because I worked for Congress on January 6th,

I understand the idea that you can't afford food. So how do poor people be libertarian? Same way rich people are libertarian, they just decide to become libertarian. I mean, it's a set of ideas and beliefs about policy. It's also, you know, marginal on some level. Libertarians are never a huge part of the electorate, but one of the things, stories that libertarians like to tell,

and Republicans back when they used to talk about this stuff, back when these guys were Republicans, is that free trade, to go back to the last question, has lifted more people out of extreme poverty over the last 35 years than anyone has ever seen in the history of the world. And that is an unvarnished great thing that we don't talk about nearly enough.

And so, liberal ideas, meaning the classical liberal ideas, have been the best poverty eradication program ever. So, I don't see any conflict in that. And just as a quick follow-up, I'm a libertarian because I grew up lower middle class, not in spite of that. I think capitalism and free markets and limited government gives you the most opportunity to actually advance in the world. It also creates a market full

of innovation so that suddenly food is unbelievably cheap, even relatively speaking during terms of high inflation. But I think that the argument that libertarianism is simply, you know, the province of upper middle class people have never really had to think about stuff is just empirically wrong. And it's certainly wrong in my case. Okay, so thank you all for those excellent questions. I apologize to the people who did not get to ask questions,

but all of our debaters will be at the bar afterwards. There is an after party. So now we are going to move into our final segment before we get to that party, before the drinking really starts. And this is just gonna be closing statements. Each side, each person, excuse me, will have two minutes to make a final case.

And we are gonna start with reason. Is that Matt Welch gonna? Yeah, Matt Welch is going to start. So I'm going to leave you with one or two stories, bedtime stories. One is about a very successful billionaire, one of the most successful billionaires in the country, who fashioned himself as a philanthropist, which he was

and is, and also somewhat of a philosopher, thinking a lot about Austrian economics and kind of big ideas. He even published kind of a book of his own, Sense of Philosophy. And he had been a big multi, multi tens of millions philanthropist in policy causes, but had long said that,

I don't wanna get into the politics of it. I don't wanna choose a side in politics because it reduces my effectiveness. And I worry that it's going to make me dumber. Well, president is elected and the president that he sees is, oh, this could be an extinction level event for American democracy. We're gonna see the bubble of American supremacy popped

and this is a bad thing. So he decided suddenly to throw a ton of money into politics to oppose this president, to create mirror institutions on his side that he saw the other side doing so well. And the funny thing is I could be talking about both Charles Koch and George Soros, but for the sake of this, I'm talking about George Soros. And what did he create? What are these things?

This very storied intellectual, he really is, theory of reflexivity and all that. What did he create? He created Media Matters of America, and he donated tons and tons of money to Democrats for a long time. Did he make the world a better place even for his issues that he'd been caring about for a long time? I'm not so persuaded that it made him smarter. I think it actually made him dumber and it made his activities less interesting. Last story, very short is there once was

a badly governed city called New York. People were mad. They thought we need to get Republicans out here. I'm just gonna back whatever Republican is going to have an R on his or her jersey. Let's go. Let's do this. And that is why we got, for at least a short little while, a congressman named George Santos. So that type of thinking is how you get some really, really bad people. Thank you. Tim, closing remarks.

Thank you guys so much for having me. Are you going to show us what's in the bag? No, it's just cookies. I've been a little bit of a smartass tonight, because I do think some of this is a little silly, so I'm going to be earnest for a second first. And the thing is, I do like politics. I wish I was as cool as Nick, and I kind of affect not caring about politics sometimes

in order to offer that cool. But I'm a model UN dork at heart. Like I care about politics, I care about government. That's why I do this. That's why I wake up every morning and talk about it every day. That's why I worked on campaigns and volunteered on campaigns.

So I text my friends about it, even when I'm not working. And I just think that it's important that we all do the best we can to try to make things better. And we're not all going to agree on what that looks like. I certainly don't agree, I think, with a lot of even my own podcast listeners about what the best way for government to look would be. But I think that it's really important that we try to engage in civic discourse. We try to make our society a little bit better. We try to protect people's freedoms.

We try to have a positive influence on the world. And I think by having an effective distance from that, you remove the ability to make a difference. You're not gonna make a difference every time. Sometimes people are gonna vote for people you didn't like and you could argue or act or work or try and people could reject you. But luckily, at least for now in this country,

you get another opportunity to do it again and again. And I think that right now we're facing a very, very serious time. And I hope that the threats are not as serious as I assess them to be, but I worry they are. And I think that this is not a moment to not pick a side. It is a moment to pick a side. And frankly, I think it's absolutely critical

that people pick a side and get involved. And I thank you all for having me today. Nick Gillespie. Thank you all for coming out and thank you guys for arguing. We'll continue it later. Thank you, Peter, for organizing this and Matt, whatever. So no, but I, you know, to follow up a bit on what Tim is talking about, it's exactly because I want to make a better world and a world in which we're all more free to live the way we want, talk the way we want,

dress the way we want, and get on with our lives outside of politics. So politics is never going to be the be all and end all. And societies that suck are the ones that are where politics is everything. We want to get rid of that. And one of the best ways to do that, in every part of our lives, we're de-bundling things. How many of you cut your cable cords?

Because, you know, you don't have to buy $200 worth of channels in order to watch the one or two or three things that you want to watch. We're de-bundling all the time, and it's time we do that with our politics. I don't want to join the Republican Party because I want slightly lower taxes, and then that means I also have to vote for a flag-burning amendment. that with our politics. I don't want to join the Republican Party because I want slightly

lower taxes and then that means I also have to vote for a flag burning amendment. I don't want to be part of the Democratic Party because I believe in an abortion and reproductive choice. But then that means I have to be against school choice. It's like no. If we continue to play the game where we say in order order to make a difference, in order to matter, in order to be serious about our lives, we have to go whole hog and pick a team in politics. We are just going to get bigger, and I'm trying to remember this right now,

it's like we're only gonna get more giant turds and bigger and bigger douches or however it works. That way madness lies. And think about the 21st century, which is kind of mind numbing that this, you know, is what some of us, or at least people as old as me dreamed about. I was going to be cool in the 21st century. And instead society gets more and more politicized and we get worse and worse candidates. That's not an accident.

And the way that you can fix that is by not taking partisanship as the be all and end all in the summit of how we engage to make a better world. Thanks very much. Sarah Longwell. Take us home. So there's a couple of us up here on stage that were Republicans. And now we talk about why you shouldn't vote for most Republicans.

And I think that's a pretty nonpartisan thing to do. Because you shouldn't pick a team, I agree, where you feel like you have to then be on their side for everything. That's stupid, that's brain dead. But you do have to decide that there are a bunch of ideas that you stand for, that there are values that you stand for, that there are things that really matter, and then you should defend those things.

And I remember being like in high school or college, you know, and teachers would sort of pose the question to you, well, what would you have done during the Holocaust? Or what would you have done during the Holocaust or what would you have done? during the civil rights movement and I've always liked to think that in a time of moral crisis I Would understand how to choose between right and wrong that I would be able to see it clearly and I feel like there has been a lot of people on the right through Donald Trump's tenure that have done whatever they can to obfuscate, to brush away, to downplay

the noxious, toxic, soul-destroying force that Donald Trump poses. And I want to fight that. Yes, what I'm going to do, I'm going to continue to fight that all through, and I'm gonna do, I'm gonna continue to fight that all through, and I'm gonna continue to fight what Trump's doing. I'm not gonna fight what he says, I'm gonna fight what he does.

But I am gonna continue to fight it. And so, uh, I... became a conservative and liked Libertarians and read Reason Magazine and have lots of friends that have gone through Reason all these years because I was on America's side. Like I wasn't really on a partisan side. I thought Republicans were better at liking America

and defending, cause everybody kept mailing me those pocket constitutions. I thought surely these are the guys who want to defend the constitution. But then I watched an entire political movement that said it was committed to ideas lie down for this guy and forfeit their intellectual credibility and not stand up at the moment that it mattered. And I will never stop condemning people for that.

And so I choose America's side. That's the side I'm on. And I think you should be too. All right. So this is now the moment in this debate when you, the audience, have to pick a side again. So you're going to vote a second time. And remember, the winner of the debate will not be the team that has the most support or the least support, but instead it will be the team that moved the most people towards their position.

And so please get out your phones. Just by choosing to vote, haven't we already won? Think about it that way. I don't know. Bring the guy up with the, with the, with the blunt. We can take this up at the bar. It's time for you all to vote. So get out your phones and vote.

The instructions, I hope, are on the screen behind me. I think it's just a text message. While you're voting, I just want to say thank you so much for coming to this very first edition of Reason Versus. You guys were great. Also, thank you so much to the Bulwark and to Tim Miller and Sarah Longwell. Also to Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch,

my friends and colleagues who came down from New York for this. To the Arthur and Rupp Foundation, which provided support for Reason for this series. OK, let's find out what the results for the initial vote were. So we had 30% for the resolution you don't have to pick a side in politics, 45% for you do, and 25% undecided.

Look at all the double haters. And now we're going to find out what happened after the debate with a second vote. I'm gonna storm the Capitol with this, if you guys pick Nick and I'll let you know that. I am gonna be. When we find out, we're gonna give a prize here. And that prize is gonna be delivered

by the one and only Andrew Heaton. So we're gonna bring him out. Gonna be at four seasons total landscaping, demanding a recount. The chicken sausage is looking better. The whole point was to increase the drama here. All right. So there's a.

Woo! Hey! And the bulwark is the winner, moving 21% of the audience towards their side. You guys win. What do you win, Andrew Heaton? You win, Andrew Heaton. And the bulwark is the winner, moving 21% of the audience towards their side. You guys win, what do you win, Andrew Heaton? You win, Andrew Heaton. You've got a trophy with some balloons and a medal.

And we win getting rid of him. What kind of skills does he have? Why does he get the medal? Yeah, take that thing off of him. You guys can divide the prizes however you want. One thing the balloons are for is that at the after party, which we're all going to go to very soon, you're going to be able to find out where the bulwark people are

because there's going to be big balloons hanging above them. All right, so... Do people at Reason have lice? I don't know. I haven't hung out with libertarians in a while. Am I concerned about the hair? I would like to thank the audience for making good choices. Thank you. Thank you all so, so much.

Thank you. Thank you all so, so much.