Transcript for What Went Wrong With Libertarianism?

Well, I talk a lot. I don't think I'm that. I'm a stand up comedian and a podcast host in a political commentator and a libertarian and the husband and dad stuff you mentioned that that's most important.

Well, you know, look, there are different camps of libertarians and some of them who I see things very different from. I'm a libertarian in the Ron Paul school. So people who believe in non-interventionism, limited government, sound money, and individual liberty.

Well, there's camps of libertarianism that comes from more of like the Cato school, as I would call them, where Cato is a DC think tank that's supposedly libertarian. Those groups are much more likely to support things like open borders, which I reject as not the correct libertarian position and also just in insane policy. There's also another school of more kind of like left libertarians that to me kind of pervert the ideology or the theory, no pun intended with the word pervert. But who seem to, that will they kind of seem to believe that But because libertarians believe in individual freedom, therefore, if somebody is doing something that is not initiating violence against other people, it must be celebrated. And I totally reject that. So I do believe that adults have the right to live whatever lifestyle they want to, so long as they're not violating the rights of other people. But that doesn't mean that all that They're, in fact, I would argue that if that's the libertarian view, then it's even more necessary that we have things like social standards and judgment and stigmas on certain behavior and that it doesn't follow it all from me believing that a cop shouldn't bash you over the head with a club for something doesn't mean that they are for it ought to be celebrated.

Yeah, I mean, look 100% and I'm with you on that. I mean, I think that in the same sense that, well, let's say outside of like a sliver of maybe some very hardcore right wingers, I don't think anybody is really advocating that it ought to be illegal to cheat on your wife or cheat on your husband or something like that. I don't think it almost nobody is advocating that that ought to carry with it like a 10 year jail sentence. However, we can all acknowledge that that's wrong and you know what I mean should should be viewed that way and so you just apply that to almost everything else that you know there's just because something is ought to be legal doesn't mean it ought to be applauded. And in fact, I think one of the areas I talked about this with Tucker, I think one of the areas where libertarians are very, very goofy is that there are some libertarians. Many are not. But that if you're going to say that you don't want government dictating morality and you don't want government being the ones who determine many different, you know, types of human interaction, well then something else has to be determining that and what you need, you know what I believe is I think you need for any system to function libertarian or otherwise you need a moral society otherwise things aren't going to work.

Here's what we believe. Donald Trump, as president of the United States of America, was framed for trees and by his own deep state. And those people belong in jail. It is an absolute crime against our nation that the intelligence agencies that supposedly worked for the president would dare frame a presidential candidate. But they crossed a home, another line, when they framed the sitting commander and chief and not one of them has paid for that. And that is unacceptable.

Guys, listen, here's my message to the libertarians here. The form of president of the United States of America and the current front runner to be the next president is here to talk to you. We, We are not a bunch of college-leftist cities. We believe in free speech. So be respectful. I'm not telling you you have to agree with him. And I'm not telling you you have to cheer for him. But we're not having like Jordan Peterson at Berkeley event here. And the message we're sending to the world is not that we can't handle ideas that we disagree with.

Well, many people in that room did not listen to me. And it did kind of turn into a Jordan Peterson at Berkeley event. And just to what you were saying, I wasn't even opposed to libertarians booing Donald Trump. Like I think if he said something that they liked, you could share. And if he said something, you didn't like you could boo, but there's a difference between that and just also just behaving with a little bit of class. And I also, I just hate the kind of booing him before he's even said anything. I just, I just thought that was, it reflected poorly on those people who were doing that, and there's nothing productive about that.

Well, basically, I was a part of a group called the Mesa's Caucus, which had been attempting for the last few years to kind of bring the wrong poll movement into the libertarian party and make it more of something that our camp of libertarians would be proud of. And we lost at this convention and the presidential candidate is let's say more a representative of that kind of woke left wing progressive libertarian. movement.

Well, I mean, look, the reason why Donald Trump was coming to appear at this convention is quite obviously political and that there are the libertarian party has gotten millions of votes over the last couple years and I think even though most of the polls right now seem to be very much in Donald Trump's favor you got Bobby Kennedy running and you just never know how these things might go over the next few months and so I think they thought this was an important enough demographic to try to appeal to I think if There's this kind of irony in third party politics where if we had gotten a strong right-wing libertarian candidate, that would probably be more detrimental to Donald Trump, whereas getting someone like Chase Oliver, whose message is like, you know, something that almost anybody who would be considering voting for Trump or the libertarians would probably be pushed toward Trump in that situation. I think that's very helpful for him.

Yeah, well, look, and I mean, a lot of this stuff does come down to things that are somewhat outside of the scope of libertarianism. Although some of them are actually, you know, within the scope of where we have differences in theory. But, you know, there are people who... You know, I had this one guy at the Libertarian party who came up to me at one point during the convention. And he's certainly not a member of my camp. And he was wearing like a thong and some weird like furry costume type thing. And he came up to me and he said, hey, I disagree with you on immigration. I'd like to have a discussion about it. And I was, you know, I was just like, oh, sorry, buddy, I'm running over here. I can't do that. But there was this moment where I was like, just the idea that you would even think you could approach another human being like this, and they would maybe have a conversation, like, maybe my mind will be changed by this man and a thong. And you know, I bet that guy, if you asked him, he probably has a lot A views that I agree with him on and probably a lot of views you agree with him on because this is a libertarian guy. This isn't like just a left-winger and he's probably I bet you he's good on guns and he's good on sound money and he's good on cutting government spending and deregulation and a whole bunch of but it doesn't matter how much we agree on if because this gap is like unbridgeable like you know what I mean like of course so there's a lot of things there's a lot of things like that where I I want to give Chase the benefit of the doubt I don't know him super well I think that oftentimes people are under spells They're ideologically possessed and you see this a lot where you know when you'll see you're like a democratic voter and I'm not talking about like one of the corrupt people in the establishment of the Democratic Party I'm talking about like your uncle you know what I mean who votes Democrat and Someone will go, like, what do you think about Joe Biden's age? That's really a problem. And they'll be like, oh, you know, age doesn't matter. Trump's old, too, or something like this. And you kind of almost feel like this is something out of the Emperor's new clothes. Like, you're telling me you don't see it. Like, just look at Joe Biden. You're telling me you don't see what the issue is. The man who struggles to walk and speak. And yet it's almost, and they're just trying to find a way in their mind to not acknowledge it. And you just kind of feel like, oh, you're under a spell. You're under some type of spell here that hasn't been broken. And likewise, I think that one of the positions that I've heard Chase and some of these other libertarians make is that they think puberty blockers for children are acceptable. And like the government shouldn't get in the way of decisions between a parent and the doctor. And I do, in a similar sense, I don't think like These people are evil. There are some people who are evil who push this stuff. But I think a lot of these people are just like under a spell. And you're like, oh, you really don't understand what's going on here. You think this is some type of like organic market outcome and that first of all, it's way over the line of what a libertarian should think. It's between the doctors and the parents. It's like, no, we don't think child abuse should be left to the market. We think it should be abolished to our outlawed. But on top of that, you're just like, oh, you really, you're just missing the bigger picture of what's going on here. And a lot of people like that, there are these people in the libertarian world. Again, by the way, they're not a majority of the libertarian world. But there are, there is this camp who kind of was like, well, we're against lockdowns and mandates, but we still do think you should stay home and we do think you should get the vaccine. So they kind of rejected, they rejected the policy, they embraced the propaganda. And that's very problematic.

No, I mean, look, I'm probably not voting for anyone right now. I mean, I don't know. There's a lot of what Donald Trump has said that I really liked. And this has been true all the way since 2016. And I think that Donald Trump, for the most part, has very good instincts. The major issue that I have with Donald Trump and I know this will get, you know, I'm sure there's people in your audience who won't appreciate me saying this. But the problem, we have to, our nation is at such a point of crisis right now that we have to really live in reality and we can't just get married to the narratives that make us feel better. And what I see when I look at the Trump administration was on so many of the key issues. Donald Trump getting rolled by the people that he had around him, appointing some of the worst people in the country to very, very important positions. And, you know, particularly with the stuff during COVID, where he kept Fauci on the job for all of 2020. And everybody can make all their excuses for how he didn't know who the people were. But I'm sorry, there's just there's no excuse to not know who John Bolton is, who Mike Pence is, who Mike Pompeo is, who Ray, the guy leading the charge against him at the FBI was appointed by Donald Trump. And it's not even like Donald Trump is coming out now and saying, Oh, yes, I realize this mistake. And this is what's going to be different next time. He's talking about building the FBI, a new building. He's talking about Nikki Haley having a place in his cabinet. He was supporting that God awful, um, foreign aid package that just came out for the war in Ukraine and the war in Gaza. And all of that stuff is just deal breakers for me. Obviously, I couldn't support Joe Biden. I mean, that's just too ridiculous. I think he's everything wrong with the country. Bobby Kennedy has too many no-go issues for me. And then all of this stuff with Chase, like the issues I have are kind of deal breakers. So I'm kind of left to be our equal assistant.

Well, I'll jump to that. I mean, you know, the thing is that I think the issue with any type of promise on a campaign trail is that I think lots of people and but particularly libertarians had just grown to understand that you have to take these things with a grain of salt and that there's always lots of promises that are made and if you want to look back at say they look back at the campaign that George W. Bush ran in the year 2000 and I maybe some of your younger audience may not remember this but if I'm not making this up. George W. Bush ran on a humble foreign policy and that the military should never be used for nation building. That's how it only be used to fight and win warrants. This was his campaign and he was actually calling out Al Gore in the 2000 debates over this. This guy wants to nation build. We don't do that. And you know, so and then you look at Barack Obama campaigning on, you know, closing Gitmo. and ending the war in Iraq and all of these things that he was going to do. And so, you know, look, I like hearing that he'll part in Russell Brick on day one. Maybe he will. I don't know. There were good things that Donald Trump did in his first administration. I mean, I given credit enormous credit for working out the deal to end the war in Afghanistan and it was it was only because Biden insisted on like moving the date so it wasn't Trump's success it was Biden's and that's the reason why the whole withdrawal was botched So I give Donald Trump a lot of credit for that. I think there were I think almost all of his instincts on foreign policy were correct. I think the real problem almost, I don't think all, but a lot of them were. The real problem is you have to have a team of guys around you who are committed to implementing that plan and he very clearly objectively didn't. I mean, look Donald Trump, when Donald Trump wanted to pull out of Syria, Mad Dog Madness resigned. even though he had run on pulling out of Syria. So he didn't even make sure that one of his most important positions, his secretary of defense, was on board to follow the plan. And so there's just a lot of stuff like that that makes it very difficult for me to have a high degree of confidence in what he's going to do next time.

Yeah, well, look, I mean, it's a very, it's a very debatable issue. And I have a lot of friends who are Liberty Republicans and are great people. And some of my heroes, I mean, Thomas Massey and Rand Paul and guys like that are heroes to me. So I'm not, I'm not against anybody who wants to be a Liberty Republican. The truth is that my focus is not really on the political It's always been much more about ideas. And I think ideas are powerful. And I think they're, they're much more powerful than voting in presidential elections. I mean, when you, I'm not, I'm not like telling anyone listening not to vote. I'm sure everybody is already made up their mind, whether they're doing that. But we do, I think, get into this kind of like mystical type of thinking when we think about voting for residential elections, where look anytime, if you're taking a couple hours to do something where you have one 150 million of a say and something, probably almost anything you could do with that time could be more valuable than that. And so again, I'm not like saying, I'm not telling everyone not to vote. I'm just the way, what I see is my role is to tell the truth as I see it. And I think that somebody has to play that role, or you know, or many people have to play that role. And the problem with already politics. And I'm not saying, like, I'm not saying you don't tell the truth or something like that. But I'm sure you know what I'm saying where there's something.

No problem with politics. Yes, you get incentivized. So once you've picked aside, you want to say whatever it is to help that side and you do feel this pressure to not, you know what I mean like, say, and so the thing that I like about being in the libertarian party is that I'm unencumbered by anything, by just telling the truth about every candidate the way I

Well, yeah, they sure are easy to hate. The term neocon has become this kind of broader term, but the neoconservatives were a small group of trotsky, former trotsky, communist, who basically decided to join the Republican Party. after World War II. And they were a small group that were considered to be like intellectuals. I've never found any of them to be particularly impressive, but they ultimately ended up really taking a lot of control of our government, and particularly our foreign policy. And these were people like Leo Strauss and Irving Crystal, and then they're Irving Crystal's son, Bill Crystal, of course went on to be very prominent. a very prominent writer during the George W. Bush years. People like Dick Cheney, Richard Pearl, David Worms and many others, Victoria Newland and her husband Robert Cagan were very involved in this and they had a very specific foreign policy agenda. And you can go back and read their writings in the 1990s in a project for a new American century. You can read a clean break, which was a memo that was sent to Benjamin Netanyahu when he first became Prime Minister in 1996. And their plan basically was after the Soviet Union fell, they were like now is the time. for America to exert its power around the world. I'm not exaggerating at all when I say this in a project for a new American century. They said, now that the Soviet Union has fallen, we should fight a war. We should fight wars on multiple fronts. And the goal there was to kind of You know, basically have American influence around the world by force and that this would result in, you know, the Middle East embracing democracy and American influence, you know, sweeping through Eastern Europe and all of these things. And they essentially won the day in terms of the fight for policy like they got all of these things. all of the terror wars and all of the NATO expansion and all of this stuff was a direct result of this group of people who really pushed for it. Well, yes, no, I agree. But it's almost just like anyone who wants the next war, it's like, oh, you're a neo-con. And then it is good that they've kind of like, yes, that's what the terms been associated with. But the truth is that it was a stark rejection of the advice of all of the founders. Which, you know, the founders disagreed on a lot of issues, one issue where they were unanimous was the idea of non-intervention, the idea of rejecting entangling alliances and searching the world for monsters to destroy. As John Quincy Adams put it, if we search the world for monsters to destroy, we will become the dicketris of the world, but we will lose our own soul. And I mean, if Wiser words haven't ever been spoken, I've never heard them. But that's

Yeah, well, I mean, that's a huge element in it for sure. So I mean, they ended up getting a lot of them got positions in Reagan's government and in Bush senior's government. They're in George W. Bush's government. I think because Dick Cheney was his vice president, they ended up getting many more positions of a lot of power. And like you said, after 9-11, that was their moment to really jump on things and see as control. Look, it also doesn't hurt that Look, in Washington, D.C., it's always about whether you're going with the wind or against the wind, right? So if you're sitting there on your thing is we advocate something that is in the financial interest of the military industrial complex, you're going to have a much easier time progressing, getting promoted, implementing your ideas, then if you were say advocating a 50% reduction in the defense budget, that's going to be a much tougher sell. And so part of the thing also is that they advocated for something that powerful people were on board with. And you see this all the time, right? Like it's like, why is it that say, John Rolls is so much more popular amongst respected society than Thomas Sol. And it's like, well, because Thomas' soul's recommendation is that you guys all lose a bunch of power and money. So no one's trying to promote that. You know what I mean? Like, if you were to cut government spending by 80%, which is probably what Thomas' soul would recommend, then, you know, all those millionaires in Washington, D.C., all lose their gravy trend. So of course, that's not what's going to be promoted. But if there's an intellectual who has a justification for why, DC should have more power. They're going to rise up. Like, you know, even if you think someone like Bernie Sanders, think about how easy a trip it's been for him. He's not like, they don't really viciously go after him the way they do real dissidents, because his messages basically, there should be more power in Washington DC. With that, I mean, maybe when he talks about breaking up the big banks or something, they're like, all right, I don't know if they're really calm down.

Right, right, but in general, and so I do think that, look, obviously 9-11 laid the ground for everybody in the country to be like, hey, we got hit, we're going to go hit back. You tell us who to hit without asking too many more questions, but also just the fact that it's like they're on the side of power. And that's always an easier road.

Well, so I think there were two major factors that really destroyed the anti-war left where Barack Obama and Donald Trump and for very different reasons. And I think that look, there is something in the left liberal mind. And I want to be as generous when I say this is possible. I think it's part of the reason why they fell for the whole wokeism nonsense. is that in the left liberal mind at the core of their identity, as much as at the core of the identity of conservatives mind is believing in God, the core of the left liberal mind's identity is not being racist. Yes, we're the not that he said it's the first commandment the prime directive the alshah not be racist it is you shall have that is number one at now if you want to be as generous as possible you could say that given some of the ugly very past history of this country there was probably a time where that kind of made sense that it was like hey I want to be the one who's not a big it and I want to be the one who doesn't believe in these you know policies whatever segregation or whatever they might be But there was something so intoxicating about Barack Obama as like their cool black friend that they just could not criticize him. And when he started to continue, all of the worst of the Bush error foreign policy and really drastically expanded that. I mean, he didn't just keep the war in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq going. He launched a war of regime change war in Libya, attempted a regime change war in Syria. Yemen, Somalia, I mean, spread it to Niger and all over the place, and then expanded on the worst of the Patriot Act abuses. And you just couldn't get it. You know, there were still some principal leftists who objected to this, but it dwindled in numbers, you know, it was ten times smaller, maybe a thousand times smaller, then it was under George W Bush. And then There's just something about the personality of Donald Trump that is this just unapologetic straight white rich man. Just by his existence, he triggers them so much. Because Donald Trump, you know, look, by Donald Trump's whole thing is like, listen, I'm rich, I'm a winner, I get hot chicks, I build big tall buildings, you know, just like the essence of who he was. The left is hated that. And then him, at least rhetorically being like, hey, and I guess what? I kind of opposed these wars. I think George W Bush is an idiot for getting us into the war in Iraq. And it was like, they were just going to be on whatever the opposite side of Donald Trump was. And that happened to be the same side, the CIA was on. And so instead of the left having any ability to be like, hey, we opposed Donald Trump, but not for the reasons the CIA does. And we also opposed the CIA. They just went, what's the CIA narrative? Yep, we opposed him because he's a Russian spy, you know, the most ridiculous claim that was so obviously made up from the very beginning. And it just, it totally ruined them. There has been this very strange dynamic since the war in Gaza has come where now there's these leftist protest bubbling back up. I'll confess, I don't exactly know why this is getting them, whereas like the Warren Yemen or Libya or Syria didn't, or Ukraine stuff, I mean, come on. Or Ukraine? Yeah, they were terrible on Ukraine. Yeah, so I don't know exactly why, but I am kind of interested in that dynamic.

Oh, no, 100%, and it's crazy. I don't know if you remember, so look, if you remember during the George W Bush years and during the Barack Obama years, I mean, during Barack Obama's presidency, the right wing radio critique of Obama, like I'm right wing radio across the country and on Fox News and all of this stuff for the most part, was that he was too soft that he wasn't tough like George W Bush wasn't if you remember the big critique of him from from Republican talking heads was always that he won't say radical Islamic jihad and so even as Obama was like expanding all of these wars killing hundreds of thousands of of Muslims Um, the critique was he's not tough enough. He's not bombing enough. You know, Charles Crown hammer's critique of his action in Syria was that he wasn't overthrowing Assad quickly enough and he was only spending 50 billion when he could be spending 100 billion and all of this stuff and they were white content to just demonize Muslims as like they're all radical Islamists and all this stuff and as soon as Donald Trump said He said, hey, we got to shut down immigration. As soon as Donald Trump went, hey, we got to shut down all Muslim immigration into the United States until we figure out what's going on. Every neocon turned around and went racist. You're a racist for saying that. It's really something that you could demonize Muslims all you wanted to if it was selling a war and even right now, it's most of the Republican establishment. Look right now, if you're defending Israel's campaign in Gaza, if you're defending a war, then the establishment Republicans are fine with you demonizing a group of Muslims.

Look, so, and that's exactly right. The analogy I use is kind of like this, right? I go, look, imagine that I am like, I'm a lot tougher than I am, right? Like, let's say I was like some sharp shooter in the Marines or something like that. And I'm home, and I got a bunch of guns, and I got my places fully protected, and someone who's unarmed breaks into my house, and I see them. I have all the weapons needed to take this guy out, but I don't, and I allow them to come in and rob from me and assault my family or whatever. I think it could be reasonably deduced from that, that I intentionally let that happen. because you certainly have the ability to stop this, and you chose not to. And likewise, this mass flux of immigration into the country don't tell me for a second that the most powerful government in the history of the world. Washington, D.C., and stop this flood if they wanted to. I mean, we have a government that has power unlike any organization in the history of humanity ever has. We can snap our fingers and a wedding in Yemen is gone. If we want to overthrow any other government in the world, we make the decision and that government's overthrown. It's short of a few. There's a few we might have trouble with. But the amount of power, the idea that we can't protect our borders is just ridiculous. And if you look at say like the UN money that goes to these NGOs that are funding these migrants, uh, caravans coming in and you look at how much anybody who just had anything common sense to say about immigration over the last say five years, seven, eight years has been totally viciously demonized. It's hard to not conclude that this is a plan of sorts. Now, I don't know exactly what the plan is. I do know that I'm old enough to remember watching MSNBC during Barack Obama's second term when they were all openly bragging about how this was a plan. And they called it the Browning of America. And they were like, this is going to give the Democrats permanent majority's in perpetuity. This is going to be a one party country after this. So isn't it so great? They all said this out loud. You go find videos of joy read talking about this. Joe Biden talking about this. Rachel Maddo talking about this. And then as soon as like, there was like a right wing reaction to it that rose up and said, no, we don't want this. Then they turned it into like somehow you're a member of the Klu Klux Klan if you would dress this and then they decided that and don't give me wrong, there were like a sliver of very hard right wing guys who would talk about the great replacement theory and how white people had to fight back, but that was just like a tiny sliver of the right wing, but then broadly speaking if anyone on the right pushed back against this at all, it was like, oh, you're those neo Nazis, you're just like them, even though these guys were all bragging that so planned to be

Well, listen, I'll tell you what really really gives me the most amount of hope. And I certainly do meet a lot of great people going around the country. But what I really love the most is that the look, governments, rely on propaganda. And there's a reason for that. There's a reason why we didn't just invade Iraq in late 2001. They spent the whole year of 2002 trying to convince everyone they had weapons, a mass destruction, and we're in on 9-11 because they need the people to buy in. And for the first time in, I think in history, governments and powerful people have lost them monopoly on information. There are shows, I mean, there are just thousands and thousands of shows on the internet that have bigger audiences than the corporate media giants do. And their their ability to control the narrative and control propaganda has been weakened to an unbelievable level. And that is why they're all freaking out so much. That's why they're so scared of Donald Trump that they're trying to use the justice department to keep him from being elected again. they know they can no longer control the conversation and that's a tremendous reason to be optimistic as far as I'm concerned.

Sure. Sure. Well, if you want to come see me live. Comic Dave Smith.com has all my my live dates. I tore all around the country. Part of the problem is my podcast at Comic Dave Smith on Twitter. And I will be tomorrow. I'm debating Chris Cuomo on the Patrick bit David show about the corporate media coverage of the the COVID error. So make sure you check that out.

Yeah, I know it's a it's a it seems like almost too easy like you go like so we're starting off with you admitting I was right about everything and now we're debating about it. So I don't exactly know now.

Yeah, no, he maybe didn't exact. He mused about whether we should have our freedoms or not, or why exactly is it that we get our freedom? Oh, why can you guys breathe? Dude, the entire corporate media and including much of the supposed conservative corporate media all failed on COVID. I mean, everybody failed on COVID except for a very small group of people and you know, some of them, even amongst like say Republican governors or something like That's where we're only like three who were actually really good on it. You know what I mean? Like the Santas and known were the outliers. It's not like that was the typical Republican governor. But of how bad the entire corporate press was, he was the worst. He was the one who was interviewing his brother every night during lockdowns. He was the one who was the number one hour at CNN and was just shaming the unvaccinated and is now vaccine injured. I mean, I don't know how he's possibly going to approach this debate, but I'm quite interested to say.

Yeah, I don't know what he's going to say, but I'll be ready for whatever it is.