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What Libertarians Get Wrong About Foreign Policy With Austin Petersen
127 Plays1 year ago
Austin Peterson Joins the show
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction of Hosts and Guest
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the latest episode of the Project Liberal podcast. I'm Josh Heckel, joined, as always, by Jonathan Casey. Good morning, Jonathan, or good afternoon. Good morning. Good afternoon. Yeah, good afternoon. Today, we are joined by a man who also may not need any introduction.
Austin Peterson's Political Journey
00:00:19
Speaker
But just if you're not familiar with him, his name is Austin Peterson. He's a writer. He's an activist. He's a commentator. He's a broadcaster.
00:00:25
Speaker
I've been a fan or at least following you Austin since I think 2015, 2016 when you ran for the presidential nomination of the Libertarian Party and I believe you came as a runner up to Gary Johnson. You're very close to that. I also know you ran for Senate in Missouri against the really annoying Josh Howley. That's the guy that you went up against. You're the host of the Wake Up America show among other things.
Challenges and Critiques of Libertarianism
00:00:52
Speaker
Austin, thank you for making time to talk with us.
00:00:54
Speaker
Yeah, Joshua, Jonathan, thank you for having me here today. I'm looking forward to this conversation. It's certainly at the top of everyone's minds in the Liberty Movement these days. Yeah, so as you know, as you probably know, as over the last couple months,
00:01:10
Speaker
John and I have some unique perspectives on the liberty movement. I'm convinced as many of the audience probably is aware of that libertarianism needs a rebranding, and we need to find a way to create a banner and a coalition that can unite both true libertarians and classical liberals, as well as people that embrace liberal values on both the left and the right. And one of the reasons why we started this project, Project Liberal, was to find a way to build that coalition.
00:01:38
Speaker
One of the reasons why I'm a huge fan of many of the things that you stand for is that you have been very – you've picked some fights in the libertarian movement and the liberty movement over the last couple of years, specifically around foreign policy. And I think that many of the things you say are on point, and I want to dig a little bit more into them.
00:01:57
Speaker
But before I do that, I'm curious if I want to read a tweet that you posted just to frame everything and then maybe get you to add some context to it. Should he be worried? No, it's not that bad. It was good. He said, antiwar is a pestilential boil on the ass of US libertarianism. It's a cover for Pro Putin.
00:02:16
Speaker
Pro-Islamic terrorist views couched in non-interventionism. There's no litmus test for any other global conflict other than those of Israel or the US. The US and Israel must always be seen as the oppressors and the colonizers. US end caps are woke, engaging in the same presentism as those who destroy statues. Hopefully I didn't mispronounce anything there.
00:02:37
Speaker
I am just wondering if you can maybe kick us off Austin, tell us a little bit about how you got to this place, what brought you into some of these conversations recently, just kind of your perspective on where we stand on this topic. Sure. So I'll try and summarize this all, but this is something that's been bothering me for.
00:02:53
Speaker
over a decade now, and I am someone who got activated in the libertarian movement specifically because of Congressman Ron Paul's debate with Rudy Giuliani in 2008 when he was talking to Rudy Giuliani about the concept of blowback and hundreds of thousands of other libertarians got active for the same reasons. That was why I was initially inspired to begin my campaigns
00:03:21
Speaker
That eventually culminated in getting me to where I'm at today as a libertarian activist But over the years as I have been embedded in the Liberty Movement worked at some of its most prestigious think tanks, you know been a libertarian party, you know Street
00:03:39
Speaker
activists, handing out petitions, trying to get candidates on ballots. I've done pretty much everything you can in the libertarian movement from the street level to running for president of the United States. So in all my interactions over the years of these thousands of conversations that I've had in foreign policy, and getting to know many of the libertarian leaders intimately,
00:04:01
Speaker
I've discovered over the years that the so-called principled stance on foreign policy had an origination point that was developed out of a viewpoint that was an established Marxist viewpoint.
00:04:20
Speaker
And which is not to say that a communist can't be right about a few things, right? I'm not of the fallacious thinking that just because Bernie Sanders says it, that means it's wrong.
Foreign Policy and Libertarianism
00:04:32
Speaker
Most people think that way. If Joe Biden says it, then we take the opposite position, right? So I'm not that kind of a shallow thinker.
00:04:41
Speaker
However, in 2013, I issued a light criticism of the Ron Paul foreign policy think tank at the time, because when Putin had his first incursion into Crimea, that conflict blew a hole open into my views of foreign policy, because I was starting to see
00:05:07
Speaker
that it was it seemed as if the views of the foreign policy views of libertarians were a some I won't say reactionary but it was always it seemed as if by default whatever the stance was was was the United States
00:05:24
Speaker
was the, it was the fault of the United States. If it weren't for the United States involvement, this would never happen. And, and I was like, I was just basic logic would say, well, this would deny that like, you know, Islamic terrorists or Putin don't make the, aren't their own act, you know, making their own decisions based on their own, uh, their own beliefs or their own values or what's in their own best interests as if the United States is, this is kind of like a puppet master view. The CIA controls everything, right? And I'm like, well,
00:05:54
Speaker
And someone who has run into a few agents in my time, I can tell you, they're not necessarily the most brilliant people in the world and they make mistakes like anybody else for – that libertarian should be aware of that concept of blunders, right? So the idea that we were sort of like engineering Putin into this invasion and putting his back into the wall so that he had to do it, I'm like,
00:06:17
Speaker
I mean, that would be a foreign policy masterstroke by the CIA. And what we see more often is usually the failure of intelligence agencies, not the brilliant maneuvers of these things. So in issuing that criticism at the time that I said that it sounds as if this foreign policy is more anti-United States than it is pro-liberty, that exploded. I mean, you can find hit pieces on me from that think tank, you know, from libertarians going back to 2013.
00:06:44
Speaker
But Ukrainian libertarians were writing to me at the time saying, Austin, thank you. We're trying to fight for our own individual liberty. We're fighting for our own autonomy here. And we see libertarians in the United States. We thought they were allies. They're calling us Nazis. They're telling us that we're out there. And like, listen, the Azov battalion, is Ukraine a great country? Probably not. On the scale of libertarianism, probably not, right?
00:07:11
Speaker
But I think what happens is with this horseshoe theory, and people who, human beings all naturally engage in binary thinking, it's if you're not this, you're that, right? So what happens is that if you're anti-US, well, then you start to, they become pro-Pudin, right? If you're anti-US, they become pro Osama bin Laden. You've seen at the end of last year, plenty of libertarians
00:07:36
Speaker
were out taking the pages out of Osama bin Luke cherry picking Osama bin Laden's letters to America to say, well, he attacked us because the United States has been over there. And Ron Paul said it in his speech in 2008. And God, if it isn't difficult for me to look back in my younger years of activism in my late 20s.
00:07:56
Speaker
I'm 42 now, and see my naivete, is that how it's pronounced, naivete? In understanding a foreign policy, and I think that probably a lot of libertarians suffer from that same naivete without a really broad-based understanding of foreign policy, it's easy to outsource your views because it's such a complex topic.
00:08:18
Speaker
And I think other libertarians probably have done that as well. But when you outsource your views to people like Scott and Horton or to people at antiwar.com or others, you've outsourced your views to literal communists, to Marxists, who look at the world from a view of what I described in that tweet, of the moral time machine, essentially
00:08:39
Speaker
The Wokies, and I say that libertarian foreign policy is woke, I don't just say that lightly, I say that because to be woke is to believe in postmodernism, this idea that there is no objective truth, and to believe in this concept of presentism,
00:08:55
Speaker
Black Lives Matter, people like this, they destroy statues in the United States because they apply a moral framework of today to incidents and things that occur in the past. Libertarians do this with Israel all the time and they go back and they cherry pick history in order to meet their, you know, whatever standard it is, which is an anti-US or an anti-Israel view that comes from a view of history informed by Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn and people who are our ideological opposites to a large degree.
00:09:25
Speaker
Which is again not to say that Howard Zandar and Noam Chomsky haven't found, you know, blind squirrels haven't found nuts a few times. Or that Bernie Sanders hasn't accurately stated what our problems are and then offered us the worst solutions in all of human history that gets millions of people killed.
00:09:42
Speaker
But at the end of the day, antiwar.com is the outsourced, is where libertarians go to outsource their thinking on foreign policy because it's such a difficult topic.
Media Influence and Internal Dynamics
00:09:55
Speaker
I mean, how many libertarians are going to George Washington University and getting studies in international relations?
00:10:00
Speaker
very, very few of us, right? So because of that, we sort of look at, okay, well, we're going to listen to maybe three or four people when it comes to our foreign policy and reject everyone else. And because libertarians operate on a purge mentality, very similar to Marxists and communists,
00:10:20
Speaker
There's always these Stalinist purge squads that operate in order to eject anybody from the movement immediately. They're constantly on the search for any heresy that strays from the true libertarian position.
00:10:37
Speaker
And over the years, I've just become less and less dogmatic. I mean, I've never been a very orthodox person. I'm not a superstitious person. I'm not a religious person. I really, I don't care for this concept of orthodoxy. I really like the idea of a pluralist thinking. I like to cherry pick as well. Because I think that's the best way to get to the facts and then take the facts and then point my way to the truth.
00:11:06
Speaker
But in regards to sum this all up, my view on foreign policy is informed on my understanding of history that comes from reading sources that both agree with my worldview and disagree with my worldview.
00:11:21
Speaker
And if the facts go up against what it is that I believe, then you've got to change your mind based on what the new information that comes in. That's not popular to do in politics. It's dangerous, right? You lose friends and you make enemies because people, because of our tribal nature of politics and libertarians are not immune to this.
00:11:44
Speaker
You know, we sort of turn on and sort of have the – we eat our young and we eject people from the movement. We have cliques and cool kids' clubs and – right? And you have to adhere to an orthodoxy in order to be a part of a clique in the liberty movement, which
00:12:00
Speaker
You
Personal Experiences and Independence
00:12:01
Speaker
know what? Thankfully, at this point in time, I don't have to kiss anyone's ass. I don't take a dime or a dollar from anybody else in this movement that I don't earn from a pure capitalist transaction. I have a very successful talk show that I talk about my libertarian ideas and I talk about my doubts.
00:12:18
Speaker
that i have on sometimes on libertarian ideals uh and sometimes i face backlash for that but frankly i don't give a shit because i don't have to i don't have to i don't owe anybody anything uh and i make my own living as my own person and i can say what i want to say and boy if that i haven't always had that freedom and that luxury yeah that is it not a lot of libertarians do if they work for many of these think tanks they don't have that freedom or luxury so yeah no that's absolutely a huge win sorry to cut you off austin keep going
00:12:48
Speaker
No, I'm just going to say I'm speaking out because I can because, you know, I don't have to be afraid of Dave Smith or Clint Russell because they're going to do an angry tweet storm at me. Right. They might they might ratio me on Twitter. Oh, no. You know, like I monetize as much as the best of them. Right. So it's like, you know, I I don't feel the need to have to fit in. I never have fit in very well anyway. But, you know, I don't I don't have to.
00:13:13
Speaker
say what's necessary in order to get along. As a matter of fact, I had a job in Washington DC. I was the most high paying job I ever had in my career, working at FreedomWorks.
00:13:23
Speaker
I was making 90 grand a year and I had a parking lot spot on Capitol Hill across from the Senate and I could hang out with the centers and Fox News was down on the second floor and I could go hang out with all them all the time and I quit that job because the corruption in Washington DC was so rampant that in order for me to get beyond that level, beyond any kind of a merit level, you really have to sell a piece of your soul.
00:13:45
Speaker
So that was kind of the beginning right then in 2013 of me sort of like walking away from these institutions. And it certainly burned bridges, right? You don't get the conference invites or the talk invites and things like that, right? And when you're pissing people off and
00:14:02
Speaker
you know, not going along with the crowd because, you know, the libertarian movement, again, operates very much in a very similar tribal aspect as to other movements as well. But foreign policies are a weak spot. I used to deny it. Conservatives would attack us. I went to tea party rallies and they're like,
00:14:20
Speaker
Well, they're isolationists, blah, blah, blah. They hate the United States. And I would argue with them. But now, actually, I kind of start to see that they're right. I do think that a lot of libertarians are isolationists. That's fine if you are. That's your own point of view, right?
00:14:39
Speaker
And then I think a lot of libertarians do despise the United States. I think that they'll lie if you ask them in public, but if you go to the conferences and you have a private conversation over a couple of martinis, they'll absolutely start spewing pro-Russian, anti-American stuff. They'll absolutely say that they support Vladimir Putin because, you know, they did one on...
00:15:03
Speaker
They did that around the rally that Angela McCardle and the Libertaine party put on. Josh and I took a pretty hard stance against that rally and said, no, this is a really bad idea. This is going to associate us with some horrible people.
00:15:18
Speaker
And then everybody was like, no, it's not Pro Putin, it's not this. And then we started looking at it and these people openly admitted, yes, Daniel McAdams of the Ron Paul Institute, I guess, he openly said, I love Putin. I love what he's doing. He's rounding up the gate, not quite saying, I like him rounding up the gates, but basically something very similar along those lines. And so it revealed a whole lot of that exact sentiment, that anti, just pure anti-American, it's not principled, it's not anything, but just pure, pure adoration for a dictator thousands of miles away.
Critique of Libertarian Principles
00:15:48
Speaker
Yeah. Listen, I'm not stupid. Okay. Like I love, I love my country, but I'm not a blind nationalist. I'm a very, I'm an aware nationalist. Okay. I love the United States. I think it's one of the better freer countries in the world, even with its problems. But the one thing really, the shining beacon of light, of hope that has just got me sitting back with like, you know,
00:16:10
Speaker
I don't know if you guys ever seen that meme of that very smug looking goat with its nose in the air, but like I've really just been enjoying the fallout of the foreign policy views of Argentina's new anarcho popular president, Javier Malay.
00:16:26
Speaker
And I love calling – it's the first time I've ever been like, ah, he's an anarcho-capitalist, but it's because of his foreign policy views that I love attaching that label to him because there is a libertarian who understands the complexities of foreign policy, and that has given me just a lot of bragging rights in recent weeks.
00:16:47
Speaker
One of the things that I think you touched on this early in your opening remarks there, which was about the non-aggression principle, and a lot of the fact that this stuff flows out of the non-aggression principle. So I see the same thing at UC Austin, absolutely. I was actually a little bit younger than you, but I was an 18-year-old, I believe, right when I joined the libertarian movement in 2012, and then I was in my early 20s when you ran for president.
00:17:14
Speaker
And at the time, in the early 2010s, I saw the same thing you do. American foreign policy was absolutely causing major problems. I think we all on this call agree that the invasion, occupation of Afghanistan, Iraq was a mistake, or at least we stayed far too long. And there are many things that the United States did wrong there. And I think for me, that seemed like an obvious truth. And it wasn't until 2014, 2015, 2016, in the late 2010s, and especially now in the 2020s, where I saw that
00:17:44
Speaker
that tendency to be reflexively anti-American start again mapping itself onto being, you know, adhering dictators and being so anti-American that they became pro-dictator.
00:17:57
Speaker
And I'm curious just the way you feel like that starts, like the core of that. I mean, is that because the non-progression principle sits at the core of libertarian philosophy and it could be? If it does, yeah, that's probably, that might be, it might be, because I think if you start with a faulty premise, you're going to look at things, like all your conclusions are likely to be flawed.
00:18:18
Speaker
I mean, it's no secret that I've never been the biggest fan of the non-aggression principle. It might have been one of the reasons why I didn't win the Libertarian Party's nomination in 2016. People were very, I mean, there was an antibiotic response to my questioning of the non-aggression principle as what many libertarians would like to term it as axiomatic. But I do think that it falls into a similar Marxist trap
00:18:46
Speaker
of seeing the world as just good guys versus bad guys. So to try and extrapolate something like a person to person interaction into the complicated web of alliances and struggles between nation states, you're going to make lots and lots of mistakes. And what Marxists do,
00:19:14
Speaker
is they look at the world through oppressors and oppressed. When I was talking about wokeism earlier, it's to look at the world as to say, well, they have power, and therefore they are the oppressors, right? If the white, this is how academics, leftist academics view the world. White people have power, therefore they are oppressors, and the entire world can be viewed and summated in this way. The foreign policy views of antiwar.com, heavily influenced by Scott Horton and formerly
00:19:43
Speaker
Justin Raimondo applies that same view to Israel that leftist communists do, which is to say Jews have power, therefore they are the oppressors, when in reality the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians or their Arab neighbors, the 22 Arab nations surrounding them
00:20:04
Speaker
cannot be so easily boiled down to an idea as simple as oppressors and oppressed or aggressors and aggressed, right? Because at the end of the day, everybody wants to look at history within a very limited timeline.
00:20:21
Speaker
Because it makes it very convenient for us to justify our worldviews when this conflict goes back to BC. And so, you know, you can't just say, well, I'm only going to look at this conflict in terms of 1948 and beyond.
00:20:40
Speaker
and use this to justify my worldview in order to ensure that my view of Islamic terrorism as an American policy imperialist view is valid and therefore justified. So in order to justify an anti-US or anti-imperial view, you have to say,
00:21:02
Speaker
well maybe the united states with the good guys in world war two maybe which a lot of morning say that as a matter of fact like the pat buchananite with the actually say we should have been on the side of the nazi sub world war two which is you know i mean it's a whole nother car discussion there with the paleo conservatives and and and all that but of most libertarians will say at least okay well the united states were attacked by japan and therefore world war two is justified but everything after that
00:21:30
Speaker
From then on, it was a consequence of American imperialism. And I'm like, OK, well.
00:21:38
Speaker
The United States definitely screwed up in the Cold War and did some bad things, and the CIA is corrupt, and certainly the deep state is a problem and works against our rights outside of the proper purview of any of the executive branch and needs to be dismantled. Okay. Agreed there, right? That should be enough, right, for most libertarians, but it's not enough
00:22:01
Speaker
you have to see every single aggressive act of aggression as somehow tied back to Langley or somehow tied back to Fairfax, Virginia, or, you know, everything gets tied back to Washington, D.C. And, you know, if there was ever, you know, any incident around the world, it is the United States or Israel's fault. Yeah, it's not only that. Yeah. And it's not only it's not only completely conspiratorial,
00:22:28
Speaker
but it undermines responsibility. I mean, and personal responsibility, the idea of personal responsibility, like the idea that somehow Putin is justified in his invasion of Ukraine because of some action the CIA may have taken or some conspiracy that you've invented. Somehow that makes it justified for him to violate internationally recognized borders and kill people. I mean, it's completely nonsensical. I didn't want to cut you off, but yeah, I can see exactly where you're going with that.
00:22:53
Speaker
I think that, you know, we talked about the non-aggression principle kind of being responsible for some of these things. I think it is both directly and indirectly responsible for some of this binary thinking because, you know, the non-aggression principle is a good general rule of thumb.
00:23:09
Speaker
But the world's complicated. If you're seeing somebody on private property being aggressed against, can you trespass onto that property? Absolutely you can. I'm sorry. If your worldview doesn't say, yes, we can make smaller aggressions to prevent bigger ones, then I'm sorry. It's not going to apply to the real world, right?
00:23:26
Speaker
And and I also think that this kind of it create the NAP creates kind of this body like the binary thinking that we're talking about good versus
Focus on Global Conflicts and Israel
00:23:33
Speaker
evil and That a lot of libertarians have gotten this mindset that America is the great devil I mean we've heard Scott Gordon himself basically used that exact terminology that that that Obama that Osama was using back in the day that the great America's the great Satan or whatever they whatever they use and
00:23:50
Speaker
And so what you have is you have the situation that you start viewing the world from this lens. And instead of looking at each scenario as different scenarios with different influences, different scenarios, you just say, America bad, everybody else is doing what they can to survive. And that's not the real world. I'm sorry. If you look at the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, and then you look at Ukraine or you look at Israel and say, oh yeah, they're the exact same situations.
00:24:17
Speaker
I'm sorry, that doesn't take into account what's actually going on. Ukraine being invaded and us helping them is not the same as us invading Iraq. That is, those are two entirely different scenarios, two entirely different pull-out justifications, whether or not you support, even support using aid to Ukraine. That is an entirely different situation.
00:24:38
Speaker
There's a special hatred for Israel, even more than the United States. I had a really good conversation with a young gentleman by the name of Jack Lloyd yesterday on my show because he has been sort of picking fights with Dave Smith on this topic of Israel. And what he points out is that there is no other conflict around the world that provokes the kind of response from the anti-war folks than Israel because
00:25:07
Speaker
China, Pakistan, India, Russia, they commit as heinous, if not more heinous crimes or acts on a daily basis than you will see in Israel over a matter of decades.
00:25:22
Speaker
But there's never a call for a boycott of China from the anti-war folks. There's never a call for a boycott of Pakistan, right? But there is a call for a boycott of Israel, right? And so what you start to realize is that there is this sort of exception
00:25:38
Speaker
to the rule in regards to what is an allowable or tolerated opinion. There's no litmus test for the conflict between the Tamil kings in India and the non-merchant forces to the north from the 1500s.
00:25:57
Speaker
But if you happen to weigh in on the side of Israel of this conflict, well, that is just a bridge too far. Any other country around the world, maybe Russia and Ukraine is not a good example for this, but other conflicts around the world, if you're like, oh, well, I kind of think that this side has a little bit more on the right.
00:26:19
Speaker
No libertarian is going to read you out of the movement for some heresy on a conflict between Japan and Korea or something like that. But if it's Israel and you come down on the side of Israel, they will absolutely see you quickly out of the movement. Jack actually told this story
00:26:39
Speaker
about how naive Horton is, which I've known for quite some time. I think he suffers from a severe lack of insight into other humans. But Jack was saying that they were at Porkfest when he had met, ran into Scott Horton and was asking Scott about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
00:26:59
Speaker
and r he was just scott was going on about how he thought oh i've met rfk i think he's such a good guy i can tell deep down in his heart he's a really good person and blah blah blah and jack was like
00:27:12
Speaker
No, he's not. He hates libertarians. He's an eco-fascist. He wants to put people like us in jail. He stands almost imposed almost entirely to everything that we stand for. He's not a good person. You're a bad judge of character. And then Horton, as soon as RFK Jr. defended Israel, Horton did a 180 on him.
00:27:34
Speaker
Right? So it was like, Oh, okay. Suddenly we found the issue that was so, so it doesn't matter that he's an eco-fascist. It doesn't matter that he wants to take our guns. It does all this other litany of issues of libertarian issues. It's okay to be a heretic on, but if you dare support the, the right of the Jews in Israel to defend themselves from Islamic terrorism, then you've gone too far. There's a special, there's a special little little hatred there for that.
00:28:02
Speaker
Let me expound on that a little bit further. I call that Scott Horton, for he called Mark Cuban a Zionist shill or something along those lines. And I quote, because he sold part of the Dallas Mavericks to a Jewish couple.
00:28:19
Speaker
And then I called out Scott Horton, and then I have a parent since I'm a huge Dallas Mavericks fan, just in case anybody knows. I'm now a Zionist, according to Scott Horton. And I have a bunch of anecdotes on that front that we could go into, but I think that, yeah, it speaks for itself. So actually, that was something I wanted to talk to you about, Austin, which was...
00:28:36
Speaker
So we've touched on the non-aggression principle thing, which I think was important.
Extremism and Bigotry in the Movement
00:28:40
Speaker
We touched on some of the bigger picture foreign policy feelings for the libertarians. I also wanted to talk about what I see as a rising anti-Semitism, specifically in the movement. I think that I truly believe this, Austin, that there's a divide in the movement between
00:28:57
Speaker
the liberal libertarians and the illiberal libertarians. So when I say libertarian movement, I want to be clear, there's definitely a difference between many of those forces. But on the illiberal side of the movement, I've seen a lot of that, especially after October 7th. And I'm curious, did you see this same stuff happening before October 7th? Was October 7th a catalyst for you to wake up to it? I mean, like, have you seen this for a while?
00:29:21
Speaker
You could go back and read an article that I wrote in 2012 that got a lot of traction. It was called Dinner with a Nazi. And it was back in 2012 for 11 or, it would have been like, yeah, 2011, I think, actually. I was in New York City and I sat down. It was the first time that I had ever had a conversation with someone who was an avowed national socialist
00:29:49
Speaker
that wasn't your typical creepy crawly guy who shows that up at a convention that has the Nazi flag. If you go to a lot of gun shows, which I did growing up, a lot of times people are selling Nazi merchandise. I'm a collector of World War II artifacts, so I'm always looking to find things like that. I don't have a lot of
00:30:11
Speaker
uh of nazi merchandise or like items but i collect um rifles and some of them are german rifles from world war ii as part of like my memorabilia collection in order to like you know remember history and to keep it safe
00:30:26
Speaker
Uh, and, um, when you run into some of these people at gun shows, typically like some of them will be fascists, right? They're not collecting it for history necessarily. They're collecting it because they let, you know, they like it. You know, you'll know that there's a real Nazi when like, not only do they collect the actual Nazi stuff from world war two, but they, they'll make like new items with swastika.
00:30:48
Speaker
and shit like that. So I knew what a Nazi was, but most of the time it was just like dudes who live in cabins, you know, and aren't like, they're not like functioning members of society to a large extent, right? So in 2011, I'm in New York City and I'm sitting down with a gentleman and I notice he's got the swastika cufflinks on. And I'm a little shocked by this, right? And we end up having a conversation and he was a big supporter of Ron Paul.
00:31:15
Speaker
And I was like, well, that's odd because I support Ron Paul because he stands against everything that you claim to believe, right? Centralization of power and corporations and state, you know, hand in hand. But it was the conspiracy theories that he loved. It was the, because not all conspiracy theorists are Nazis, but all Nazis are conspiracy theorists. So that's how that Venn diagram works, right? The overlap.
00:31:44
Speaker
You know, he liked Ron Paul because Ron Paul was against the Federal Reserve and Ron Paul doesn't want to end the Fed because it's run by Jews. He wants to end the Fed because it's his monetary policy view. But anti-Semites want to end the Fed because they see it as a Jewish banking concert, right? So that's where that sort of like Venn diagram
00:32:04
Speaker
you know, overlay occurs. So it was at that time in 2011 or 12 that I'm like, Hey, you know, there's a few people hanging around the fringes. These aren't the mainstream people necessarily, right? These aren't the people that get lifted up all the time. Right? These it's not like Nick Fuentes is considered to be like a libertarian leader or something. But I mean, but they were there. And, and I was all sort of awakened to that.
00:32:29
Speaker
back in 2011 after that conversation with that gentleman who was, I mean, a bright young man, functioning member of society, didn't seem like the type of person that you would easily write off. Seemed very professional, had a very beautiful young wife, but was in New York City, downtown Manhattan with a pair of swastika cufflinks, and I was really shocked by that.
00:32:52
Speaker
But, you know, then over the years, as I, you know, as I spent more time in the liberty movement and I started seeing it more and more, I realized that, yeah, you know, that racism, antisemitism, you know, a general bigotry does exist on the margins. And, you know, this is why I don't fit in well with either the paleo camp or the liberal camp, you know, I've got, you know, feet in both sides. I sort of consider myself non-dogmatic and non-orthodox because
00:33:17
Speaker
Because I do believe that people who are racist or bigoted should be allowed to be free and live in a society that tolerates their racism and bigotry. If you all remember the Nazi cake thing from Gary Johnson debating me, right? My argument was that the racist or the or the that the homophobe should be allowed
00:33:38
Speaker
to be a homophobe and not have to bake the cake, right? But I also said specifically that I don't agree with that, and I would start up the biggest homosexual gay cake, you know, factory right next door to compete with them in a free market society. And that was not populated with those Johnsonites, you know, the more liberal types, because
00:33:58
Speaker
you know, many of them were like Gary and said, no, make them bake the cake. Right. So, you know, for a short time, I was a hero to the paleo conservatives because I defended their what I believe to be their liberty.
Future of the Libertarian Movement
00:34:11
Speaker
And then until I became anathema to them by not, you know, jumping on board with hating Jews and, you know, being pro-Israel and all that stuff. So, so you can see what an awkward position I find myself to be in.
00:34:23
Speaker
Well, for the record, I'm on your side and not Gary Johnson's side of that. Me too. I'm the biggest left libtard according to the paleo, so there you go.
00:34:33
Speaker
No, I don't actually- There's a long conversation to be had about that because of the Civil Rights Act and the laws as they are. Would it be a better world necessarily if black people weren't allowed to rent hotel rooms in Alabama? Probably not. But these are conversations that you need to have at the bar, not in public at a libertarian debate.
00:34:59
Speaker
So anyways, the anti-Semitism, the bigotry, it exists. It's there. You know, I don't see it as, here's the thing, like what might be mainstream in our movement or even maybe like a significant body of thought in our movement or significant movement, even if it's larger, the paleos are larger than the liberals in the movement at this point in time.
00:35:18
Speaker
it's still dogshit compared to like the rest of society and the views of people it's still it's still completely it it is it is immaterial what most libertarians the united states believe it the reason why it is immaterial is because our influence
00:35:35
Speaker
has been not only diminishing, but almost nearly entirely diminished in the United States. There is no true functioning liberty movement in the United States. It's an atomistic, highly individualized
00:35:50
Speaker
a group of people of individuals doing their own thing in their own spaces. Eric July doing his thing, me doing my thing, very, very little cohesion or sticking to stick togetherness. So, I mean, even if there are people in the libertarian movement who might be Nathan, you know,
00:36:09
Speaker
devoted National Socialists who want to end the Federal Reserve because the Jews are running the place, it doesn't matter because the libertarian movement, if they can't even get other libertarians on board that message, then they're not going to get their message out to the wider group because most people aren't listening to us and they aren't interested in what we have to say.
00:36:34
Speaker
with the caveat that on the good news front uh... i have been getting a lot of attention and interest in people who are interested in starting up something new here in the united states based on the ideals of principle of principles of poverty or malay you know i i i hosted a space the other night but that was uh... uh... conversation between argentine libertarians and american libertarians and most of their people who participated the speakers were young argentines who voted for habir malay
00:37:00
Speaker
And it's fascinating to hear the difference between anarcho-capitalist in Argentina and anarcho-capitalist in the United States, because countries who don't enjoy the benefits of the protection of the United States military
00:37:16
Speaker
They are much more – they aren't immune to the altercations and the subterfuge that foreign nations engage in to undermine their national security. So Argentines are very concerned about China and their national security from China because they have incursions of fishing boats all of the time.
00:37:38
Speaker
And they are very concerned about their national borders. And the Argentines wish they had a military that could operate at one quarter the strength of the United States so that they could defend their national sovereignty and defend themselves against Iran. They've had terrorist attacks by Islamic terrorists in Argentina. And so they're not as naive because we as Americans, we sleep very peacefully at night because men with guns
00:38:05
Speaker
are willing to do dangerous, violent things to people overseas and under the cloak of night and the protection of privacy and secrecy, that cloak and dagger thing that we all talk about, that the CIA and these intelligence agencies that we love to hate on, that they – that the acts that they perform in order to protect us here in the United States, that gives us the fat little cushy Americans
00:38:29
Speaker
the ability to say, well, I just think the United States shouldn't be involved. I just think the United States shouldn't get involved in that conflict. And it's not in our national interests. Well, how the would you know that? Because there's a whole star star. Listen, you're making me say nice things about the CIA.
00:38:44
Speaker
There's a whole wall of stars of dead Americans whose names we will never know who died overseas, engaging in subterfuge or attempting to protect American national security in ways that we don't know. So when they fail, we know. When they succeed, we don't know, right?
Foreign Influence and Media Bias
00:39:03
Speaker
And I love this conversation when I talk to my anarchist libertarian friends about like, would you abolish the CIA? Okay, so then you so then how do we prevent spying from other countries? Yeah. Well, there are no I love it when an anarchist says, well, if we just stopped spying on other countries, they'd stop spying on us.
00:39:23
Speaker
Really? Are you that naive? And some of them really are that naive. I think that points back to what you mentioned earlier, Austin, about the idea that there is very often a naive perspective on foreign policy in the movement, and that extends to that. You're completely correct. Not only is the CIA not responsible for everything going on around the globe, but there, as you said, is a concerted effort from foreign agencies to interfere
00:39:55
Speaker
Let me give you an example. Here in Texas, we had two protests show up on our state Capitol steps. One was a Muslim protest and one was an anti-Muslim protest. They tracked it down.
00:40:09
Speaker
Both of them were organized by Russians in Russia to show up on the same day. None of the actual organizers showed up. It was just Russians in Russia sitting around, typing up a plan, getting people involved, and they sent these two protests to clash. Martin Luther King Jr.
00:40:29
Speaker
Russian agents used to plant information here in the United States to get people to hate Martin Luther King Jr. A lot of the information that we have that people still spread today about MLK Jr. was spread by Russian communists in order to spread discord here in the United States. So that's my favorite conspiracy theory is that foreign intelligence agencies love to spread conspiracy theories in the United States to get us to hate each other.
00:40:54
Speaker
And on top of that, it's a real big problem when you have people in the libertarian or classical liberal movement that are so willing to embrace that they become unwitting actors and spreading it. So not only is that a problem on social media and whatnot, which that's a whole other conversation.
00:41:09
Speaker
But we talked about the anti-war protests that happened last year on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The Mises caucus took over the Libertarian Party. For our audience's sake, that's a very illiberal group that went in and tried to take over and hijack the Libertarian Party. They succeeded in doing so. Immediately after that, they partnered with this really niche political group called the People's Party. They set up this fund and almost within a matter of weeks, they had over $100,000 raised.
00:41:39
Speaker
And they brought literal Russian propagandists on the steps of the US Capitol to talk about why Ukraine was filled with Nazis and effectively undermine any sort of, yeah. Two of those speakers, two of those speakers have already defected to Russia. Yes. Scott Ritter and Tara Reade.
00:41:55
Speaker
have both defected to Russia. One of them is convicted pedophile. Those two people, they've probably been compromised. I'm just guessing, I don't know, but my guess on Scott Ritter is that after he got busted for the kiddie diddling attempt, that Russia probably has some intel on him. Oh, I'm sure.
00:42:20
Speaker
in order to like he probably committed acts like that and in Russia was maybe supplied people because they do things like that in order in order for them to gain you know the information to you know prevent him from you know turning on them he uh Scott Ritter is probably one of the biggest spreaders of Russian propaganda here in the United States and well you know I you know we talked about
00:42:46
Speaker
We talked about, you know, kind of conspiratorial, you know, the libertarians do have kind of a conspiracy theorist mindset to some degree, right? We question a lot of things, and I think that's a lot of healthy, there's a lot of healthy aspects to that. Sure. But we also only, a lot of times we talk about, you know, always opposing the U.S., we also, a lot of them, a lot of libertarians do that with conspiracy theories, that if it's a conspiracy theory that makes the U.S. look good, well, it can't be true.
00:43:09
Speaker
Right. But if it makes you come seriously through that makes America look bad. Well, it's true. You'll see that all the time. If it's an anti US conspiracy theory, then it's true. If it's a pro US conspiracy theory, well, then it's definitely wrong. But I mean, like, you know, the government, our government is invites it. I mean, look at what happened with COVID-19. I mean,
00:43:30
Speaker
the trust of the government is an all-time low. And in many ways, that's a good thing. That's a great thing. And listen, I love conspiracy theories because they're fun and they're interesting, but then I'm the type of person who likes to, I don't like to necessarily believe the conspiracy theory, I like to like,
00:43:49
Speaker
pull it like a thread and unravel it and see if I can find kind of like a, you know, a puzzle, like the mystery of like, where are the, where's the faulty errors and logic? Where's the real information? Because a lot of conspiracy theories, the reason why they'll spread is because they'll have grains of truth in them. And you'll, you'll say, okay, well, then what is really the truth in that? So like, you know, when Alex Jones said that the water, the chemical, I don't like to put in chemicals in the water turn the fricking frogs gay.
00:44:16
Speaker
Okay, well, the frogs weren't turning gay, right, but certain chemicals, some hormone, like your hormones can be affected by some of the chemicals in plastics that can leach into water if you're drinking water from certain types of bottles, especially if you heat them up, and it didn't turn the frogs gay, but they spontaneously changed their gender.
00:44:36
Speaker
but that's also a trait of these frogs that they can do that. And it's like, you know, I don't know if you remember the Jurassic Park thing, but that was kind of like the technology, the spoof that they spoofed it on. So it's like, but so there's a grain of truth to that conspiracy theory, right? And it's fun to find out what's real, but the problem is most people never have, they don't have the time, they don't want to look past that because they've already confirmed their biases for whatever reason and stuff like that.
00:45:04
Speaker
You know, I love to shit on conspiracy theories, but not conspiracy theorists because I think most of them are well-meaning people who have healthy distrust and concerns about central power and centralized banking institutions. And I think that many of them truly are our allies in many ways.
Transparency and Foreign Policy
00:45:25
Speaker
They just simply
00:45:27
Speaker
They simply have drawn the wrong conclusions at the end of the day, based on the information that they have, or they've been given faulty information. Some of them are victims of foreign intelligence agencies. And you know what? It would be illogical to assume that our own intelligence agencies aren't running SIOPs here in the United States, and that a lot of the mainstream media is in bed with the pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer and others. Listen, I've worked for mainstream media.
00:45:56
Speaker
If you've got a sponsor like Pfizer, you don't talk shit about Pfizer. You can't say anything about that. Like, like, listen, if I if I was taking money from the local landscaping company here and I'm the local talk radio station, I can't. And it turns out they're running over grandma's, you know, handed foot, you know, and they're they have terrible safety practices.
00:46:20
Speaker
If I say that I'm fired. It doesn't matter if it's true. It doesn't matter, right? And so you're not going to, you're not going to get truth from these mainstream media agencies. And because the bigger that an institution gets, I mean, the bigger it is, the more likely it is to be corrupted.
00:46:38
Speaker
and and the more easily it is corrupted because the more money that there is the more just the more danger there is involved in taking the risk to your own bottom line of actually going out and speaking the truth the truth has always been a very dangerous thing but it's the same in the alternative media the alternative media whether it's you know info wars whatever these you know always huge like conspiracy theory account for things like that they can't tell the truth either because you know the difference between
00:47:06
Speaker
Prison Planet and MSNBC, they both sell dick pills, but at least Pfizer's actually works. But you can't speak out against the dick pills, because we're getting money from the dick pills. So you have to follow the money, and it operates on the same model. The mainstream media, the alternative media, operate on the same model. Where are they getting paid from? Where is their money coming from? And I'll tell you that 75% to 95% of the time, somewhere in there,
00:47:36
Speaker
Somebody's going to be there. You take the King's coin, you're going to sing the King's song, right? They're going to advance in a gent. They're going to sell water. If they're concerned about fluoride in the system, see if they sell water filters. If they sell water filters and they're deeply concerned about fluoride,
00:47:54
Speaker
then you have a reason to question, right? So it operates the mainstream media as it does the alternative media. Yeah, so, and the solution, which I think you touched on a lot of very accurate things there, the solution is transparency in government, which I think we all agree, I mean, whether you're on the left or the right, we need more transparency in government to reduce, you know, if we talk about issues, like a lot of people complain that trust in institutions are going down, people complain that people don't trust our, you know,
00:48:22
Speaker
scientific recommendations in the life of COVID, for example, or best practices.
00:48:27
Speaker
The way you fix that is through transparency and truth, right? And opening up those doors. Maybe, maybe. And I'll throw this back on you on another way. How do we conduct, as libertarians, let's say we were Javier Malay, or we get into that position. A libertarian becomes president of the United States. How do we conduct foreign policy in a manner that actually protects the national security of the people that we're elected to represent?
00:48:55
Speaker
You know, I had a conversation with Josh Smith, and I got him in big trouble because I asked him if he approved of the CIA's assassination of Che Guevara, and he did. He said that he did. He's like, okay, I'll give the CIA that one, okay? And it's like, you know, he's a communist. He had declared war against the United States. He attempted to get nuclear weapons, and if he had gotten them, he would have used them against us. Okay.
00:49:20
Speaker
pretty reasonable, but very interventionist, right? So, you know, then he starts getting raked over the coals. Like, what is the role of libertarianism in regards to foreign policy? I don't know that you can actually be a libertarian and conduct foreign policy, because how can you possibly have transparency when you're conducting espionage? Like, yeah, there are lines. I've got an answer for this. Yeah.
00:49:48
Speaker
So I think, and I might get a little long winded here, but I think what you have to do is you do not have to be transparent in every single action that you do, but you have to be transparent in your methods. You have to say, these are the lines that we operate within. We do not step out of these lines. So let's say, for example, I do not need to know where the nuclear subs are. I do not need to know what the targets are. I do not need to know what the nuclear codes are.
00:50:16
Speaker
I do have every right to know what is the use case for those nuclear weapons, that they will never be used as the first strike, that they will only be used in the absolute necessity, last chance, nuclear missiles are headed our way, we have to respond.
00:50:32
Speaker
I do, you know, so I don't need to know all the little details, but I do need to know what are the guidelines for operations? So what are the rules of engagement? But as far as like a grand foreign policy standpoint for a libertarian party, I think, or a libertarian philosophy, how you apply that to the world's skills, one, what works and what doesn't?
00:50:50
Speaker
Two, is it being accomplished in the right way? Are we actually declaring war? Is Congress actually declaring war? Is it just a unilateral, oh, we're spending this budget so we can have a war now? I think that that's a very important thing to make sure that the people that are being represented have, the people that are representing the people are the ones making that decision and not just unilateral decision, not just hand-waving it away. The problem then, of course, is that
00:51:20
Speaker
But if you're a constitutionalist or if you believe in this idea, the concept of declaring war, the problem with that is that we've already passed these treaties with the United Nations. If you want to declare war, you have to go to the United Nations and you have to get a coalition and you have to get all of this buy-in from the international community.
00:51:42
Speaker
which to an extent flies in the face of the intent of the Constitution of the Founding Fathers that the United States should be allowed to conduct foreign policy war-making from a unilateral perspective, but that doesn't exist anymore. And you can argue about whether or not that's the right way to go or not. I would argue probably not. I would prefer that the United States does conduct its policy in from a unilateral fashion, but not everybody agrees. Some people think you should have to go to the United Nations and get buy-in from the international community.
00:52:12
Speaker
that, to a large extent, it's because of the treaties and the post-World War II system that we've set up that the United States, that no one really declares war anymore. Nobody does because they don't, what they do is they just call it like a kinetic military action or they, the Congress has passed, you know, what do they call it, continuing resolutions.
00:52:33
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, authorizations for the use of military force. So they do that so they don't have to go to the United Nations and say, hey, we'd like to declare war on Tajikistan or whatever. And so like,
00:52:45
Speaker
We are not living in the real world as libertarians on foreign policy. We're not engaging with diplomacy and we're not looking at the world as it is. We're looking at the world as we wish it would be and then trying to operate in a paradigm that doesn't exist. Javier Malay does not do this.
00:53:07
Speaker
Xavier Malay says what he believes and campaigned as an anarcho-capitalist, said exactly what he believed about the Pope, being a communist, and at the end of the day, last week, he went to Italy, he shook hands with the Pope, who's the head of state, and invited him back to Argentina, where his ancestral home, and was diplomatic, despite the fact that
00:53:28
Speaker
But it's quite clear that Javier disagrees very deeply with the Pope's Jesuit views when it comes to the proper role of government power. So here we have someone who is an anarcho-capitalist who understands the fine nuances.
Cultural Dynamics and Libertarian Transformation
00:53:45
Speaker
a foreign policy who understands the complications of diplomacy, who understands the role of the United States in Israel, for better or for worse, as leaders in the world in standing for a system of government that is aimed at representing individuals and not autocrats. The United States, for better or for worse, has a system that relies on buy-in from the individuals, from the consent of the governed.
00:54:13
Speaker
it – does it have its problem? I'll entertain any libertarian criticism of the consent of the governed, if you will, and suggest that we need massive reform here in the United States. There's certainly no doubt about that. But I think that it is a superior form of government to a monarchy or an autocracy or just a straight-up dynastic monarchy, something akin to North Korea, that you live in a country that has the consent of the governed.
00:54:43
Speaker
And so do I think the United States should go abroad looking for monsters to slay? No. Do I want the United States to be involved in conflicts around the world? Do I want us to be funding Israel or Ukraine? No, I do not. And that's what separates me from a neoconservative, interventionist point of view.
00:55:01
Speaker
But I do believe that there is a role in the United States in protecting our shipping lanes. And this is a big one that I've been convinced of in recent years, specifically by Larry Sharp, as a matter of fact, who is who's a U.S. Marine. But I do think that it is the proper role of the U.S. Navy to protect American merchant shipping. I didn't used to believe that. I used to think no corporations should have to put 50 caliber machine guns on their boats and protect. I still think they should. But the problem is, is that they aren't allowed to.
00:55:31
Speaker
Yeah, they can't. They can't do that. They aren't allowed to. They're not allowed to. Right. And that then so because of that, you know, I think that it's more important that the United States protect its international trade system that benefits us all as a product of our free market capitalism, so that we can export not necessarily democracy, but that we can export American culture, because if anything, the most powerful export that America has is our culture, I think,
00:56:00
Speaker
I read a really good article the other day that talked about America's cultural dominance in the world is our greatest strength. But in many ways, it's also our weakness. Because American culture is so ubiquitous around the world, it's easy for Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping to see the weaknesses in our culture and the cultural divides in the United States. So China, of course, is going to finance
00:56:25
Speaker
Black Lives Matter commercials and media that's going to make Black Lives Matter look good because they know that's going to piss off conservatives, right? Vladimir Putin is going to say terrible things about transgenders and homosexuals, not necessarily because he believes it. For him, it's just tools to power. And he knows that he can take advantage of
00:56:48
Speaker
these people in the United States who are gonna agree with those views because he knows that right-wing authoritarians are gonna say, look at Vladimir Putin, he hates the gays just like I do, right? He must really be a man. He just loves his country. He's stopping the global homo-Western, no, he's taking advantage of you knowing, he knows in American culture that that's a weak spot for us and that that's gonna cause division here in the United States. So going back to Javier Malay,
00:57:19
Speaker
Javier Malay is not naive. He recognizes who the good guys are. If there are good guys or bad guys, Javier Malay recognizes that it's better to have an alliance with the United States because these values are closer to anarcho-capitalism than they are of Putinist Russia. And rant. No, no, no. I think you're right. There's some things I disagree with Malay on, but overall, I've seen a breath of fresh air. Also, it's been shocking to see
00:57:48
Speaker
just how unified every subset of even the American movement have been in some positive praise for him. I've seen the regime beltways and the paleos and the end caps. Everybody's coming together and saying, look, this guy's somebody that's doing good things. So that's interesting. But we are at about an hour, so I do want to pivot to something that's more of a forward thinking kind of way for us to end this conversation.
00:58:15
Speaker
And that's basically the vision that you have of this new movement. Now, I mean, obviously, we're, I think, on different sides. I know that you consider yourself a Republican, and I know you're a part of that space right now. I'm definitely far, far, far from that. But I do think that we share some similar views, especially when it comes to our criticisms of the things we discussed on foreign policy. But one of the things that you did mention early in the conversation, I think you've mentioned this online, is that we kind of need a new framework to think through these ideas.
00:58:44
Speaker
And I think on Twitter, when somebody pushed you on this, you had said something like, grounded in private property and natural rights. So I'm curious if you had to articulate – if Austin Peterson, as Gary used to say, could wave a magic wand and say, what is the next major transformation of libertarian philosophy?
00:59:04
Speaker
How would you rethink it? And maybe you can expand on that idea that you mentioned on Twitter a couple months ago. Well, I think a lot is going to hinge on, from a tactical, practical perspective here, I think a lot's going to hinge on what happens in the election this fall. And depending on the outcome of the presidential race and the Libertarian Party, I think you're going to see sort of what the movement is
00:59:31
Speaker
People are only going to change once they experience such pain that they're forced to change. And so, you know, Dave Smith and the Mises caucus and others had promised to get a higher vote percentage total than Gary Johnson did in 2016. If they can't accomplish that, then it's sort of a legacy squandered to a large extent that the takeover wasn't able to
00:59:54
Speaker
accomplish its promises, and I think that the shrinking of the party will be the wake-up call that people are going to look for new ideas. I can't say what it's going to be, but I can say what I would like it to be, and I would like to see whatever kind of a libertarian Javier Malay is, is what I am. I like to describe it as an anarcho-capitalist in the streets,
01:00:22
Speaker
but a monarchist in the sheets. So at the end of the day, when it's time to get the business done, Javier takes a very pragmatic approach. He has his principles, and he has his ideals, and he knows what he believes, and he understands economics. But in order to bring these principles to bear, you have to be able to make compromises and meet people halfway. So I would like to see an idealistic libertarianism that takes pragmatic steps.
01:00:48
Speaker
Milton Friedman is probably the best example of someone in the United States who advanced ideals and sometimes even to our detriment in proposing ideals, ideas that in practice I think ended up being a mistake.
01:01:05
Speaker
I'm not necessarily a big fan of the negative income tax, right, or – and I'm not the biggest fan of some of his monetary policies, but needless to say, many of the policies that he espoused were good things for the United States. And he had a big impact on libertarian thinking and in ideals, and certainly he had a huge impact in Chile and in countries like Estonia after the fall of the Soviet Union.
01:01:32
Speaker
So there has to be some form of a pragmatic approach that meets the American people where they're at and offers a bridge towards our ideas that doesn't rip the rug out from underneath their feet, doesn't
01:01:49
Speaker
spook the horses, as we say in Missouri, right? So it's like, people should be able to transition from this position of where we're at to the next best thing. Americans at this point, they're fat, they're happy, they've got their Xboxes, they've got their drugs, they're more than happy to stay
Preparing for Political Realignments
01:02:07
Speaker
where they're at.
01:02:07
Speaker
We're not at 250% inflation like the people of Argentina are. But the libertarian movement is essentially the Argentina of political movements. We're at 250% inflation.
01:02:22
Speaker
We have got corruption everywhere. We're dying and we're destitute. And if we don't get, I mean, we may not have a Javier Malay to come in to save us, but at the end of the day, maybe the spirit of Javier Malay after this election this fall, people will be, hopefully look to be inspired to start a new liberty movement that has the same principles and ideals we've always believed,
01:02:51
Speaker
but takes that diplomatic pragmatic approach that Javier Malay does that that actually can unify people and take us in a new direction because I think you know let's if the libertarian but let's say the mises caucus is successful and gets three point five percent right they're gonna take that as
01:03:09
Speaker
They're going to take that as a huge win and they're going to trumpet that and then they're going to it's going to continue the slow decline. So, you know, collapsitarians, right? They see that they want to hurry up the the fall of the United States. Right. To some extent, I'm a collapsitarian with the liberty movement. Like, let's just kind of like.
01:03:27
Speaker
you know, stop playing, you know, stop the what do you call the fallacy when you spent money fallacy when you keep spending some cost fallacy, some cost fallacy. Let's stop sinking money into these and what we've been doing here in the liberty movement. And let's just walk away from the table, say, OK, let's write that off as a loss. Let's start something new. And I hope to be a part of it being something that very much mirrors closely what Javier is doing in Argentina.
01:03:50
Speaker
I think that's a really, I think we're incredibly aligned in that regard when we look forward to the future because I am of the same boat that the sunk cost, first of all, the other people that are still there, the sunk cost fallacy is basically the driver for many of the people that are still involved and still wasting time. But I mean, can you imagine?
01:04:12
Speaker
just how
01:04:42
Speaker
But there are individuals who are certainly doing very well with the current status quo as it is right now. As a matter of fact, Dave Smith was very proud in our debate on foreign policy to say, well, I'm doing just fine, Austin. I'm doing just fine. I've got lots of followers.
01:04:58
Speaker
He loves to trumpet his followers as an example of how correct he is about things. And I didn't, you know, I didn't respond, but I tried not to make it too personal. But I'm like, well, Dave, I'm glad you're doing well. But everybody else is doing pretty shit. The rest of the movement is not doing as well as Dave Smith is. So I'm glad you're personally benefiting from this, Dave, and that you're in a good position. But as of writ large, your movement ain't looking too hot.
01:05:24
Speaker
Yeah, and that is absolutely true. There needs to be a complete rethink of these ideas. There needs to be a complete rework of the coalition. The things that have worked for the last, or the things that failed for the last 10 or 15 years have to be completely rethought through and reworked. I do think that
01:05:42
Speaker
You know, we talk about collapsitarianism and we're hoping the U.S. burns down. You know, the American population is not up for that. We are actually doing very well by and large as a nation. Our economy is chugging along. There are concerning things. Don't get me wrong. There's plenty that needs to be fixed. Don't get me wrong. But we are not in the position of Argentina where it is a burn it down. Let's try anything we can to fix things because things are generally as far as looking around at the rest of the world, we're doing pretty damn well.
01:06:09
Speaker
But what we have to see and what we have to recognize is that over the next decade, particularly once Trump is no longer a factor, I think that you are going to see some major realignments in the political spectrum. And I really hope that the liberty movement is in a position to capitalize on it. One of the things that my local county chair of the libertarian party, Ed Kluss, says often, he says, you know,
01:06:34
Speaker
Right now, people are not going to vote and elect a Libertarian Party president. But I damn well want to make sure that if the voter's ready for that, that we're ready to put one on the ballot that they can get into office. And that's the kind of attitude, regardless of whether it's through the Libertarian Party or through the Republican Party, Democratic Party, we need to find a way to make sure that if the general population of America is ready for it, that we're also ready for it.
01:07:01
Speaker
Amen, brother. Amen. It's a great conversation, guys. And I'm glad that you brought me on to have it. I think we need to have more conversations like this on this topic specifically. I think there's a hunger for it. It pisses off all the right people. And I think that if we can come to some basic consensus
01:07:24
Speaker
in the liberty movement around like a foreign policy ideal that's more based in a realistic worldview. And, you know, not necessarily even like a communist worldview. I know that this name is anathema to libertarians, but ever since Henry Kissinger died, I've really been reading a lot more about his foreign policy because, you know, as Ron Paul said back in the days when in that very same speech that got me activated, he said, Richard, he said Republicans were elected to end the war in Vietnam.
01:07:54
Speaker
And the person who was the power behind the scenes of Richard Nixon was Henry Kissinger. So in looking at that example, I'm reading more about his view of foreign policy that is not based in a Howard Zinn Noam Chomsky view of foreign policy, but like true
01:08:14
Speaker
Republican, real politic foreign policy. Richard Nixon may have been one of the greatest foreign policy presidents that we have seen in the last 100 years, not because he was so perfectly libertarian, but he accomplished things that libertarians would dream to have accomplished, including opening up trade with China. And he did end the war in Vietnam eventually after he bombed Cambodia and Laos and killed a lot of people.
01:08:43
Speaker
Those are the consequences of the man with power. Heavy is the head that wears the crown. And until we can understand why nation states act in their own self-interests, the same way that individuals act,
01:09:00
Speaker
then I don't think we're going to move forward with any kind of a coherent foreign policy, because at the moment, I would not trust a libertarian to be president of the United States who advocated the foreign policy views I hear. I would not trust them to safeguard our national security. And I think most Americans agree that – and I think probably one of the big reasons libertarians don't win elections is because people do not trust us on foreign policy.
01:09:28
Speaker
because I think they see us as hopefully naive and dangerous at worst because of not just the pro-Putinist views, but a foreign policy view that is anti-American. If you go to the United States and you say, you're the problem, you're the reason for all the problems in the world, you're the reason Russia invaded Ukraine, and you're the reason that we have all these wars,
01:09:53
Speaker
By the way, vote for me. Good luck. It's probably not going to work out for you. Yeah, well, or if you're wearing a blindfold to everything that's happening across the world and blaming yourself. Yeah, exactly. So, no, you're absolutely right on that. There definitely needs to be rethinking. Austin, I appreciate you taking the time to come articulate some of those criticisms.
Conclusion and Farewell
01:10:11
Speaker
I think this will definitely make the rounds online, I'm sure, in the coming weeks.
01:10:16
Speaker
for those that are. Well, you mentioned Henry Kissinger in a neutral light, which means we will all be excommunicated. It's all over. Quite quickly. It's all over again, yes, for the fifth time or something. Honestly, that was another thing that Dave was really troubled by in our debate, was that I suggested that he should get some neocon friends.
01:10:37
Speaker
in order to listen to people who disagree with him on foreign policy, right? I have communist friends, I have neo-con friends, I have libertarian friends, I have friends from all over the different views and spectrums of foreign policy, and I inform my views based on all of these interactions and understandings, rather than a single centralized power
01:10:59
Speaker
of view of foreign policy. For people who are all about decentralization, they certainly have mainlined their foreign policy views to one single institution, which I find fascinating. Thank you. Yeah, that's definitely unwise in every situation, so I couldn't agree more. Austin, you're welcome back anytime. For those of
01:11:18
Speaker
you that want to follow Austin, you can follow him on Twitter or X or whatever the hell Elon's calling it today, at AP4Liberty. Do you have any other things to plug Austin, if our audience wants to learn more about you? Yeah, so just the Wake Up America shows every Monday through Friday, 7 to 9 a.m. Central time, and it's a really fun way to start your day to get informed about what's happening in the world. We do serious interviews, and we do goofball stuff like little karaoke during the holiday seasons and things like that, so
01:11:46
Speaker
If you're looking for a family-friendly, liberty-friendly show, talk show in the morning, that is in all 45-minute lectures about the intricacies of cryptocurrency, then I think the Wake Up America show is a really good introduction to libertarian ideas to start your day. So join me at rumble.com slash AP4Liberty, and I think people will really enjoy it. It's a really fun show, and it's really taken off. We're getting to where we're like,
01:12:15
Speaker
averaging around 50,000 downloads a day of the show. So I mean, that right there is, you know, a very sure sign of success. So for Take that, Dave Smith. Now you have to agree with me now. I'm more right, because I have this many downloads, right? That's that's what makes me right. Well, yeah, thanks again, Austin. Everyone have a great day. You can find our learn more about Project Liberal at project liberal.org or follow us on Twitter at Project Liberal. Thanks, everybody. Have a wonderful afternoon. Thank you.