Christianity, Libertarians, and Midwits | The Tom Woods Interview
On The Babylon Bee Interview Show, Kyle and Ethan talk to author/podcaster Tom Woods. They talk about being a very failed podcaster, the difference between society and politics, and Thomas Aquinas. Tom Woods is one of the leading Libertarian podcasters with The Tom Woods Show and is the author of 12 books. He also has written a number of Ebooks that he gives away for free by signing up for his email list on his website. We get some questions from our super fan, Michael Malice for Tom Woods that brings the discussion to Nullification, Ron Paul, and how Libertarianism works with his Catholic faith. He speaks about how Thomas Aquainas helped construct his views. In the Subscriber Portion, Tom answers a question about Russel Kirk and Patrick Buchanan. He answers who the 5 best presidents are in America's history. Ethan finds out how the government is messing with our life from Tom. As always we conclude with the 10 questions for every guest.
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Thomas Woods.
He's a freaking celebrity in Libertarian Land.
Oh, what did Tom?
Does anybody call him?
Tommy Woodward Stone.
He's a senior fellow of the Mises Institute.
Yeah.
He's a historian, a libertarian commentator, and he's written 12 books.
And he's got all these like e-books.
I don't know if that's included in there.
Yeah, those count as books.
I don't know if that counts or not.
They're free.
So you just get all these books.
That's how he suckered me in.
That's how he hooked me into the Tom Woods vortex.
He's like, I have a free e-book.
And you sign up, and then he's got your email forever.
And then he just blasts you all the time.
I mean, I'm saying this in a good way.
Like, he sends you good information all the time.
So my email every morning is like, he's got these very provocative email titles, like, your Facebook friends are idiots.
And then it tells you, like, you know, I don't know.
That's true.
That's provocative.
It's just accepted.
So, yeah, Tommy, does he need an introduction?
Well, if you're not in Libertarian Land, maybe you don't know Tom.
He's like the John the Baptist of Libertarianism, right?
Make straight the way of Ron Paul.
He walks through the wilderness.
He's a podcaster.
He's got the Tom Woods show, which you can check out all over, TomWoods.com and on all the different podcast stuff.
He's a Roman Catholic and like does the Latin Mass thing, which we didn't really dive into, unfortunately.
I'm always interested in the Latin Mass thing.
Libertarian, kind of almost anarchist, very he's like Michael Malice, but also not as Willy Wonka, maybe.
Okay.
Less of a Willy Wonka.
Should we let them in on the thing we do in this episode so that they know they're not on the joke?
Sure.
So our friend Michael Malice gave us a list of questions to give to Tom.
And so we presented these questions to Tom as if they were just from fans writing in questions.
But they were all silly Michael Malice questions, which he told us at some point during asking them, he would realize this was all coming from Michael Malice.
I don't know if he actually figured that out.
You think he figured that out?
At some point, he said something like...
Yeah, I think he started...
He at least realized that some of these were from the interview.
He said, Michael Malice has hijacked another interview.
Okay, that's true.
So maybe Michael does this to other people.
Yeah, he must do it a lot.
I remember last time he gave me questions for like Dave Rubin.
We didn't do it, though.
Yeah.
Never again.
Never again.
All right.
Well, that's enough of an introduction, right?
Let's jump in.
Come on in.
I mean, Tom, and you.
Everybody, let's do it.
Prepare to be mind-blown, and you will now be a libertarian after this.
Let's go into the woods.
All right.
Welcome, Tom.
Thanks for coming on.
My pleasure.
How you doing?
I'm great.
Glad to be with you guys.
Yeah, cool, cool.
What's the state of libertarian land these days?
You guys doing okay?
I don't know why you torture me with this question.
My wing of it is doing great.
It's growing and full of energy and youth.
I think I'm the oldest guy in it at this point.
I used to be the youngster, and now I'm, you know, I'm like the elder statesman at this point, but that's the way I want it.
And of course, then we have the libertarian world that is desperate for approval.
And I'm telling you, if you are a heterodox, if you have a heterodox perspective and you're desperate for approval, that's a bad combination because something's got to give there and it won't be the desperation for approval.
So that's a bad thing.
And we've had some libertarians who have not been as sound as you would think libertarians would be during lockdowns.
So that's all bad.
But the silver lining of this is that it has awakened a sleeping giant, which is all the normal libertarians around the country who are trying to reclaim the word libertarian.
So you're the godfather of libertarians, kind of?
No?
I don't know that I'd use that term, but let's just say I've been around a while.
All right.
Well, do we want to start with our super fan questions?
We did get some super fan questions.
Yeah.
We let our fans know that you were coming on, and we got questions from some super fans.
So question number one, who is Ron Paul?
Are you kidding me?
That was the question that they asked.
All right.
You know what?
I'm going to give an honest answer to that question, but we're going to time it.
If only I had a timer nearby, I'm going to put a little clock here, maybe.
I'm going to do one minute.
All right.
No more than that.
This is Ron Paul.
Let's hear it.
All right.
So Ron Paul was a multi-term U.S. congressman who first entered Congress in 1976, served until 84, then left for a while, then came back in 96, ran for president twice as a Republican, once as a libertarian.
And unlike everybody else, he managed to bring up issues like the Federal Reserve, what causes boom bus cycles, whether it's a good idea for the U.S. government to have a military presence as far-flung as it is.
But beyond that, he would say things to audiences that didn't want to hear them.
So he'd go down to Florida and say, we shouldn't have the embargo against Cuba.
He'd be in South Carolina and say, we need to end the drug war.
So he didn't use focus groups or whatever.
He just appealed to people, their natural sense of what's right and wrong and what we ought to find appealing in a politician, somebody who just tells us the truth regardless of what we want to hear.
And he got young people to read thousand-page economic treatises.
Whereas if you try to ask yourself, what did Rick Santorum accomplish?
No one even remembers who he was.
It's been 60 seconds.
You're done?
I did that.
I was mentally counting the seconds because I actually didn't have a clock.
Oh, wow.
Okay.
Well, we have one.
Question number two from super fans.
Nullification, didn't we settle that issue with the whole Civil War thing?
Okay, now I don't know if these are meant to be like questions that they know I've answered.
All right.
No problem.
I'll do it.
Well, first, what is nullification?
Because I don't want to assume, I don't like when people just use crazy lingo as if the whole world knows what it means.
This happens all the time.
I don't know.
Well, when the Fed buys securities, okay, you've already lost half the country.
Why are you talking like this?
Anyway, so nullification is the idea that the states have to be able to challenge the federal government if it violates the Constitution.
That if the federal government has a monopoly on interpreting the Constitution, it will interpret it in its own favor.
And that the entire history of the early republic demonstrates that the United States was not meant to be a single indivisible blob.
It was a collection of societies, each with its own rights and liberties.
That's why the Constitution refers to the United States in the plural.
The United States are.
And we see this, I mean, in fact, in my book, Nullification, I go through all this forgotten early history of the sovereignty of the peoples of the states and that this was understood by everyone, North and South alike.
Northern states appealed to the principle of nullification, if anything, even more often than the southern states did.
The northern states referred to it to fight against Thomas Jefferson's embargo, 1807 to 9.
We see Daniel Webster, the consummate northern unionist, saying that if during the War of 1812, the federal government should attempt the mad project of conscripting men into the military, it would be up to Massachusetts to resist that.
So this is just normal talk.
This was normal.
This was how you keep the federal government in check is not by waving a piece of paper in its face.
Oh, look, it's the Constitution.
It's a magic amulet.
This will protect our liberties.
This is not plausible.
There needs to be some genuine pushback.
Now, in terms of whether the Civil War settled this, well, first of all, the Civil War was not fought over nullification.
Secondly, the Northern states used it, from what I can see, from what I've chronicled, more often than the Southern ones did.
And actually, if you look at Jefferson Davis's farewell address to the Senate, he's complaining about nullification.
He's complaining about the Northern states nullifying the fugitive slave laws, which indeed they did in multiple forms.
So that, and not only that, I don't think it's a civilized person comes to the conclusion that intellectual arguments are settled by violence.
So you're telling me that if the Nazis had won World War II, then I guess the whole question of anti-Semitism has been settled.
Who would think that way?
Right?
Or who would look at the Indian wars and say, well, guess the question of the plains Indians has been settled by that?
No one thinks that way.
If you came home to your parents after getting beaten up on the playground, they would not say, well, guess that settles that, right?
I guess you were in the wrong.
No one thinks that way, except here.
We feel like, well, our war settled that.
That's the wrong way to think about it.
Don't get mad at us.
Get mad at the superfan.
No, I'm speaking to a hypothetical person.
All right, the hypothetical superfan asks, what do you like best about Michael Malis?
No, not this.
She says, can't that guy leave me in peace everywhere I turn?
Jeez.
I don't know how he's done this to me, this guy.
And if you don't know who Michael Malis is, he's a celebrity ghostwriter who was made famous by me, by his multiple appearances on the Tom Wood show, and who now thinks he can outshine me with this crap.
No, look, look, in all seriousness, I love the guy.
Honest to goodness, I love the guy.
So I'll say, I actually asked this question.
I had Matt Welch on my podcast.
Now, that name might not mean much to some of your listeners, but Matt Welch has been associated with Reason Magazine for a long time.
And there was a little bit of a spat between Reason magazine and me.
And I don't care, you know, I don't want to fight with people.
I honestly don't.
And so Michael said, you know, you two should hash this out.
So we both went on Michael's podcast.
And then we each went on each other's program.
So I had Matt Welch on, and the very first question I asked, I said, now, look, you and I have been tiptoeing around this, and we have to, and he's thinking I'm going to ask him about Rothbard or some controversial figure.
And I said, but we just need to get this question on the table.
What do you like best about Michael Malice?
So he thought, oh, okay, that I can handle.
But what he said was quite similar to my own answer, which is his loyalty.
Malice, again, if you don't know who Michael Malice is, follow him on Twitter.
You'll never be the same again.
Your brain will be warped, but in a good way.
It's a good kind of warping that occurs when you follow Malice.
But he's a very loyal friend.
If he's your friend, he's your friend through thick and thin.
And I saw that the very first time I met him, very first time I met him, when you would think, you know, you're trying to be friendly the very first time.
You wouldn't really try to open up a Pandora's box or cause controversy.
You just want to become friends.
And I made a comment about somebody it turns out he likes and respects very much.
And instead of just letting it pass, it's just in the interest of keeping our first meeting pleasant and whatever, he gently but firmly pushed back against me and explained the merits of this person.
And I remember thinking, wow, if he'll do that for this person, you know, I guess he just does that for his friends.
And that's, that's how he, and he's the kind of guy, something terrible is happening in my life and he'll get on the phone for an hour and a half with me and we'll work it out.
And there just aren't that many people in this world like that.
And he doesn't always give away his softy side online.
You know, he seems like he's tough as nails sometimes, but he is deep down a softy.
True.
Yeah.
Twitter, Michael Malice, and real life Michael Malice are not exactly the same person, I'd say.
Yeah.
You've talked about Michael Malice longer than Ron Paul.
I don't know what that says.
I had a self because over the course of my career, trust me, I've talked about Ron Paul way, way more.
Another question from Superfan.
What's with all the e-books?
All right.
Again, I'll fill the rest of the audience in on what in heaven's name is going on here.
I've gotten a reputation for myself because when there's some hot topic in the news, I release a free e-book about it.
So if it was the police, I got an e-book on the police.
If it's these crazy lockdowns, I got an e-book on that.
When healthcare, the people, I remember, now that we have had all the lockdowns, the COVID stuff, it's hard to remember things like several years ago, healthcare was a really contentious topic.
Like people were accusing you of wanting to murder tens of thousands of people because of your opinion on Obamacare.
So I released an e-book on that.
And I have several e-books of the style where the title is something like, your Facebook friends are wrong about healthcare or your Facebook friends are wrong about guns.
And I just bought domain names that were just sitting there.
So I bought yourfriendsarewrong.com.
Why was that available?
I bought wrongaboutguns.com.
I mean, this has just been a blast.
So I also did your Facebook friends are wrong about the lockdown.
So I did all this stuff.
But I do it because it's, I mean, from my point of view, it helps me scratch an itch.
You know, when there's a contentious topic out there, I want to have the definitive answer.
And you can produce an e-book and release it very quickly.
And secondly, when you get the e-book, which doesn't cost anything because I give them away, you get on my mailing list and you think, I don't want to get any emails.
Yes, you do.
You want to get my emails because they're damn, oh, I forgot Babylon B. Doggone it.
They're darn good and entertaining and full of meat that you can use against some of the midwits you encounter online.
Midwits.
I like that word.
In fact, you know what?
Why don't I give one away now?
As long as somebody brought it up.
One of the things I've been doing over the past year is publicizing charts where I'll, you know, I'll say, all right, here's a, here's a, here are all the Midwestern states.
Now, one of them reopened completely on February 1st.
Can you pick out which one it is?
And it's all, we haven't labeled them.
Now, you would think if it reopened, well, according to the conventional wisdom, its death number should be like this.
I mean, it should be the vertical line on the graph.
But as it turns out, by an oddball coincidence, all the lines look identical, no matter what policy the state enforced.
And so I say, oh, well, how about that?
You couldn't figure out which state it was.
And yet you would have thought that state would be a giant graveyard.
Maybe this should make you rethink.
Anyway, so I came up with an e-book called COVID Charts CNN Forgot.
So you can get that over at chartstheyforgot.com.
So there's my e-book for the day.
All right.
Well, okay.
So another one from our super fan whose initials are MM again.
What are you going to do when they laminate the index card of popular opinion?
Yeah.
So again, I'm going to be the one briefing people.
My tagline is setting fire to or shredding the three by five card of allowable opinion.
Because as you may have noticed, there are certain things that we are allowed to think and say.
And there are other things that if you think and say them, well, you're backward, evil, anti-science, whatever the latest thing is.
So you're supposed to confine yourself to the debate framework that the New York Times has graciously laid out for us.
So we can argue about whether we should have a top federal income tax rate of 40.3% or 39.1%.
They're perfectly happy if that's the kind of debate we're having.
But if we ask whether we should have a federal income tax, now that one, see, that's not allowed.
You see, weren't you paying attention?
You're supposed to be debating this marginal fringe question.
Or, well, should the Supreme Court impose this doctrine on all schools and neighborhoods or that one?
Now, if you say, well, wait a minute, I don't think it's really up to the Supreme Court to do that, period, regardless of what it is.
See, again, you're not really paying attention.
The New York Times hasn't authorized you to think that way.
So certainly if we talk about nullification, well, they never approved that crazy idea.
You're supposed to sit there as a conservative or a libertarian.
Your job is to be a good loser who just sits there and takes it while the left-wing establishment doles out abuse.
You're supposed to just sit there and take it.
You're not supposed to resist.
So I fight against that on the old Tom Wood show.
And so, yeah, so I guess if they laminated that the card, what would we, I guess it is the idea that that makes it fireproof?
I think it would still be relatively hacking into pieces.
There's probably some industrial strength shredders that could.
I mean, look, come on.
Right?
Against scissors.
We'll figure something out.
We're America.
Was Mozart a red?
I can't answer that one.
That's a reference to Murray Rothbard's one-act play about what it was like being in Ayn Rand circles.
But I'm going to let that one sit.
Yeah, we can rapid fire these.
If anarchism is such a good idea, why are there no anarchist governments?
Why are there no square circles if circularity is such a good idea?
I mean, well, there are other, there is another form of that question which does get asked, which is how come if libertarianism is so good, why don't I find any libertarian societies?
And there are a lot of answers to that question.
I mean, some societies are more libertarian than others.
I have an article somewhere online on this exact question.
But part of the answer is: well, if there's power to be had and money to be made by doing a particular thing, people are going to be drawn to that particular thing.
And right now, they've got a pretty good scheme going whereby they educate the kids into thinking that it's good and right that they should be ruled over by wise overlords who know better than they do what's best for them.
And by coincidence, those people get to collect taxes and lord it over them and enjoy power and privilege and wealth at the expense of the rest of the public.
That's a pretty good grift, you know, kind of grifter approach.
So it's very, very hard to resist.
And as I say, there's a reason, and this would take the entire episode, but there's a reason that people who tend to be in education support this arrangement.
And so kids grow up thinking, well, look, I remember all the presidents were looking down on me from the schoolroom wall.
All the presidents from George Washington all the way up to the present were looking down on me with their benign visages as I did my work.
And so they're inclined to look at them as people who were just innocently pursuing the common good.
But if instead, if Walmart ran the schools and instead of the presidents, they put everybody on the Walmart board of directors up there and the kids went home and said, well, there's no questioning Walmart.
I mean, I see their nice faces up on the wall and they're paying for the school.
They must be good.
We would all think that was really creepy.
But if the kids come home and say, oh my goodness, where would we be without these great presidents?
I'd probably be dead in a ditch or earning 10 cents an hour or my computer monitor would be exploding in my face if it weren't for these people.
We would think, well, yeah, he's just being patriotic.
Say that sound.
We should isolate that sound effect.
Exasperated.
We're going to give Tom Williams a heart attack on our podcast.
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B. B. Another question from Superfin.
Am I really supposed to trust the views of a very failed podcaster over Dr. Fauci?
Every single one of these questions is an inside joke.
So this is again, Michael Malice threading on my podcast area.
See, Malice liked some of the Trumpian formulations just because they were so outrageous and over the top.
So very failed is an expression that they like.
Then he later changed it to extremely failed.
Now, no one ever put those words together until the Trump years and until Malice.
And now every time, now he just casually refers to me that way.
Now, you know, my friend Tom Woods, the very failed podcaster, had a point the other day.
And then he goes on as if he's done nothing abnormal.
So I just sit and take it.
And it's funny to see in the comments section of videos or blog posts, people referring to me as the very failed podcaster.
And every once in a while, somebody thinking he's defending me will come along and say, what?
Woods is extremely successful as a podcast.
You don't have to.
Don't save me from this.
Okay.
It's fine.
Okay.
So, yeah, we got two more from the super fan.
Super fans.
Super fan.
Isn't Twitter or Facebook a private company that can do whatever they want?
I'm sorry.
Just I constantly have to say, anytime I criticize anything any company does, Facebook, Twitter, or any company whatsoever, you get, I thought you were a libertarian.
Libertarians are supposed to support the free market.
As if every decision a company makes is the free market.
How could companies ever make losses if we all had to just accept everything they do?
Well, they have a frozen porcupine on a stick.
I guess I'm going to have to eat that because it's the free market.
You know, sometimes businesses do things that are wrong.
You can criticize them.
If they overcook your steak, you can send it back.
You don't have to say, well, it's shoe leather, but that's the free market, isn't it?
So, yeah, so this questioner is trying to get under my skin, you know, in a friendly way, because every time I criticize something a company does, I have to put in parentheses.
Now, listen, for all you midwits, anybody with an IQ below 85, understand that I am allowed to criticize anybody I want to.
That's part of freedom.
All right.
Final question from her super fan.
Why do you think Michael Malice is better than you at literally everything?
See, now, if I were somebody like Hillary Clinton, I would just walk off the set.
It's happened to us.
I remember, I think it was Ann Coulter.
Ann Coulter was being interviewed by Peter Schiff.
Oh, and also, who's that guy?
Dick Morris.
I think they both did this.
Peter Schiff was interviewing them and they both had new books out.
But in the first couple of minutes, he just wanted to pick their brain about a couple of things.
And as soon as it was obvious that this wasn't just going to be buy the book, buy the book, buy the book, buy the book, they just hung, they literally hung up and left.
So I, on the other hand, am a terrific sport.
And I'm just sitting here in the back of my mind calculating how I'm going to get back at Michael Malice for this.
So yes, if nobody put it together, every one of those questions was from super fan Michael Malis.
Trolled.
And also audience, you should buy Tom's books.
Yeah, also buy Tom's books.
Yeah.
Which apparently are not as good as Michael's books.
Yeah.
Yeah.
If you've had a lobotomy, you might think that.
All right.
Well.
I think, okay, so now actually interviewing.
That was Michael got 20 minutes of our interview.
We did him a huge solid on that one.
So I'm a, am I a midwit?
Does that count?
Because I'm, so I'm not like super, I became more libertarian leaning recently, but I'm not like a guy who's read a bunch of books like Dan back here.
In fact, I was saying during our interview, we should each kind of like on Who Wants to be a Millionaire, you get one lifeline to Dan because Dan reads a bunch of like, yeah, but can I jump in here for a second?
Oh, yeah, let me jump in.
A midwit would be somebody who, in the middle of a discussion about mitigation of the virus, comes along and says, well, you know what's really important?
Social distancing.
Social distancing consists of trying to stay like six feet apart as a way of, now, we've been through this for 15 blankety blank months.
How could you possibly think I'm unfamiliar with the term social distancing or think that an argument that I've obviously heard a million times answers me?
Or, you know what's really important?
Masks.
Okay, maybe you believe that, but that's not an original claim.
I mean, everyone's already been talking about that for 15 months.
So that's not actually an argument.
That's just you repeating something you heard on television.
That's a midwit.
Okay.
So that's not me.
No, you're not a midwit.
No, you're not a midwit.
Our audience is largely Christian and their faith is a big deal to them.
And I'm interested in your, I'm sure you've answered this a million times, like every question, because you do a lot of this stuff.
How do you connect faith to libertarianism, your views on economics?
What is the case you make to somebody like that who just goes, well, I'm a Christian.
I don't get so into economics and politics and stuff like that.
All right.
Well, we'll just start with politics more generally.
I mean, I don't really care for it.
I find myself drawn to it because just as a matter of self-defense, I have to be involved in it.
But I would say that particularly in this day and age, there's just no possibility the state is ever going to be your friend, even if you thought it might possibly be.
That's just not going to happen.
The kinds of people who are drawn to it and who remain in the permanent bureaucracy are people who cannot stand the sight of you.
And they broadcast this to you almost daily.
And even if somebody manages to get into the White House who kind of likes you a little, he's going to spend his time fighting against an entrenched bureaucracy that wants to resist his every move.
So far better to try to build a parallel life apart from the coercive structures of the bureaucracy.
Build something, build up your community, build up your church, build up your friendships, build up all these beautiful, small, voluntary arrangements that really are what America is all about.
Alexis de Tocqueville, all the way back in the 1830s, said that that was his impression when he visited the United States.
He said, in Europe, you have all these problems and the government is always trying to fix them.
He says, whereas in the United States, instead of that, there's always some voluntary association that comes together to try to make things better.
And I think just as a matter of plausibility, especially since the French Revolution, the French Revolution, granted, was aimed at the religious aspect of it was aimed at the Catholic Church, but that wasn't because they were Protestants.
That was because they, I mean, the fact that they started the calendar all over again and they dated the year from when they killed the monarch and they made the weeks into 10-day weeks instead of seven, which would make it almost impossible over time to remember when Sunday was.
That's not like they didn't accidentally do that.
They didn't accidentally enthrone a statue of the goddess reason in the cathedral of Notre Dame just because they had nothing else to do.
This was a pretty obviously anti-Christian movement.
And the idea of a single, indivisible, almighty, irresistible state was at the heart of the French Revolution.
And that's been the heart of almost all regimes in the Western world since then, is one single irresistible power center.
And when that power center is aimed against you, you're going to wish you had a little patchwork of tiny little jurisdictions of the kind that I'm describing.
So I think in order to build the kind of life we want, we need to stop trying to build some gigantic tower of Babel and instead build what's all around us.
Be humble and not try to fashion the world into a vision that we have when our own kids are struggling just to not be corrupted by a crazy world.
I mean, we have to get our priorities straight.
You have your family, you have your neighbors, you have your church.
These things will take up enough of your time without trying to build some giant empire or something or have a single irresistible power center.
And then when it comes to economics, economics is not just about money and profit.
Like these are things that are beneath us, that we're too sophisticated for that.
That's for stupid, materialistic people.
That's all wrong.
The economy is how we cooperate with each other when there are more than 10 of us in the world.
When there are 10 of us, we all know each other's names and we can all hand out assignments to everybody.
But when there are billions and billions of us, it's impossible to do that.
So we have to figure out what's the best way for us to all work together so that as many needs as we have can be satisfied and so that people can lead flourishing lives.
People are not going to be able to have a study group reading Calvin's Institutes if they're on the verge of starvation.
They're going to be thinking, they're going to be extremely materialistic if they're on the verge of starvation.
I guarantee you, that's not going to make them purer and more spiritual.
It's going to make them radically materialistic.
So to me, then the economy, understanding the economy means understanding how it's possible that the smallest thing like a ham sandwich or a book that requires a vast number of inputs.
I mean, the book is you got to grow a tree and chop it down with an axe and the axe requires steel.
So then you got to do mining and all these.
Who knows how to do all those things?
And who could possibly coordinate everybody doing them in just the right amounts at just the right time so as to bring together this consumer item that costs us $2?
That's like a miracle.
If you're not curious about how that happens, I don't know what to tell you.
That's a wonderment.
It's a miracle.
And so what it's showing us is how it's possible for us to flourish and live together peacefully, peacefully, where no one steals from anybody else.
Nobody aggresses against anybody else.
Nobody harms anybody else.
But just through our own natural activities of providing for our families, which we have an obligation to do, because if you do not provide for your own household, you are worse than a heathen.
Then, I mean, to me, this is like one of the most beautiful things in the world, is that when you get bureaucracy out of the way, when there's no guy shouting orders at people through a bullhorn, an extraordinary order, not chaos, but order spontaneously emerges.
And that's a very appealing world to me, where we treat each other as I treat you as an end in yourself.
You're not a means to my ends.
I don't issue orders to you to satisfy my desires.
You are an end in yourself, and I treat you that way.
I don't just grab things that belong to you.
I don't interfere in your plans.
You are an end in yourself.
And I think that's the kind of society we should want.
Yeah, it's a it's a real struggle with politics and religion, I think, because for me, it's like I want to.
Chesterton wrote, we tend to make politics too important.
GK Chesterton.
We tend to forget how a huge part of a man's life is the same under a Sultan and a Senate.
And he goes on, but to me, I love that sentiment.
But then, you know, I'll go post that on social media and people are like, you know, no, as a Christian, you have to be involved in the political discussion all the time because we have this societal responsibility to do it.
So I don't know what the balance is there.
And I, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But I mean, the thing is that what they're mixing up is society and politics.
Right, right.
Can't we resolve matters among ourselves without politics, where it always has to be one size, winner takes all.
So, you know, one side takes everything.
So the sort of there's a meme that's going around right now where it shows, here's the marketplace and here's ice cream.
There's a million flavors.
You pick the one you want.
Everybody's happy.
Then you have American politics.
You have two flavors.
And if 51% chooses this flavor, everybody has that flavor.
How is that an improvement?
And so why would I, I want as few questions as possible to be resolved in that kind of way.
I want as many as possible to be resolved in a matter of, well, maybe we can't agree among ourselves.
Now, there is no, I'll grant you, there are some issues that are so important that we just have to fight them out.
I'll grant you.
But not all of them.
And sometimes you do more damage even to your own side by fighting.
It would be much better for me not to try to go to San Francisco and make them all live like me.
That's never going to work.
And meanwhile, I'll be neglecting my own children.
It would be much better if San Francisco and I declared a truce and you live your way and I'll live my way.
And maybe by the force of our example, one of us will want to emulate the other.
But instead, we're just constantly either every four years or every two years, or now it seems like constantly, we're in a civil war with each other all the time.
And I can't imagine that it's healthy for people, for our mental health, for our social health, to be constantly at odds with each other, ripping each other apart with our incompatible worldviews.
I want these things resolved outside the realm of politics where more than one side can win and we can have peace.
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So the other thing that I think a lot of Christians get hung up on, and I don't know where you stand on these things, but when they hear the word libertarian, I think a lot of them get hung up on the idea of legalizing all drugs and legalizing prostitution.
It seems like that's like the libertarian stance is generally like that.
And there's an assumption about abortion, too.
And also abortion, yeah, that you're teaming up with pro-choice people.
And yeah, those are the biggest hang-ups, I think, for Christians when it comes to the idea of going full-on lib libertarian, lib, not live.
My approach in these areas, I'm pro-life, so that resolves that question.
And there are plenty of pro-life libertarians.
As Libertarians for Life has a great website with some great articles on it.
And they actually make, although they don't have to, you can be religious and be a libertarian, but they make secular arguments against abortion that I also find very persuasive, that respond to a lot of the common arguments that you hear, that the fetus is an unwanted parasite.
And so I have the right to expel it.
They take care of all those sorts of arguments.
Just the way I look at the state is, I don't want this thing defending my values because five minutes from now, it's going to be attacking me and it's going to be assaulting everything I value.
So I don't want to depend on it.
I'll build my own society with my own values without its help.
But right now, I mean, what more needs to happen before you realize this thing's not going to be reformed in your lifetime?
There's just no way it will ever be your friend.
It might be your friend for 10 minutes, and then you're going to hand over to it all these powers that will then be turned against you.
No, this is going to – I wish the problems that we face could be solved by a political argument and a vote.
These problems are going to take rolling up your sleeves and working and proselytizing and teaching and countering the wrong ideas and making videos and teaching people and explaining things.
It's going to take that and it's going to take one soul at a time.
I wish we could just have a vote and it's all resolved, but it's not.
Now, in terms of the other two issues that you mentioned, well, I know that Thomas Aquinas won't appeal to every viewer, but we can at least agree Thomas Aquinas was not an atheist, let's say, right?
He spent his entire life contemplating God and theological questions.
And it was his view that when it came to something like prostitution, it could in fact be tolerated because there are some situations where when you ban something, the outcome could actually be worse.
And so, for example, with the drug war, I think the outcome is worse because I don't actually think, it is possible, by the way, people could use more drugs if they were legal.
That's possible.
There are countries where they've done this and they haven't had that effect.
But think about somebody in your life who has a drug problem and ask yourself, is imprisonment the best approach for that person?
And what we surely know is going to happen to that person in prison is that honestly, the Christian approach to this issue is just lock them in a cage with people you wouldn't want to be within a thousand miles of.
That's the best approach you can come up with.
There has to be a more compassionate approach than that.
And by the way, those are the only two options.
Those are the only two options.
Some compassionate approach where we try to get people the help they need or we lock them in a cage.
And the libertarian position is simply saying don't lock them in a cage.
Do whatever else you want.
Give them all the resources you want to give them, all the education, all the therapy, whatever it is, but just don't put them in a cage.
And likewise, the way it's not like banning prostitution makes it go away.
They don't call it the world's oldest profession for nothing.
Somehow, it's been evading all these regulations for thousands of years.
But the way it used to be handled would be that, well, it went on in the bad part of town that you keep out of.
But pretty much everybody somewhere along the line has some moral foibles.
And we don't necessarily think that the solution to it is to humiliate him completely, but rather to provide for his moral education.
So just because you tolerate something doesn't mean that you want it to be shouted from the rooftops everywhere or available outside a schoolhouse or whatever.
Private property in a society of entirely private property would resolve this because nobody would want to live like that.
Nobody wants a school that has a heroin dealer outside the door.
Nobody wants that.
So that doesn't happen.
This resolves all these kinds of questions about who gets to protest where and who gets to scream in whose face.
Well, it depends on who owns the property.
And that tends to resolve, again, peacefully.
It peacefully resolves these problems.
Yeah, you midwit.
Get out of here.
All right.
Well, let's move into our subscriber portion.
All right.
We'll ask the real steamy questions here.
Drill down into some more.
Geez, they're going to get harder than these are harder questions.
We'll ask the other 20 questions from Michael Malice.
Yeah.
Coming up next for Babylon Bee subscribers.
What are some like examples of things like maybe they're just not paying attention to that you would say, look, the government's doing this.
You may not realize it, but like these are the things where they're messing with your life.
Who's your top five presidents?
How do you feel about Russell Kirk or Patrick Buchanan type conservatism with its focus on culture and tradition and its eschewing of ideology, even free market or classical liberal doctrines?
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