Is Dave Smith Good For The Libertarian Party? | Justin O'Donnell | OAP #13
Chase Geiser Is Joined By Justin O'Donnell.
Justin O'Donnell is an outspoken Anarchist and leader in the Libertarian Party. He is an Author, Sales Professional, Public Speaker, and BitcoinCash Shill.
Justin believes that Culture is upstream of politics and is now focused on working in the nonprofit world to get at the source of what may causing our political problems. In this episode we discuss Dave Smith's impact on the Libertarian party, where the party has been and where it is going.
EPISODE LINKS:
Justin O'Donnell's Twitter: https://twitter.com/ODonnell4NH
Chase's Twitter: https://twitter.com/realchasegeiser
Links & Tips: http://cointr.ee/justinodonnell
Merch: http://snekstore.com
PODCAST INFO:
Podcast website: https://www.patreon.com/IAmOneAmerican
What do you think about um uh all the work that Dave Smith's been doing for the Libertarian Party?
I like Dave uh a lot, and um, as far as recruiting, I know he gets a lot of shit from people within the party who hate him and think he's a racist.
Nick Star Work tweets out an article saying Nick's uh Dave Smith is a Nazi.
It's a bunch of shit to me.
I I don't understand people.
Um, it's a lot of people who have big fish syndrome, I think.
You can't be a Nazi and a libertarian.
No, I I you cannot, in my opinion.
I I if you believe in a fundamental philosophy of consent, you're not a Nazi.
Um the two are mutually exclusive, in my opinion.
Yeah, but what I think it is, I think it's a lot of the old guard, people who've been in the Libertarian Party for decades, who've been heavily involved and have been in leadership, and even though we've been failing, failing, failing, failing, failing, they've been the big fish.
They're they've got their celebrity status within the small pond.
And all of a sudden, you got people like Tom Woods and Dave Smith who are coming in from the outside.
They're not they're not they're not homegrown leaders who rose through the ranks through libertarian party activism.
They came in from the outside with audiences and said, you know what?
It's time for me to get involved, and I'm bringing people.
We choose to go to the moon and this decay and do the other thing, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.
Mr. Gorbach tears down this wall.
A date which will live in infomy.
I still have a dream.
Good night and good luck.
Good night.
I appreciate you uh getting on the call.
I um uh saw your Twitter account.
I think Dave Smith tweeted it, and I thought, man, I gotta talk to that guy.
Oh my shit posting.
Yeah, that's right.
That's right.
Um so what's going on?
How are you doing?
I'm not bad, just not much going on.
Just working on nonprofit stuff in New Hampshire and pretending that the Libertarian Party is worth my time and effort still.
So yeah, so are you feeling disenfranchised with the party or do you think there's hope?
Uh it seems it waxes and wanes.
Um, as a former board member of the Libertarian National Party, uh, I'm in a weird position where like I know the ins and outs of the machinations of what the national party's long-term strategy is.
Um, but I'm then seeing things like New Hampshire where our local party goes completely defunct for six months of the last year and doesn't do anything.
Uh, in the quick revitalization with the new Mises caucus kids trying to actually get the party back up and running.
Um, but I've taken a personal step back to focus on outside the system activism, uh, nonprofit and community building, because uh as a friend of mine harped on me for years, it finally started clicking.
I really do think that uh culture is upstream from politics.
Yeah, I agree.
That if we really want to see uh effective change in politics long term, it's gonna have to start with a cultural shift at the local level.
So, what kind of nonprofits are you working with?
So uh me and a few friends, we started a nonprofit called the Emergent Order Limited uh about a month and a half ago, and uh we are fundraising to build a series of community centers uh across New Hampshire and hopefully across the country.
We want to expand it.
Uh we have a model of one as a community center called the Quill, which is operated in Manchester, New Hampshire for the past 10 plus years, 24-7.
It's been a members-only community center.
Um, they do host public events, mark community market days, um, potluck dinners, uh weekly and monthly throughout the year, uh, even on throughout all COVID, they stayed open, kept doing their events, weekly movie nights for the community, um, all sorts of things just as a place to get together in a place for the community to have to rely on.
Um, but really focused around libertarian ideals around agorism and volunteerism and building a liberty-centric community, and what we want to do is move that model to scale.
Um, and we've been presented an opportunity where the building that the quill has been occupying for the past ten years is for sale right now.
So we're fundraising to buy it, make it a permanent thing, and then create a above the board non profit entity that manages a fraternal order um and starts chartering lodges in kind with that all across the country.
Um, and we think there's already another club on the seacoast here in New Hampshire that we'd invite to be lodged to.
Um, We've heard of some underground community clubs out in Los Angeles and in the Bay Area that we look at for lodges like three and four, as well as a community in Maine that wants to start one.
And ideally, we'd look at going from one club for 10 years to by year 11 having six or seven already.
Yeah, that's cool.
So is it inspired in part by the uh uh Masonic influence on the uh revolution?
Uh it's I just I can't I can't help but uh think think of that because I am a Freemason, so it's all your lodge, and I'm just like, oh yeah, cool.
Um it's operated as a really low low um low-key underground community center nightclub type of a thing, yeah.
Um more of a speakeasy environment for the past 10 years.
Yeah, and it's it's evolved.
The culture of the community's evolved to the point where we want to take things above board now.
This is our coming out party.
We want to show people um this is the libertarian studio 34.
Um, yeah, like as far as as much as it's been like a secret, it's been New Hampshire's best kept secret and underground libertarian only uh club and uh social club and community center.
Um, but as we were going through pictures, putting together presentations for the nonprofit, we're sitting there like, oh, there's the time Nick Gillespie was here, oh, Verman Supreme hangs out here on a regular basis.
Oh so will you have to be uh will you have to be a member of the Libertarian Party to attend certain events?
It's not associated with the Libertarian Party whatsoever.
Okay, okay.
But it it's inspired sort of by libertarian ideals.
And yeah, so it's but the the current membership right now, most are not members of the Libertarian Party.
Um, most are actually free staters, people who moved for the free state project.
Um there's a few of us who are members of the Libertarian Party, uh, but it really has built a really tight-knit community around libertarian ideals, volunteerism, agarism, uh, free market exchange.
And yeah, one of our members joke, he's like, somebody doesn't need to be a libertarian for us to invite them in here, they just have to agree not to call the cops.
That's a great joke.
Yeah, so um that sounds really cool.
Um, obviously, you know, the Libertarian Party has had some awesome um influencers and leaders kind of over the years, but it's struggled to have a um consistent strong position.
Um, I actually think it was I think it was underestimated how much of an impact Joe Jorgensen had on our national election because if all the libertarians would have voted for Trump and he would have won.
So I mean, I'm not blaming you guys for Biden by any means because libertarians, it's not your fault, but it's just but you guys do have enough influence nationally that major elections are impacted.
They they are to a degree, and uh, I had this argument with a few new members of LPNH a couple weeks ago, where they're getting on the home.
Well, what if a libertarian candidate runs for governor is a Republican?
Maybe we shouldn't run a candidate against them.
Like, no, I don't give two flying fucks who's running.
We should run against them.
Because at the very least, if we're not competitive enough to win, we are competitive enough to impact their policies and impact how they campaign.
And as I think we can see in New Hampshire last year, we're a swing state, we're always very close.
People are always terrified of the split vote mentality and vote splitting and vote stealing here in New Hampshire.
I ran for U.S. Senate.
Daryl Perry ran for US for uh New Hampshire governor, it's the same district, the same number of voters.
I more than doubled his vote total.
He was running against one of the more libertarian Republican governors in the country.
I was running against a hardcore statist who wanted to build the wall, ship people out, beef up the drug war and send more troops overseas.
Um, so libertarian voters weren't willing to vote for him by any means, but they had a tougher choice to make when it came to the governor's race.
And by having a libertarian in those races, we either took enough votes to make an impact in my case or had a presence that forced the Republicans to be more libertarian in their messaging in Darrell's case.
Well, that's one thing that I do respect and admire about the Libertarian Party and just libertarians In general, is that um uh unlike Republicans and Democrats, there's never any Machiavellian approach, there's never any compromise.
It's like you're either for liberty or not.
So, like, you know, they like like it, it's so easy for Americans like myself, right?
To be like, all right, Trump's not my favorite.
I'd much rather have Ron Paul be president, but I'm gonna vote for Trump because I definitely don't want Biden to come in.
Like that's that's the way that most people think, like I do.
But I admire the libertarians who be like, no, I'm not voting for that guy.
You know, like I vote for liberty to death, right?
I I think the difference is that libertarians like myself are the ones who see that it's been three generations of voting for the lesser evil and compromise candidates that have gotten us to the point where the government is an existential threat.
Yeah, and well, that's what Ayn Rand said is that you know, the difference between a deal and a compromise is that in a compromise, both people lose, and a deal, both people win.
Right.
And every time somebody votes for a Republican who's not Ron Paul, both people lose because you you're voting for the lesser evil, the lesser evil gets into office, and unfortunately, just because they're lesser doesn't make them not evil.
The thing that baffles me about Ron Paul, um, as a person who is actually a legitimate Ron Paul supporter, uh, I actually read his books and listened to his speeches.
Okay.
The thing that babbles me about him is so many people who support Bernie now or the same exact people that supported Ron Paul like eight years ago.
It's like they have completely opposite policies, but like you just you're just going for that old man vibe, right?
I I think I think the key to it isn't the policies.
It it I think a lot of those people, the people who went from Ron Paul to Bernie, um, the people who went from Bernie to Trump didn't care about the solutions, didn't care about the policies.
They cared about somebody addressing the problems.
And for all of their differences in policy and approach, Bernie and Ron Paul speak about the same problems, they identify the same problems, they just have radically different approaches to attacking them and fixing them.
Meanwhile, nobody in the establishment is even talking about those problems.
Right.
Yeah, that's true.
And I also think that um one of the things that the libertarian party struggles with is similar to what Republicans struggle with.
I we've I don't I don't like to associate libertarians with Republicans, but if either of the main parties is closer to libertarian, I there's a case that it could be Republicans, though.
You could, yeah, I'm sure that um you can make an argument that it's not really a difference between gems and issue by issue basis, yeah.
And I I've said time and time again here in New Hampshire that it's time for us to shift left with the libertarian pushes and libertarian messaging.
Um, not because the issues on the right and the issues that we can form coalitions with Republicans aren't valid, it's just that we've already accomplished them.
We've already gotten school choice, we've already gotten uh constitutional carry, we already have the lowest tax burden in the country.
Um, we we've we've already accomplished everything that we want to accomplish, all the low-hanging fruit with the Republicans on our side here in New Hampshire.
The things that we have not accomplished are decriminalization of sex work, uh decriminalization legalization of marijuana and ending the drug war.
Those are issues on the left where the Republicans are the ones opposing us.
And by working within the Republican Party and by adopting the mentality that Republicans are closer than Democrats to libertarianism, what we've done is we've created a monolith of the liberty caucus that's beholden to Republican leadership and can't act on those left-leaning issues.
They can't approach those left-leaning issues.
If they try and form a cross-the-isle coalitions with Democrats to get things done on those issues, they end up losing their committee seats, they get primaried, they get thrown the hell out because the monolith of the Republican Party doesn't want to approach those issues.
The monolith of the Republican Party is more than willing to accept the liberty movement on the issues that we align with it with, but they're then not willing to go actually let anyone cross the aisle to work on the other issues.
So a couple things that come to mind when you mention that.
Um, the first thing that comes to mind is I think that we make a big mistake in thinking politically in terms of just left and right, because there's really left authoritarian, left libertarian, right authoritarian, right libertarian, right?
And so um, you know, the right is so like its brand is so associated with like evangelism and and moral governance.
And it's like not every Republican is just you know all about um uh monitoring personal behavior in terms of your sexuality or whether or not you smoke weed, right?
Um, but it's it's funny how um we have a tendency to loop um uh each other into those groups, but um one of the things I think it's important, I think it's very important that when you're talking about a left-right paradigm, as I often do, I'm not talking about the total political paradigm.
I'm not talking about the fact that if we really wanted to break down core ideology into parties, we should have 15 to 20 different major parties in this country.
Uh-huh.
When I talk about the left-right paradigm, what I want to talk about is the uh legislative split.
There's a left-right legislative paradigm based on the two parties that are in power.
Right.
That makes sense.
Um I also think one of the disadvantages that we have is that the Democrats are incredible at branding, even though their policies all suck, and um, in my opinion, at least.
And and I think one of the challenges we have relating to that is it's really easy to approach a group of people on Twitter or in a speech and say, listen, the wealth gap is astronomical, therefore universal basic income.
It's very difficult in one sentence to emotionally convince people that fractional reserve banking is the cause of the wealth gap, and like all the problems, you know what I mean?
Like, wait, let me like who wants to take economics one-on-one, like people vote just like they buy, they vote and buy based off of emotions and then they rationalize later with logic.
And we lean too much on the logic thing, but that doesn't change minds.
I mean, if that changed minds, then everybody would be a Ben Shapiro follower.
Right.
And that's the problem that Republicans and libertarians share together.
They try and approach things logically, they try and make their argument about why their ideas are better, but they're not actually roping anybody in with a story or a personal connection.
And people think emotionally, people act emotionally.
Um people vote emotionally, people decide what is going to pique their interest, what's going to motivate them based on emotions, not based on logic.
It's just the simple truth of sales.
When you're working in sales, you're trying to convince somebody to buy something.
Politics is no different.
You're just selling an idea.
So when you're trying to sell somebody an idea, you need them to be convinced that it's best for them, not because of the logical thought process of working out and doing the math.
And it's like, oh yeah, that makes sense.
It's like, no, I want it.
Why do you want it?
I don't know.
I just really fucking want it.
That's the best.
That's how you motivate a customer is to get them to want something on an emotional level, not a logical or processed level.
And libertarians suck across the board almost at communicating emotionally, because libertarians tend to be an incredibly logical and hyper focused on analytics type of uh movement and uh type of a people.
Yeah, and there aren't many libertarians who can get out and talk to voters and to speak to voters and connect on a personal level.
We see personality-wise, they're tend to be a little abrasive.
What's the fringe movement?
Any fringe movement is gonna be.
No, I yeah, I'm all about it, man.
I I mean, in the Patriot, my favorite character was that dude that was the uh grimy dude that uh, you know, he is of course his family died in the movie, but you know what I'm talking about?
That Mel Gibson picks up at the bar and he la had that funny laugh in the movie The Patriot.
Oh, he was uh he was one of the he would have been a libertarian today.
Um but when Mel Gibson had to go recruit people for uh the revolution, he went to this like real rough bar and they walked in and they said, Long live King George, and everybody like attacked them, and that's how they knew that they wanted to recruit there.
It's like that was the libertarian bar.
And that's the thing, a lot of libertarians get hung up on like the mythos of the revolution that it does that you don't need a majority to affect change, you just need a loud minority, and that's true to a sense.
But in a if you were fighting a war, if you were fighting a revolution and you were starting something where you had like an actual conflict, it's not gonna take a majority, it's gonna take a winning minority.
But we're fighting for elections, we're fighting in a democratic system where we need to convince the people who care enough to vote that they care enough of vote to vote for us, and we're never gonna be able to do that until we start connecting with voters on an emotional level with an emotional appeal, and we can convince them how things are affecting them and how our policies will help them because they're emotionally attached to it.
Uh, the Democrats with the whole fight for 15 thing, they've got that locked because they're preaching they're they're starting that on social, they've got constant social media bomb arm and fight for 15, fight for 15, 15 minimum wage.
They're not talking about the GDP aspects of the $15 minimum wage.
There, There's a lot of positive things about a $15 minimum wage you could spin from a logical and analytical standpoint, depending on your school of economics.
And the Democrats aren't talking about any of that.
What they're talking about is we need a $15 minimum wage because people are struggling to pay rent.
We need a $15 minimum wage because people are from debt.
Yeah.
Right.
It's like Microsoft versus Apple.
It's like, you know, like for years, a Microsoft machine was far out outperforming technically a Mac.
And Steve Jobs did a great job of coming in and making everyone love the brand of Apple, right?
And that I feel like that's the same thing that's that's going on between the right and the left right now is that look, the these policies are inefficient.
They they might even be counterproductive in many instances, not just 15 uh an hour, but other policies as well.
But you guys, like they're branding on an emotional level, and it's way more effective than a better policy from the other side that comes off as selfish or um uh insensitive.
Right.
And here's the thing.
I can even make a libertarian case for universal basic health care based on policy impact, based on the financials of the system, and how it is better than what we have now with corporate and fascist managed health care that is prices spiral out of control.
And the Democrats aren't even trying to make that case.
Yeah, yeah.
It's like it's a winning logical argument, and they're not even gonna bother trying to make it because they don't care about that case because voters don't care.
Voters don't care about the financial bottom line.
Voters care about their personal impact, and Democrats pitch universal basic health care, not based on the fact that it would actually save the tax base hundreds of millions of dollars a year by reforming the uh handouts and the bailouts to insurance companies, the reinsurance through Medicare and all of the uh fraud waste and abuse that exists in the Medicare system by having third party processors.
They just say you won't be burdened by medical bills, and people like whoa shit, mind blown.
Like yeah, yeah, absolutely.
And so that actually brings me to my like something I want to ask you.
I spoke with uh Liberty Clint from Liberty Lockdown the other day, and um I asked him the same question.
What do you define?
How do you define libertarianism?
Libertarianism to me, um, again, me, I'm an anarchist.
Um the um the perfect end state to me is harmonious anarchy in a panarchical society.
Um, I I don't believe in a that a lack of a government will result in one dominant form of an economic system.
I believe in panarchy, where there will be multiple competing economic models and currencies and methods of exchange across different communities as we spread out, and people will define their own uh systems of local governance at the most local possible levels.
Libertarianism to me is a political philosophy that understands the current status quo of the fact that there is a state um in that that state should operate on the premise of the protection of life and liberty only,
that the state's whole purpose should be the defense of individual liberty and the defense of individual rights and the protection of the individual, because the individual is the most important minority that exists, and any powers of the state that exceed beyond simply the protection of an individual is an affront to libertarian principles to me.
And I think there's a justification case for a minarchist libertarian philosophy, but libertarian philosophy again to me, uh is more of a cultural thing.
I think we want to approach things culturally, not politically.
Um, so from a cultural standpoint, libertarianism is just a philosophy of consent.
Every interaction the two individuals have must be consensual.
Um, and whether that's trade, whether that's education, whether that's work, whether that's uh barter, whether that is uh personal friendships, relationships, romantic engagements, anything is rooted in consent, and that can extend to individuals and companies, individuals and corporate entities, individuals and governments, so long as every engagement, every interaction is based on mutual voluntary consent.
We'd be working within a libertarian uh community mindset.
So, how do you define um anarchy?
Uh anarchy is the fundamental principle of self-ownership, that is what it comes down to me.
Is the existing sovereignty individual sovereignty, self-determination, um, not having a government entity that you did not choose, or you were in the minority of choose choosing against uh being able to dictate without your consent the manner in which you live your life.
Um, because right now we have a government by minority.
We don't have a government by majority in this country.
We have a government by minority, right?
Because the government is chosen by a minority of voters in a plurality democratic system every year.
They're just the biggest minority.
And we have a government by minority that enforces their policy positions, their rules, their regulations, and their laws on people who did not willingly consent to those with the full knowledge of what they were getting into.
And that extends to not just things like taxation, um traffic law enforcement, like anything from traffic law enforcement to taxation to um slavery.
The government nothing stops the government from engaging in slavery.
They do it, they just prison labor.
If you're paying if you're paying 40% in income tax, it means four out of every 10 days you work, you're working for the government.
Right.
You know, um, even the United States constitution doesn't ban, doesn't ban slavery.
The constitutional amendment that ended uh for-profit slavery has a clause.
Unless you're in prison by the United States government, the United States government can still use you as a slave.
Yeah, that's um that's really bothersome because um of all the incentives it it creates for imprisonment.
Right.
You know, like oh man, the roads really suck in Texas.
Well, we need some we need some more labor here, but you know, I guess the ins it's the incentives for Kamala Harris's career.
Yeah, man, don't even get me started on Kamala.
I don't understand.
It's so funny to me how how obvious the whole propaganda machine is when you have a primary candidate who polls in 3.5% favorability, and then she becomes the vice president for Joe Biden, and now everyone is coming to defend her when everyone knows that no one likes her.
Like no one likes Kamala Harris at all.
Not even the Democrats, just the journalists.
Yeah, I don't get it, and blows my mind.
I thought Kamala Harris's campaign was over after the debate when Tulsi Gabbard eviscerated her.
I love Tulsi.
I I mean, I'm I mean, I obviously I disagree with her a lot, but I she was by far the best Democrat candidate.
Not a high bar.
Yeah, that's right.
That's right.
Yeah.
Um you can say she was by far the best democratic candidate, but the bar there was so low to start with.
Um I I've met Tulsi a couple times.
I've gotten the chance to talk to her when she was here in New Hampshire.
Um, that is one of the benefits of living here in New Hampshire.
Nobody gets to run for president without meeting half of New Hampshire.
It's uh so uh I I've had conversations with Tulsi on things like gun control health care, um, where we disagreed, where we agreed.
Uh she did keep trying to come back once she figured out that I was a libertarian.
It was like every time we come up in conflict, she she would slide into remind.
I am really good friends with Justin Amash.
I'm like, you've mentioned that.
Like I'm a libertarian, I'm familiar with fallacies.
That's not gonna work.
That's an appeal to authority.
Justin Amash likes me, therefore I am good.
So um, do you think that the Libertarian Party has a chance, or do you think we're just long-term uh in trouble in terms of liberty in this country?
It really depends on how you define a chance.
I I think the biggest mistake every libertarian candidate gets into when they run for office, is they don't define alternative victories.
They they don't really disclose and define what they consider a victory aside from getting elected, because we're not in a position to elect a senator, we're not in a position to elect a congressman, and I don't think we're in a position to elect a governor.
That's a little bit different of a conversation.
There's a few states that have a knack for electing third party governors out of the blue.
Um, that could happen.
It's not out of the question, but I don't think we're quite there.
We are absolutely in a position to elect a bunch of state representatives.
We're absolutely in a position to elect a whole bunch of school board representatives of selectmen of aldermen in major cities and people who impact policy where it actually matters and it affects people the most.
And they become federal leaders 10 years down the road.
You know, if you get somebody to a state office, they might run for federal senate, you know.
With name recognition and a resume, right?
Right.
So that makes a lot of sense.
What do you think about um uh all the work that Dave Smith's been doing for the Libertarian Party?
I like Dave uh a lot, and um, as far as recruiting, I know he gets a lot of shit from people within the party who hate him and think he's a racist.
Nick Star Work tweets out an article saying Nick uh Dave Smith is a Nazi.
It's a bunch of shit to me.
I I don't understand people.
Um, it's a lot of people who have big fish syndrome, I think.
You can't be a Nazi and a libertarian.
No, I I you cannot, in my opinion.
I I if you believe in a fundamental philosophy of consent, you're not a Nazi.
Um the two are mutually exclusive, in my opinion.
Yeah, but what I think it is, I think it's a lot of the old guard, people who've been in the Libertarian Party for decades who've been heavily involved and have been in leadership, and even though we've been failing, failing, failing, failing, failing, they've been the big fish.
They're they've got their celebrity status within the small pond, and all of a sudden you got people like Tom Woods and Dave Smith who are coming in from the outside.
They're not they're not they're not homegrown leaders who rose through the ranks through libertarian party activism.
They came in from the outside with audiences and said, you know what?
It's time for me to get involved, and I'm bringing people, and that scares people.
There's people are scared of change.
This is a turning point for the Libertarian Party.
This is a natural shift.
Like a bunch of the Liberty Republican movement is finally seeing populism and statism win out in the Libertarian Party.
They're seeing that the Republicans try and primary massey and Paul constantly in Kentucky.
They're saying that Amash was getting redistricted out of his seat anyways, even if he ran for re-election, that the Republican Party is working to minimize the influence of libertarians within their own ranks, and a lot of them are starting to jump ship.
And we see people like Dave.
We saw Matt Kibby even like Matt Gibby came out um not too long ago and said, you know, my whole the whole Tea Party take over the Republican Party thing is not working, and it was his idea.
He's the one who wrote the book that spawned the whole thing.
Um but Dave and Tom Woods are coming in with an audience, they're coming in with people who follow them, people who take their perspective and run with it, and they're coming in with a media reach and an audience reach that's bigger than the Libertarian Party was when they came.
And so people are afraid of a takeover, they're afraid that we're gonna see a rapid shift in the culture of the Libertarian Party towards what Dave and Tom are promoting.
And they're not wrong, but I think they're wrong to oppose it because that's the culture of libertarianism.
It's people coming in who might have different ideas than you, but they're still not willing to force their ideas on you, and we are going nowhere if we want to remain big fish in a small pond.
Um right now, the Libertarian Party is a small pond with a bunch of big fish, it's too crowded, and everyone's eating each other to try and survive.
And what I see Dave Smith and Tom Woods doing by trying to recruit and bring in tons of new and fresh blood and fresh activists from their audiences from the Republican Party, some even from the Democrat Party.
Uh there's a whole bunch of people who've joined who said they were Democrats before, but they saw Dave Smith on Joe Rogan.
Well, I tell you what, there's probably nothing better for the Libertarian Party than what we saw last year with COVID.
Because it forced so many people to think the government can make me close my business, the government can make me stay home.
Yeah, the government can make me wear a mask.
Like, what the hell?
And and you know, it's it's not like it's not like it's obvious that there was the pan, like I always say I made this joke a couple of times that if none of your exes are dead, it's not a pandemic.
So it's like So it like you know, it's it's it's one thing when there's like a it's very apparent that there's a disaster going on and people are dying in the streets, but like the COVID thing, I mean, it was it's it's really terrible what happened, but the the extent of the danger and the seriousness of the virus was not nearly enough to justify the total disregard for personal liberty, and I think it woke a lot of people up on the right and the left last year.
So I I come at this from a really weird perspective as a libertarian because um my educational background is in emergency management and homeland security.
Okay, so yeah, yeah, my degree correct me, I'm not stubborn by any means.
Like I totally want to learn from you.
Yeah, so my educational background is in education is in homeland security and um emergency management.
Uh, I had my time in the military doing working on defense logistics and uh that kind of stuff, and my professional background, a lot of what I do now is consulting in uh health insurance and health care management.
And so when the pandemic hit, it was a really a collision of my professional educational and activist lives, all just wrapping into one.
I had to sit down, like this is nobody agrees with me.
Like nobody agrees with me there, nobody agrees with me there, nobody agrees with me there.
Um, but the reality is the whole the the mythos that got put out really early by anti lockdown activists that COVID's nothing but a bad flu.
100% right, it's nothing but a bad flu.
But people don't realize how close the United States healthcare system is to being overwhelmed by the normal flu every year, yeah, yeah.
A bad flu.
You like you get we we normally experience several like 10 to 20,000 deaths a year from the flu.
If we had it's more than that, man, I looked it up, it's closer to 50,000.
50.
It's it's spiked and varied, but I do know based on the models we've done in management uh and emergence management preparedness logistics.
If we had a 10% spike on average uh on a bad year, just in the number of cases, and the hospitals got overwhelmed and didn't have enough beds, we would see probably a 50% spike in deaths.
That's terrible because of how close the US healthcare system is to being overwhelmed.
And the the US healthcare system is that close to being overwhelmed because of government overregulation, because we require things like certificate of need to open a new hospital.
We require things like reinsurance processes, we require insurance contracts, we encourage Medicare binding, we have the Medicare register where the Medicare Blue Book tells people what they're allowed to charge for services, and there aren't enough hospital beds in this country to handle the normal flu.
So when COVID comes in, and we're like, it's just a really bad flu.
People with like me with an emergency background emergency management background look at that, like oh, we're that's a big problem.
That's a big problem.
Yeah, um, but in the same instance, the answer to that is not a government mandated lockdown.
Um, and that's where I run into like I'm looking at my education and my education, everything about my education and my practical experience in emergency management tells me, oh, we need to lock everything the fuck down.
We need to do this, this, and this, and then my libertarian activist side is we need to suggest people social distance, we need to suggest employers um transition to remote work, which thank god one of the good things that came out of the lockdown to me is the vast majority of professional industry in this country realized that they could do remote work, yeah.
It was awesome.
And I think we're gonna see a huge shift in de-urbanization over the next uh decade as businesses realize they don't need the overhead of offices if people can work from home, and the people won't need to live in major cities like Boston, New York, and LA if they can work from and a lot of these commercial buildings will be turned into residential buildings, and it'll help with um some of the urban issues we have issues, yeah, with housing scarcity and stuff like that.
I think that's a great positive long term that came out of the negative of destroying the economy for a few years.
Well, I think with what's what happened last year, and and it was really interesting for me to hear you say, like, listen, from a healthcare standpoint, XYZ needs to happen from a libertarian standpoint.
None of those things should happen, right?
And right, and and then that's the thing that people like don't understand is that when you ask Fauci, and Fauci's not a good example because it's really hard to tell what like he's always full of shit.
But when when you ask someone whose role is to be the head of health care, right?
Right.
Um, they're gonna their priority is gonna be health, not like liberty, right?
And so, yeah, of course, a doctor's gonna say, well, it'd be healthier if everybody got locked down, you know, because it's healthier, but you have to the problem is people aren't thinking in terms of what is government's role.
Is government supposed to save as many lives as possible, or is government just as just supposed to protect our rights?
And so if you think that it's government's role to save lives, then lockdowns make sense.
Mate, well, maybe there's debate about how the lockdowns uh ensure that beds are available rather than save lives, right?
Um, uh you know, so if that's government's role is safety, then okay, there's an argument for for some of the behavior last year.
But if the role of government is to protect rights, then it's absolutely uh a failure of government.
It was despicable.
Um, but I I want to go back to the whole Fauci's full of shit thing.
Yeah.
By the way, I published all of his emails uh as an ebook on uh Amazon and they censored it.
What you should do is you should go through his emails in chronological order and match them up with the public statements he was making at the time.
And a lot of people are using his emails really out of context to say, Oh, look, Fauci is discrediting Fauci.
But if you actually look, as science was changing, his mind his mind was changing on the go, and his emails actually line up to what he was saying at the time.
Um, and he made a very compelling argument as a scientist, uh, to say we changed our models as we gained new information, which is how science is supposed to work.
But then he did the stupid bullshit and said attacks on me are an attack on science.
No, Fauci, you are not the dark dark Sith Lord Palpatine.
You are not the Senate, you are not the science.
Um the problem with Fauci to me isn't that he he changed his mind as new information came in as models were updated and updated guidance that he was giving.
It's that he abused the authority and position of the government to try and make those recommendations have the force of law behind them and make them mandates instead of recommendations.
Yeah, he got a little bit carried away with the um uh the publicity of it.
I think he really liked having support, you know, and so yeah, he got a little you could tell he was just behind the pulpit even early on.
You could tell he just loved it.
He's like, Oh my god, no one's taken a picture of me since AIDS.
Well, because some of his recommendations are just good common sense recommendations, and people unfortunately the contrarianism and the um oppositional defiance disorder that's rampant within the liberty movement.
People were like, Oh, I'm not gonna do it because the government said it.
I'm like, okay, just because the government said it doesn't mean it's inherently bad.
Yeah, I was that way with vaccines and masks.
Like, I wore a mask to be a jet to be polite, and I got the vaccine, uh, the J and J vaccine, though, you know, uh, because I'm willing to take the risk, you know.
And I don't think I don't support vaccine passports, but it doesn't make me a leftist because I went and got the J and J vaccine.
It might make me, you know, a little bit of a risk taker because there's no long-term data.
But man, I'm telling you, COVID wasn't thrilling enough.
I need a little excitement in my life, so I put an experimental drug in my body.
Well, a lot of people like to point to say, Look, there was no even flu last year, they just reclassified all the flu deaths as COVID.
I'm like, no, there was no flu last year because everyone was washing their hands and wearing masks.
You really think so?
I do I struggle with that because um, you know, I don't know.
I you might know the data data better than I do.
I'm sure, I'm sure you do, but I don't know how many of the COVID deaths were actually confirmed tests or just doctors saying you know, COVID symptoms, therefore, so they could get the money from the Fed.
The money was kicking the money from the money from the Fed wasn't kicking back to doctors and hospitals, it was kicking back to the insurance companies to make sure they didn't go bankrupt.
Really?
So the hospitals didn't really have an incentive to uh falsely classify no.
That's just that's just another piece of misinformation that's right.
I I was mind blown.
My my uh my aunt died uh about a month and a half ago.
I'm sorry, she she was in a nursing home.
Uh it was long time coming.
She was late-stage Alzheimer's.
Um, she had a respiratory infection in a nursing home in Massachusetts, and They didn't call it COVID.
And my mom called me.
I'm like, did she die of COVID?
She's like, no, they just said respiratory infection, probably the flu.
I'm like, that's honestly surprising.
Because like I would have expected her to have COVID.
And they said no.
I think the problem we might have with inflated statistics was the rampant um shifting goalposts in what PCR testing was testing for.
Yes.
Because there was a point where the PCR testing was just testing for the presence of a coronavirus.
A coronavirus is a class of viruses.
COVID 19 is one of thousands of them.
The normal flu is a coronavirus.
The common cold is a coronavirus.
And the PCR testings was just testing for the presence of that.
I want to push back a little bit on the COVID numbers and incentives for hospitals, just Just to ask you, don't you isn't it possible that the hospitals knew that the insurance companies needed the bailout?
I mean, if your customer's about ready to go bankrupt, don't you want them to be funded?
Hospitals any collusion.
I don't like to use the word collusion because it's been it's been so beaten into the ground.
But their insurance companies were calling hospitals like, please count these as COVID deaths.
There is hardly any for-profit in healthcare anymore.
Yeah.
Hardly any.
The bailouts were coming either way.
The bailouts, like if they weren't if they weren't bailed out by the FEMA program for COVID uh related deaths and COVID-related treatment, the financial statements end of year 2021, they'd get bailed out.
We just know Congress bails them out.
It's what happens.
Um their lobbyists in DC would have known that they're getting a bailout either way at the end of this.
Um, they would have had that information.
There might have been it's impossible.
It just seems so highly unlikely to me, knowing how the financials of the insurance industry actually works.
Um Obamacare destroyed for-profit health care.
There's no for-profit health care.
Yeah, because the pre-existing commissions are way too expensive.
Um, like hospitals, like when was the last time you saw a private practitioner who wasn't part of a group?
Just the guy that gets me out of all.
Somebody you pay cash to.
Exactly.
Because anybody who's working with insurance right now, the insurance reimbursement rates are set by the federal government.
The insurance companies have very little room on how they're allowed to negotiate prices with uh with hospital networks.
Okay, so you've you've convinced me that this there was not this bullshit inflating of numbers because of financial incentive by the federal government.
You convinced me, but I do think there is an inflation of numbers due to the shifting of goldposts on PCR testing and how they were determining whether or not uh some I'm with you on that.
And and um are all the COVID deaths, I understand the testing changed, but are all the COVID deaths were the conf confirmed by any test?
At least even if it's an inaccurate test, was there a testing confirmation required?
I think that varied wildly.
There were I did see reports that in New York they were going based on symptoms.
Uh in New Hampshire, they were going based on tests.
Yeah, yeah.
So what about um year-over-year deaths?
Uh, how did 2020 look compared to 2019?
I don't know if we've seen that data yet.
It usually comes out end of summer um when it's published, or around this time of year is when you start getting that information published.
I haven't gone looking for it myself.
I think it if my memory serves because I did look at it fairly recently.
I think we're up, but I don't think it's 600,000.
But a lot of that can be explained by um like fewer car accidents and other other causes of death.
But you know, we know from studies done in the 80s that every one percent unemployment goes up, 40,000 people die.
So you can make a case that the lockdowns were really unhealthy for people, uh, at least over the course of the next few years in terms of impact on stress and and other uh deaths.
I I think it's gonna be a really long time until we have any kind of solid statistics on what the impact of the lockdowns were, not just economically, but in healthcare as well, because you're sure we're looking at less car car accident deaths, less roadway deaths because nobody was commuting, nobody was driving, but we're looking at more cancer deaths uh and uh more cancer deaths because of the unavailability of treatment, more heart disease deaths because of the unavailable of treatment during the time.
Um, we're looking at more suicides.
I possibly I haven't seen the suicide statistics, but it makes sense.
I've heard mixed reports, yeah.
I heard I think it's higher among kids and lower among adults.
Right.
Um oddly enough, I believe homelessness went down.
I don't know.
I can't explain it.
Um, and I think that might be the bailouts and the unemployment.
Yeah, maybe, maybe.
I don't know how easy it is to get home unemployment if you're a homeless person with mental health issues.
Super fucking easy.
No shit.
At least in the states I've done it with.
I thought in order to get unemployment, you had to be actively seeking a job, and they only did it for a few years.
They waived that.
They waived they waived the job search requirements for the past 16 months.
So why doesn't I man, I should have I should have claimed unemployment then since I'm self-employed?
They especially not only did they waive the job search requirements, um a lot of self-employed people don't pay unemployment tax and don't put pay the unemployment insurance premiums and are not eligible for their state's unemployment programs.
Most states waived that for self-employed people to collect unemployment as well.
Well, it makes sense though, because a lot of self-employed people did actually become unemployed last year.
If you own a restaurant in California, you were pretty much screwed unless your friends at Gavin Newsom.
I was working in uh Medicare health insurance and I was helping seniors with their Medicare.
I wasn't meeting with groups of seniors once COVID started.
That makes sense.
So exciting things are happening in Libertarian Party.
Um it's changing.
There's a lot of new, a lot of new blood uh coming in.
Are you worried about any sort of um compromise of the integrity of the party?
Because I I know that the stubborn old guard is problematic more problematic than helpful in a lot of ways, but do you think that there's a threat to the Libertarian Party's um uh adherence to its own principles?
I don't think there is a threat to the Libertarian Party's adherence to their principles.
I think there's a threat to the Libertarian Party's public image as it fights with this internal battle and the division.
And unfortunately, what we do have right near now is a lot of new blood coming in, a lot of new blood getting active, a lot of new blood taking roles in leadership because they're motivated to do so, but they don't have the experience and the know-how to do things like social media management and understanding metrics of what is positive engagement and what is engagement.
Um, and we see that with Libertarian Party of New Hampshire right now.
I I'm working with people in New Hampshire to try and help improve their messaging.
I'm working with National Mises Caucus leadership to try and improve New Hampshire's messaging.
Um, because New Hampshire sends out a tweet and child labor laws.
Like you're technically correct, but that's not the best kind of correct right now.
Because you were technically correct, but you didn't explain why you were correct.
You just said and child labor laws and pissed off 24 million people.
And uh how many members of the libertarian party are there in the United States?
Dues paying members who actually pay money every year, about 20,000.
Um, but I mean there's a lot of people that there's a lot of people that vote libertarian that are pay dues.
Right.
Pledge members who have signed the pledge but don't pay dues, or who have um registered to vote libertarian in their state were probably closer to three or four hundred thousand, including all of those.
Um, so when you're when uh then I see somebody brag, like, yeah, our tweet got 24 million impressions.
I'm like, you got 24 million impressions, but yeah, AOC retweeted it, and all of our followers hate you.
Yeah, you got 24 million impressions, but only 2,000 new followers.
24 million impressions by a standard metric should net you 40 to 50,000 new followers on a Twitter account uh of your size, which means you had less than a tenth of one percent positive engagement, which means 99.9% of the reaction to your tweet was negative.
That's not something to brag about to me.
Um, so you're you're sharing you're only looking at one metric, and it's because a lot of people don't understand, they haven't been doing this.
Um, they they don't understand how that works, and they're also willfully ignorant of internal politics, and they don't understand what it takes to appease the old guard because sure I want people coming in, I want people saying radical shit.
I want people pushing the overton window more towards libertarianism, but the old guard are the people who control the infrastructure who control the money, who control um the press contacts and the donor lists, and without appeasing them uh and convincing them that what you're doing is good for the party, they're not gonna help you moving forward.
So, what we're seeing is a schism, and that's yeah, but that's a problem.
That can be ironed out when there's new party leadership elections, though, because that's gonna change.
I mean, if if somebody if somebody moves into town and brings 5,000 of their buddies and there was only a thousand people in town to begin with, they're gonna be mayor next year, you know.
Like so, like, you know, if Dave Smith wants to be the chairman of the Libertarian Party, I'm sure he wouldn't have a hard time getting elected, would he?
Oh, I I can't imagine Dave Smith wants anything to do with that.
I know, I'm not saying that.
But my point is that the schism, in my opinion, seems from a from an organizational structure standpoint to be a temporary problem.
Um yes and no, because it it's not necessarily party resources that those people control, it's relationships and connections to people.
Like there's some there's some old money blood out in California with millions of dollars, who generally finances the petition drives and whatnot.
Um, that look to the current party leadership for advice on who they should support and how they should help.
Yeah, but money isn't everything, man.
If money was everything, Bloomberg would be president.
Money isn't everything, but money sure is shit is something, and you need some to get going.
And if you don't have any, you're not playing in the game.
Right, yeah, you're right.
It's not to be ignored, but I it's it's not to be leaned on either, you know.
Right.
So he's you you so you're right.
Money isn't everything.
A good ground game can make up for a lack of money a lot of the time, but that good ground game has a baseline cost to it to even get it going.
All I can say though is that I hadn't heard of a libertarian, I couldn't name a libertarian leader other than uh Ron Paul until this year.
Dave Smith was on Joe Rogan.
So whatever the party's been doing the last you know, 10 years, 15 years isn't hasn't been working from like a an awareness standpoint and in a messaging standpoint.
So, you know, maybe it's healthy for the old guard to kind of fail.
Well, so here's the thing.
You haven't been able to name a libertarian leader, libertarians really haven't had people winning elections or taking office or I and even on a thought, even informal leader, like somebody who's an influencer, like Dave Smith doesn't have a position, right?
I guess he's a candidate, isn't he?
Technically, but I I look at I look at the people who are currently in leadership in the Libertarian Party.
They aren't people I'd want the public to know who's the chair of the Democratic Party, who's the chair of the Republican Party.
Yeah, that's a good point.
I and that's funny because I actually did recently look up the Republican one.
Um, but I I couldn't name him either.
You're right, right.
You're right.
Um, it doesn't matter who's but I can name a million democrats and I can name a million Republicans, and it's it's hard to name libertarians.
Yeah, it it's it's a matter of time to get there.
The problem isn't that it's hard to name libertarians, it's hard.
You could name a bunch of libertarians, I bet you just don't know they're libertarians.
They're the same thing.
Well, I mean, you just have to name the founding fathers, just pull out the signatures from the declaration of independence.
Not all of them, not all of them.
You can skip some.
You had that split between the federalists and the anti-federalists, the abolitionists and the pro-slavery people.
Um, they all the only thing they actually all agreed on was that King George was a dick.
They were right.
Um, but yeah, like you you look at people like Glenn Jacobs is a libertarian.
A lot of people don't know that Glenn Jacobs is a libertarian.
Um, then again, a lot of people don't know that his name is Glenn Jacobs, they know him with Cain from the WWE.
Uh well, and and I think a lot of Republicans are actually libertarians, they're just libertarians willing willing to vote for Republicans, so Democrats lose, you know, and so like like uh like a Rand Paul, for example, is he technically the a member of the Libertarian Party?
Or is he a Republican?
Paul has never been a member of the Libertarian Party, right?
Ron Paul is a lifetime member of the Libertarian Party.
He paid but he ran as a democracy or as a Republican, didn't he, in 2012?
Uh Ron Paul has run flip-flops back and forth from running as a libertarian, running as a Republican, running as a libertarian, running as a Republican.
Uh, but he is a lifetime member, and he was the Libertarian Party presidential candidate in 1988.
What do you think?
Um, what do you think of Rand Paul?
Um my problem with Rand Paul is that he's too willing to play the game.
Okay.
Um, and you'll see at the beginning of his term, Rand Paul is super libertarian.
And as the six years go by, he gets more and more aligned with Republican leadership and statists.
Because as he's coming up for re-election, he needs the support of the party to get re-elected.
He gets re-elected, starts doing super libertarian shit again, and then over the next six years starts getting more statist and more libertarian.
Yeah, see that that's part of the reason why I am all for longer terms with only one.
Like I would much rather see a president for six years that doesn't run for re-election than a two four four year terms.
Sure.
Um, I I'm a huge advocate for congressional and senate term limits.
Um, you know, you know how to get that to happen, right?
You get Trump to run for Congress.
Feinstein would be coming out as a longest serving member in like the history.
But um, yeah, so it's well, I'm interested to see what's gonna happen.
I really hope the best for the Libertarian Party and just the libertarian movement as a whole, regardless of party affiliation.
And I really appreciate you taking the time to get on with me and answer my questions about the party and you know, share with me some of your thoughts on what it means to be libertarianism, what it means to be an anarchist, uh, what really happened with I learned some new things about COVID that really changed my interpretation, actually made me feel kind of bad about um talking so much shit about Fauci's emails, given that they lined up with this, you know.
It's interesting.
Yeah, I know I'm not defending Fauci, but it just goes to show that we always have to check ourselves in terms of um what facts we just kind of assume to be true.
Yeah, because uh what the problem is I've seen a lot of people sharing Fauci's like late emails with updated models and data, right?
And match it against his early statements, right?
I'm like any any scientist worth his weight is going to change his mind over time because that's the thing.
I hate the phrase trust the science.
Like to me, that is in flip.
That should be blasphemous.
Nobody should ever say science is a process, not a conclusion.
Right.
Yeah, yeah.
Science is a method, like just even science doesn't say evolution is is is real.
It just you know it says that here's the method, here's all the evidence, right?
Right.
And so so yeah, there's no conclusions in science.
There's just there's just evidence and and meth methodology.
There's evidentially based theories that are constantly evolving based on new data.
Yeah, uh, and it a scientist who's making recommendations for public safety, and his recommendations continually evolve, is doing his job.
When his recommendations are lock down the economy, he should be fired, removed, and strung up for all to hate.
Right, right.
Well, thanks again for taking the time to um uh uh meet with me.
And uh I really enjoyed our conversation, and I wish you the best in all that you're doing.
I'm excited for you and what's happening in the party, and I think that you're gonna keep kicking ass.
We choose to go to the moon and this decay and do the other thing, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.
