Joshua Smith from Break The Cycle | How Can Libertarians Win Against The Deep State? | OAP #29
Chase Geiser is joined by Joshua Smith from Break The Cycle.
Joshua Smith is a political commentator, podcaster, at large Representative of the Libertarian National Committee, and blue collar working class person who is trying to break the cycle of two party politics.
EPISODE LINKS:
Chase's Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/realchasegeiser
Joshua's Links: https://linktr.ee/breakthecyclejs
PODCAST LINKS:
Anchor: https://anchor.fm/oneamerican
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/IAmOneAmerican
Yeah, I use Anchor now still to publish to my RSS feed, but I just rip the audio from the live show and then split it up in the middle, drop a couple of sponsors and then stick it to the RSS feed.
I mean, she takes like my old t-shirts and other people's old t-shirts and she does all these cuts and ties and like turns them into fashion accessories.
I even had some shirts of bands that I never really particularly cared for very much, like the Misfits.
Like there was a couple of Misfit songs I really liked, but he had to have Misfit shirts, you know, when I was came, I came up in the punk rock scene playing punk rock music and stuff.
Yeah, like a private school that she goes to out in the kind of the country.
And it's very homeschool-based, but they have like, you know, cool things, but they have like their own cow and like all this cool stuff that she gets to do.
But my two, my daughter goes to an alternative school.
She's 16.
She just wants to get her, she wants to try and get her diploma, but she hadn't been to school since the eighth grade.
And then the two littles, the six-year-old had never been to school.
And so, and then the nine-year-old had only gone to one day of first grade and no other school since he was supposed to be in the fourth grade.
So we moved into, we live in Iowa now.
And, you know, Iowa's got a pretty decent public school system as far as states go.
They're, they're, they, they're not pushing politics here in their schools, which is nice.
They're, they're, uh, CRT is banned in the public schools here, um, stuff like that.
And so we moved into the nicest school district in the state.
Uh, and I, I way overpay for a house so that we could get them into, you know, we, we couldn't homeschool them.
They needed, they had too many needs.
Um, and we didn't really have the money to send them all to private school.
And, uh, so we found the best elementary school we could find that had, you know, they don't wear, they don't have to wear masks.
There's, uh, there's religious exemptions for vaccines.
They, they're banned CRT.
I mean, it's, it's a good school.
And so we put them there because they needed the help that they needed, the two that really need it.
And then my daughter's going to a continuation school type thing to try and get her diploma.
But if not, she'll probably end up getting her GD.
She's already worked.
She spent some time working at Wendy's and babysitting.
I mean, I had pictures, final pictures of my grandfather on there, pictures of my daughter when she was a baby and very young with me, pictures of my son when he was very young and a baby with me that I'll never get back because they're from old cell phones.
And I was like, oh, well, they're on Facebook.
I'll always have them.
And then they kicked me off after 11 years during the election.
I was stumping for, you know, I sit on the Libertarian National Committee.
I'm an at-large rep. And of course, I'm going to stump for my candidate.
I thought, you know, if I had to, if I had to think about a candidate that I wanted to win the election, it was Joe Jorgensen.
And, you know, I get a lot of shit for that, but I still believe that she would have been better than definitely better than Biden.
There's no doubt about that.
And she did go a little woke.
I wasn't super happy about that, but it was my job to work for the campaign.
And so I stumped for Joe a little bit.
And within a couple of weeks, I was kicked off YouTube or off Facebook.
But I also dared to make the statement that maybe this virus had come from a lab in China.
And that's why they pulled you?
I think that's why they initially, that's why they eventually pulled me, which is funny because now that's the approved narrative and everyone's talking about it.
It's totally fine.
So here they have let me back on, but not my old profile.
Well, so, you know, I was on the USS Constellation during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
We were in the middle of the Persian Gulf when George Bush declared war on Iraq.
And I was really jaded on the military industrial complex.
I saw the wasteful actions that the military uses.
We dropped hundreds of millions of tons of ordinance on Baghdad, in my opinion, for almost no reason whatsoever, other than macroeconomics issue over the petro dollar.
I didn't know that at the time, but I knew that we were dropping weapons on homes.
And there's family pets there and kids with dreams and goals and aspirations that would love to start their own business and do the kind of because the same kind of things that I wanted to do, you know.
And so it was kind of a bummer for me and definitely jaded me on the political parties because when I got out in 2005, I didn't see a party that really represented my anti-war ideals, especially.
I don't know that I'm necessarily against national defense completely, but I am against these forever wars that we've been experiencing in the Middle East for a long time.
And so I was really jaded and just really didn't find myself in the Republican Party.
I was still a Republican, so a registered Republican voter.
And then in 2007, I found Papa Ron Paul, you know, and that just absolutely changed my life.
You know, he was calling Congress a bunch of psychopaths.
He was talking about blowback and he was essentially speaking to how I felt completely with even the Republican Party.
I mean, he was even going off on the Republican Party.
And so I decided to get involved with the Ron Paul campaign.
I worked on the Ron Paul campaign in 2008 in California.
But when you're, you know, I'm from, I'm from Oakland, California, you know, and it's got to go to the Inland Empire if you want to get any love.
Yeah, or the Central Valley or like way up north by Mount Shasta and weed and Waireka and all that stuff.
And so it was rough.
And then I watched how the Republican Party treated Ron Paul.
I watched how the media treated Ron Paul.
It was disgusting.
And in fact, they actually had delegates getting arrested trying to get into the caucuses and in New Orleans and all kinds of, it was just, it was wild.
They changed the rules at conventions to screw Ron Paul and his delegates.
I mean, it was just, I was like, there's no way I can support the Republican Party after this anymore.
They've made it very, very clear to me that they do not support my ideals.
So in 2010, I joined the Libertarian Party.
I said, you know, here's a party that supports mostly what I want.
I think the platform's pretty great as far as personal freedoms, economic freedoms, stuff like that.
I dropped my donations after like three months and just kind of did my own thing.
I helped found a couple of publications, including Think Liberty, which is pretty successful now.
And then in 2012, of course, I stumped for Ron Paul again, even though I was a registered Republican or a registered libertarian voter at this point in California.
And then in 2012, when they just dashed right over Ron Paul again, I supported Gary Johnson.
He did really well as the governor of New Mexico two-term governor.
He cut taxes 13 times.
He really made that state a lot much more inhabitable for people who like personal freedoms.
But he just, he wasn't a good candidate for president.
And in 2016, I supported him again.
Obviously, I couldn't support the reality TV star or the lady who has people murdered for her own political game.
And so I joined, I joined the party and I joined the Libertarian Party.
I became a regional rep for the state party of Washington.
I started building county affiliates there.
And then in 2017, Nick Sarwark stepped way, way out of line and started talking shit about Tom Woods and Eric July and all these great libertarian people, including Ron Paul.
And so I was like, you know what?
I'm going to find someone to run against this guy for chair.
And I started calling all these big name libertarians that I knew and everyone's like, you're crazy, man.
This guy is the most popular chair the party's had.
He's running for a third term.
Like, no way.
He's a trial lawyer, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And I was like, I don't care.
Someone's got to do it.
No one would do it.
Well, I had Think Liberty at the time.
We had about 16,000 daily followers and readers.
And I was like, I'm going to do it.
So I put out an intent to run statement.
I ran.
I traveled to 25 states.
I spoke behind Ron Paul at the Roads to Freedom Unconvention.
All shit I had never done before.
And I didn't do well.
I mean, I took like 24% or 22% of the vote at national convention.
And then in 2020, I ran again against his little henchman, Joe Bishop Henchman, who just resigned actually as our chair, national chair, after I'd served two years on the board as an at-large.
And I decided I was going to run one more time.
And I lost by like 100 votes, unfortunately, at national convention.
Yeah, but now there's some, you know, there's some people who think that they cheated and they want to, you know, they want to stop the steal, but I'm not, I'd never pushed the stop the steal thing.
I just, I ended up back on the board again anyways.
I have a crazy life right now, seven kids and the show.
And it's like, I'm kind of glad I'm not chair right now, you know?
You know, it's interesting how the party structure is in the United States because obviously every party has leverage over how it operates to a certain extent, but there are federal and state level requirements for how the districting is supposed to be set up and how the leadership is supposed to be established.
Can you talk a little bit about that?
Because I don't think people realize how difficult the existing parties have made it for any new parties to form.
And so for the Libertarian Party, our biggest hurdle always is ballot access.
You know, just never, it never, it's a war that we will always fight until we're a major party nationally.
And we get close.
I mean, in 2016, we were about 700,000 votes away from getting debate access and becoming a major party in the country and all this stuff.
And then, you know, Joe really kind of took a step backwards as far as presidential votes go.
But yeah, I mean, we have states like Tennessee where we just can't get ballot access no matter how hard we try.
They want, you know, an inordinate amount of signatures that are impossible to get in the timeframe allotted.
Illinois has been really bad.
Alabama has been really bad.
And it's a state-by-state case.
You know, there's some states where you have to run a gubernatorial candidate or a state rep candidate that gets a certain amount of votes.
And it's been really easy in those places for us to get the required amount of votes for a good candidate, like in New Hampshire or something.
And then there's states like Tennessee where we haven't had ballot access for like the last three election cycles or something.
And so it's just different.
That's the problem is they've made the states, really, it's up to the states for most things.
Ballot access for presidential campaign is different than the federal campaigns different.
That depends on what we got in the last presidential election.
That depends on some states we just have to petition.
But some states, as far as statewide races go for state ledge and governor and stuff like that, or any partisan race, just to get an L next to your name is almost impossible.
And that's what the Republicans are supposed to do.
That's why they fight.
That's why they fight.
That's why they fight the ballot access stuff.
It's like they want it to be harder on other parties because they've already got, you know, they've already got their foot in the door and can do whatever they want.
And so if another party came around, we start threatening their positions.
And now that the Libertarian Party is actually becoming this united front with the Mises caucus kind of taking over, we've taken over over 25 state boards in the last year.
And there's still a whole nother year of state convention season before the national convention.
And I kept telling people, I'm trying to start a movement.
Like, I want, I'm running for chair because it afforded me the opportunity to travel around the country and get people hyped on taking the Libertarian Party away from these loser brigade types who only want to focus on the culturally woke issues instead of the serious issues like ending the wars, ending the drug war, ending the Federal Reserve, these kind of things, or at least even just once in your life, Libertarian Party, just at mention at least audit.
You know what I mean?
Like, you know, it's what made people like Ron Paul and Thomas Massey and Rand Paul.
It's what made them popular was they used this rhetoric that resonates with people all over the political spectrum, all over the country.
And the Libertarian Party, we have the principles.
We have the principles.
We just don't have the mouthpiece.
And so it's nice to see people like Dave Smith and Tom Woods.
Yeah, that was, yeah, that was that was a good response.
But it's just, it's just so funny how they can totally like straw man and pivot the uh the narrative.
And I, I just wish that, you know, both libertarians and Republicans, I wish that there was more thought put into, and this is one thing that Trump was really talented at as an individual.
There's more thought put into how you can manipulate the media rather than just trying to win the argument because logic doesn't win votes.
It's good policy and it has it is very important to have the best logical argument, but you don't get somebody to vote for you by convincing them intellectually until you've convinced them emotionally.
You know, and it's I'm in marketing, so that's that's how I think in terms of advertising is concerned.
It's like you have to emotionally appeal to the consumer with your advertising before you logically convince them about the product.
So if I ran an ad for a computer and all I did was list the specs, nobody would fucking buy it.
But if the ad for the computer is like showing like somebody making, you know, an album in a recording studio and then it cuts to them editing a video in another studio and then it cuts to them gaming with like all you know what I mean?
And so, you know, and that the problem I have with the Democrats is that they only do the emotional and they have no logical, they have no good reason behind the policies.
It's actually trash, especially in terms of economic policy.
And then with the Republicans, you know, they're not, they're not perfect logically either, but they are better in terms of, hey, maybe lower taxes are a good idea.
Like that's a pretty reasonable position, but they get branded as greedy for saying low taxes because people just assume that low taxes means rich bailouts.
Which is going to cause, if we go past that date, it's going to cause more, it's going to cause more problems in the way of, did I turn my mic all the way down?
And the Democrats are always championing criminal justice reform, which is a good thing to champion because there's a hell of a lot of people spending years and years of their lives in prison for nonviolent crimes.
It's like, when was the last time you heard of mass pardons from a governor or from a president?
It's like if you really want to, yeah, if you really want to, like, for example, this might kill me later if I ever, if I ever run for any office, but if I were president of the United States, I would be very tempted to instantly pardon everyone in jail for nonviolent crimes.
Here's the thing that really upset me about Trump.
And in fact, you know, I actually enjoyed a lot of the things that Trump did.
I think the regulation cuts were really great.
I think not starting any new wars for the first time in I don't know how long was really important.
He could have rolled a lot of those wars back.
I wasn't happy that he didn't do that.
That's not something I'm going to praise him for.
But the thing that on the way out of office, he knew he was out.
He knew he was leaving.
He had the opportunity to show or to keep to his principles that the corporate media is the enemy of the people and release Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, and maybe Ross Ulbricht too.
And he didn't even entertain the idea of releasing Julian Assange, who was who is like one of one of the last great media or press people left.
The swamp is still full in the Republican Party, and Trump knew that.
And that's his people now.
The Republican Party is his people now.
And so if he wants to run again in 2024, if he wants to have any kind of say in the Republican Party anymore, then he's got to do their bidding still.
And I think that unfortunately, when he had the chance to be brave on the way out the door, he chickened out and cowered out.
And that hurt me as somebody who was like, ah, you know, I like when he triggers people.
It's kind of cool.
I was like, oh, that's fucked up.
You know, I don't want to, I don't want to, I don't want to ever see a president talk about how the corporate press isn't any of the people and then not free somebody who's literally in jail for being an honest journalist.
Well, they did that same thing to this guy here, you know, the guy who started putting out the ghost gun blueprints.
You know, they did.
That's what they do.
If you go against the government, dude, they are looking for, they will do anything that they can.
They will try to pin you on other shit.
They did this to Ross Ulbricht, who started, you know, Ross is, for me, the free Ross movement's one of the biggest things for me because this man started guy.
So, so here's the thing: the guy who had the hits taken out on him literally said 100% that Ross did not take that hit out of him.
There was several admins for Silk Road.
They just took an admin account and said that there was some people trying to send Bitcoin to have this one guy murdered who could have been a test, a witness.
And they put it all over the media, all over the media.
And then when they went to court, federal court, they dropped it entirely.
They knew that they had no proof that it was him, but they dragged it through the media to crucify him before he got to court.
Then when they got to court, they just did all kinds of the judge, you know, I did a whole episode on this on my show.
The judge did so much underhanded bullshit that they couldn't even present their case.
Like they literally kept the Ulbricht case from being presented in court.
And so they crucified the man in public, court of public opinion.
He's hiring people to kill people.
Ross would never have done this.
I mean, anybody who knows Ross knows Ross, not personally, but anybody that you talk to that's known Ross, even the person who had the hit taken out on him, right, said that he did, there's no way in hell that Ross would do this or did this.
He even tested, he tried to testify they wouldn't bring that testimony in the court because they dropped the case.
So they dropped the murder for hire charges, right?
Completely.
So they couldn't even defend against those charges that had been dragged out for over a year before court, you know?
And so the whole thing was just a farce.
They tried to make a, they tried to make an example of Ross Ulbricht because he was working in commerce outside of the federal government.
And, you know, I tend to have a libertarian perspective in terms of whether or not people should be allowed to use drugs or do whatever they want with their own body.
I'm not like a traditional Republican in that sense where I'm like, just say, I'm not just say no guy.
Okay.
But federally speaking, it has to be against the law to get earn kickback on trade that's illegal trade.
Right.
So if he was an admin of Silk Road, wasn't he earning like a percentage of every single time an eight ball got mailed from Maine to New Mexico?
To even find him, they essentially had to violate Fourth Amendment, right?
To even find the guy.
They hacked a server and completely violated civil rights.
But here's the thing.
This is what they did.
And I didn't ever think about this until I started diving into the Ross Ulbrich story.
I watched the really good documentary called The Deep Web that was put out actually by the guys from Bill and Ted's excellent adventure, Keanu Reeves and the other guy who played Bill.
But so they actually, this is what this was.
unidentified
Strange things they're put at the Circle K. No, they really did good.
It was a really well-done documentary that showed all of the facts.
And so, but here's the thing.
This is what the American government can do.
They can't use these tools to spy on you, supposedly.
But what they can do is they can send these tools to Europe or the UK, where they can use these tools to spy on you.
And then they can give them back the information that they've taken legally.
Right.
And so that's actually how that's actually how they found, that's actually how they found the servers and then how they used that to hack the servers, violating Ross's Fourth Amendment and tracking them down to San Francisco where they found some fake IDs coming across the border from Canada, intercepted them and showed up at his door.
Acting like the big tech companies are not part of the cathedral at this point is pure ignorance, in my opinion.
You know, when Curtis Arvin talked about the cathedral consisting of academia, the corporate news media and the government, he was working in big tech.
And so I think there might have been a reason why he purposely left big tech out there, but you cannot at this point say that these are private industries.
I mean, these are monopolies on the digital town square.
They've taken all kinds of government money that's our tax funds, you know, and now they're completely pushing a political bias and narrative by kicking people off.
Actually, my most watched episode is Scott Orton 2, where we actually talked about Waco, which was a lot of fun because Scott is very, Scott's very knowledgeable on the Middle East stuff, but he knows a lot about domestic issues and the Waco stuff.
He could talk.
I mean, it was like an hour and a half long episode, man.
It's it's scary too, because every time this happens and the media gets caught in the act or the government gets caught in the act, there's no accountability.
So it's like, all right, yeah, you caught us, we lied.
And, but it's, you know, nobody reads the retractions.
And there's no check, there are no checks and balances on these law enforcement agents.
Like, like, whenever the FBI gets in trouble, they do an internal investigation.
It's like, I made this quip the other day.
It's like, would you hire Jeffrey Epstein to investigate Epstein's Island?
It's like, why would you rely on the FBI to investigate itself?
There's a reason why there's this mass movement of pushing back on journalism now too, and calling journalists are the enemy of the people.
They no longer report the truth.
And who was that that I just had on the show?
Anyways, we were talking about how these DC reporters and publications, the CIA and the FBI and these people are actually getting their narrative from the journalists, like the publications now.
They're like getting this and bringing it into briefs and stuff.
Like, that's not right.
That's not how this works.
You know, that's, that's, you know, that's really, really bad shit.
And, and so it's like the journalists and the law enforcement agencies.
It's like this, this country needs a mass, mass overhaul in all these areas.
How do we, how do we do that other than just wake everybody up to these to these things that we can't you have to establish financial independence and you have to establish um information independence so i'm really hopeful though i don't i don't know that it's going to be the case but i'm really hopeful about blockchain tech and crypto because if we can have decentralized hosting uh information then we don't have to worry about amazon web services shutting down websites that are controversial we don't have to worry about um you know inflation if we can just get a if
And then it tells you not to go, don't go to this part of the blockchain or whatever, which is kind of cool to think about, you know, and he doesn't know.
I don't remember if we talked about a way for that to be reported, you know, but in my opinion, I think they got a pretty good, like digital wood chipper protocol on there already.
You know what I mean?
So that's pretty neat.
But yeah, you know, nobody can take that down.
Nobody can take the stuff down from library.
So there were, that's, that's what's coming.
You know, at the end of the day, that is what's coming.
When Silk Road got shut down, hundreds of Silk Roads, and they're all decentralized now.
That's, that was the difference.
You know, Silk Road wasn't decentralized.
Ross was running Silk Road with 11 other people or whatever.
