Reed Coverdale | How Can America Become Free Again? | OAP #32
Chase Geiser is joined by Reed Coverdale.
Reed is a Libertarian who is deeply concerned about the state of our country and our foreign policy. He is a voice for libertarian principles. His goal is to bolster independent thought, dialogue between opposing arguments, and to end the power hold the establishment and gatekeepers of religious and political ideology have over our heads. Their greatest fear is that we realize we are not each others' enemies in Reed's words.
EPISODE LINKS:
Chase's Twitter: twitter.com/realchasegeiser
Reed's Twitter: twitter.com/reedcoverdale
Reed's Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCByLOaisZPyJ9E0lT0CqKYg/featured
I figured it was because I heard somebody else say your name the correct way on your podcast before, but it didn't really make sense last night when I was doing seed Roverdale.
You know, Roverdale just kind of made more sense.
So I didn't know if it applied to the hard continent either.
So tell everybody a little bit about who you are, what your podcast is, and then we'll take it from there.
Yeah, it's funny because I don't even know how I stumbled upon like the libertarian podcast scene.
I think it was, you know, I actually do remember it was Dave Smith.
He posted some tweet a number of weeks ago, maybe even over a month ago now, where he's like, hey, here are the Liberty podcasts everybody needs to follow.
And I think you were tagged and Clinton was tagged as well.
And I just followed you guys and reached out to start doing podcasts.
So I kind of wound up doing these like libertarian podcasts, even though I'm not a libertarian, which is fine because I've got very similar ideas to libertarians and I totally get along with libertarians.
But it's just, it's cool how I think it's easy to forget how huge the world is and how many people there are and how many groups there are.
And it's cool when you stumble upon like this totally niche, tight community.
And I know you guys have had some like internal turmoil, but it's like family turmoil.
It's still tight-knit, close.
And so I don't know.
It's just, I feel like I discovered this kind of hidden treasure.
And I don't mean to say that in like a patronizing sense because I know that libertarians are important and making an impact and growing.
I think that you guys have a real role to play it.
Well, I'll tell you what, you guys could totally change the political dynamic with your existing structure now, in my opinion.
If you ran a candidate for president and you focused all of the national funding for that candidate only on Texas, enough that the Republicans would not win Texas over the Democrats in the Electoral College, you could basically choose whether or not a Republican could be the president of the United States if you guys focus like that now.
And that's an incredibly threatening thing that you guys could use to leverage Republican policy.
You could say, listen, do you want us to endorse your candidate or not?
Because if you're not willing to do X, Y, and Z, then we're going to put all of our money only in Texas and we're just going to let the Democrats have it.
I mean, we're so we're all we're still obsessed about one day we can win and it's not really strategic as far as what can we do right now to influence things in our direction.
What type of political threats can we make or, you know, kind of what you're talking about.
We don't really think like that, which is unfortunate because we should be thinking.
It's like part of the reason why you guys are good people.
Like I tweeted earlier today, like, you know, by the time you get the power, you don't have enough time left to do enough good to make up for all the bad shit you had to do to get the power.
So you have to like find that balance.
Like, how much am I willing to do now in the hopes that I remember who I actually want to be when I get the power and do the good that I started the whole thing for?
I think it depends on how the shakeup happens because I don't think we're going to remain the dominant superpower in the world for another 100 years.
I think the end of that is much nearer.
China is projected to surpass our GDP by 2028, I think.
We're so far spread and thin spread across the globe militarily.
We're $30 trillion in debt.
We're having a currency crisis.
We're having inflation.
You're having people who believe less and less in the political system.
So it's not, I don't think the next hundred years is going to be like the past 100 years.
I think that it really depends on how everything shakes out, how things fall together as far as if another party rises or if it just stays this two-party system.
And like you and I were talking about on my channel last night, if it could be worse, you know, if we end up with a one-party system or a, you know, a more authoritarian government.
I don't really know.
I guess my biggest hope is that this trajectory that people are losing faith in government continues and they finally decide, you know, we don't need this one giant federal government controlling all of these 50 states.
At the very least, we should respect the 10th Amendment again and let the states govern themselves.
I would like to see something like that happen.
I think that some sort of balkanization or secession or breakup is the best solution that we could have going forward for peaceful, you know, a peaceful resolution of the problem now.
Because I think if we keep getting more and more centralized, if the government keeps getting bigger and bigger, we're just going to hate each other more.
And then you could push things to some sort of chaotic civil war scenario.
So I just think that getting people to think in the way of, okay, we don't need centralized control to keep us all online.
We need to be more independent.
We need to be less in each other's lives and, you know, just let the government kind of sit back and let us run the show again.
So I think the best thing we can do is just talk about those ideas and try to change the way people think.
Because if people don't change the way they think, it doesn't matter what type of government policies you pass because if you get rid of an authoritarian policy, but the public doesn't really care, then that can just sneak right back in again.
You have to change the way the public perceives authority, perceives the government, perceives liberty, and that's how you win.
And I do think one of the differences, and I think we briefly touched on this last night, was, you know, this is one of, this is sort of the first time in recorded history that we have civilizations that have incredibly secretive police departments and like the CIA and the FBI were.
There's not really a system of accountability for these organizations.
And they're flooded with money and resources and power at the same time.
So it's sort of inevitable that the intelligence community at some point, I don't know if it, like I said, I don't know if it's next year or next century, but it seems to me inevitable that they will be an overwhelming power in the government to the point where the other branches and departments really can't, they can't overcome it.
You know, there'll be a vetoed power there.
And part of the reason I wanted to bring that up is because I wanted to segue into how the hell do you know Ryan Dawson?
And Dawson's been, he's been like prolific, right?
Hasn't he made like dozens of documentaries?
And when I say documentary, it's like it's him and a bunch of news footage and articles and like a webcam, and they'll be hours and hours and hours long.
Well, I mean, I think that's great that he's done that.
And I think of him now that I know who he is whenever I think about the deep state because it seems to me that the amount of work you have to do to get to the bottom of what is really going on is insane.
And since it's so insane, there's very few people who do it.
And since there's very few people who do it, it makes those who do do it very unbelievable.
You know?
And so it's like for me, I don't think that he's nuts or wrong or illogical or anything.
I haven't looked into the stuff specifically, but I'm worried of like falling into the flat earth trap where I consume the wrong content for too long and then wind up with the wrong idea about the nature of reality.
You know, and I don't know, like how do you protect yourself against getting in like an echo chamber where you believe bad ideas?
Because I think smart people believe stupid shit all the time.
Something that he actually talks about a lot is, you know, the kook movements within the truth movements.
So Alex Jones is a kook, you know?
I mean, he's not, a lot of the stuff that he talks about is crazy, you know, like lizard people and interdimensional demons and aliens and, you know, all this crap or QAnon, things like that.
I mean, he actually thinks that they're designed to throw off the scent to sound so ridiculous that if you hear anything relating to 9-11 truth, you instantly think, oh yeah, the buildings were demoed, you know, building seven was demoed.
There were no planes that hit the buildings.
They were holographs, you know, whatever, like that whole craziness.
And so that in itself kind of makes you go crazy.
If you start buying into that, if you start saying, okay, the mainstream isn't true, so everything that everybody else is saying must be true, that would be a mistake because obviously then you end up in some pretty ridiculous territory.
So it's really about, it's really usually somewhere in the middle, you know, because what they'll do is they'll call you a, you know, they'll call you a believer or a denier.
So take climate change.
Like if you don't buy 110% of the narrative about climate change that we have like at this point, what, nine or 10 years left to turn things around or the world's going to end.
And I think one of the problems, too, is that since we live in like this, we're like in a hyper character assassination sort of culture right now.
And I think that has to do with the internet and social media.
So like in a way that I don't think we've ever experienced before, people are behaving with constant attention to their reputation almost on like an hour by hour basis rather than like a month by month basis, like it might have been years ago.
Right.
And I think that what that does is it makes people very reluctant to have nuanced conversation and change their positions or learn anything that would cause them to make any sort of like apparent shift because they're afraid that any change or shift may be perceived as like a hypocrisy or an ignorance or I don't know, just it's like a, it's like a vulnerability where they can get attacked.
And I guess my concern is how do we, how do we get to a place where people are able to actually change their minds and have debates again, you know, because don't you want like for me, for example, I've said this on the podcast before, it's like, I don't, I don't know if climate change is, is man, is caused by human beings or not.
I don't know.
I want to know, right?
Like, I don't care which answer is correct.
I don't want it to be that it's happening.
I don't want it to be that it's not happening.
You know, I don't, I don't have a belief that I need to have reinforced.
I just want to know what's actually going on.
And it's very difficult for me as a thinking person to figure it out because I don't know what studies to look at.
And then if you look at studies, like you have to like study how that study was funded by what department and who was running the department at the time and where did they go to get their alma mater and who was their mentor.
And then this is why they believe in this form of, you know what I mean?
There's like so many layers to it that it's really hard to get to the bottom of it.
I mean, you talk to some scientists.
They're like, yeah, the measuring devices that were used in the late 19th century and early 20th century weren't very accurate in determining the temperature.
And a lot of times they were measuring temperature from tar blacktop roads and that was radiating heat off the ground.
So it could have been exaggerating the temperature.
There's all these variables that raise questions about the legitimacy of the data that we have.
And I just don't know.
I don't find it hard to believe that we're having an impact, but I also don't find it hard to believe that that impact is greatly exaggerated.
I think that what you got to do is you got to have a philosophy that guides your decisions.
Because I mean, it's good to have your mind change on certain subjects.
But if you ran for office, say, and then you get in there and then your views on everything suddenly change, that's not going to work.
Or if you're always just flip-flopping all over the place and you have nothing guiding you, that also doesn't work.
So I think you have to figure out what it is that grounds you and centers you and points you in a certain direction.
And then that's going to guide a lot of your decision making.
But on circumstantial issues, especially like is climate change man-made?
Or, you know, if you're, if you're a libertarian who wants to figure out how you're going to roll back the state, you know, what should you prioritize?
You know, because you could just be this autistic absolutist who's just saying like, oh, we just need to hack at everything no matter what.
Or you could be someone who said, well, you know, I don't think food stamps are the biggest issue right now.
I think if we ended the wars in the Middle East and stopped giving billionaires money, you know, that would be a better strategy.
So I think what it comes down to is having something that kind of directs you, but then on an issue by issue basis, being willing to look at, you know, different evidence and have your mind changed about how you're supposed to deal with something.
And that way you're going to stay pretty consistent, but you're obviously approaching the situation with a critical mind, trying to figure out the best way you can tackle it.
I think it's one of the things that I think is so ridiculous and so funny about our leadership now is like if you watch C-SPAN and of course they have like their formal debates before they vote on any given piece of legislation and everybody has their two minutes or whatever it is to say their part.
And it's just like all the same shit they've been tweeting or all the same shit they've been saying at press conferences or in appearances on corporate media outlets.
It's like they waste all this time, like three, four hours before they actually do the vote saying shit that they, that they know everyone in the room has already heard them say and hearing what they've already heard from everyone else.
It's like not actually a debate where, you know, different ideas are being exchanged and they're bickering like, you know, sort of like in the British system where they scream at each other.
And I just, I wish that the debates actually, maybe, and maybe the debates do happen like behind closed doors and they just don't do that part on C-BAN, right?
In order to save face.
I don't know, but like, it doesn't seem to me like there's actually anybody like sitting down in a friendly way, having cigars and like saying, all right, let's get to the bottom of this.
I mean, Justin Amosh's last year in office, he, I really started following his Twitter account closely and he would constantly talk about how none of the bills were debated on at all.
It was all, you know, I forget what he was saying.
I think since since Ryan was the speaker of the house, they got rid of adding amendments to bills.
You couldn't debate to have an amendment added to a bill.
So you just had to vote on the original content of the bill.
One of the things that really bothers me is like, you know, in the advertising world that you can't do false advertisement.
Like you can't make claims that are just totally erroneous or you can't say a product's for one thing when it's actually for another.
And when these bills are named like the Patriot Act or the COVID Relief Act or COVID Relief Bill, whatever they called it, it's like there was only like 5% of that bill that had anything to do with COVID relief.
Everything else was like foreign aid.
Or, you know, the Patriot Act is like, it sounds like a great thing, you know, but it turns out like, you know, it just opened the door for domestic surveillance.
And so I wish that there was a law in place that didn't allow for the naming of legislation to be a misleading reflection of what's actually in it.
And maybe the solution is just to like eliminate earmarks so that you can't just throw random shit in the same bill.
But I don't know.
I think that's a major problem because the issue with it is if it's the COVID relief fund or if it's the I Love Teachers Act and you vote against it because it happens to like expand Guantanamo Bay, right?
They can say, oh, you voted against teachers.
You're like, that's not why I fucking voted against it.
And so it's just like a real cheap shot to kind of like to manipulate people into voting for legislation, legislation they don't actually support because they're worried about the PR backlash.
So, you know, we've had some issues, right, where it's been like a month or two and TSA is not getting paid, but they know that they're going to get compensated eventually.
What if just for a year, Republicans are like, we're not going to vote for any budget that Biden would sign.
But it's not like a, it's not a, it's called the Federal Reserve, so it sounds like it's part of the federal government, but it is a, it is a private bank.
And, you know, I think that's why the Federal Reserve is this private entity as a strategy for the government to be able to use fiat without violating the Constitution.
They basically outsource the constitutional violation.
But our founding fathers were, I believe, anti-fiat, just generally speaking, in terms of not backed currency is what I mean when I say fiat.
He didn't want a Federal Reserve note if it was backed by gold.
He thought that was bullshit.
It's just kind of funny seeing everyone clutch their pearls about him possibly being taken off a bill that he definitely would never want to be on himself.
Like we get hung up on, for example, like the Confederate statues.
It's like, look, if some town has a city council that wants to remove a statue and they vote on it and they're elected by the community in that town, it's like, let them take their statue down.
Like, you know, I don't know.
I personally would vote to keep these statues up because I appreciate the history.
I think they're pretty.
I think that in most cases, they're beautiful work.
Sometimes they're kind of shitty looking.
It depends where you go.
But I think they're neat.
And I don't think there's anything wrong with respecting brave men who disagreed.
And I know that's a very controversial thing to say today because it's so obvious to us culturally how terrible racism is and how unjust slavery is.
But I don't believe that you can define people by the worst things about them or you should.
And just because these people were on the wrong side of history regarding race doesn't mean that they shouldn't be admired for, I don't know, taking a can into the leg to save somebody in a battle, right?
Like they, you know, they did things that were noble.
People are complicated.
And, you know, so if a community wants to take them down, I'm fine with that.
But I don't know.
I just think like with things like, you know, are they going to put Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill instead of Andrew Jackson or they're taking these statues down?
i'm like you know what like maybe we should be worried about other shit like yeah you know our like corporate income tax going from 26 to 40 like that would suck a lot more than a statue i've never seen yeah yeah i mean if you look throughout i don't know just your lifetime um you know think of every time that there's some horrible scheme going on behind the scenes what they use to distract us with it's always something like harriet
We always, we never want to actually make the hard decisions necessary in order to solve difficult problems.
Like, because the thing is, like, I believe that most of our problems are incredibly complicated, especially in the sense that solving them is painful.
Even if it's simple, what we need to do, it's still painful for like constituents.
So for example, you know, one thing that I've been really advocating recently, particularly the last 12 months, is I don't think that we should be doing any business with China at all as long as the CCP is in power.
I think it's a global terrorist organization.
I don't think that we should be funding it with our business.
And that would be an incredibly painful thing for us to stop doing, especially if we stop doing it instantly, because we don't produce anything here from a manufacturing standpoint, especially not to the extent that we rely on China for importing our goods.
And so, you know, like even if that, even if that solution is simple on paper, there's no way for a politician to possibly navigate actually making something like that happen in the first place, especially not being able to stay in power if they accomplish it, you know?
But I also think that that is a problem that is very quickly solved.
So like I can example would be, I don't know, there's countless movies where there's like a situation where, I don't know, maybe like a disaster happens and there's like one spoiled person and the whole first half of the movie, they're like unbearable to deal with because it's like, why are you being such a brat in this terrible situation?
And then by the second half of the movie, they're actually, they like realize their woe, you know, and they start busting ass.
So like one example of that would be Lost the TV series.
I don't know if you ever watched that, but there was like the blonde girl that was sort of high maintenance and they crashed on this island and she's like tanning on this island while people are like tending each other's wounds and trying to find food.
And, you know, by the end of the series, she totally changed.
And my point is, I think that when things get really tough in a real way that people feel, you know, there'll be like a little bit of outrage behavior, sort of like we've seen in the last 12 months.
But I do think that people do eventually, you know, sort of pull their pants up and get to work.
I mean, even though Generation Z is really, really dumb and aggravating and lazy, you know, a lot of this blame goes on the baby boomers.
You know, they tend to be pretty judgmental toward the younger kids, but a lot of the policies that they voted for and things that they did are why we are where we are.
You know, I mean, the Department of Education came around from them.
You know, the massive debt that we've gotten into, you know, college loans, getting people in tens of thousands of dollars of debt.
I mean, it all started with the baby boomers, and now they're the ones who are kind of sitting back, judging everybody else for not pulling themselves up by their bootstraps.
So it's not completely fair to just be like, wow, these kids all suck because they've been brought into this world at a time when that was what was acceptable.
And then, you know, they've got all these problems that they didn't really create that they have no idea how to deal with.
So I don't blame them 100% or, you know, get angry at them necessarily.
But at the same time, it's like the baby boomers aren't going to get us out of this.
You know, it's going to be, it's going to be us.
It's going to be the millennials, the Gen Z, Gen X. We're going to have to really, you know, come together and pull ourselves out of this.
I, and I just feel like, I feel like maybe we haven't gotten to a point where we feel it enough yet.
Like, obviously, this past year was difficult for everyone from a psychological point of view.
Like, there were so many drastic changes and rules, but like nobody actually lost their house or, you know, people lost their jobs, I guess, but the unemployment benefits were so steep that people were kind of able to weather the storm.
Like, I just feel like the kind of pain that we felt this past year was a very easily surmountable psychological pain, not like a real sort of anxiety about how the hell am I going to feed my kid.
Like people felt in the 30s.
Like people were actually worried about what my grandmother grew up in the Depression in Kansas in the Dust Bowl.
And she said that she was only allowed to wear shoes on Sunday to church so that she wouldn't wear them out.
You know, like, I can't imagine being that poor.
And her father had been a wealthy man with a townhome and a farm.
And when the stock market crashed, they had to sell the townhouse and move out of Topeka into the farmhouse and live off of the farm for the first time.
So they were like urban people that happened to have a farm and they actually had to go back to the farm and like raise chickens and do all that bullshit.
And I just feel like it's going to take, we're going to have to get to that point where people are like knocking on houses door to door, like, hey, do you need any maintenance on your house?
Like almost like a desperate level before there's like a real wake up and change.
Because if you look at the Third Reich, for example, if you look at what happened and how they came to power, the unemployment rate in Germany at that time was about 30%.
Okay.
And when you have an unemployment rate that high, it's not because the people suck.
Okay.
So, you know, maybe that could explain 3% or 5% unemployment.
You know, 5%, I think, is when you're kind of getting in the realm of, all right, what's going on?
But you could really explain like maybe one out of 20 people don't have a job because of circumstances or whatever.
But when you have unemployment that's 30%, that means that you have people with average high IQs, no mental illness, no drug addiction that are waking up every morning and looking all day for how they can be productive and not finding anything for months, right?
And we haven't seen that in America really since like the 30s, okay?
And when things get that wonky where normal, functioning, good people are not able to find any opportunity, then they start identifying enemies, right?
And obviously the Germans pinned it on the Jews.
And I don't know who it's going to get pinned on in the United States.
You know, people say, oh, it's going to be the white privileged class.
It's like, you know, it's always a minority, not necessarily racial minority, but it's always someone who's outnumbered, right?
Like whatever class.
So I have a very hard time believing that 60% of the population, which is white, is going to be, you know, like sent into camps by 40% of the population.
It's like maybe if we were 15% of the population, that kind of thing would happen.
But it's going to be very interesting to see what enemy, who we blame when things get really bad as a society, because it'll almost certainly be wrong who gets blamed, but like not totally wrong, but like too wrong for it to be justified.
But whoever gets blamed is really going to get fucked.
However, when you find a common enemy, it unites everyone else and it can be healthy.
So like internally during World War II, Germany did quite well.
Like the middle class improved.
They were doing well until, you know, Hitler got a little bit too ambitious and decided to invade Russia in the winter instead of having a beer and collecting the interest.
And, you know, I'm optimistic that great tragedy will bring great unity in this country.
I'm just very worried about who's going to be falsely prosecuted as the culprit.
I mean, I feel like the minorities that are, it's not really a minority on one side, I guess, but the demographics that they're going after, the establishment left is demonizing Trump supporters, you know, and, you know, extreme Trump supporters or whatever adjective you want to put on it, as though they're domestic terrorists.
That's where I've seen a lot of marginalization going on.
And then where I saw it from the right establishment in the past has been with Mexican immigrants, you know, people who are here legally, but or who came here illegally and are working or whatever.
Like that was where I saw it from them.
You know, in 2016, there was all this talk from the Republicans that really bugged me about immigrants.
And the reason it bugged me is the point you were just making out there a little while ago that you're blaming the wrong culprit.
Mexican immigrants are not why our economy is in shambles.
And they're not taking the jobs that Native Americans want to do.
And I don't mean Native Americans as Indians, but I think Native Americans is people who were born here.
Right.
So like they're coming over here and they're busting their ass on like on roots.
I can't remember the last time I saw a white dude working on a roof.
And it's not because they can't get the job.
It's because they don't want to, like you said, they don't want to work for $18 an hour.
So yeah, I think what I think everyone was afraid that the Mexicans were going to steal their jobs.
And then they realized that the Mexicans were actually going to make their life less expensive because they're doing all the jobs that nobody wants to do.
I have such mixed feelings about that because I agree with you that there's a lot of wisdom in moderation and that there's a lot of irrational radicalization that's going on.
But at the same extent, I'm an objectivist in the true sense of the term that I think things are black and white, even in terms of policies.
I think that you should have policies that are based off of a philosophy that's derived in reason, which is man's tool to perceive reality.
That this is how we perceive reality and everything that we do should be based on reason and what is real and objective and true so that we can have laws and policies in place that most naturally harmonize or align with how shit actually works in the universe because that's like the only thing that that's the only way that's sustainable and just.
And so when you have sort of like an objective foundation like that of print like that principle, that objective foundational principle itself, then you can really start making arguments about policies and a way that you can't if you're like a postmodernist subjectivist person who just sort of has like a like an intuition or a whim about what they think is right.
So for example, like, you know, intuitively, people are like, of course, women should be able to get like an abortion.
Like if she doesn't want to have a baby, she shouldn't have a baby.
Like intuitively, that makes sense.
Like you can't see the baby yet.
Like nobody's held the baby.
You don't think of it as like a human being yet, right?
Like absolutely that makes sense intuitively.
If you think about it and you're like, wait, like, all right, if we are born with inalienable rights, like when do we get those rights?
Is it actually at the moment of birth?
Is there some sort of theological instolment that occurs where the soul goes into the fetus?
Like the Catholics say after 40 days, right?
And if we're, and if we believe in the separation of church and state, then do we just make an arbitrary timeline in order to determine where we're comfortable drawing the line?
And like, that's why it's complicated.
And so I think things seem like that moderation is the key or that gray areas are the key are the answer.
But I often think that gray areas aren't really gray areas.
They are just unsolved problems.
You know, it's like a cluster of unsolved problems.
And if we could just, if we could just hash through it, we would get there.
And I guess what my ultimate point was, is that maybe some things that seem radical aren't actually radical.
They're just correct.
And as a society, we are radically incorrect.
You know what I mean?
Like if you're, if you're so off base, then what you, then what you actually need to do seems radical.
Yeah, well, that's actually kind of what I was saying.
Like the actual correct, maybe I should just use a different word than moderate, but the actual correct answer is, you know, it seems radical, but it's not what the radical left or the radical right are pushing for.
Their ideas, I think, actually are radical and wrong.
But what the center, the establishment center has presented as correct is also extremely wrong.
So people will go looking to the right or the left when the solution really is right there.
You know, there are some pretty obvious answers to these questions that nobody's entertaining because they're just going for one of those three extremities, whatever the establishment's pushing or what the crazy right or crazy left are pushing.
And I think the job of libertarians is to say, hey, this really isn't that hard.
You know, we should not be fighting all these wars.
We shouldn't incarcerate people for something they put in their body.
You know, the police shouldn't be able to steal money from you without accusing you of a crime.
The government shouldn't be able to seize property from you without a warrant.
And if people actually hear it and think about it, it might make more sense to them.
But they've been so propagandized with this idea of control that they either go for the establishment, which definitely believes in control, and then the crazy right and the crazy left also believe in control.
So radically right wing at this point, I mean, because these terms shift all the time, but extremely nationalist, extremely pro-law enforcement, extremely pro-military, extremely anti-immigration, anti-free trade, anti-win to say free trade, do you mean domestic free trade or do you mean international free trade?
International, like, you know, keep sanctions high on Cuba, keep sanctioning Iran, all that type of stuff.
You know, extreme cultural values through legislation, like being against ending the war on drugs, being against not so much gay marriage anymore.
You know, I would have people that I think are evil on my show.
Like if Billy Crystal wanted to come on my show for some reason, I'd have him on and I'd tell him what a piece of shit I think he is and all the stuff I disagree with him on.
Or if AOC wanted to come on my show, I don't care.
Well, and I think there's a big difference too between trying to talk to somebody who's just like fucking lying versus somebody you just you disagree with.
So like one of the things I struggle with with AOC is I tend to think that she's just like making shit up because she knows it works for Instagram.
Yeah.
I could be I could be totally off base about that, but that's just sort of my intuition about her.
But I'd be happy to debate somebody who like earnestly disagreed with me about tax rates.
So I don't know.
It's just hard to tell these days.
What I think Ryan Dawson needs to do is I think he needs to sort of take like a Bill Hicks approach where he tours and does stand up.
And I swear to God.
All he does is just like walk right through all this shit and rant like he does because it is funny and it is true.
And if he does it as a comic, they can't de-platform him.
Yeah, he actually gave me the hint of putting all those four horsemen episodes in the comedy category on YouTube so that they're less likely to get removed.
I forget what social media platform it was, but people made like five different accounts that were the same picture and the ID number was just like one number off.
And they would say obscene things and get him removed that way.
I mean, that's kind of what Porkfest is, but we need with the bands and panels, though.
So it's like South by Southwest meets Burning Man and anybody can go, but you have to become a registered member of the party in order to be welcome.
So you have to be like a card-carrying member of the party to go.
So everybody will join the party for a month or whatever to go.
And then you waltz in, all the panels are going on, all the partying is going on.
That would be cool.
And it would draw so much attention to the movement.
You know, you have the stand-up comics go through.
Like, that would be easy to organize, especially like in Texas or something where there's like so much open land that it would be easy to put together like a like a Woodstock type thing here.
I want to see more of those types of things being done and trying to actually appeal to the public that we're trying to convert to libertarianism, you know, try to be funny.
Yeah.
I mean, if we had our own George Carlin, you know, who was a libertarian just out there, you know, just eviscerating the warfare state and that could be Dawson.
And we could make it so that when you walk into the event, you like deposit money and it's got like its own crypto just for the event that works, you know, like tokens.
You know, that's why we're, that's why we are where we are today because media has pushed a certain narrative.
The left has been really good because they do a lot of those types of things.
You know, they've got Hollywood.
They've got, you know, a lot of the music festivals, like all that type of stuff.
It's all culturally left.
So we need to do the same thing.
We need to start inserting libertarianism into the culture because I feel like we're so obsessed with legislation and we're not working on changing people's minds.
And when I say culture, I don't mean right or left because I don't think libertarianism culturally should be right or left.
I think it should be a choice.
What we need to get people to understand is that power corrupts and control is not a good thing.
You don't need to control other people.
You need to control yourself.
Control yourself, make yourself better.
You know, that's the goal.
So if we can somehow make that a popular message, that's how we win.
