Dave Smith addresses co-host Robbie Bernstein's absence due to AIDS, contrasting 1990s TV stigma with modern political panic over climate change and Trump. He rejects street brawls, discusses secession as a solution to cultural divides, and defends his Jewish and white identities against bigotry. Smith critiques the Koch brothers for opposing Trump despite supporting Republicans, arguing moderate libertarians are futile against hard-left accusations of Nazism. He dismisses China's military threat due to nuclear deterrence, blaming America's debt and regulations instead, while rejecting 9/11 controlled demolition theories but acknowledging Saudi and Israeli involvement in conflicts. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Media Disappointment Over Hurricane00:09:05
Let's start the show.
We need to roll back the state.
We spy on all of our own citizens.
Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I am, of course, the most consistent motherfucker you know, Dave Smith.
Good to be with you.
Robbie the Fire Bernstein is out.
He's out today.
So I am coming to you solo.
Robbie was under the weather.
Once again, Rob's got AIDS.
It's a tough thing to announce like this, but you know, he's got AIDS.
He's living with it.
And well, hopefully it doesn't flare up again on the next episode.
We'll see.
We'll see what we can do.
Oh, by the way, here, speaking of AIDS, that's always a good way to get into a conversation, right?
Speaking of AIDS, so I watched an old episode of, don't judge me on this, but me and my wife watched an old episode of 90210 the other day.
They've rebooted 90210 and we saw a commercial for it.
And then my wife mentioned that she's never seen an episode of the original 90210.
And I was like, oh my God, we have to put one on.
And if you haven't watched like recently, and it's a great, just, it's just hilarious.
It's awful, but great at the same time.
It's a great show to watch in 2019 and make fun of, like the original.
And we watched an episode, just a random episode from the first season in 1990.
And the episode was about AIDS and the AIDS epidemic from the perspective of 1990, which is really just amazing.
So you got to think, this is like, I think a couple years even before Magic Johnson.
So there's, you know, it's a brand new thing.
And it was just really fascinating to watch how they talked about AIDS in 1990.
Like the story was there's this girl who comes to speak to the school, and she's like a white girl, straight, had sex once without a condom, and got AIDS, and now she's going to die.
And basically the moral was like, look, you're all going to get it too.
We're all going to die of AIDS.
So just one time without a condom, you probably don't even need to get checked.
You have AIDS.
There's no way, like, obviously, if you've ever fucked without a condom, you have AIDS.
It's a miracle you're still alive.
Say goodbye to anybody you love because you're a goner.
And then also, simultaneously, the message is like, but don't be weird.
You can't get it from hugging someone.
You know, so like, don't be weird about AIDS.
You're going to die from it anyway.
So just get used to it and wear a condom every single time unless you want to die.
And it's just really, it's amazing.
It's amazing to watch.
This is, you know, by the way, for all the people, it's so funny how like when there's a current scare, like if whatever, you know, climate change or something like that, like if Bernie Sanders is like, the world's going to be uninhabitable for our children, you know, you're like, you can't question that.
Are you crazy?
But then you just look at the last one.
It's always, you know, I mean, there were experts behind that one too, who are like, oh, you're all going to get AIDS.
The numbers are going to be insane.
Everybody's going to die.
And there was this real push that they were like, this is not just some disease that gay people and heroin addicts need to worry about.
This is your average straight white man.
You're dying from AIDS too.
And it's funny now, 30 years later, looking at that, and you're like, it's pretty much just something gay people and heroin addicts have to worry about.
That's what it turns out that that impulse that you all called so bigoted and evil was the precise way to think about this problem.
Anyway, I don't know why that popped into my head, but Rob Bernstein has AIDS.
My point is that Rob's going to be fine.
He's not going to die of AIDS.
He'll live with it.
No big deal.
All right.
I don't have too much to talk about today.
So I'm going to spend this episode responding to some questions, comments from the good folks in the Part of the Problem Inner Circle, which of course you can join as well.
You just have to become a supporting listener of the show.
Go over to gasdigitalnetwork.com, use promo code P-O-T-P.
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You get access to the nearly 500 episodes of Part of the Problem on demand, our entire archive.
And on top of that, you get the show ad-free.
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And you get to join the private Facebook group, the Part of the Problem Inner Circle.
So we'll take some questions from them.
There's just not, I mean, the news has kind of been dominated by talk of this hurricane that I guess is, as we speak, is destroying the Bahamas.
But it's, it, you know, the trajectory of the hurricane ended up changing.
And so it's not really hitting Puerto Rico.
At first, they were worried it might hit Puerto Rico.
Then they were worried it was going to fuck over Florida.
But it looks like it's just going to kind of graze Florida.
Florida is pretty prepared for these hurricanes anyway.
So I think it's been kind of funny to watch the media's disappointment over the last few days because they were really hoping this would be, you know, a hurricane can really fuck over a president.
They really tried to use that last one in Puerto Rico to blame Trump for it.
Of course, Katrina really destroyed George W. Bush's approval ratings.
I mean, there were some other problems with that guy as well, but Katrina was very bad for him.
And, you know, it's very interesting to watch the way the media spins these hurricanes and storms and stuff like that.
I actually remember doing a podcast, one of the early, early part of the problem podcast.
I remember talking about a New York Times article that said, I think it was a big storm requires big government.
And so their whole idea was like, well, you know, you may say you believe in small government, but look, when there's a storm, you got to have a big federal government that can reallocate resources to the people who need them.
We can't be playing around with these free market solutions.
Of course, you know, and I, you know, I talked about this on that early episode of part of the problem, but of course, because, you know, FEMA's track record is so excellent that we, there, it's just proof that we need them.
And I still think there's a whole bunch of people who haven't gotten their Hurricane Sandy money yet because Chris Christie fucking ate it on a beach or something like that.
But anyway, but you'll notice it's like Katrina, the story was what a failure George W. Bush was and how all these people suffered.
During Hurricane Sandy, the story was how great Obama was for coming and hugging people and stuff like that.
So they always spin it the way they want to, but it did seem, it was pretty creepy, but it did seem like they were getting very excited to blame Donald Trump.
There were several articles all over the place about how badly Donald Trump botched the Puerto Rico situation last time and how he was going to do it again and how it was going to be a disaster.
They were like getting excited.
And now it's like, ah, shit, it's just going to hit the Bahamas.
They can't really blame Trump for the Bahamas getting fucked over.
It's Puerto Rico we can blame him for, Florida for sure, but you know, yeah, this, this may not have any political benefit to it.
And then, you know, it's like, it sounds kind of crazy that people would think this way, but you know, it's, it's, what was it, Bill Maher, who openly, and I believe he repeated recently that he's, he's rooting for a recession because that's what'll get Donald Trump unelected or that's what'll get him voted out.
So that's, you know, if that's your mentality, that you actually are fine with destroying real people's lives in order to get a Democrat in next time or to damage the president, that's, you know, I don't know.
That's pretty wacky.
If you get to that point, you might want to take a look in the mirror and rethink where your priorities are.
Maybe, if I dare say, you should check your privilege if you're somebody who makes $10 million a year saying, I would gladly sacrifice other people's misery or I would gladly sacrifice other people's livelihoods, I should say, in order to get the political candidate who I like voted in.
Straight Pride and Melee00:03:25
You might be the bad guy in that situation.
Like if you were watching this in a movie, would that guy be the good guy or the bad guy?
Pretty sure he's the bad guy.
Okay.
Anyway, one of the other things that was on my mind, and then I'll get right into the listener comments and questions.
There was this, I guess the straight pride parade happened, and it made for some funny internet videos of like Antifa guys.
I guess the cops really cracked down on the Antifa guys in this one.
I will say, I was invited to participate in the straight pride parade and I declined.
I was invited by a couple different people who were involved in organizing it.
And I was like, yeah, no, I do not have that much straight pride, I guess.
What I'm trying to say is I'm gay.
I'm the one who gave Rob Ace.
That's what I was trying to get at here.
But yeah, so a couple of the people who were who were involved in organizing it asked me if I wanted to participate and promote it and like get on board.
And I was like, no, no, I don't.
I don't have any interest in that.
And I guess it was just, that was on my mind as I saw this whole thing unfolding is that I just don't.
First of all, I have no interest in getting into street brawls with Antifa.
I'm like, you know.
I have a family and a career and that's nothing, nothing that interests me at all.
And I'm also not particularly interested in trolling for the sake of trolling.
I just, I don't get that stuff.
And it's not, like, if it was something I really believed in, if it was like an anti-war protest that like there were going to be some people there trying to fight you or something, I could maybe consider that.
But just for the sake of kind of trolling the gay pride parade, I just didn't do it for me.
And I don't, you know, I, I, if it makes sense, and I think I may have mentioned this before on the show, but I get somebody who, um, I get somebody who wants to get into a fight.
Or I certainly understand somebody who, if somebody disrespected them or did something that crossed the line, being like, like going up to a guy and being like, why don't we step outside and handling it?
I even get people throwing a punch at somebody if they if they fucking cross the line.
I also completely understand people who don't want to get in a fight.
I completely understand somebody being like, yeah, I'm an adult.
I'm not getting into a fist fight.
That's probably the correct response.
But I understand it and I understand somebody who fights.
I understand people who are UFC fighters being like the thrill of like competing and fighting and playing a game where everything's on the line.
Like competing where literally being hospitalized is on the line.
I get that.
What I don't understand at all is somebody wanting to be involved in one of those melee, like the mayhem of the fucking Proud Boys versus Antifa brawls.
I don't understand why you want to get into a fight where everybody's swinging from different directions.
And like it's just, you're just kind of sitting there hoping you don't get brain damage because you don't get blindsided by the wrong person.
And for what?
Like, what does it accomplish at the end of that?
Kids Inspired to Brush Teeth00:02:25
It's not like you got anything out of it.
Like you just do that and then everybody else kind of makes fun of it on Twitter.
I just, I don't know.
I don't get it.
So I opted to not participate in that.
But, you know, hey, to each their own, I suppose.
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The Jewish Question Impulse00:11:48
Am I right?
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All right, let's get back into the show.
Other stuff that's going on, I don't know.
There's been a lot of gun control talk, a lot of gun control talk.
There was another shooting in Texas the other day.
Not like a big one.
I think four or five people were killed.
That's by American 2019 standards.
That's like, you know, come on.
Four or five people are we, why are we even talking about this one?
Doesn't seem like that big of a deal.
And of course, it's renewed like the calls for gun control.
Seen a decent amount about that in the news.
To be honest, I'm just kind of almost a little bored of that subject.
I did, when was it like, I think it was last year or something like that, where I did like four or five episodes in a row on gun control.
And then by the end of it, I was just almost like, I got to move away from this issue.
But yeah, I've kind of accepted at this point.
I just feel like it's like the arguments are kind of stupid and emotional, and they never really seem to stick after, like a few days after the shooting's over.
So I don't know.
Maybe we'll jump on that in the future.
In fact, I'm sure we will have to deal with that more in the future, but I don't really feel like talking about it today.
So let's go.
Let's go to the part of the problem inner circle.
Let's see.
What do we got here?
All right.
So I asked the part of the problem inner circle.
I said, is there anything you guys want us to talk about today?
Of course, at the time, I thought it was us.
And then I found out about Rob Bernstein's AIDS.
So it's been pretty disappointing.
But he's not in.
Okay, hold on one second.
Let me just queue it up here.
Okay.
Is there anything that you guys want us to talk about today?
Cody got the first comment in, and it's one word secession exclamation point.
Is that, wait, is that the show?
Is there a show called Secession, or is that Succession?
The show's Succession.
The show is Succession.
Okay, so this is Secession.
Because I'm sorry, people have been telling me I need to watch the show.
So I haven't watched the show.
If you meant the show, I have no comments because I haven't watched it, but I've heard it's good.
Secession, the idea of seceding from the union, I'm all for.
I'm all for it.
And in fact, more and more, I think that's our only hope.
And I used to, you know, I think that it's become more and more something that doesn't quite seem so crazy.
I mean, it's still a little bit crazy.
It's crazy on giving up.
You know, it's kind of like a marriage.
I mean, sure, it's not really a voluntary marriage.
It's like an arranged marriage that somebody else decided for you.
You are going to be a part of this thing called the United States of America.
And I get where for the normie, it is the idea of seceding and the country breaking up would just seem so crazy because you're like, this marriage was so great.
It was like the greatest marriage ever.
We achieved things no other marriage has ever achieved.
And that is true.
But I remember when I used to talk about this on like when I'd be on cable news shows.
So not even with normies, but with like political pundits.
And I'd talk about how I think the country should break up.
And that would be the best thing we could do is just dissolve the United States of America, break up.
We already got 50 state borders anyway.
Let's just be 50 different countries.
Why do we need to be together?
And people would be like, that is batshit crazy.
But then I remember talking about it in the post-Trump world after he got elected.
And people are more and more kind of like, yeah, I see what you're saying.
I mean, why is it?
Why does it make any sense that Brooklyn and Alabama, you know, or New York City and New York State and Alabama, why are they in the same country?
I mean, like, they despise each other.
Both of them think the other one's pure evil.
I mean, like, imagine a marriage where both of you think the other one is pure evil.
Well, what's the answer?
What do you do there?
You split up.
It's obvious.
It might be hard or painful or whatever.
You try to make it as pain-free as possible, but why would you want to be together?
Why would you want to?
I mean, like, it's very hard for me to see why, like, how with the cultural divide that we have, it's not just the political divide.
It's bigger than that, you know?
It's like, why would you want to all stay together?
So many of these issues seem to be impossible to reconcile.
So you have these issues like, well, look, take guns, right?
Like we were just saying, gun control.
You have one side that goes, guns, the right to bear arms is an inalienable right.
That it's only a tyrannical government would come and take your guns away from you.
Your right, your God-given right to protect yourself and your family and defend against a tyrannical government.
That's your right.
And the other side is like, if you don't believe in gun control, you're basically like you're a kid killer or you're sympathetic to a kid killer.
You have one side that goes, it's murdering babies.
And the other side that goes, you are denying women's basic freedom if you deny it.
Where do you compromise on that?
It just seems like there are these issues that like the if this was just a relationship, if this was just a marriage, you would go, this is so obvious.
You guys should have split up years ago, years ago.
On top of that, I think it's the libertarians' best path forward.
If you want to actually achieve liberty in any real sense, I think the best we can hope for is radical decentralization for now.
And secession would help a lot with that.
So there we go.
All right, Cody writes, do you consider yourself white or Jew?
And he spelled Jew, J-U-U-U-U-U-U, which I think might be, that might be to avoid the Facebook algorithm.
You got to be careful throwing that J word around.
Do I consider myself white or Jew?
Well, I think the question is misleading.
By the very nature of being a Jew, we're all dual citizens.
So whatever is convenient, I will go with at the time.
You know, I don't really know.
It's not something I've really thought about a lot.
I'm a kid from New York City.
And people say like Jewish is white on the coasts.
Like in New York, people kind of consider Jews to be white, but almost like a subset of whiteness.
So I don't know.
Whatever you want to consider me is fine with me.
I don't really care.
I would say, like, if, so to the, to the like extreme left, I think they would consider Jews white, which is a bad thing to be on the extreme left.
That's like, you have white privilege.
And then on like the alt-right, they would say you're not white, then you're a Jew.
So that's the bad thing to be.
Or it's like, I don't know.
Whatever.
I am what I am.
I don't think, I guess I would say that, and maybe this is part of the reason why some people who probably lean more toward the alt-right or whatever, why they'll, they, some of them still listen to me.
I'm sure most of them probably don't care for me very much.
But I guess my, my impulse in some way is that when people talk about like the Jewish question or something like that, and this is why I've done a few podcasts on this topic, I don't think it's a topic that you shouldn't be allowed to talk about.
I do notice things around me.
Like I notice that there is this weird double standard where somehow Israel is, you know, like all Democrats and Republicans all come together to unquestionably support Israel.
I'm not a fan of that.
I do notice the Jewish overrepresentation in some very damaging industries.
Like, you know, again, I don't have the exact numbers right in front of me, but it's like, you know, in banking and media, in neoconservatism and like all these different things, there's like this huge, like 8,000% overrepresentation of Jews.
And I find all of these to be, you know, kind of damning.
Like, you know, it's, these are not helpful areas.
These are some of the, you know, the people who I have the most contempt for.
So I don't think you shouldn't be allowed to talk about that.
I don't believe that it's A, a Jewish conspiracy or B, some genetic, you know, like desire to subvert a host nation.
I don't believe in any of that.
But I also don't think you shouldn't be allowed to explore these questions.
So when there is kind of this like anti-Semitism that's rising up, I tend to, and maybe just because it's the more useful approach from my perspective, I tend to go like, well, what is it that Jews are doing that are pissing all these people off?
And I don't say that as somebody who, you know, dislikes Jews.
I say that as somebody who, you know, has a vested interest in there not being like a large anti-Semitic movement building up.
And, you know, I certainly don't want to see that gain any real traction.
So, you know, it's like, hey, what are we doing?
What could we maybe not do?
Maybe it's not a good idea.
I don't think it's that crazy for any group of people who are, and I would say this to like all minorities in any country across the world.
If you're like 2% of the population, I think it's reasonable to ask yourself, hey, are you helping the nation that you're a part of?
Maybe you should try to make an effort to be a positive force because, you know, in your own self-interest, you're outnumbered.
So if you're kind of fucking over a lot of people, that's not a great strategy because they might realize and then they might be kind of pissed off and there's 98 of them for every two that there are of you.
So maybe that's not the best idea.
So that's kind of my impulse with the Jewish question.
You know, it gets me in trouble on all sides.
It's one of these issues that it's just kind of like the alt-right guys think I don't go far enough.
Everybody else thinks I'm alt-right for even talking about it.
It's, I don't know, whatever.
And as far as the white part goes, I do, I'm very just turned off by the openly anti-white bigotry that's completely accepted in polite society in America in 2019.
I can't stand it.
I just think it's horrible.
Open Borders vs Free Trade00:11:51
It's like, I don't know.
I don't hate white people.
Like, I guess I consider myself a white person.
I don't really know.
Like, yeah, I guess I do.
But like, disproportionately, my friends have always been white.
Some of the best people I've ever met have been white.
And just looking across the world, I feel like white Christians have done okay.
I don't know.
It's like, yeah, there's bad and good in it all, but like most of the places that I want to live are probably predominantly white and predominantly Christian.
And I don't think they should be hated.
I also was turned off by like bigotry on the alt-right and different guys there.
But like I, there's nothing about that that's like dominates polite society.
I just don't see that.
So yeah, that's that's more or less my take on those two things.
But what do I consider myself?
I guess both.
I don't know.
Jake asks, why did you cuck out on Rogan again?
That's a Milo reference.
I don't cuck out on Rogan.
I go hard.
I'm the most consistent motherfucker you know.
I'm me everywhere that I go.
On Rogan, on part of the problem, everywhere I am.
I'm the same.
All right.
Andrew writes, talk about the Koch brothers, their place in libertarianism, and the reactions to David Koch's death.
All right.
That's a really good question.
There's a lot.
There's a lot there.
So the Koch brothers, for anybody who doesn't know, right?
It's David and Charles Koch, and David just passed away.
So they're, you know, the Koch brothers.
So Charles Koch, I know, was like straight up a Rothbardian.
Like he met, I guess he was like reading Rothbard's stuff.
He met Murray Rothbard and he was like, you know, had the reaction that a lot of us have when they read Murray Rothbard.
And he was like, this motherfucker is the most incredible mind I've ever read.
Like this guy's a genius and he's figured like so much of this shit out and I want to really promote him.
And they started the Cato Institute together and they had a falling out at some point.
And I think, you know, I remember reading a lot about this back in the day, but I think more or less it was, you know, about like a purity thing.
Like Rothbard was like, hey, like, we're really going to be, you know, anti-war and promote Austrian economics and all this stuff.
And the Koch's were more into being power brokers and being like, well, that stuff's not really going to get us influence.
So we're going to fucking, you know, go in this different direction.
And they had a bad falling out.
And the Koch brothers ended up like really hating.
They told Lou Rockwell not to start the Mises Institute.
They were furious about that.
They never support any of the, you know, what I would consider to be like the best strand of libertarians.
And they didn't support Ron Paul in his presidential campaigns.
So they're known as these kind of libertarians, but really, if you look at who they supported, they've supported all types of all types of, you know, like Reason Magazine and the Cato Institute and all this stuff, but they never support the Mises Institute, never support Ron Paul, but they had no problem supporting lots of Republicans, like mainstream Republicans.
So they have no problem, you know, and that's where you start to question like, were these guys really libertarians?
Because if you don't support Ron Paul when he's running for president, when you have the biggest libertarian moment of any of our lifetimes, you don't support that guy, but you would support, you know, like a John McCain or someone like that.
It's like, okay, so where are your alliances really?
I mean, where like, where's your allegiance, I should say?
Like, what are your actual values here?
So the other thing is that they were very anti-Trump.
They really liked, I think they liked Scott Walker.
I think that was their big guy, who ended up going nowhere in his presidential campaign.
But they weren't like flooding money into even Rand Paul.
I think it's just anybody who's kind of associated in any indirect way with Mises, Rothbard, like that, that crowd is not getting support from the Koch brothers.
And that it does make me wonder.
Now, the funny thing is that they really didn't like Trump.
And I think there's something here to, you know, like there's an interesting lesson that could be learned from that.
But so, you know, these guys who they really didn't like Trump.
And I guess their justification for really not liking Trump was like, number one, these were like open borders guys.
They were like, we don't want any type of government restrictions on immigration, which, you know, feel however you feel about that.
You can, you know, you can get there from a libertarian ideology.
And they were really into free trade.
So they didn't like the tariffs or any of that type of stuff that Trump's talking about.
And again, you can get there from a libertarian ideology.
I guess my issue with it would be, why would those issues be deal breakers, yet a fucking Republican war hawk, that's not a deal breaker?
Like, why is that government program okay?
Like, I think to me, most libertarians who I admire and who I know, even the ones who really are leaning more in the open borders direction, if they had like a war hawk who was open borders versus a guy who wanted to end all the wars, but close down the borders, they would all hold their nose and support the guy ending the wars.
They may be like, yeah, I don't really like this border policy, but it's a lot more important we don't kill another a million Iraqis.
That's a lot more important than fucking, you know, like whatever our visa policy is or building a wall even or something like that.
And certainly same thing with the tariffs.
So I guess the question with the Cokes is like, well, why is that your breaking point?
And why would you not be supporting, you know, a guy like Ron Paul?
I mean, who, you know, was, you know, I mean, I think his immigration policy was actually probably the perfect libertarian answer.
Basically, Ron Paul's immigration policy was like, look, like, you don't want easy citizenship.
You don't want any welfare benefits.
You don't want to, you know, but basically you're like, people, if they're going to work, give them permission to come and work and cross the border and all that stuff.
It's better for the economy.
You know, you want to eliminate the incentives for people to come here illegally and all that stuff.
But there's that.
And then he was a complete, you know, free trade guy, but he wasn't like a corporatist free trade guy.
So he was kind of opposed to NAFTA and GATT and stuff like that on the grounds that really these are just like big corporate schemes to manage international trade.
It's not truly free trade.
But so they don't go for that.
That doesn't work for them.
Anyway, you also said, what was the rest of the question about his death, right?
The reactions to his death.
That I think is very interesting.
You know, I've actually been thinking about this a bit because next week I'm doing this debate with Nicholas Sarwak.
So I've been actually in the mode now for a few days of really thinking about what I'm going to say.
And it's been an interesting experience.
It's kind of brought me back to my roots to some degree because the first thing, I mean, the resolution is something about the Libertarian Party.
It's like the Libertarian Party should never again put up national candidates with views similar to Gary Johnson and Bill Weld.
But the first thing that you start thinking about, about how I would present this argument that we shouldn't put up candidates like Gary Johnson and Bill Weld is you start thinking to yourself, well, why am I a libertarian?
And what are we doing here?
What's our goal?
What are we trying to accomplish?
And that kind of brings you back to some very fundamental, you know, areas.
So with the Koch brothers' death, if you see the reaction from pretty much, you know, all of these people on the left, you know, if you go look online, it's been pretty, whoo, go look at like when the, I saw a few of them, like the, the more, you know, like MSNBC would like put out a tweet like David Koch dies at age 70, whatever, blah, blah, blah.
And just look at what the tweets are underneath.
And it's like, good, burn in hell.
I'm glad you died.
They're, they're evil.
To them, they're like the epitome of evil, the Koch brothers.
And you just go, it's like, wow.
So for all of this, you know, virtue signaling against Donald Trump, you know, you think about Donald Trump, who is just by these same people, the most hated figure you could imagine.
And his, the reason, like the main reason why Donald Trump's so evil to them is because he's racist.
And the main reason why he's racist is because he said the thing about Mexicans not sending their best.
A lot of them are rapists.
And he's separating families from children from their families and his border policy and all this.
Like that's the main thing.
Immigration was Donald Trump's central issue.
And it's also the central reason why he's literally Hitler.
And then you have these guys who go, well, we're completely against that.
We're these big Republican donors and we take the exact opposite approach.
Even Bernie Sanders, when asked if he was open borders, said, no, that's a Koch brothers position.
Like that's even, even his position is like, no, that's them.
They're the OG open borders people.
Well, for all of that open borders talk, for all of that anti-Trump talk, what does that get you?
What does it get you?
Nothing.
Like, what's the point?
What's the actual benefit?
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Defending Moderate Libertarians00:14:53
All right, let's get back into the show.
You know, this is like a big thing that I've been thinking about in preparing for this debate: it's that like there's no, I have nothing wrong.
I have no problem with trying to win someone over, with trying to persuade someone in any way you can.
If you're being consistent with your beliefs, present it in whatever way you think will be most effective.
Fine.
But the idea of trying to suck up to a group of people who are going to hate you anyway, like, what's the point?
Just tell the truth then.
Why wouldn't you?
You're risking nothing.
You're already, you know, it's so funny for like, if it's like I was thinking about with when I did, when I did the Thaddeus Russell's podcast and I argued a little bit with Nick Gillespie, like Nick Gillespie might take a lot of positions that you would think, you know, the left would prefer over what I'm saying.
But do you really think any of these hardcore leftists see any difference between us?
They don't.
We're basically both Nazis to them, or both tools of the Koch brothers or whatever, like whatever you want to call it.
We're all the same.
So it doesn't even gain you any favor.
It does nothing.
Which is one of my main pitches to libertarians in general.
It's like, fucking, be a radical, man, because that's what you are.
And pretending you're not isn't going to help you any.
You're like, like, you are a radical.
If you're a libertarian, you're a radical.
That's it.
And, you know, like maybe in an ideal world, you'd be a centrist.
But I think that's almost true for every political philosophy.
For every single political philosophy in an ideal world, you'd be the centrist, right?
Because you want the system that you advocate for.
And then that would be the center.
That would be the moderate, reasonable position.
But if you live in the United States of America in 2019 and you live in the biggest, most powerful state under the biggest, most powerful state that's ever existed, and you're anti-state, that makes you a radical by definition.
Like, you, you know, this is part of the thing, and maybe I almost should have tried to make this point clearer when I was arguing with Nick Gillespie a little bit on that podcast.
But it'd be funny to me in a way because I would take some of these like radical positions that he would argue with.
But then if you really unpack what he's saying, what he's saying he believes in, he basically should be just as much of a radical as me.
So just for example, right?
When we were talking about abortion, you know, Nick says at one point, you know, Nick was kind of like dogging me for being pro-life and how this is an un-libertarian position and we get into it.
So I start asking him questions, which is always, look, I think in the abortion debate in general, I've noticed this before.
I think no matter what your position is, people get uncomfortable when they get grilled more and more on them because there's some difficult areas that it takes you into, you know?
Like if you're pro-life like I am, people start asking you about a day after conception and you have to kind of talk about that and it's a bit of an uncomfortable situation.
They ask you about rape and incest, like these really like, ah, fuck, this is, this is where my beliefs take me.
So I kind of have to defend this.
But the same is true on the other side.
So he asked me some of those questions.
I started asking him some of these questions.
But as I'm asking him questions, Nick gives me that.
I said, when is it murder?
You know, because most reasonable people will say a day before you deliver, like when the baby's completely viable and could have just happened to be born yesterday, but happens to be born today.
Yeah, okay, so that's murder.
And he basically says at the point of viability, the baby is, then it's murder.
That's what he says, his words, that after the point of viability, he thinks it's murder.
So I said to him, I said, okay, so the law of the land in New York, where we are right now, is that you can have an abortion way past the point of viability on demand.
So baby murder, according to you, is legal here in New York.
So what are we doing?
What are you arguing with me for?
Like, could you imagine if you think, you know, I draw the line too early and you're arguing with me.
And you also think baby murder is legal in the state where you reside.
Wouldn't your time be better being like, we should end baby murder?
Holy shit.
What's worse than baby murder?
Like, so if you think that's that, so so you should be a radical too.
You shouldn't be putting all this emphasis on how my position is like too radical.
It's not like if fucking somebody like who lived on your block murdered three babies and then Brian came out one day and he goes, did you know that guy murdered 10 babies?
I wouldn't be like, oh, Brian, you're exaggerating.
I'm really just outraged at you for exaggerating about how many babies he's murdered.
He's only murdered a couple babies.
I'd be like, holy shit, this guy's murdering babies.
We got to fucking get him arrested and stop this.
And then me and you could like debate later on about how many babies he actually murdered.
But if we're both together that he's murdering babies, shouldn't we team up against baby murderer?
Like, why are we pretending we're not radicals?
We are.
And there were other examples in that as well.
I mean, just in general, the fact that like Nick was, you know, kind of saying to me, he's like, oh, you know, you anarchists, you want to like privatize the sidewalks or things like that.
It's like, fine.
So you don't want to privatize the sidewalks.
Okay.
I do, but like, whatever.
Forget that.
You, we, we live under the biggest state in the history of the world.
We're both completely against this.
Like, you're a radical too.
I, I, I know, like, some people just aren't comfortable in that position, but that's what you are.
Um, so I guess that, you know, to tie it back to the David Koch death thing, it's just like, I think it might be of benefit to some of these libertarians who are a little bit more moderate by nature to go, look, man, they're, they're going to think the worst of you too.
So now that's not, that's not a reason to say, oh, so just be like, fuck it, I'm a Nazi because you're going to call me a Nazi anyway, because you don't believe that.
You believe that's wrong.
Okay, so don't be that.
But don't fucking at least at least take the liberating aspect of that.
Like, accept that.
The liberating aspect of it is that, well, if you're going to call me a Nazi no matter what I am, I can just be what I am.
I can say what I believe.
I don't have to fucking, you know, like, I don't have to pussyfoot around these issues.
I can just say it.
Who the fuck cares?
It doesn't matter, man.
You can't, at least with this, look, you can try to persuade some people who are on the left, but with the crazy hard left that we deal with a lot of times in today's culture, it doesn't matter.
It doesn't, if you go like, well, I'm a libertarian, you know, take the Gary Johnson approach.
Like, I'm a libertarian, but I don't think you should have the right to discriminate against people in your own business because racism is so evil and I'm against racism.
C, I'm a good guy.
It's like, okay, but you're against Obamacare, right?
So you want to kill kids.
It doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter.
If you're libertarian at all, you're going to be a problem for them.
Look at these fucking activists.
They think Nancy Pelosi is too right-wing for them.
You're not going to win that battle.
So I think it's an interesting situation.
We can think about where our priorities are.
I'm not like one of those people who's like, yeah, fuck the Koch brothers.
I'm glad he's dead or something like that.
I just don't, you know, I mean, it's not like fucking John McCain dying or something like that.
It's, you know, he did some good work.
He did some philanthropy.
He did some, you know, he funded some organizations that did some good work.
It's just, I don't really consider them to be great libertarians.
In fact, I think they were, when it was really important, they were more against the libertarian movement than for it.
And it's just, you know, it's a, I don't know.
It's, it's a fucking, that's what I think of the Cokes.
So, you know, also, like, I don't think the people like, I think it's just like in poor taste, like the people who are like tweeting at Charles, like, I hope you're next and shit like that.
That's just like, come on, man.
This dude just lost his fucking brother.
Like, even someone like John McCain, I'll come on the podcast and I'll, you know, I said some pretty harsh things after John McCain died.
Like, I, you know, I said his fucking, you know, his friends and family better really hope there's not a hell.
Because if there is a hell, he will surely be burning in it for eternity.
If there is a hell, John McCain's still down there right now in the fucking penthouse suite.
Okay.
But I'm not like tweeting at his daughter.
Hey, I'm glad your father died.
I mean, it's like, come on, man.
Like, just have some class and be a decent human about it.
I don't know.
Okay.
Grisha Gricha.
Oh, okay.
The name is Grisha.
Gri Sha.
It's an interesting name.
Writes, I think you should talk about how hilarious it is that Trump and Bannon are so scared of China, but Bannon is going around telling everyone China is a paper tiger with a banking system on the verge of collapse.
Which is it?
The two are mutually exclusive.
Yeah.
Well, I tend to agree with you.
I mean, I, you know, if you listen to, Bannon's an interesting guy.
He's an interesting guy to listen to.
And it's interesting that he managed to become so reviled.
And he, I, I thought that was like a really, a really clear example of how much the media can control people's minds.
And I don't just mean that.
It's one thing when you just see a narrative in the media, but when Bannon first came in and was in Trump's administration, I remember being really blown away by real people who I know, like real people, mostly like in the comedy scene and friends of mine who are like left left-leaning, who would be just like, they hated Steve Bannon.
And I'm like, how do you even know who the fuck Steve Bannon is?
Like if I had asked you a year ago who Steve Bannon was, they'd have had no idea.
But they were just given their marching orders.
He's racist.
He's Trump's guy who's racist.
And they were like, we hate him.
He's the most evil person.
And it just, it kind of worked.
They were able to get him out of Trump's cabinet.
But if you actually listen to him, he's a really interesting guy.
I recommend if people haven't, go check out his monk debate where he debated David Frum.
He just wrecked him in front of a very hostile Canadian crowd.
And he brings up a lot of things that are very like real, like he gets right at the heart of some of the issues that were like really led to Trump's victory.
And you can see how it was helpful for there to be this real, this intellectual guy behind Donald Trump who actually understood the moment and what was going on.
And he talks a lot about the Federal Reserve and the wars and the stuff that really kind of hollowed out the country.
I agree with you.
The China stuff to me has always just been goofy.
I've never quite gotten it.
He's basically his whole worldview is about, you know, the problem is the rise of China and the decline of America.
But even when he understands, I mean, he kind of breaks down pretty well what's led to the decline in America.
And it's really, like, I just don't, I don't know.
I don't see it.
I don't see some big fear out of China.
I do, I do agree that they're a paper tiger.
I think that's for sure.
I don't think China's going to take over the world.
In fact, I think they're much more likely to have major setbacks.
The truth is the only enemy of America that I'm really concerned about is the federal government of the United States of America.
Like nobody's touching us except them.
I mean, nobody is a threat to us militarily.
You get to a certain point.
Once you can blow up the world 36 times, nobody's really going to take you on militarily.
The terrorism problem of people like planting bombs, like, I don't know.
There's a pretty easy fix to that problem.
I mean, it's not easy to implement because there's a military-industrial complex, but there's a pretty easy fix.
Be like, hey, stop slaughtering people in their home countries and giving a whole bunch of weapons to terrorist organizations.
Maybe you won't have this problem.
I mean, really, for all the fucking wars we've fought, we've had problems with basically al-Qaeda and ISIS.
Those are the only guys who have really been committing terrorist acts against America.
And they were both funded, armed, and in Al-Qaeda's case, trained by the West and the United States of America's CIA.
I mean, it's like, so don't do that.
Don't do that.
Don't starve people to death.
Don't murder them en masse.
Like, that's the starting point.
And, you know, then that isn't really a problem anymore.
So that's, you know, the fairly straightforward solution to that problem.
So I'm not really worried about that.
I am pretty worried about, which is the only thing I think you really should be worried about as a threat to America is that our federal government is on basically a suicide mission.
You know, it's like a suicide mission of, you know, 20 plus trillion dollars in debt, never-ending wars, regulating every nook and cranny of the economy, building a prison industrial complex, the fucking education industrial complex.
Like this is this is the shit that's destroying us.
As far as China goes, I just don't, I can't get on board with this fear that China's gonna, you know, they're gonna, you know, so you have all those threats that I just mentioned of our federal government.
And then what's the Chinese threat that they'll just keep producing cheap consumer goods for us?
Like, oh my God, what?
Who cares?
You know, this other idea is like, well, they're going around and investing around the world.
So they're going to have this influence.
It's like, okay, fine.
So maybe we shouldn't be fighting these wars and we should allow our firms to invest around the world.
Okay.
But I don't really see the argument that there's this is some huge threat to us.
It's kind of a benefit.
It's not the cause of any of our problems.
You know, I know there'll be these kind of like whatever, the Tucker Carlsons of the world who are like, oh, well, you know, you have like this opioid epidemic.
Our kids are going off and dying in wars.
People aren't getting married.
Housing Prices and Division of Labor00:03:00
They can't, the young people can't afford to get married and buy a house.
The birth rate is falling, but they have cheap Chinese goods.
So we're supposed to be okay with that.
And it's like, well, no, I'm not okay with any of that other stuff, but just taking away the cheap Chinese goods doesn't make all those other problems disappear.
It's like, I don't know.
I'd like to not have an opioid epidemic.
I'd like people to be able to afford housing, be able to afford starting a family and have cheap consumer goods.
Like, that's the idea.
You also want that.
You also want the higher standard of life and better quality of life.
And the reason why people can't afford all this shit isn't because of China making cheap shit for us.
It's not.
It's because we have a fucking, you know, we have a fucking economy that's based on fucking four plus trillion dollars a year spending out of fucking Washington and next to 0% interest rates for the last decade.
And this is what you get.
Not to mention the reason.
What's the reason why these kids can't afford a fucking house?
This is the fucking housing industry regulations are insane.
It's a completely propped up government industry.
They specifically propped it up.
It's not even like, oh, this is a conspiracy where this is my take on economics.
It's like after 2008, the Federal Reserve was like, we are buying 80 billion of mortgage-backed securities every month.
Like they're like, no, we're doing this.
We are propping up the housing industry.
That's what we're doing.
We're keeping the prices high so that people who own don't lose all of their fucking value.
It's like, okay, but what's the flip side of that?
The flip side is that you keep the prices high and now people can't afford to buy them.
So yeah, it sucked.
If the price of housing falls, it sucks for people who own houses.
It's pretty sweet for people who want to buy houses.
So that's the other side of it, right?
There's always a cost and benefit to this shit.
In the same way that it's like, oh, if interest rates are really low, that's awesome if you want to borrow.
It's kind of sucks if you want to save.
So you have to punish one to help the other.
So anyway, it's like, yeah, the reason, like, I don't know, it's because fucking education costs, housing costs, healthcare costs are through the fucking roof.
And these are not markets that are left to the free market.
These are the most regulated, you know, crony markets.
So yeah, that's that to me is the solution.
The fact that China wants to make cheap shit for us, like this whole like fucking anti-free trade right-wing populist movement is just so misguided.
It doesn't make any fucking sense.
And like, you know, the if it was true, if it was true that outsourcing things to a different area, you know, like robbed you of your ability to keep the jobs there, then like we shouldn't have free trade across states.
We shouldn't have free trade across neighborhoods.
You should build everything in your house.
Why are you outsourcing all this stuff, man?
That's a good job you could have had at your house.
Why are you going to the store to buy a sandwich?
You know, you could have made that sandwich.
This is how like division of labor and specialization works.
It makes us all richer.
So I agree with you.
Justifying Life Imprisonment00:15:59
I just don't, I don't see the threat.
And the other thing is that China is, you know, they have their own bubble issues.
They're going to deal with that.
You can only build so many ghost cities before that's going to come back to fucking bite you in the ass.
So there's no military threat between the United States and China.
That's the fucking like the biggest secret in all this shit that they never want to tell you is that once two countries have a nuclear arsenal, they don't go to war.
They don't go to war with each other.
It's not, it's, it literally hasn't happened yet.
And that's like pretty much the threats taken off the table in some weird, weirdly, it kind of has worked out.
I know we've had a couple close brushes before.
You want to make sure you de-escalate between nuclear powers.
Like the whole Trump-Russia thing was really stupid for that reason.
But really, you know, if America's showed anything, as soon as someone else got the fucking nuke, we were like, okay, well, we just go pick on puny third world countries and we don't actually fight the nuclear powers because, you know, nukes tend to kill the elites too.
So they don't, they don't want to risk that.
You know, Saddam Hussein was never going to fucking kill anyone in Washington, D.C., but you drop a nuke on Washington, D.C., it's a whole different story.
And it's not just the poor kids.
All right.
Let's see what else we got here.
The former Marine getting his guns seized.
This is from Christian.
The former Marine getting his gun seized for online comments saying he'd slaughter Antifa.
Yeah, I never, you know, I haven't looked into this enough to really comment on, but that's pretty creepy.
I guess he did say specifically that he had a detailed plan on how he was going to kill them.
That might be the part that got him in trouble.
But yeah, watch out.
Watch what you fucking say online.
You know, I don't know.
If you got guns, always try to stay away from anything that could be interpreted as a direct call to action.
I know it's not having your guns taken away, but he got his Twitter account suspended.
For someone was saying something like, how do you deal with, I think this was it.
I might be mischaracterizing this a little bit.
Someone basically said, how do you deal in a libertarian society?
How do you deal with pedophiles?
Like someone molests your child.
And he was like, I got about 8,000 rounds in my fucking AR-15.
That's how I deal with them.
And they fucking suspended him for that.
And it's like, he, for what?
Threatening a hypothetical fucking pedophile?
That's not okay.
He fucking lost his account over that shit.
It's fucking, you know.
But any, but them actually coming and taking your guns away is far creepier than just suspending a Twitter account.
I'll grant you that.
All right.
Mike asks, do libertarians have anyone on deck for cable news after Kennedy?
Well, I mean, you're looking at him.
I'm the only game in town, gents.
Well, first off, where's Kennedy going?
She's not going anywhere anytime soon.
I hope not.
I'll be back on there on Thursday.
I don't know.
I don't know, man.
It's an interesting question.
Like, who else?
Well, there's Judge Napolitano.
He's got a show on Fox Nation right now.
He's always in the picture.
And I'm sure there's some other people, but no one really jumps out to me.
Like what I'd like to see.
Judge Knapp's the only hardcore libertarian who I think's even in the realm of possibility.
I mean, you know, like I'm a guy who like goes on some panels and stuff, but I would not hold my breath for one of these networks giving me a fucking show anytime soon.
I'm not quite respectable enough.
And they just would never give a show to one of the great, you know, like Tom Woods isn't getting a show on network, as great as that would be.
I just don't see that happening.
And then, you know, like theoretically, maybe like one of the reason magazine guys they'd give a show to.
I mean, the guy that comes to mind is Robbie Suave.
Like he gets a lot of play on cable news.
To be honest, and this isn't a dig at Robbie at all.
I just don't really think he's built to be like a host of a show.
He's a good, he's a very good writer and he's a very good panelist, but he doesn't, I don't know.
Maybe I'm wrong.
I just don't see him in that, in that role.
But that is a good question.
Look, the truth is that none of that shit really matters.
I mean, the world has changed.
The rules change.
The fucking Rogan gets more views on every episode than the number one show in cable news.
He's probably close to twice as big as the number one show in cable news, which is usually either Hannity or Tucker Carlson.
So, You know, he's probably doing three times what Rachel Maddow does every night.
And then your average like CNN show, he's probably doing 10 times what they are.
So, you know, it's like at a certain point, at least for me, I start to go like, well, I don't think the goal is to get a cable news show.
Like, why the fuck would I want to do that?
Why would I want to go get a show that's like fucking interrupted by commercials constantly?
I got networks, you know, execs telling me what I can and can't say, being fucking like always put into this box.
I just want my podcast to get fucking bigger and bigger and bigger, which it's been doing.
So really, that's the goal is to just get this, just compromise nothing, say exactly what I want to say, curse when I want to curse, have on whatever guests I want to have on, and fucking, you know, do it that way.
It just, it just, that just seems to be the right, uh, the right path.
And there's something kind of beautiful about that.
But, you know, I'm sure we'll all be, if I get big enough, I'll be fucking, I'll be, I'll be unpersoned pretty soon.
Hopefully not.
Okay.
Jimmy says the whole beef between the Koch and Rothbard and how the libertarians should react.
Yeah, okay.
I think I pretty much mentioned that already.
Justin says bonus apps.
Bro, every Wednesday is a bonus episode.
Every goddamn Wednesday.
I've been killing it with bonus episodes.
Are you out of your mind?
People are very ungrateful.
Very ungrateful.
Secession again.
Am I reading the same fucking things?
Oh no.
No, it's just, it's just there's only so many topics our people want to talk about.
All right.
Madrux.
Madrux, who I always feel like I'm pronouncing that wrong.
Saudi Pakistan and Israeli role in 9-11.
Hmm.
Well, that's an interesting question.
I don't know that I have too much to offer on that.
I mean, I've heard the conspiracies.
And as I've said before, when it comes to 9-11 conspiracies, I'll just say I'm not, I wouldn't call myself a truther or somebody who, you know, believes in, because I'm not.
I don't like believe a lot of these crazy theories.
I don't believe in the controlled demolition thing.
And I don't.
However, my reaction to 9-11 conspiracies is never like, get out of here.
It's always kind of like, huh.
You know?
So if you're like, Israel was involved in 9-11.
I'm kind of like, huh, all right.
Go on.
You know, continue.
I've heard some people who have mentioned some interesting theories about that.
The Saudi aspect of it is like the most well-documented.
I mean, that's like, that's actually pretty much just fact.
I mean, first off, it was a bunch of Saudis who fucking attacked us on 9-11.
And they very clearly had help from high-level Saudi officials.
So both private and public individuals in Saudi Arabia helped these Saudis, you know, like, I don't know.
It's like if you had a fucking, a bunch of New Yorkers who went and hit, like, were hiding out in New Jersey for a few years, and then they planned an attack on you with the help of like high-level people in the New York government, you wouldn't fucking be like, and then you were like, hey, you want to talk about New York attacking us?
And you'd be like, you're a conspiracy theorist.
It was just this one little group.
And yeah, so obviously.
And whether or not, you know, at a certain point, it's like, it doesn't even really matter to me because whether or not Israel was in on 9-11, they were certainly in on all of the war plans that were drawn up immediately after 9-11.
So the real, you know, like, I mean, I shouldn't say it doesn't matter.
Like it matters if you were involved in a conspiracy to kill thousands of Americans, of course.
But what we know for sure is that Israel was involved in the war in Iraq and all of the subsequent wars that followed afterwards.
So that, that to me is the real evil.
I tend to just feel like let's focus on what we have them on.
If I see proof of something else, I'll look into that.
I know there's been some people who have talked about, you know, all the different people involved in 9-11.
I just, you know, I actually think if you look at the evidence, there's a lot of evidence that like, just to take on some of the conspiracy theories, there's a lot of evidence that like al-Qaeda was a real thing, that they really planned this and that they really did it.
I don't buy into the like, you know, idea that it was just the Israelis or just Dick Cheney or just, you know, like, I think Al-Qaeda was involved.
That being said, that doesn't, you know, Al-Qaeda had been getting a lot of support years before by the CIA.
Who was supporting them in the meantime?
Who the fuck knows?
There's a lot of shit.
Look, what we know, like what we know that the CIA has done, that the different secret services that the Pentagon, the military industrial complex have done, what we know is outrageously horrific.
And if that's what we know, believe me, there's a whole bunch more shady shit going on.
So my inclination, my guess would be that if we knew what was really going on, if 100% of everything was declassified tomorrow, it would be worse than mere you can imagine.
That's kind of my guess, but who knows?
Could be wrong.
But even if there was nothing else going on, it's still enough to, you know, to justify putting a whole bunch of people in fucking prison for the rest of their lives, if not up against a wall in front of a firing squad.
After a trial and a conviction.
That's for all, just for the NSA who's listening in on that one.
After being duly prosecuted, then we then we move to phase number two.
All right.
Let's go through, let's see what else we got.
We're going to wrap up pretty soon, guys.
It'll be a little bit of a short episode.
I just, without my muse, Robbie the fire, it's can only go for so long.
Okay, Ben asks, do you support the death penalty for people who commit abortions?
No.
The answer would be no.
Certainly not in today's, not in the current context.
And I just think, you know, you kind of have to, when you think about punishments for these things, you have to, you just have to apply it within reason and you have to understand the context of the world we're in.
So like, look, I think it's good to call things what they are.
Like if I call, if I say war is mass murder, which essentially is, you know, factually true, that's what you do in war.
You kill a whole bunch of people.
You know, it's mass murder plus property damage plus trespassing.
I mean, if you really want to break it down, it's like many different crimes all in one act.
But I'm not saying that every soldier should be, you know, should be tried for murder.
I'm not saying every soldier who's killed someone should get the death penalty.
I think kind of, you know, what's reasonable, there's some historic precedent for this.
You kind of blame a lot of the people at the top and they should be tried for war crimes and things like that.
And then at a certain level, you almost have to go, this was like a mass societal fucking brainwashing into a delusion.
And I just don't want to see everybody, you know, at the bottom tried this way.
You know, so many of these kids, these were like 17, 18 year old kids who are brainwashed into thinking they're fighting for freedom and democracy and they're lied to about what the fucking, what actually happened.
You know, it's like at a certain point, you just, you know, you can't, it just doesn't seem practical to me.
So, no, I don't think so.
I think really what you want with the abortion issue is like a cultural awakening.
You want to try to persuade as many people as you can that like this is some truly evil, demonic shit to be doing, to just be okay with killing your baby simply because it's inside of you at the time.
To me, it's just, you know, it's truly evil.
And you'd want to move to a system.
I mean, you know, in my opinion, preferably like a private law, private property-based system where this wouldn't be allowed.
But, you know, I don't support the state death penalty for anything.
So definitely not.
Not for people who have abortions and even not for doctors who perform them in today's context, you know.
Let me just see.
I can bang out one more.
Let me try to look through.
Okay.
Talon asks, should libertarians draw a line on free speech, i.e. threats of violence?
Why or why not?
Well, yeah, of course.
Threats of violence are an act of aggression.
Of course they are.
Because that's basically what, you know, half, probably more than like a huge portion of theft is based off of threats of violence.
You know, give me your money or I'll fucking shoot you isn't technically an act of violence.
It's a threat of violence, you know?
So of course, that's a violation of the non-aggression principle as well.
It's the initiation of violence or the threats of violence, which probably isn't said often enough.
But yeah, it's got to be.
I mean, give me all of your stuff or I'll kill your family.
And then you give them all of your stuff and you go like, well, I never actually killed your family.
So no harm, no foul.
It's like, no, of course, that was a threat.
Now, it's, you know, like every other principle, like every principle that exists, it has to be applied within reason.
So you can't just claim anything as a threat of violence.
And this is in general why, you know, Western common law societies have, you know, kind of worked with like a jury trial and things like this where people kind of judge whether this was actually a threat or not.
But yes, threats of violence are absolutely a violation of the non-aggression principle.
I think fairly clearly.
All right.
I'm going to wrap on that one.
I love you all.
Robbie Bernstein.
Hopefully we'll be back for the next episode.
Hopefully this AIDS clears up.
We love him and we miss him very much.
Make sure you let him know.
And thanks for listening.
I'm getting fucking psyched for my debate next week, man.
Getting real, real psyched for this.
So if you're coming, I look forward to seeing you guys there.
I'll be hanging afterward and we're going to do like a little, we're going to record a podcast after you're aware of this, right, Brian?
It's a good thing.
Brian's nodding.
That's always a good sign.
So I just start going, oh shit.
I'm really hoping Brian knows that this is happening because I'm relying on him for everything.
Okay.
And by the way, Brian's the man who fucking produces this show.