James Smith and Rob Bernstein dissect the decline of religion, arguing that secular ideologies like diversity now fill a "worship vacuum" while mocking Democratic hypocrisy. They defend Jacob Hornberger's open borders stance as consistent with libertarianism if paired with welfare abolition, asserting voluntary segregation is a natural market outcome rather than forced integration. The hosts critique left-libertarians for obsessing over vague racism instead of actual violence and discuss the medical benefits of psychedelics despite personal discomfort. Ultimately, Smith suggests the future involves prepping for societal collapse through land and guns, preferring the chaos of too much liberty over government-mandated poverty. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Mocking Christians in 202000:11:44
Fill her up!
You are listening to the Gash Digital Network.
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.
You're listening to part of the problem on the Gas Digital Network.
Here's your host, James Smith.
Ho, ho, ho.
Merry Christmas.
I hope you've all been good.
I see Rob Bernstein's been a very naughty boy.
Nothing but eating sandwiches and jerking off all year.
You get a lump of coal, Jew.
I feel like Santa would be into that.
If anything, Santa would become mop like, I like the way this guy's living.
We can hang out.
I remember when you put away those two subs back to back.
Old Santa's been there a few times.
Yeah, maybe.
Santa comes down and just loves Rob Bernstein.
And there's no way he's still sleeping with Grandma Claus.
Oh, no.
No.
I highly doubt it.
That's, I don't think.
It's either jerking off or fucking the reindeer.
It's one or the other.
Oh, wow.
This is, well, and there you go.
And there you go.
Jew denigrating your precious, precious holiday of Christmas.
Well, Merry Christmas, everybody.
It is the morning of Christmas Eve.
We don't usually record in the morning.
I feel like I'm working for the man here.
10 a.m. Star Times, the day before Christmas.
I know what's going on.
Really, I'm sorry.
This is supposed to be a 6 p.m. job.
It is.
I don't know how many ever podcasts I've recorded in the morning.
We've done like skanks a couple times when we had to do like makeup episodes or something like that early.
But yeah, there's something that's a whole different vibe to it, having an orange juice instead of a beer with the podcast.
It makes me...
Yeah, see, you guys have been getting a lot of evening, Dave.
I'm really not that angry.
And I think the system, you know, it could be tweaked to be a little bit better.
Hey, I want to abolish the government.
I mean, when I say it at 10 a.m., it just sounds a little bit crazy.
Like, I don't know, maybe cut marginal tax rates a little bit, but abolish the whole thing.
It's a full day of the city.
It slowly gets to you as you wake up and hear the cards going by.
Get out of the fucking way.
By 6 p.m., I'm like, just blow the whole thing up.
I don't know what to tell you.
But 10 a.m., like, I don't know.
Hey, how about this Mises sweatshirt?
Jeff Dice sent me this for Christmas.
What a great guy that Jeff Dice is, huh?
Great guy.
Love the Mises Institute.
I'm still waiting for my crown.
Well, this is the Institute, not the caucus.
You have no affiliation with the Institute.
You're not their king.
You're the king of the caulks.
Don't start getting crazy here.
Well, I'm basically licensing.
Are you annexing the Institute and taking that over as well?
King of the Inst?
Well, they're the academics behind our cause.
So, I mean, they somehow fit into my kingdom and need to pay proper tribute.
Oh, all right, very good.
I'm willing to license the name back to them.
My wife and daughter came down to the studio with me today as we're going straight to Christmas at my wife's house.
At my wife's, my wife's house.
She lives with me.
At my wife's family's house.
At my wife's house.
We're doing this thing, really.
I mean, we're married and have a kid, but I don't want to, you know, I maintain separate residence.
But I literally, I'm just looking out and I see the cartoon is already switched from the one they were watching when we came in here.
I go, that's not a good sign.
That means somebody's fussing.
So, you know what I was thinking?
I thought for today's episode, we would take some listener questions from the part of the problem inner circle.
It's been a little while since we've done that.
And I always like to hear back from the people, the people who made me, and stay in touch.
That was the, I remember when we first started the show, that used to be a segment on the show called Listener Questions.
And the show was so small at the time.
Like, we just had a few thousand people listening to it.
That I would, I used to say, and I never even really thought about like the idea of the show getting big, but I used to go, my like guarantee on the show was if you come, I will read every listener comment on the show, and it'd be easy to do because there'd be like eight.
So you would just read them all.
And then there's like, I remember that was the first time when I thought I felt like, oh, the show's getting big.
Because I was like, I can't even read all the comments anymore.
There's too many.
And now, Jesus Christ, half of them are just memes about bonus episodes.
But I mean, those are, there's thousands of those just alone.
I'm sorry, okay?
Maybe I haven't come through on every bonus episode.
It's Christmas.
Jesus Christ, it's Christmas.
Have they no heart?
Have a soul, a cooked goose for everyone.
All right.
You know what I did want to say, though, before we get into that?
It's just something that was on my mind that I thought maybe I would express or share with you guys that I was thinking about as we, you know, we enter the holiday season of what is this crazy year and we go into 2020, which is just going to be such another wild year politically.
And this stuff's moving fast, man.
I mean, I think the first, I could be wrong about this, but I believe the Iowa primary is at the end of February, maybe March, but it's coming soon.
Like, they're going to start voting.
Hillary Clinton's got to announce, she's only got a few weeks left.
She's got to like get into this thing.
Unless she's going to get in after Iowa and hope she can just rally up all the blacks in South Carolina.
Skip New Hampshire, skip Iowa, just get in.
Anyway, the point is this is going to get going.
This is a presidential year.
Going into a presidential year with Donald Trump running for re-election, with all these crazy Dems, with fucking with Trump getting impeached, I think.
It's just going to be wild.
But anyway, I was thinking, going in, because it's Christmas, you know, and who better to talk about the spirit of Christmas than a couple Christian conservative Jews.
But you got a Gentile family now.
Oh, yeah.
You're almost in the Klan.
I'm working hard.
Just got to get baptized or something.
Yeah, I don't know.
I mean, I've.
I mean, why would you want the rest of your family to get salvation?
Yeah, not true.
No, I performed my own baptism, but I don't know if it counts.
It wasn't holy water.
It was Poland Spring, but I've doused myself good.
That's the most Jewish baptism you could do.
I really.
Bottled water.
Yeah, it really, it bothered me because I was, you know, bottled water ain't cheap and I wasted, you know, half a bottle on that thing.
But you got to do what you got to do.
But I was just thinking, I don't know, it was just dawning on me.
Like, isn't it?
And I know we've talked about this before, and I'm sure everyone to some degree has thought about this.
But do you think?
The Jews killed Christ?
Absolutely.
Well, they didn't do it with their own hands, but they obviously sold him out.
They were like, Mr. Realman, this one, a little bit of a loudmouth.
I don't know.
He's always saying things you're not supposed to say.
But isn't it, and I'm sure there has been a time in history, but isn't it pretty remarkable how little religion there is in our society?
You know what I mean?
Like in our government and our societies, certainly there's never been a time in American history when religion is as removed from people's lives.
You're somebody who grew up in a very religious house, but now you live in the world of heathens.
But isn't it kind of crazy when you think about like, you know, like we've talked about before on the show, but throughout history, usually the most dangerous thing you could do would be to deny God or, you know, commit blasphemy, like speak out against your religion.
That was like something that had like real, forget, obviously there were legal costs and people got killed for this shit.
And, you know, but just socially, there'd be like huge social ramifications.
And today, it's like you could say, you could go tweet, God is dead.
You could tweet there's no such thing as God.
You could tweet fuck Christianity, anything like that, and not even have an ounce of concern that your account's going to get suspended or you're going to get a strike against you.
Like, no one would even think.
People would be, you know, even the tech companies would be the first to say, well, that's his freedom of speech.
He has every right to shit on Christianity or God or anything like that.
But if you were to say, like, you know, anything, the wrong thing about race or the wrong thing about Jews or Muslims or something like that, then it's like blasphemy.
And it's just an interesting dynamic because how many, like, if you were to criticize a religion, the only religions you couldn't criticize are the minority ones in the country.
And isn't that just strange?
Like, the majority religion is the one that you can freely criticize.
Isn't this such a strange world we live in?
It's just so devoid of religion.
And like, that's a pretty big thing.
Religion has played a really central role in the way humans organize for pretty much all of human history.
And, you know, feel however you feel about it.
It's just, it's a big deal.
I was thinking about how, you know, it's like the, first off, Trump is the president.
And Trump's got to be the least religious president ever.
Do you ever see the thing when he was getting, because there's still kind of these like archaic, like.
He still plays it like he's a good old Christian boy.
Well, he does.
Well, that's almost what I was saying.
You kind of have to.
You almost have to like pretend you are.
But do you ever see?
So when you're campaigning, and this will be coming up this year again, but they'll still do these like interviews with like Reverend so-and-so or some pastor or something like that that they sit down and talk to.
And Trump was doing one of them in 2016 when he was running for president.
And he was talking about the Bible.
And he goes, you know, it really is just an unbelievable book, just a terrific book.
And he goes, it's even better than my book, Art of the Deal.
At one point, like, he goes, it's even better than my, like, that was, and you knew that took everything for Trump to like say, like, that to Trump was the ultimate compliment.
It's even better than Art of the Deal.
And then the guy asked him, at one point, I think he said, he goes, what's your favorite, you know, verse in the Bible?
And he goes, well, they're all really terrific.
Like, it was just so transparent.
And like, you know, he said at one point, they said, what's your favorite book in the Bible?
And he goes, the Bible.
The Bible's the book.
That's the book.
It's the Bible.
The whole bottle, like, he's not even aware that there's multiple books.
I mean, he's like, it's, but it's hilarious.
And it's just like, look, Trump may say he's a Christian or something like that, but I mean, come on.
Who really thinks that Trump is like a religious guy?
I just, I don't know.
It doesn't, it doesn't seem like it to me as a guy who's on his third marriage and walking around, you know, fucking porn stars while his wife's pregnant is, you know, in gold-plated.
I think ever since he bought Melania, he's really turned it around.
You know, once you purchase that third wife from Russia and she's fresh, you become a man of the Lord.
I found God right around the time I purchased my third wife, got a great deal on her, half the price of my second wife.
Yeah, but it's, and then the Democrats, as opposed to him, I mean, they're just like, I mean, again, they all pretend to be Christians, but they're all just hostile toward Christianity.
The funniest one is Mayor Pete, who really, he's the one who invokes Christianity the most.
And he'll be like, you know, like he'll brings up the Bible a lot and he's like, these Republicans aren't acting the way the Bible tells you to act.
And separating children from their families at the border is, you know, just, this isn't how the Bible told us to act.
And you're just sitting there like, dude, dude.
Why I Am an Atheist00:13:55
You're gay.
You're gay.
Just sit here and tell me about the word of the Bible.
What did they say about you?
It's just like it's just so it's it's just like it's almost like just to mock anyone who's seriously a Christian.
Gay people are both giving and receiving and what's more Christian than that, Dave?
That is a good point, man.
God damn.
You and your Talmudic logic.
Both giving and receiving.
That is, that is absolutely true.
They do both of those things.
Yeah, man.
It's a anyway, I don't know.
It's just like I used to be, you know, like kind of like a militant atheist.
Like I really, I did.
I used to just be like, you know, like to me, it was like since I was young, you know, like since I think my teenage years and into my 20s, it was like with the very obvious, you know, atheist points, like there's no, you know, there's no proof of this and it's faith and faith isn't a virtue and all the stuff that like your 20 year old looks at Christopher Hitchens and thinks he's like so badass and stuff like that.
And then even when I first became a libertarian, I was like, I was very on the atheist bandwagon too.
Like I was like, no gods, no states.
All of this shit like just doesn't, it's all fake and it doesn't need to exist.
And I've just more, as I get older, been more like, you know, I think the absence of religion in life may not be the best thing.
And I think that at the very least, we've really thrown out the baby with the bathwater as a society.
Like there were really good aspects of religion and we didn't replace that with anything else.
And we just isolated people.
You know what I mean?
Like it's not, there isn't like some other sense of community that we replaced religion with.
There isn't some other reason to be a good person and not just worship yourself and not just live life about the meaning of life isn't just to be happy or just to have fun or just like we maybe theoretically you could replace religion with something else, but we sure as fuck didn't do that.
And I've always had like a big problem with like the which I think even Stefan Molyneux, I think he kind of like like he used to be this way and then kind of backed off of it where he would be like, you know, like philosophy can replace religion.
And it's like, yeah, okay.
I mean, what does that do for the guy with an ADIQ?
Is philosophy going to replace religion for him?
Because I don't know if he's really going to be reading fucking Aristotle, you know?
But he probably can get going to church.
He probably, like, the thing about religion is it really was something that binds the society together.
Like, it's got a role for everyone.
You know what I mean?
And look, obviously, you can find in Christianity, you could find, like, if you go through the, through the Bible or you go throughout history, you can find really good elements of it and really bad elements of it, you know?
But it's like if you look at society starting from like mud huts and basically people living like savages, and then you look to where like the Western Christian nations got to, it's like, seemed to work pretty well and at least was there while society was advancing.
I'm not saying that's, you know, an argument or like a slam dunk for why you need it, but it does just seem like, it's like, wow, this is a really, really different experiment, what we're in right now.
And I don't know.
How's it going?
It seems like it has its problems.
I think the, I don't have a lot of evidence of this, but I get the vibe from some of the finding founding fathers.
Vibe's a great word when you're just saying, hey, I think this to be true and I have no analytics or something I've read about it.
Yeah, that's great.
And we're wasting time with data and empirical evidence.
Just give me a vibe.
No, I pick up from like people like Ben Franklin.
I don't think that they were necessarily real Christian believers, but they just felt like society needed religion.
And so they partook in it because they just saw it as important, even if you didn't necessarily have absolute faith in Christ or however that wacky religion works, because I'm not familiar with that one.
Yeah.
But no, it's like, I think the best version of that is just the Bob Dylan song, You Gott Serve Somebody.
It's like we're all kind of have our philosophies and like every decision is built around them.
And I don't know that most people's personal gauge or code of ethics is better than what religion offered.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, I agree.
And that thing, that is really, it's like that.
And even the people who say they're above it, the atheists who are like, I'm just a purely rational atheist or whatever.
And then maybe there are some people out there.
You're making values around something.
You just, look, the desire to worship is like hardwired into our DNA.
Like it's, and, and, and the, and, and the idea of God.
Like, it's a, was there some old, it was like a Jewish story.
But this guy, he was like, the, the story is something like a college student writes a paper on God and the idea was to disprove God.
And he's like, you know, and he goes through it and he's like, he's like, oh, I had your paper come out.
And he was like, oh, it was great.
He goes, first off, I, I, the first page or the first argument was that it was all, you know, there's no evidence for God and goes through all of the like archaeological findings and all of the like, you know, like scientific evidence and nothing about God can be proven.
And all the evidence points toward evolution.
And then the second one was like a psychological breakdown about how God, you know, Freud would say God is the projection of a father figure.
And like each chat, you know, each thing like more and more just attacking the idea of God and there's no evidence for God.
And this is why I'm an atheist.
And he writes this whole paper and he goes, he goes, oh, what'd you get?
And he goes, I got an A. Thank God.
And like, that's the, but, and, and it's, it's just silly, but it does demonstrate something that there's like, you know, it's like if you're, if you're on a plane that's coming down or you're on a, you know, there, what's the saying?
It's like, there are no atheists on sinking ships or something like that.
Yeah, well, what, you know, you get the point.
And it's just like, there really is something, like, it's in you.
Now, that doesn't prove that God exists on its own, but there is, it does say something about man, if nothing else.
And it certainly doesn't prove God doesn't exist.
But it's, it's, it does say something.
And that was the experience I had, you know, a year ago when my wife had my baby where, you know, it was like just, it was like right away, even somebody like myself who was never really raised really believing in God.
It's like right away I'm talking to God.
And right away I'm making deals with God.
Like I'm telling, so it's like, not only do I feel like in my core somewhere without ever being aware of it, it's like, I believe in this God.
And then also I feel like I know what he wants me to do.
Like I know he wants me to be a better person and I'm like agreeing to do that.
And, you know, it was just after looking at that and you go, man, what the fuck was that?
That's kind of crazy.
That just came out of me.
That was never indoctrinated into me.
That just came, that was organic, you know?
And yeah.
And that's why I think you see, now there might be some individuals who will be like, well, I can cut out, particularly, you know, if I'm speaking like the libertarian crowd, there might be some individuals who are like, well, I just, you know, I do, I think like I'm an atheist and I'm I act rationally or whatever and, you know, ethically and I follow philosophy.
And yeah, listen, maybe that's you.
But when it is brought to the masses, it does seem like what ends up happening is they find something else to worship.
It does seem like there's like a worship vacuum and then something else floods into that.
And of course, the best example is the modern left in America, who are the most atheistic group of people in our society and immediately just start worshiping these other gods.
I mean, like diversity is their God or anti-racism or like, you know, fucking the state or like all of these things.
They're obviously religions.
I mean, like, it's the same exact thing as religion, egalitarianism.
It's just a religion.
It's just, you never actually, it's just undying belief in something.
And you never actually have to like, you know, I don't know, prove it.
It's just something you worship and believe in.
So anyway, Merry Christmas.
I guess that's, that was more or less what I just wanted to start off talking about.
I just think it's something that's interesting and it doesn't get, it's like such a profound shift in our society.
And that's like so many of these things in America in 2020 almost now.
There's so many things where it's like, this is a really profound shift in our society and it doesn't really get discussed.
Like people don't really talk about it that much.
Just to jump off what you were saying with the, I guess there's a belief system even amongst the left.
So I noticed it myself a while ago when I stopped really observing religion.
I thought belief was a very stupid reason to kind of, there's no fact base there to just do something and revolve your entire life around a belief just seemed like a dumb reason to do something.
But I later realized that I have a belief in goodness.
And what I mean by that is if like you take God out of the equation, I still kind of believe that there's reason to be good.
Like I don't see life as just a pursuit of power.
And if you take God out, you could really go, hey, then life is just about power.
It's about accumulating power because that's the absolute best thing you can do here.
And even if you have to do that amorally, that's what you should do.
And I don't believe that.
So now I'm already, that's not logical.
That's belief.
So once I say I've got belief in goodness, so what's the jump to say I have a belief in God or I have a belief in anything?
You're still making decisions around a belief.
Yeah, that's a good idea.
Which is probably true of everyone in the left.
That if you really put, you know, their feet to the fire about why I guess they hold certain things to be true, it's probably not fact-based or evidence-based.
It's more belief-based.
And so to shit on person for Christian belief versus what you really have is a belief is not like really logically consistent.
No, you're right.
And it's very nice to feel like you're above that.
You're like, oh, and it's very easy right away to go, oh, you're just doing this off faith.
Well, what is faith?
Why should I have faith in anything?
But then you realize it's like, yeah, well, there's going to be, look, if you really just reduce it down to like the pure atheist, we are just, you know, basically the way fucking a single-celled organism turns into, you know, a two-celled organism.
And then that there's us, a long process in between.
But the same way trees, you know, evolved, we, we basically evolved.
We're the second half of that, right?
We're at 50% of the same DNA as a tree or something like that.
It's really like all, that's the idea, right?
Like all life just like kind of is just a scientific process.
Then why not just take people's shit and kill people?
And do why, why have any fucking, you know, like, why, why, why live by any ethical code?
And then you get into a thing, which, which I've heard the argument, but it's, you just start to get into a thing that does become a belief again.
Because I've heard these people who, and their argument will be like, well, but it's not really in your best interest.
It's in all of our best interests to act morally or something.
But then you can always be the free rider.
Well, the problem with that is that there's so many people who act immorally and do great from that.
I mean, like, you know, like you can, you can come back to say like, well, you know, the Clintons are really miserable, even though they have hundreds of millions of dollars and they've had all this power and all of this stuff.
They're really miserable inside.
But then isn't that just kind of like a religious belief in itself?
That karma always comes back to get those and nobody's really happy at the end of the day if they stole the money.
Like, do we actually know that?
Is there any way of actually gauging this?
Because there's some people who live really honest lives and aren't that happy.
And so I don't actually know that there's any evidence that people don't aren't happy when they fucking steal.
Like, I don't know, maybe, but it's kind of just, again, like you said, a belief.
You're just, it's really hard to escape believing, like the way you just said it was perfect.
It was simple and profound.
It's really hard to escape believing something unless you're just going to be a piece of shit and just be like, I believe in nothing.
I don't believe in anything.
And I'll kill, rape, steal, whatever.
And again, this isn't like, that's not like to disprove atheism.
It's just saying that you will end up putting something in there.
Now, different, that's not to say that all beliefs are the same.
And I got to say, even someone who does believe in God, I got to say, there are certain traditions about religion that for me personally, I find kind of goofy.
Like the idea that, like, to take the Jewish shit, like just believing in good is, to me, at least seems a little bit different than believing that I can't have a cheeseburger because it was written down 5,000 years ago.
Like, that to me just seems so illogical that I'm like, no, I mean, I don't know.
It's like, you're telling me there's a God and he made cheeseburgers taste this good and doesn't want me to have a cheeseburger.
That's just, that's, that seems silly.
Seems much more likely that this was dangerous to eat 5,000 years ago.
And that's why they wrote it down.
Here, I'll give you a Jewish religious argument against that, which is that if you want to.
You got to eat the cheeseburger.
No, it's not.
It's that if you want to create the reality of God, part of it is just doing and not doing things on the basis that he told you you can and can't do it.
And so in your own mind, if you want to create the reality of, hey, there's a God here, and then you're doing things just because he commanded you on the basis of doing and not doing, then like in your own world, you're creating that reality.
And then part of it is he just created a framework, even with the relationship with the rabbis, that it's more important that you're doing or not doing on the basis of what you were told.
Right.
And so like some of that, all of that faith in those.
Just submitting to the rules.
Okay.
The Legend of Heshy Socks00:02:21
Yeah.
Look, I mean, I...
And now I don't keep any of those rules, but I'm just giving you the argument.
Still my favorite.
My favorite Rob Bernstein story ever was that me and Rob, when Rob stops being kosher and he had never had a Philly cheesesteak.
And we went to get a Philly cheese steak.
He goes, I'm going to have my first Philly cheesesteak, Dave.
Let's go do it.
So I was like, okay, great.
There's this really good cheesesteak place.
I think they closed, but it was called 99 Miles to Philly here in New York, you know, 99 miles away from Philadelphia.
And they'd get the bread shipped in from Philly and stuff.
It was really good.
And we go there and we had cheesesteak.
And then Rob, by the way, afterward, literally after we pound these cheesesteaks, Rob goes, do you want to go get a burger now?
And I was like, you're insane, dude.
No, we just ate.
I'm like, are we doing this or not?
What do you mean, one meal?
I called you the next day and I called Rob and I go, what's up, Rob?
He goes, what's going on, Dave?
And I was like, what are you up to?
And he goes, I'm just eating a cheesesteak.
And I was like, holy shit, Rob, it's not an everyday thing.
Like, you just had your first cheesesteak ever.
And then I just call you the next day and it's just like, this is life now, eating cheese steaks.
I don't know.
This is what I do.
Anyway, I was making up for lost time.
It was a great, great Rob Bernstein moment.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
Unique Problems with Liberty00:15:56
All right, let's jump into some of these listener questions.
Why, baby?
Hi, cute baby.
Sorry, my baby's in the background.
It's just so perfect.
All right.
Hold on one second.
Let me pull it up.
So I posted in the part of the problem inner circle.
Of course, if you want to be part of the part of the problem, part, if you want to be part of the part of the problem inner circle, all you got to do is sign up, become a contributing listener.
Go over to gasdigitalnetwork.com, use promo code P-O-T-P, get you a monthly discount, and then you just post on the forums that you want to be in the inner circle, and then you request the group on Facebook.
And I know some of you are like, oh, it takes me a while to get into the group, but you should see how long it used to take.
It's really not that bad.
Couple weeks, you'll be in there.
But then you get in.
It's a real fun group.
I love the guys in there.
A lot of ball busting of yours truly in there.
But, you know, some of it's fair.
So I enjoy it.
And a lot of really interesting stuff.
Cool articles.
Good people.
Okay.
So I posted, we're recording an episode this morning, and I'll be taking some questions.
What you got?
And okay, so let's get into it.
Mike writes, quote, abortion is the five-second rule of murder.
Credit Nick, his brother.
Yeah, I don't know.
That's not really a question.
No, no, he's saying like, if food's been on the floor, usually I always heard it as 10 seconds.
It's like, it's still okay to be.
Even when people say five seconds, you hear it as 10 seconds.
I've always heard that as 10 seconds.
Listen, I'm a germaphoe.
I ain't shit off the floor, you garbage, dirty people.
That rule shouldn't exist.
But some people, they go, hey, only on the floor for 10 seconds.
I can still eat it.
So it's like only been in the wound 90 days.
You can still kill it.
That's what he's trying to say.
You want to say there should be no arbitrary line, and he's saying that sometimes there is magical arbitrary lines.
Well, perhaps, I guess, listen, I'll be honest, it's the best pro-choice argument I've heard.
I'll just leave it at that.
Not saying it's great, but it's the best.
I would respect a pro-choice advocate more if they just came out and they're like, ah, you know, five-second rule.
Come on, you know?
All right.
So Connor writes, the militia is being formed in Virginia in response to possible gun control legislation.
Boogaloo.
Oh, yeah, the Boogaloo.
We haven't really talked about that.
So that is an interesting topic.
What do you think about it, Robbie?
Love it.
Also, they had a, it happened in Washington State that they, I forgot the specifics, but they had passed some new gun law and the local sheriffs just said that they weren't enforcing it.
And that, to me, is the ultimate example of the fact that a armed populace is important.
Because you see, like, does the army, is the army really going to show up and start taking guns away from people?
Do they really want to be in a gunfight and have to kill civilians?
I don't think so.
And so I do think that when everyone has guns, government does have to somewhat keep in mind, hey, if we move taxes up to 100%, people are going to fight back.
And then one of the factors there, is the Army or cops actually going to go fight their neighbors in order to enforce the law?
And I think the answer is no.
And so what you're seeing right now, which I think is super important, and you're going to see more of it, it's going on in Virginia and it happened in Washington, is I think law enforcement officials, if these laws get passed, are not going to want to go enforce them, which is proof of the importance of people with guns.
It is, in the Virginia example, it is particularly crazy that the governor doing it is a guy who openly advocated for killing babies and was wearing blackface.
It's like if you just wanted a person to do it to convince these right-wingers that they're literally trying to have, you know what I mean, like the most evil leftist revolution ever.
Like that was like the face.
That was the black face of the evil left.
Or to be fair, he might have been in the Klanhood.
I don't know if we ever got to the bottom of that, but it was one of the two.
But yeah, there is something interesting about that dynamic that you were talking about with the sheriffs saying they're going to refuse.
How far would the military go?
How far would the National Guard go if they were ordered to disarm people and people are not willing to be disarmed?
It's an interesting question.
Yeah, there's something about this country that is a little bit different.
And, you know, this is just, it's really hard to deny if you have any perspective, and I'm no historian, but if you have any perspective on history at all, where you would kind of go, America is a pretty unique, you know, country.
And it's not unique for any of the reasons why the left bashes them.
It's really funny because what the left bashes about America is all the shit that makes America like every other country.
Like, oh, we used to have slavery or, you know, like there's racism or something like that.
That's actually what makes America just like every other country in the world.
There's, you know, show me a country that fucking doesn't have prejudice of different groups.
Show me a country that's not tribal, that doesn't have any sectarian conflict.
You know, how many countries, how many modern countries can you point to that never had slavery?
And not that many.
Slavery was pretty normal up until the 19th century.
So anyway, but what, you know, if you just looked at America, what we've done, you would go, oh, that's a pretty unique country.
Like this country, you know, like is the most powerful country that's ever existed.
It's, you know, the world empire.
There's so many things about us.
But more than even that, it's like just the fact like the influence, if you take away the fact that we're like the empire and we fight all these wars and we have, you know, military bases all around the world, American culture has an impact on the country, on the world, unlike any other country.
I mean, think about how many countries you go to and get Coca-Cola and get, you know, like these, our music, our literature, our movies.
They all go throughout the world, you know?
And there's something interesting about the mindset that Americans have.
And although most people probably don't think of freedom in exactly the same way that me and you do, they do believe that we're supposed to be a free country.
And I think in some way, no matter what the law in the books is, there's going to be a lot of sheriffs and National Guard members who have a real problem with this, like, you're going to war with your own people.
You know, it's like other countries, there's been other countries throughout history where it's just kind of like the deal is we're a military dictatorship or we're a socialist dictatorship or we're this.
So yeah, if the great leader tells us we're getting rid of our guns and we're getting rid of our guns and all that.
By the way, sometimes even those guys lose their army and that's when they lose their dictatorship.
That's right.
I saw that in Egypt.
What was that, seven years ago or something?
Yeah.
Yeah, but that's what happens.
You got to give enough goods to the army.
Like you got to pay the people well enough that they want to actually go be extremely shitty.
And you know how much money you'd have to pay your typical soldier to actually go kill his neighbor?
I don't think you have that much money to incentivize enough people to want to do it.
And there is something, and thank God for this.
I mean, I wish there was more.
I wish this feeling was attached to more things, but there is something about the right wing in this country and their guns.
And that is to them how they define freedom and how they define their God-given right.
Like you can fucking, you know, some Republican president could lie their kid into a war and they'll send their kid over.
You know, they'll be like, well, we got to defend this country.
My boy's going to join the army, you know, whatever.
And that's, and then, you know, they might be upset about it later.
They might vote for Trump eight years later, but like they'll, or almost more than that, I guess.
But, you know, they'll, but they'll do it.
But you're not taking their fucking guns.
There's a lot of people like that in this country, man.
Like, you're not taking their fucking guns.
They won't give them up.
And I do think that, you know, I mean, we'll see how it plays out.
It's scary when these things even start progressing because you don't want to see the violence, man.
You don't want to see that.
I know it's real easy for sometimes people who are like on Twitter or YouTube or something like that to get pissed off at the system and they're like, yeah, fucking burn it all down or let's fight the civil war.
It's like, dude, you don't want to fucking see that.
You want to do everything you can to avoid that.
But if I had to guess, I don't think it's going to be the gun owners in America who are going to blink on this one.
I just don't think so.
There's something about the level of distrust that there is in the establishment mixed with how the right wing feels about guns.
That right now, I think it's going to be very tough to actually start rounding up guns.
Very, very tough.
But it's real interesting to see what's going to happen in Virginia.
I don't know.
Maybe it's the Boogaloo.
Maybe.
All right.
All right.
Chris asks, do you think Jacob Hornberger's open borders position may hurt him receiving support from many conservatives, given they are more on the closed border spectrum?
You know, well, I've thought about this a bit.
And, you know, it might, it might.
I think that there's so many great qualities that Jacob Hornberger has and so many, you know, he's so consistent and is so like genuine about his beliefs that hopefully he can find a way to pitch himself to a lot of these people who are really concerned with borders.
It's just, or concerned with, you know, demographics or concerned with illegal immigration or whatever it might be.
It's difficult, like all libertarian views.
It's always, basically, libertarians always have the right answer.
So we have the truth on our side, which is the benefit of what libertarians have.
That's like what we have going for us.
But the hard part is that it's always a tougher sell than just saying, write a law or build a wall or do this.
You know, the truth is this.
Look, this is, and here's, let me just start with this, right?
Like real quickly, giving my view of the immigration issue and then kind of getting into things, right?
So my view of the immigration system is like, and we've done podcasts on this before, but okay, so perfect world, the way that you, you solve this problem is that you have a private property-based society, and then there's no real borders except private property borders, and people can come on.
They can, you know, like any private property, they can come on if they're invited and they can't come on if they're not invited.
And that's what ownership is.
It's the right to exclude or invite.
Like, that's what exclusive property ownership is.
And really, if you think about it, and this is why I think sometimes a lot of libertarians, when they talk about open borders, they kind of get it wrong.
Like, the idea of libertarianism to me isn't that you're always allowed in any more than it is you're always allowed out.
The idea is that whoever owns it gets to decide.
Like, it's almost like asking, like, are libertarians for sex or not having sex?
Like, open borders versus closed borders.
It's like, well, we're first sex when people consent to it.
You know, like, I don't, it's not one or the other.
So, so ideally, you know, like if you wanted to take real libertarian steps toward, toward dealing with the border issue, you'd want to stop destabilizing the region, stop having these fucking bullshit coups in Latin America, stop fucking cut off foreign aid, end the war on drugs, you know, like don't empower the worst elements of it.
Oh, we have a huge problem with drug cartels killing people down by the border.
Okay, well, legalize the fucking drugs, man.
Like, take their market away from them.
It's the best way to deal with this.
But then there's another element to it where you need to like abolish the welfare state and you need to have freedom of association.
So like if some group of some town, some group doesn't want immigrants from a certain part of the world coming in, well, then they have the right to not rent to those people, to not hire those people, to not associate with them.
Like they have the right to do that.
And what we have right now is a situation where all of that's illegal.
So the government comes in and says, oh, you don't want to rent to this person based on their nationality, based on their race, based on that.
That's illegal.
You have to rent to them.
Oh, you don't want to hire this person based on that?
Well, they could sue you for millions of dollars.
So the government comes in and illegalizes all of the market forces that would deal with this.
Then there's a welfare state.
Then there's the war on drugs.
And it's a nightmare.
Now, under all of those conditions, to just open the border seems crazy to me.
Like, and that's, and it doesn't make me any less libertarian than some other pure libertarian to be like, yeah, no, this step isn't first.
It's like, I don't know.
It's like if I'm like, I'm against public schools.
I think they should all be privatized.
And then you go like, okay, well, we have public schools and I want to open the door for homeless people to come hang out in the classes.
And you're like, well, no, let's keep those doors closed.
So the kids, it's like, oh, you're a statist.
It's like, no, man, I want to abolish this thing too, but the first step shouldn't be open the doors to the public schools.
I don't know.
Like, if we're going to have them, keep the doors closed and only let the kids in and then let's work to abolish this thing.
That being said, the reason why I don't have a problem with Jacob Hornberger's belief in open borders is because unlike all of these other guys, Jacob Hornberger's right on all those other issues that I just nailed that I just talked about.
He's right on all of them.
Like he's like, no, I'm telling you, we're going to repeal the welfare state.
We're going to end the war on drugs.
We're going to make freedom of association legal again.
And I don't really care about like having strict immigration controls.
Now, under those situations, I have no problem with that.
And it's not, look, the idea that it's not a concern of mine that Jacob Hornberger is going to get elected president, keep everything else in place, and open the borders day one.
Like, I just don't think there's any likelihood of that happening.
So the idea is like, do we ever want to talk about what the real problems are here?
And this is a thing that a lot of the left-leaning libertarians and a lot of the open border advocate libertarians, like they need to grapple with some of these issues where it's like, look, and this is part of the reason why it drives me crazy when they fucking obsess over racism.
Oh my God, racism, this vague boogie man word of racism, whatever that even means.
It's like, look, man, if you find an act, obviously an act of aggression, like if anybody's being violent or advocating violence or threatening violence toward a different group because of their race, okay, we'll all be right there, like calling that out as evil.
If you find someone acting outrageously shitty, let's say it's not an act of aggression, but just outrageously shitty, you know, cursing out some black guy, calling some black guy the N-word or something like that or whatever, be like, yeah, that's fucking horrible.
That guy sucks.
Fuck that guy.
I'm right there denouncing it with you.
But if you're just talking this word racism, which could mean like, I just prefer my own race.
I have an in-group preference.
I don't really care for this group of people.
Something like that.
It's like, well, here's a big problem, libertarians, if you hate racism so much.
Liberty vs. Racism Debate00:15:08
If you give people liberty to do what they want to do, a lot of them are going to have in-group preference.
Sorry.
Now, there shouldn't be forced segregation any more than there should be forced integration.
But we can look at the way the market already works and pretty easily deduce that there will be voluntary segregation to one degree or another.
I mean, look at churches.
This is the best example.
It's the one area where there's no forced integration.
You can be as segregated as you want to be.
And they're incredibly segregated.
Incredibly.
There are black churches and white churches.
Now, the white churches don't call themselves white churches, but they're fucking white churches.
And the black churches call themselves black churches.
And like, I don't know.
Look at neighborhoods.
Even in a place like New York City, it's this huge melting pot, right?
But you go to neighborhoods and there's still ethnic neighborhoods all over the place.
There's still black neighborhoods and white neighborhoods and Asian neighborhoods and all these different things.
It's like people voluntarily have their preferences.
And if you're a libertarian, you have to like at least tolerate that.
You don't have to embrace it, I suppose, but like you can't like, you know, if you're trying to like rewire human DNA, then that's not very libertarian of you.
So I'm just saying that people, listen, obviously in an ideal society, you want people to be able to move in if there's people there to hire them and rent to them.
And like, who wants to fucking see government agents ripping families apart?
It's fucking horrible.
But you also have to let people discriminate.
And we've made that such a dirty word and such a like evil concept.
And, you know, like libertarians got to like wake up or just decent people.
You got to wake up.
Like the same people who are telling you that like, you know, discriminating, you know, is like the worst thing in the world you can do are like dropping bombs on babies.
Don't fucking listen to these guys for a second.
It's not the worst thing you can do.
It's not so evil.
It's like, that's your, you're right, man.
Maybe I would do it a little different.
Maybe someone else would do it a little bit different.
But like, that's your right.
If that's your business, you can hire whoever you want to for whatever reason you want to.
And literally in the same, this is the essence of the best, the best point that Ron Paul ever made.
And it really was, I remember it really blew my mind when I first actually wrapped my head around it.
But where he was like, you know, like these ideas of separating different liberties, like you have your economic freedom and then your social freedom or your political freedom or your this that he goes, there's no, it's all one unit.
It's all one unit.
Either you have your liberty or you don't.
It's like individual liberty.
That's what it's all about.
And all of these things, it's no different than the way a woman should be able to choose who she has sex with.
A man or a woman should be able to choose who they marry.
And they should be able to do that for any reason they want to.
And if they want to do that because they're like, hey, I'm not really that into Puerto Rican guys, but I'm really into fucking Catholic guys or whatever.
In the same way you wouldn't judge that woman, like it's the same thing as somebody hiring at their business.
That's their life.
It's their existence.
It's their world.
You have a right to do what you want to.
So now, the question wasn't exactly this.
I've kind of veered off into how do I feel about Jacob Hornberger's immigration policy.
The problem with libertarianism, right, is that, like I said, the good part is we have the truth on our side.
The hard part is that it can be a tough sell sometimes.
And so he's got to find a way to sell to these people who are really concerned with immigration that it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I get why you're concerned with this, but here's the reasons, here's what's really going on.
And that's the truth with basically every libertarian issue.
It's the same thing as like, look, you get where there's somebody who's got like really high deductibles, really high copays, and really high premiums on their insurance.
And they're like, this Bernie Sanders guy is.
is appealing to me.
Like we got to do something about healthcare.
Now, Rob, you understand healthcare.
You understand what's going on, you know, to some degree, that the problem is not a free market.
The problem is the lack of a free market, right?
And you could be trying to convince somebody, well, listen, here's why your premiums are so high.
Your copays are so high.
Your deductibles are so high.
Here's why this industry is a nightmare.
And you have the truth on your side.
But what does Bernie Sanders have on his side?
He can say, no more premiums, no more deductibles, no more copays.
I write a law that says you don't have any of those anymore.
Now, you have the truth on your side, but he's got a message that you can sell in like one sentence.
That's just like government will do it.
Now, it'll be a fucking disaster, but you get where in some ways that's an easier sale, even though you have the truth on your side.
Because you have to actually, you have to do this like this step-by-step process.
Like the number one step is you have to like empathize with that person.
You have to go, no, I get why you're pissed off about this.
And you're right.
You're right to be pissed off that these bills are out of control.
But here's what's actually causing that.
And this is why we need to roll that back.
That is like a multi-step process that's a lot more difficult than just going, write a law.
There you go.
Write a law.
No more copays.
Can you beat that?
I just wrote a law that says no more copays.
And then you got to go, right, but you can't really, just because you write something down on a paper doesn't really mean that economic laws don't exist anymore.
So it's still going to cost something and the costs are just going to be transferred over here and you're going to end up paying those costs.
And like, it's just, this is just the nature of the game of believing in freedom is that it's a tougher sell, even though we're right about everything.
So I don't know if that answered the question or not, but there's Jacob Hornberger on immigration.
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All right.
Colin writes, 2020 is the year of psychedelics.
How do Christian conservatives respond to this?
Is that a thing?
Is 2020 the year of psychedelics?
Have you heard of that?
No, Brian doesn't know, and he's my go-to on these issues.
All right.
It's not going to be the year of psychedelics for me, but it could be for you.
By the way, I'm not bashing psychedelics.
I'm just done with them.
It's like, I don't, you know, I'm having having a baby, it just, it, it freaks me out too much.
Even if I didn't have a baby, I think I might just be done with it.
Like, it's just not where I'm at in my life anymore.
But having a baby, it just freaks me out.
Like, what if something happened and I'm all fucking, you know, tripping balls or something like that.
But I did, you know, I had some really profound experiences on psychedelics in my life, had some really fun times and some really, you know, meaningful experiences.
And so, you know, I'm not, I'm not knocking it.
I know a lot of good people who have had like some pretty intense mind-altering experiences and really thought they benefited from it.
Baby's tired.
I don't know.
What are your thoughts on psychedelics?
I like psychedelics.
There you go.
All right, Rob Bernstein coming in.
So I don't know how is 2020 going to be the year of the, is that a thing?
I think you're just saying that.
I don't think it's, I think it's going to be just like every year.
Oh, do you mean like legalizing psychedelics?
Maybe that'll happen.
There was that Denver decriminalized mushrooms, right?
Which was pretty crazy.
Did you hear about that?
I have not.
Yeah, they decriminalized mushrooms in Denver.
I don't know when that goes into effect, but it was pretty incredible.
And certainly, I'm all for that.
I mean, they should all be legal.
I mean, that's just insane.
Literally, just it's it's it's the craziest of all that the the fucking hallucinogens are illegal because it's not even like people are getting addicted or like killing themselves on that shit.
Even that's changing because like I remember hearing as a kid that ecstasy will rip holes in your brain.
And then John Hop, I think it was John Hopkins disproved it.
And now it's one of the major tools they're actually trying to use to fight PTSD.
And the big thing is that they basically found that it will fire off neurons in your head that you don't normally have access to in the same way like the electro magnetic therapy when they fucking buzz your brain to beat depression because it sparks neural pathways that you don't normally use.
So like ecstasy can do that in terms of empathy and just feeling joy.
And then all of a sudden you can experience that in your real life.
So I think, or like the way ketamine therapy exists now, which I've never done, but apparently people are going to shrinks and offices where you can get some special K and you know feel good or whatever.
I don't really know.
But I think the medical science.
It's really funny.
There's the medical sides that are like, it's like ecstasy will throw your spine out of alignment and put holes in your brains.
Then John Hopkins University has to come out and go, turns out just makes everything feel awesome.
Yeah.
So I think as they explore some more of the medical benefits of it, the problem is that then that also kind of distorts it because the licensing laws come in about who the practitioners are and where you can use it.
And then all of a sudden you're back within their fucking framework.
That is a problem.
Well, I'll be watching 2020.
All right, John writes, why the fuck are these left libertarians getting so butthurt over Tom Woods?
Oh, yeah.
I don't, I don't know.
It's really funny to see, though.
I mean, the left libertarian guys, like, I don't really know who they are.
I see, you know, I've been like tagged in a couple posts on Facebook and I've gone back and forth with them a little bit.
Like this one left libertarian group was trashing Tom Woods.
Tom puts out like an email letter, which you guys should subscribe to if you don't already.
It's really great.
But Tom puts out this email newsletter.
He'll write a piece there.
Like almost every day he writes something.
Always great.
And he said a thing about it, how he's like, he was like the battle plan of like me, Scott Horton, and Tom Woods.
And it was about joining the LP and supporting Jacob Hornberger's run for president.
And they were trashing us in this libertarian, left libertarian Facebook page.
And I asked him at one point, I was like, I was like, okay, so like, yeah, you don't like me and you don't like Tom Woods.
Like we're racists or whatever, you know, like, okay, fine, whatever.
What could your problem with Scott Horton possibly be?
Like, left-leaning libertarians.
What could your problem with Scott Horton possibly be?
And what could your problem with Jacob Hornberger open borders Jacob Hornberger, right?
Like, what could your problem with this guy who we're all supporting?
Like, what could your problem with him possibly be?
And then just everybody's like, all these people tell me, like, Tom Woods is a fraud.
Tom Woods is a racist.
I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, sure.
Can anyone answer my question?
Can anyone answer my question?
And then finally, the guy on the page chimes in and he's like, well, listen, I'm not going to like, you know, go listen to 600 hours of podcasts of Scott Horton's, but like, you know, from what I've heard from people, he's like really been like, you know, saying like Trump shouldn't be impeached.
And I'm like, okay, maybe you should do some of that homework.
Maybe you should go listen to him a little bit because he's the most incredible human being on the planet.
And like he's the most important voice on the most important issue.
He's fucking brilliant.
He knows everything about every foreign conflict.
And by the way, you know, he knows a lot more than you do about the impeachment stuff too.
So maybe go hear him out on this.
But that turned out to be their beef, that he wasn't for impeaching Trump.
Like they not responding to his argument at all, not anything about it.
And no one ever mentioned anything about Hornberger, like what their problem is.
It's something about how he had a beef with Harry Brown in the year 2000 or something.
Like they have nothing.
They have nothing.
So I don't know.
But also, these guys are so irrelevant.
Like he was, he's getting like ratioed on his own page.
Like it's these guys.
There's only like a few of them.
Look, what's going on is that we're taking over the fucking party and now people are getting butthurt about it, you know?
And so that's that.
They're going to have to deal with it.
They're outnumbered and we're smarter and better.
I don't know.
But jump on board.
I'm not trying to make enemies out of anybody who I think might be supporting Hornberger.
That's where I'm at right now with the libertarian thing.
It's like, I'm obviously going to keep speaking my mind.
And, you know, I just said smarter and better and all that.
But I'm not really trying to pick fights with anybody else who's going to support the guy.
I want to have a good libertarian moment.
We got a really good libertarian candidate.
The fucking country needs a message of liberty desperately right now.
Somebody talking about reigning in the size and scope of government because nobody else even talks about this shit anymore.
So, you know, even with everything Trump's going through, he's fucking re-upping the fucking, you know, the fucking NDAA and the Patriot Act and all this shit.
Like he's not, he, even this guy won't roll back the spying powers of the fucking deep state.
So we need somebody making this message.
So I just, anybody who might support him, okay, might support him.
So that's been my take when I like these guys post-trashing me.
I'm like, yeah, yeah, I get it.
I'm terrible and racist and all these things.
Sure.
You guys should really check out Jacob Hornberger.
Look into him.
I think you guys, I don't think you guys can find anything to have a problem with, with this guy.
But yeah, I mean, Tom has become the biggest fucking recruiter for the Libertarian Party.
He's not just the guy.
So he's made the transition now from being like the intellectual leader of the liberty movement to now being that plus the intellectual leader of the LP.
And that freaks a lot of these guys out.
So, you know, okay, deal with it.
We're not going anywhere.
It's our party now.
And I'm sorry.
I see these people like fucking tweeting.
Somebody was, one of these left libertarians was like calling me out the other day on Twitter.
And he was like, he was like, it's an embarrassment to our party that our chair would even go debate some comedian.
And you're like, yeah.
Well, then it's really an embarrassment that he'd lose, right?
Okay.
By the way, I kind of agree with you.
You're right.
It is fucking ridiculous that the chair of the party is debating a comedian.
Absolutely.
Bashing Trans People Claims00:08:59
Absolutely.
It's ridiculous that an idiot comedian like me has this job at all.
Yes, someone way better should be doing it.
It's ridiculous that the chair is sitting across from a fucking comic having this debate with them.
Yeah.
But you know what's even more ridiculous?
That he's getting worked.
Sorry.
You're right.
I'm just some idiot comic.
That's how terrible everything else is.
What do you want me to say?
All right.
Eric writes, when are you coming to DC to do some comedy?
Also, if you do, I'll take you to shoot some guns.
That doesn't sound like a very DC thing to do.
Are we talking about starting a revolution?
Is this a bugaloo?
Bugaloo.
I get the feeling you as a libertarian don't have enough guns in your life.
I have lots of guns in my Virginia.
I have lots of guns my Virginia governor doesn't like.
Okay, in Virginia.
That makes a little bit more sense.
All right.
Yeah.
We're actually, we've been talking about setting up a gig in DC.
Me and Rob are going to be doing the road a bit more this year.
So we'll be coming.
We'll be doing our best to come somewhere near you.
Casey asks, what did you think of Rand Paul's Festivus tweet?
Also, Merry Christmas.
Merry Christmas to you, Casey.
It was fucking hilarious.
Did you see that?
No.
So Rand Paul just went this epic Twitter thread for, I guess yesterday was Festivus.
And he just went on this stating grievances Twitter thread.
It was really fucking funny.
Really, really funny.
I can't remember them off the top of my head, but it had some fucking hilarious shit.
He had one that was really great about he goes, I'm lucky something like the FBI didn't find any phone conversations between me and Rudy Giuliani.
Not that I said anything incriminating to Rudy Giuliani, just that my father would be like, what are you doing talking to Rudy Giuliani?
I thought it was really funny.
He had a bunch of them.
We're on a long thread.
Anyway, okay.
Matt writes, call me Fletch on air and I'll be a lifelong fanboy as if I had a choice.
All right, Fletch.
I'll call you Fletch.
Thanks for the question, Fletch.
What are you doing in preparation for the bubble burst?
Investments, diversification, precious metals, et cetera.
How about in regards to possibly breaking down of society?
Nothing crazy.
Just wondering what you would recommend, especially since you live in New York City.
Yeah, well, truthfully, if it goes real bad, living in New York City is a goddamn nightmare, which is probably why I plan on getting out in the near future if I can.
I mean, really, what I want to do is, you know, I'm hoping in the next year or two, and hopefully it lasts that long, to go get a fucking house and get some land, get out of the fucking city.
I mean, not like too crazy far away, but I need to have a fucking, I need a home and some guns and shit like that, because unless you got that, it's really, there's nothing you're doing to prep for this type of situation.
If you don't have land and guns, I mean, what the fuck is it all about?
There's a great Bill Burr joke about that, where he was like, you know, talking about being a conspiracy theorist and like prepping and shit like that.
And he's like, you need guns.
He goes, nothing else means anything if you don't have guns.
But he's like, oh, I have a whole self-sustaining system and a garden and seeds and all this shit.
He goes, you just built that for someone else.
If you don't have guns, they just come take it from you.
Yeah, I mean, I got some money invested in precious metals.
I'm not in the crypto game, which I got it this year.
I'm going to really try to look in more of that.
I'm really ignorant on that subject, which I know a lot of people complain about.
Sorry, I'll try to do better.
But yeah, I don't know.
That's pretty much it at this point.
I got a few escape plans.
Owen Benjamin will have me on his fucking farm if I can make it out there.
But if shit really hits the fan, hopefully I got some time to make it out west.
I don't know.
You prepping at all, Rob?
You got some sandwiches lined up?
Yeah, that's the problem with prepping is you have to, it's almost like a luxury good that you got to have a certain amount of wealth that you're putting away some wealth that you have to have actually wealth that you need to store.
Some just not there yet in life, but if you got wealth, start doing some of those things.
Get some land, get some guns, get some antibiotics, put some of it in gold, not all of it in gold.
There's no returns there, but you definitely want to store some of that wealth, diversify it.
Don't just keep it in dollars.
That's crazy.
Well, no, I agree with that.
I also, you know, I like still fairly recently, just over the last couple of years, started making any money at all.
So I, you know, like I was always aware of this stuff, or at least for the last decade or so, aware, but I was just broke as shit.
So I was like, well, what am I going to do?
You know?
But yeah.
No, now I have, especially now since having the kid, I really have fantasies like about like, I just really would love to have like a lot of land with like a year's supply of food and a lot of guns and like fucking medical stuff, you know, antibiotics and like shit like that.
And just like really be like, I want to be as self-sustaining and as prepared for anything as possible.
It's really, you know, it's, it, uh, the, the prospect of all that stuff gets a lot scarier when you have kids.
Um, okay.
Uh, Jonathan writes, Conan, Dave, what is best in life?
Is that a thing?
Do I should I know what that means?
What's best in life?
Family.
That's what's best in life.
Meaning, purpose, family, believing in something, believing in something more important than yourself.
That's what's best in life to me.
Rob, sandwiches.
I already answered for you.
Okay, Jonathan asks, what happened between Owen and Joe Rogan?
He spends half his IG posts going after him.
Yeah, I don't know, man.
I mean, you know, you know as well as me if you're following it.
You know, they were cool and Rogan had them on a bunch of times and then they fucking had a falling out.
But I don't actually think it was like in-person falling out.
I think it was just, I think what you see is what happened.
I don't know.
You know, I don't know exactly what happened there.
I think that Owen tends to, or at least he did.
Maybe he stopped doing this.
But Owen tends to like put people on a pedestal.
And like when he, if he feels like somebody is like really noble or honorable, he like really like puts them on a pedestal.
And then if he feels betrayed, he fucking goes scorched earth and is like really like, well, fuck that guy.
And I don't know if he does that as much anymore, but I think to some degree that's what happened with Jordan Peterson and with Rogan.
And, you know, so I don't know.
I mean, you know, I'm kind of just speaking out of my ass.
I mean, I don't really, like, when I talk to Owen, we don't really like talk about that shit.
So I don't know.
I've never like had a long conversation with him about it.
I don't exactly know.
I'm just going off like the streams that I've seen and stuff like that.
But I don't know.
I love both those guys.
And, you know, what can you say?
I actually heard Rogan defending Owen the other day.
I just saw a clip of it where someone was saying, it was Elijah Schlesinger was on the show.
And she was saying something like, she said something like, Owen, you know, Owen started going crazy when he was like bashing trans people.
And Joe was like, well, no, I mean, he wasn't bashing trans people.
He was saying that four-year-olds shouldn't, you know, like their parents shouldn't be making four-year-olds trans.
And Rogan was like, and I completely agree with him on that.
And I thought that was cool because, you know, like, Joe didn't have to do that.
And they have like a weird thing between the two of them.
So it could have been easy for Joe to just be like, yeah, yeah, you know, not like agree or disagree, but he went out of his way to be like, no, let's be fair.
That's not what he was saying, which it is.
What a fucking mind.
Aside from the Rogan Owen thing, which, you know, I don't really have anything else to say about it.
But what a crazy thing that you could take the position that four-year-olds shouldn't be like transitioning genders.
And then someone goes, oh, remember that time he was bashing trans people?
You're like, wait, bashing trans people.
Like, I don't really think that's what he was doing as much as he was saying, like, don't abuse children.
It's a controversial statement these days, I guess.
Josh writes, why aren't any of your clips from Fox or CNN on YouTube?
Can you start wearing a yamuka to make fun of Ben Shapiro?
I'm not sure people would realize that I was making fun of Ben Shapiro if I just wore a yarmulke.
I think I'd have to, you know, make it a little bit clearer somehow.
Flaws in Libertarian Worldview00:06:14
I think there are some clips up on YouTube.
I don't know.
I don't know, dude.
That's that's fucking, you know, they do what they do with their footage.
But I think if you like, you can find stuff online.
If you, if you like, Google Dave Smith SE Cup, I bet there'll be clips that come up on something or other.
Maybe not on YouTube, maybe on like social media sites or something like that.
But I think there are some that are on YouTube.
But I don't know.
Josh writes, what's the best Christmas movie?
Hmm.
Let's go.
What do you think, Rob?
You got any good Christmas movies?
Elf comes to mind.
I don't know.
What are like the big Home Alone?
I guess I could have been a little bit more.
Home Alone Alone.
Yeah.
Loved Home Alone.
One and two.
They're both great.
What are your other big Christmas movies?
Well, there's like the what's it called?
It's a Wonderful Life.
That's the one where they have the great bank scene at the end where he justifies fractional reserve banking.
Oh, really?
I don't know if I've ever seen that.
He's like, they all come, there's like a bank run and they all come out for your money.
And he's like, well, your money's not here.
Your money's with Steve and Steve's starting a farm.
And then your money's with Jim and Jim's starting a vent.
But they kind of make it seem like fractional reserve banking.
It's like, oh, no, it's just everyone helping the community and everything like that.
So I just want to be right there.
Go, I want my money.
Fuck Jim and his farm.
Give me my goddamn deposit.
But let's see, what else?
What's another good Christmas movie?
I gotta think.
What's the best Christmas movie?
Huh?
She said Christmas vacation.
Christmas Vacation.
Yeah, that's a good one.
Oh, there you go.
Christmas National Lampoon.
Where'd they go on that one?
I don't know.
Somewhere for Christmas.
I can't remember.
I just remember the first one when they go to Lolly World and then it's closed.
But then they hijack John Candy and then they have a nice time on the roller coasters together.
All right.
All right.
Yeah.
That's.
Sorry if I just got that movie for you kids.
Merry Christmas.
Okay.
Ethan writes, what are the biggest flaws in the libertarian worldview?
Biggest flaws in the libertarian worldview.
That it doesn't attract enough hot women.
That's an issue.
That's an issue for sure.
You know, I got one real attractive woman, but I don't think I got her from the libertarianism.
I think I got her in spite of it.
You got to recruit them from the outside and bring them in.
Yeah, that's what I did.
Recruit him from the outside and then put a baby in him.
That's my plan.
At that point, they got to go along with your libertarian bullshit.
Well, look, I'll be honest.
I don't.
Let me look at it this way.
I don't know that there are any flaws in libertarian in a libertarian worldview or like in libertarian philosophy that aren't just flaws of people.
Like people are flawed.
And if given their liberty, some people will do flawed things.
Again, it's not a utopian philosophy.
It's not that things are perfect.
It's that things are natural.
And we have to, to some degree, work within the world of reality.
I guess, you know, it depends on what you're talking about, right?
Like in a libertarian worldview.
So to me, the biggest flaw that I see with like, as Noam Chomsky would call really existing capitalism, right?
It's like capitalism as it exists as it's been practiced in real life, which has never been anarcho-capitalism, really.
It's what it's been more is, I don't know, republicanism, maybe you could call it.
But the problem with like limited government, right, is that it creates a tremendous amount of wealth, which then creates a huge tax base of relatively speaking wealthy people that can then will stomach taxes increasing.
And then the government increases.
And then you have the story of America, basically, where then it's just like, it's much easier for the government to do a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more.
And then when the government grows, it's got this huge, wealthy society as a tax base that, so it's, it's an enormously powerful state ends up getting created.
And then all the special interests come in and all of that stuff.
So, or actually the special interests probably drive it to begin with.
But so that's a real problem with like capitalism is big, big government.
In terms of just libertarianism, like just with anarcho-capitalism or if there were like a true minarchist state that remained small, to me, the flaw or the biggest problems with the society are the problems of wealth.
You create a tremendous amount of wealth.
And when you create a tremendous amount of wealth, there are some issues with that.
People, you know, it's like when people get very comfortable, when people get very wealthy, in many ways, they kind of forget what built that wealth.
They forget what got them there.
And, you know, like everybody knows, it's sometimes just having more stuff doesn't lead you to being, you know, more fulfilled.
I don't know.
So there's issues with that, you know, like there's like with any system, there are issues.
But I, I, you know, it's like Thomas Jefferson said, I'd rather attend to the problems of too much liberty than to those associated with too small a degree of it.
Like I'd rather have the problems of wealth than the problems of poverty.
They're a lot better to deal with.
But it's, there's, there's problems in life.
You know?
So I don't know.
I mean, I, to me, there's the actual philosophy of liberty doesn't really have any flaws to it.
The flaws are that it's working with human beings and humans are flawed.
I don't know.
You got anything on that one?
Desmond writes a World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
Einstein would agree with you.
All right.
Eddie Murphy Movie Memories00:03:20
Sean writes, do you think Democrats in Virginia are insane enough to start the Boogaloo?
We kind of already covered that.
And then Josh writes, how much do you want to bet he doesn't know what the Boogaloo is?
Hey, listen, Josh, I do know what the Boogaloo is.
And then he makes fun of me.
He quotes and goes, hey, guys, I'm a 30-something-year-old dad.
I'm not hip to these kiddos' lingo these days.
Listen, I knew Boogaloo.
All right.
I've seen, but I think I knew it because I asked Brian what it was at some point.
I think I just saw enough people tweeting about it.
And I was like, what the fuck is this Boogaloo?
And he was like, oh, it's the revolution, bro.
And I was like, oh, okay.
I get it.
Yeah.
What do you want me to tell you?
I'm lame.
Okay?
That's part of my appeal these days.
I'm boogalooguing.
Brob's boogalogalooing all day long.
Yeah, but I don't know.
When I started this podcast, I was the young cool cat around these libertarian parts.
But now I'm an old fart.
So, you know, deal with it.
Nick asks, did you enjoy Eddie Murphy on SNL last weekend?
Just saw it and thought it was pretty damn funny.
Is he a guy who influenced you at all?
I didn't see it.
I saw like one sketch on YouTube that I thought was pretty funny.
But I didn't see it.
I'm interested to watch that.
I'll watch that at some point this week.
Did you see it?
You did?
What'd you think?
Not good?
It's not that it wasn't good.
Firstly, I remember a couple years ago, I saw Eddie Murphy, and he just ended up doing stand-up when he was getting an award.
And he's got the world's greatest voice box.
And man, when that guy turns it on, nobody's funnier.
No one performs better.
The opening monologue, it just was clear that the writers kind of wrote their cheesy row style jokes for him.
So it wasn't like Eddie Murphy doing stand-up.
And then he almost copped out of doing a full open because Chris Rock and Dave Shapiro.
I saw the pictures.
Yeah, they all just came out.
It was almost like they're just paying tribute.
Everyone's paid tribute to Eddie Murphy.
He's the fucking best.
He's coming to do SNL.
I want to see him do SNL.
Then he also just kind of did a highlight of all of his characters, which I didn't grow up with.
So I'm sure for some people, it was just kind of nostalgic.
But to me, it wasn't like he came out with hot fire original stuff.
The one moment where I thought he really clicked into Eddie Murphy and it was just fucking hilarious was he was doing the Gumby thing on Weekend Update.
And like he just killed it.
Like he clicked into when he's like a powerhouse.
But I kind of give it a B.
I mean, Eddie Murphy, he's not like a huge comedic influence.
I more grew up with his movies than his stand-up, but he's one of the best ever to do it.
As a performer, the way he can just hop into characters, I mean, he doesn't need my endorsement, but on SNL, it wasn't like, oh, fuck, Eddie Murphy's back, or holy shit, that was some biting Eddie Murphy satire jokes.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, look, I mean, to say, you know, Eddie Murphy isn't someone who had like a particularly huge influence on me.
I wouldn't say he had none at all.
He's Eddie Murphy.
You know what I mean?
He was like the biggest comedian in the country when I was a kid, but from movies, really.
But Raw and Delirious, I remember watching them as a kid.
I mean, I just, I thought two of the best specials ever.
And so it had great movies.
I mean, like, really great movies.
Like, I loved coming to America and Trading Places.
So fucking funny.
I haven't watched either in years.
I don't know if they'd hold up and I'd still think they were funny, but I loved him as a kid.
But not like a particular influence on me.
We're just me and you are so different stylistically from him.
But yeah, he's Eddie Murphy.
He's like one of the greats, you know?
Left Wants State Power00:04:32
So I don't know.
I'll check it out.
I'll watch it.
I didn't make past updates, so I don't know what sketches they did after that.
All right, all right.
What do we do when the Civil War starts?
Asks Dante.
We call up Owen and be like, please let us eat some of your chickens, Owen.
Yeah.
Oh, and I never thought that the moon landing was real and that I always thought the world was flat.
This is when we become Owen Benjamin.
We become serfs to Owen Benny.
Owen, you're so tall and I'm so short.
I think you're the wonderfulest.
Let me eat some of your chickens, please.
Yeah, you're too short for Owen.
I don't know.
He won't let you in the house.
Too short and Jewish.
I can be an outside farm boy.
We have to live in the chicken coop or something like that.
Yeah, it's going to be rough going for Rob Bernstein.
Look, man, once it gets to a fucking Civil War, the question is what you do before that, you know?
Like, it's once it gets to that, that's bad.
Once you're getting shot at, it's like, I don't know, grab a gun and shoot back.
What do you do?
You really, really want to not have a civil war.
That's why, you know, I've been advocating for quite some time for like a peaceful disillusion of the nation.
You know, let's go our separate ways.
Way better than a civil war.
But, you know, I'm not sure which one is more likely.
I don't think you're going to get a civil war because I actually don't think the right wants to aggress against the left.
I think the left would be willing to aggress against the right, but it would need government to do so.
And even the people with arms in government lean more right.
That is the big issue, which is nullifying a civil war right now.
That's it.
You said it perfectly.
It's that the left wants a revolution, but they don't have guns.
The right has guns, and they don't really want a revolution, at least not yet.
And then the left wants the state to be their guns.
The problem is that the cops and the military aren't exactly lefties.
And so they're not very likely to lead the revolution for your gender studies major social justice warrior.
It's the most hilarious part about the left, like what they don't even see at all.
They're always calling for more fucking government guns.
And you're like, that's the cops.
Do you ever hear there was fucking Scott Horton said at one point?
I forget which show it was.
Oh, I think it was on Sam Tripoli's show that he was just on.
It was a really great interview.
Sam, I love that guy.
And Scott Horton, of course, is the great Scott Horton.
But he was talking about how, and Scott's so like on point with so much of this stuff, but he was like, the real problem with Black Lives Matter was naming themselves Black Lives Matter.
And he's like, if they had just made themselves like a police accountability organization, it wouldn't have alienated everybody else and basically told them this is our group and it's not your problem.
It's our problem.
And then he was talking about when the Bundy Ranch thing happens.
And he goes, this was the perfect time for Black Lives Matter to be like, yeah, we're with you.
You know, like, this is exactly what we're talking about.
And, you know, instead, they were like, oh, see, when it happens to white people, blah, blah, blah and made it this like adversarial thing.
And you're like, what are you doing?
And he's talking about these leaders of Black Lives Matter who were like tweeting at the Bundies.
And he's like, oh, man, you know, white guys can stand with their guns there.
If black guys ever did this, they'd mow us all down and all this.
And it's like, you guys are so obviously like, should be sympathetic to each other here.
Like, this is the perfect, you know, like, like, build, build a bridge.
Why are you fighting with these guys?
And they said, he said he saw one of the Black Lives Matter movement people tweeting.
And they tweeted a picture of one of the people at the Bundy Ranch.
And they were wearing a fuck BLM shirt.
And he goes, wow, look at that.
Fuck Black Lives Matter right from the fucking Bundy Ranch guys.
And Scott Horton had to tweet back at her.
And the way Scott describes it, he was like, young lady, BLM is the Bureau of Land Management, aka the cops.
He's not saying, fuck you.
Okay.
This is your partner here.
Like, okay.
This is not somebody.
This is your fellow traveler here saying, fuck the police, not you.
Okay.
Like, but it's just shit like that is, you know, that's fucking, it's just unfortunate, but that's the fucking world we live in.
Okay.
Joe asks, how did Robbie come to be known as the fire?
Also, recently Tom Woods said, you have more listeners than him.
Did he get that right?
Recession as the Cure00:02:48
If so, congrats.
If not, be better.
All right.
Fair enough.
So how did you come to be known as the fire?
Bad case of syphilis.
That's exactly right.
Yeah, it was really burning and I was walking around.
I was complaining, complaining, complaining.
And Lewis is like, Robbie the fire.
There you go.
Lewis did W. Robbie the Fire, right?
Where did that come from?
Just said it.
On his podcast a million years ago.
Yeah, just said it on his own.
And it just, it stuck.
There you go.
The genius of Lewis J. Gomez.
It just fucking stuck.
As far as me having a bigger audience than Tom Woods, I don't know if he said that or not.
That doesn't just doesn't sound right to me.
Doesn't sound right.
Tom Woods, Tom Woods is the fucking general, and I'm the soldier.
So it doesn't make any sense to me.
All right, we'll do one more, and then we got to get out of here.
Another one about Virginia.
Let me find a good one.
Will the student loan bubble popping be good in that it may sway people from going to commie use all across the country?
Like commie universities.
Yeah, well, I think so.
Absolutely.
Look, man, this is a, and Peter Schiff used to say it this way, and I thought it was the best, uh, the best way to look at these things if you want to really understand it.
But the recession is painful, but it's the good thing.
Like, the recession is the cure.
The bubble, building the bubble is the disease, and the recession is the cure.
So it's like taking your medicine.
It might be bitter, but that's the good thing to do.
And there's a lot of pain in taking your medicine, but that's like, that's good.
And so every bubble bursting is ultimately the best thing that can happen to a bubble.
It's better than it just getting bigger and bigger.
It might feel nicer while the bubble's getting bigger and bigger, but that's not good.
So yeah, of course it would be good.
If this, whatever it takes to kill this fucking bubble would ultimately be the good thing.
Yes, you literally have kids going six figures into debt to go learn that there's no such thing as gender.
Like, of course, anything that puts a stop to that would be good.
So that's my answer.
You got any thoughts on that?
Yeah.
Don't let kids off the hook for the debt they took on.
They paid to go to summer camp.
I didn't, and I want to be ahead of them in life.
No, well, I agree with you on that.
But the bubble bursting isn't necessarily the same thing as debt forgiveness.
You know, I'm not rooting for debt forgiveness.
I think those two things will go hand in hand.
Quite possibly.
It might just be unavoidable.
But yeah, I do agree with you that I don't want to see debt forgiveness.