Michael Malice and Dave Smith dissect political hypocrisy, arguing that both parties use wedge issues to distract from corporate interests while prioritizing cultural battles over economic realities. They critique the left's selective democracy, citing Supreme Court overrides of state referendums and the Michael Flynn case, contrasting this with libertarian preferences for minority rule. The discussion exposes how terms like "conspiracy" are emotionally framed to reject American foreign policy goals of global dominance, ultimately suggesting that true peace requires recognizing these power structures rather than engaging in zero-sum culture wars. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Heshy Socks Comfort00:01:34
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Tulsi Gabbard Campaign00:15:27
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.
Hey, what's up, everybody?
Let this be your Groundhog Day.
What day is it?
Who knows?
What number podcasts is this that we've done?
I've lost count.
Also, I've been arrested.
I am in jail.
I was arrested for the crime of going to the park.
They gave me 25 to life.
But I'll tell you, jail's not so bad.
They're treating me pretty good in here.
So I'm on them.
And the smart money was on Lewis.
You never see it coming.
No one saw a viral pandemic coming.
No one saw me going away before Lewis.
What do you, you know, sometimes these things happen.
I think he snitched on you.
That's what I think.
Wouldn't that be something if that's how I go down after all these years?
I mean, come on.
You can't sell, you can't say rattlesnake without snake.
Oh man, that is true.
All right.
I never thought about that.
All right.
He's a snake animat.
Now I'm just thinking, I'm trying to find snitch in there somehow.
I don't know.
That's what the J stands for.
The J stands for snitch.
Of course, that is the wonderful, the legendary Michael Malice, who is back with us and is looking fresh, fresh cut.
Did you do that yourself?
No, no, no.
So I figured out when I was in college, there was, this is the beginning of the internet.
There was something called Hillary Vision.
Okay.
And this was a website.
People forget this.
In the 90s, when she was first lady, before Bill Clinton put her in charge of healthcare, so this would have been 93 and 94.
She literally had like 50 different hairstyles.
Like she changed it like every fucking week.
And someone did, I don't think they had gifts then.
They basically made a little movie of it just going one after the other.
And she had like perms.
Like she went crazy.
And I was there thinking, I'm like, that is so cool that like you got this hairdresser and you could be like, let's fucking change it up today.
I don't give a shit.
You know, and now I learned how to straighten my hair with this weird comb.
So I'm going to have so much fun with it.
It's not even funny.
I've got like six hair waxes I'm going to order from Japan.
Let's see what happens.
You did that whole, the shaving yourself?
Not that my hairstylist did, but this whole thing, this happened.
This is all me.
But I'm saying, like, so how did you had a hairstylist come over?
Oh, yeah, during Nightshade, he came over and gave me a haircut while I did the show.
Oh, very good.
Yeah, it's good for fun.
Yeah, Hillary Clinton had a whole bunch of different looks.
She also just had a whole bunch of different personalities over the years.
Really?
Oh, yeah.
No, each one worse than the last.
But there was like Hillary Clinton was like, when she was the first lady in Arkansas, she was like a southern, like good wife, down-home kind of country girl.
Like that was her thing.
She spoke with a thick southern accent.
Then when she first got into the White House, she was like, still had the Southern accent.
Wait, wait, I got to interrupt you.
You missed a step.
So what happened is she goes to Arkansas.
She's married to the boy governor, Bill Clinton.
I think they had two-year terms back then.
They get elected.
She's a proud feminist, won't take his, she's Hillary Rodham.
Does it, you know, she's like, I'm here representing all the, this is the late 70s, right?
Like women are making it.
Bella Abzug, Liz Holtzman.
We took down Nixon.
And he got voted out on his ass after one term.
And then all of a sudden, oh, you know what I meant?
I meant Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Yo, you like this apron, y'all?
It's got crabs on it.
So she from the junk was pulling this shit and selling out her most basic principles.
Like this would be such an opportunity to bring like, from her perspective, like urban, sophisticated, educated feminism to what she regarded as a hick place.
And she tried and they're like, fuck you.
And she's like, oh, well, I tried.
So now I'm just going to go hungry for power.
Whatever, whatever the route to power is, Hillary Clinton was always happy to take.
And of course, politically, she recast herself several times as well.
I mean, she was, she was in the 90s, not even trying to play like centrist moderate.
She tried to be like uber liberal.
That was her whole thing.
Like, I'm fighting for universal health care, women's rights, all these positions she staked out that were far left.
It wasn't really until she ran against Barack Obama that she tried to go, well, this guy's a little radical, leftist.
I'm more moderate because she thought that would be the path to the nomination.
And then it was very funny.
One of my favorite things about Hillary Clinton was that she really went like in 2008 in the primary when she was running against Obama.
And that was, people forget, that was a big upset.
Hillary Clinton was the favorite to win that the whole way through.
Yes, it was a huge, huge upset that Barack Obama, who was complete unknown at the time, came in and took it from her.
And obviously, she got matched up with just this incredible talent as far as politics go, you know, an incredibly talented guy.
And she was, she went full dog whistle.
And I hate that term dog whistle because I think it's something that people use to just claim you're saying something.
It's like if there's nothing you actually said that's fucked up, they can get you on, then they can just say, well, you're dog whistling.
But Hillary Clinton was dog whistling.
I mean, she would say things like, she'd be like, well, you know, there's a lot of people.
Barack Obama can't win over like the, you know, the hardworking white white working class vote.
She probably won't, he probably won't be able to win them over.
And you're like, you know exactly what she fucking means by that.
She's basically just being like, I don't know.
I mean, there's some working class Democrats, some white guys who you really think they're going to vote for a black, you know?
And then at one point, she straight up said, she's like, you know, I mean, Bobby Kennedy wasn't even assassinated until August.
So there's still a lot of time left in this race.
And you were like, holy shit.
What are you?
So she was missed like white power in 2008.
And then in 2016, when Bernie Sanders was her comp and he wasn't doing well with the black vote, she was all like the fucking cops are out of control and we need to talk to the community.
Like she, she's just, you almost have to admire it at a certain point.
Whatever path to power there is, that's what she's going for.
Actually, this harkens into something that I just saw on Twitter today, which is HRC, the Human Rights Campaign, which is a gay rights organization despite its name.
They had, it's, it's what I love about social media, and I know you love this too, is there is, I think, a people say it's slippery slope.
I don't think it's slippery slope at all.
I think there's a very big difference between spin and outright lying, right?
There's a difference between, okay, I'm going to look at things from one perspective and I'm going to say things that are demonstrably false and factually untrue and can be disproven as such in seconds.
So they had a tweet that says, Joe Biden has been fighting for gay rights his entire career, and now we're going to do everything in our power to fight to get him elected president.
Now, you could easily say, I don't think it's true, but you could easily say, President Trump has done such an assault on the LGBT community.
You know, we got to pick anybody else, blah, blah, blah.
That's to me, spin.
But I just retweeted it with the photo of Joe Biden voting for the Defense of Marriage Act.
And let's put some perspective here.
It's not like someone who was like pro-slavery in 1840.
There were plenty of Democrats who were against it, thought it was gratuitously cruel and just a stunt just to put gay people in their place.
And he's not in some, you know, Arkansas where he has to run anti-gay.
He's in Delaware, which is one of the bluest states.
And he was like a 25-year incumbent in Delaware.
Yeah.
To add to that.
So there was no political reason for him to vote for this.
This would have been, if he wanted to fight for gay rights, he could have very easily said, I am not codifying this in federal law.
This is just gratuitously a slap in the face easily.
Because others said that at the time, his contemporaries.
But that's the thing I just want to point out to a lot of people on the right that they don't get.
Bill Clinton, I remember this.
He gets into office.
First thing, the first thing he wanted to do was gaze in the military.
And everyone flipped their minds because he was campaigning the campaign ad.
You can see it on YouTube.
Bill Clinton Al Gore.
They don't think the way the old Democrats do.
They're for capital punishment, blah, blah, blah.
The new Democrats.
That's why he picked a young running mate who was similar to him.
First thing is something out of like hardcore New York City.
This is 93, mind you.
This is not, you know, 2020.
And he got smacked down really hard.
The people in the military are like, you didn't even ask us about this.
This is, we don't think we're ready for this, blah, blah, blah.
He has to compromise to don't ask, don't tell, but you shouldn't be able to do it.
Which is ridiculous.
Which was just for, but for every side, you would be like, this is a ridiculous compromise.
And then a few years later, he's the one championing the Defense of Marriage Act.
So I think conservatives and many people on the fringe right don't appreciate the extent to which it's all about power.
They do not care about Muslims.
They do not care about transgender people.
They do not care about whatever issue it is.
This is the exact prime example.
Like when gay people can be used as a tool to further the agenda, hell yeah, give me that rainbow flag.
And when gay people can be used against gay people to further the agenda, it's like I'm defending the family with a straight face and with no shame.
And here's even more proof of this with this whole demographics is destiny.
The Labour Party in Britain is a great example of this.
The way the Labour Party talks about the working class when the working class doesn't vote the way the Labour Party wants them to.
If you had said in the 30s that one day union people would be voting, let's suppose 30% Republican, 40% Republican, you would have been told, okay, that's insane because the basis of leftism is the working class.
This is what we're about, is having the socialist revolution, distributing profits to the working class.
And now it's identity politics.
Okay, we've got to have gay, a drag queen story hour.
We have to have transgender bathrooms.
As soon as things change, it's like, you know, oh my God, blah, blah, blah.
And we see it constantly.
And conservatives, whose job it is ostensibly to look at the lessons of history and apply them to contemporary times, are either lazy.
I don't know what the reason is.
But the fact that they're not realizing this, I have no explanation.
Well, I think that both the left and the right in this country, they're suckers for these wedge issues that get people excited, that politicians love to throw out there because they have, no matter what happens on the issue, it has no real effect on their power structures.
So they love people fighting over gay marriage.
They like people fighting over Charlottesville or transgender bathrooms or all of this shit, because you know what?
That's not going to affect Goldman Sachs' relationship with the Federal Reserve.
That's not going to affect Boeing or Lockheed Martin's relationship with the Pentagon.
It's like no one's even talking about that shit.
And then everyone else just agrees about the, you know, it's like, we're going to just go ahead with this and it will never be discussed.
But they throw out these issues that people get very passionate about, like cultural issues and other distractions.
And that's not to say that cultural issues don't matter.
I think they matter very much.
But the point is that Hillary Clinton and John Boehner and these guys, they don't care about any of that stuff.
What they care about is getting their lobbyists and corporate interests appeased so they can maintain power.
And it's funny because I thought the Tulsi Gabbard campaign exposed a little bit of this.
I remember saying at the beginning, one of the things I loved about Tulsi Gabbard was that she was, with the exception of Ron Paul, the only candidate who really ever in my lifetime, I mean, I guess maybe Dennis Kucinich or a few others, but so few have made war their number one issue and been on the right side generally of it.
I mean, maybe you could say McCain made it his number one issue, but he was terrible on it.
But when Tulsi Gabbard comes out and says, hey, I'm against all these regime change wars, one of the things you realize right away is that that's not just her most important issue.
That's everybody's most important issue.
Because this makes her untouchable.
Hillary Clinton's coming out and calling her a Russian asset.
Like they're going at her because she talks.
So it's all of their number one issues.
The rest of them would just prefer to not talk about it.
That itself is very revealing.
And it's also like, okay, so Tulsi Gabbard met with Bashar Asad and she has to be asked about it every interview.
Okay, fine.
Let's pretend from your point of view that this is something that really has to be explained away and it's unconscionable.
How is it that when Hillary and Barack Obama are shaking hands with Putin, who you've also been saying for three years is like the most evil geopolitical force, who is far more of a direct threat, according to your perspective, to America, who has done an enormous disservice from your perspective to undermining our democracy and has really been a subversive force pervasive throughout our country.
And they're shaking hands with him.
You're just like, well, you know, whatever.
It's just like, well, which is it?
Right.
Right.
No, that's kind of the beauty of a campaign like Tulsi Gabbard, even if she didn't do very well politically.
It's good if people can see these things and it starts to help wake some people up.
And it lets people like me and you point to this to kind of demonstrate our message further.
But yeah, it's a weird thing.
One of the things you mentioned.
Jessica, sorry, because it's just funny with Tulsi is that like one of the things that drives me crazy is when people think red-pilled means Republican.
Because red and red, it's just like, uh, kill me now.
But when you talk about like how useful she is to red pill leftists, there are some people who are like, oh yeah, I'm red-pilled.
I know to never vote for a Democrat.
It's like, you're not.
You're not.
And the extent to which, just wrapping up a point that you made earlier, these wedge issues, the extent to which conservatism culturally is a reaction to just being pissed off by what the left is pushing nowadays, though broadly might make sense, is such a function of being subordinate to their moves and playing defense constantly.
And it's just like, for example, I have a buddy, Janine Marie Kroc.
She's transgender.
As a dude, as a dude, was a world record powerlifter.
World record, right?
And powerlifting, it's not ice skating.
It's numbers.
Either the weight goes up or it goes down.
It's objective, right?
Became trans.
So if it was a man competing in female sports, it's like, okay, as a dude, got the world record.
Now is a female.
Transgender Powerlifting Records00:15:14
And now they're like, I don't know how to, they don't know what to do with this information.
Like they have one mode, which is, okay, we're going to yell fairly.
We're going to yell at transgender men competing against biological females.
Okay.
What about this person?
Then they just, so the extent to which their cues are a function of the leftist agenda is really unfortunate.
Yeah.
And that's why the left always wins because they are constantly staking out what the new position is.
And then the conservatives react to that.
So you're always on defense.
It's like if there was like a boxing match and one guy is always throwing punches and the other guy's always blocking.
Well, obviously the guy throwing right sometimes blocking.
It's like, obviously the guy just blocking is going to lose because you're not offering up any offense.
It's just what, what can I defend?
And then you feel really good about yourself if you deflect one punch.
It's like, yeah, but there's three more coming.
One of these are going to land on you eventually.
Your best case scenario is a draw.
Right.
Best case scenario.
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I will never forget this.
I was a Cato intern in the late 90s.
And I don't think this is in my book, but I remember it so vividly and it stuck with me my entire life.
And you can look this up, anyone can online.
When the Republicans took over Congress with the Gingrich Revolution in November of 94, the Cato Institute has something called the Cato Handbook to Congress.
I think I still have mine somewhere, I must.
And what they did, which was really cool, they went through the entire federal budget and made recommendations for cuts in each department that they said would have effectively been painless, right?
So these are things that you as a Republican congressperson could just vote on right now, not really feel guilt, and you're making actual dents to the federal budget.
And Bose in an interview said, I'll never, it's look it up.
This is like pornography for Republican staffers because we know they're never going to do it, but it really excites them to like think about it.
And I'm like, wait a minute, by your own estimation, this will never accomplish anything.
And I'm like, why would anyone have any effort in a project, no matter how admirable, if it is doomed to failure?
It makes no sense to me on any level other than, well, I got to be doing something, you know, blah, blah, blah.
It's horrible.
And it's weird.
It seems like those are the type of things that David Bose types really like.
The things that they know won't succeed in any way won't excite any average person, but it's just kind of like, well, we can feel good about putting this forward.
I think that, you know, to understand, because obviously, as everyone knows, you wrote a book about the new right.
The title, in fact, is The New Right.
And by the way, if you guys haven't read it, it's a really fantastic read.
So make sure you go check that out.
Go purchase that.
It's available on audiobook as well.
But so many of the, like if you want to understand the new right, you really have to understand the failures of every single conservative right-wing moment in the last 30 to 40 years.
Every single time they rose up to power, it was like, now's the time.
I mean, I remember, you know, I was a kid, but I remember what they called the Republican Revolution that you were referring to when the, you know, the Republicans took over Congress.
And then in the year 2000, it was like another Republican revolution when George W. Bush had the presidency and they had both chambers of Congress.
And every single time they talked a big game about how they were going to rein in big government and all these things.
And every single time it failed miserably.
And eventually it was like, well, what are we doing?
And I think that in a way, like what, you know, obviously this is a big part of your book, but a lot of what characterizes the new right is that they were like, yeah, we're not playing defense anymore.
We're not just going to block punches.
We're going to throw some fucking punches.
Because why not?
Because the new right kind of recognized that they go, well, we're in the 11th of 12 rounds and we haven't thrown a punch yet.
So we're going to lose.
Let's go for it.
Let's see if we can't put one on the chin and get a knockout because it's our only chance at this point.
I remember when I was a Cato intern in the late 90s, I had said, look, when you have Republican president and a Republican Congress, like then I won't be a Republican anymore, right?
And they were like, I'm telling you.
And I'm like, look, let me have the data.
And then George W. Bush comes in and it's a total abomination.
And that people are like, oh, there's this little thing that happened called 9-11.
And it's like, fine.
When isn't there some sort of crisis that would give politicians a justification toward increasing spending?
When don't people have cancer?
When aren't some people unemployed?
Then isn't there a foreign country who is threatened in some sense by our power and is going to make moves against it?
It is literally inconceivable for any of these things other than cancer, but there's going to be some other diseases.
It is literally inconceivable for any of these things to be solved.
So if you are looking for an excuse and that is their job, they will always have a reason to increase the size of the budget.
And in fact, The logic even works like as you know extremely well, look, we're at peace.
It's an unprecedented peace because our military is so big.
That means we have to spend even more.
It's working.
And what are you going to say to that?
So you need more military spending when there's more.
And when there's peace, you really need more.
Because A, you got to be prepared, but B, look how good a job it's doing.
Yeah, there's this piece by William F. Buckley, who's one of the villains in your book.
And just in life.
Yes.
But he really was in many ways.
I mean, he was one of like what I would call kind of the molders of what is now the Republican establishment, but at the time was kind of the new right of its day.
I mean, like kind of the neoconservative movement.
I mean, there was like the hardcore kind of like Jewish Israel neocon side, like the Crystal, Irvin Crystal guys at Leo Strauss guys.
And then there was the Bill Chris, then there was the Buckley kind of national review wing, and they all kind of came together to form what is, you know, really dominated the Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush administrations.
And he said flat out when he was basically responding, like he had this article on, I can't remember the name of it, but it's one of the most interesting articles ever.
He basically started talking about liberty versus tyranny.
And he was kind of taking on libertarians, although maybe not saying the word libertarians.
And he starts out like the first two paragraphs and was basically like, you guys are right about everything.
Like the first two paragraphs of the article are like, look, the greatest struggle in human history is liberty versus tyranny.
And the greatest embodiment of tyranny is the state.
And nobody's ever done more evil than the state.
And this is why we have to always guard against state power and individual liberty and free markets and yada yada.
It was all of this.
So it's almost like for the first couple paragraphs, you would be like, this guy's like an ANCAP or something.
It was like perfect.
And then come about paragraph three is, but here's the thing.
There's the Soviet Union.
I get what you're saying about all of this other stuff totally.
But look, here it is, the absolute model of the statists.
And the only thing that could possibly defend against that is a state military, right?
So now's the time.
Unfortunately, it sucks.
I'd love to be a libertarian with you guys.
But as long as the Soviet Union exists, we can't possibly be libertarians.
Obviously, I'm not paraphrasing what he said, but it's really.
It's even worse because he says we need tyranny here or else we'll have tyranny abroad.
We need a tyrannical bureaucracy at home to avoid a tyrannical bureaucracy aboard, abroad.
And so this was kind of the justification for the neoconservatives rejection of libertarianism.
And by the way, it worked on a whole lot of people because when you got a country like the Soviet Union and they got nuclear warheads pointed at you, it's very easy for people to go, yeah, I mean, what the fuck are you talking about?
Shrink the size of the military budget.
Of course not.
And then All these motherfuckers were in power in George H.W. Bush's government when the Soviet Union fell.
And they had this, like, if ever there was to be an excuse to go, like, okay, now we go back to being a normal country.
It was called the peace dividend, supposedly.
Right, right.
And this is what drove a lot of the really principled right-wingers out of their alliance with neoconservatism.
This is why Pat Buchanan, this is Pat Buchanan, was a loyal cold warrior for all those years.
And then when this happened, he was like, oh, we did it.
We beat the Soviets.
They did it.
Yeah, we did.
They were accomplished for real.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Actually, mission accomplished.
Now we can go back to being a normal country.
And someone like Pat Buchanan, who would not be in line with us on this, but he would justify the war in Vietnam.
You know, of course, before that, the war in Korea.
He would justify us arming Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, all the stuff we did to bring down the Soviet Union, because that's the most important thing.
We brought down the Soviet Union, and that's all that matters.
And then he's like, great, now we can be a normal, you know, limited republic again, and everything's great.
And then they're like, wait, hold on.
There's this guy, Saddam Hussein.
Here's the real threat we got to go deal with.
And they just found, as you kind of pointed out, there'll always be some excuse.
There'll always be something they can find.
And then basically, that's why America has done such a shitty job of managing the 21st century.
Yeah, one of my favorite, one of my favorite historian Victor Sebastian, and I think this is one of his books.
I'm not, no, it is.
Or no, no, it's another book.
There's just two books, one called 1989 and one called The Last Empire.
George H.W. Bush was writing to Gorbachev and said in writing, no one wants to see the end of the Soviet Union or collapse the Soviet Union.
I forget the term.
It's in my book.
And let's give him every bit of the doubt and say this is him just trying to be reassuring.
He doesn't want Gorbachev to freak out.
But when you look at how he talked to Thatcher and how he talked to these other people, it wasn't like we have an opportunity to free half the world peacefully without firing a shot.
We got to make sure we stick the landing.
That wasn't his approach.
He's got to be like, well, what if there's a power vacuum and then Stalin Jr. comes along?
That is a real concern.
That wasn't what he was talking about.
He was just like, well, if this old world order falls apart, like we have, we knew what the back, we knew it's like when you're in an abusive relationship, like he hits you and then he apologizes.
You know the dance, you know, it's been established.
But all of a sudden, someone has a backball.
It's like, now you don't know what to do.
His concern wasn't let's free half this world.
His concern is, what is that going to mean for our role in power?
What's that going to mean for this for the Russia and role in power?
How are we going to manage the world?
It's a very, very different approach.
And I'm going to put on my Ayn Rand hat.
I would say it's a very anti-life, anti-man approach.
I don't think he gave two shits about the people in the former Soviet Union at all.
Yeah, or for that matter, the people in America who had to like bear the costs of these military buildups or give their life in some of these conflicts.
No, it really is something.
And it also, you know, it's like it's hard to not put on your conspiratorial hat when you have that kind of historical context and then realize that the subsequent actions of the US government was to basically instigate conflict all throughout the Middle East.
And I mean, I'm talking about arming the people who were going to be fighting in a few years, provoking conflict.
You know, it's almost like, and I wonder this sometimes, but a lot of times, you know, like there's kind of like the Ron Paul approach or the Ron Paul theory, which is like, well, these wars are blowback.
It's like we take these actions and we don't realize there are these unintended consequences, but it's kind of worth entertaining for a minute that maybe that's actually wrong and these aren't unintended consequences and are in fact very much intended.
and just create a system where you're guaranteed that the people in power will keep power and the people making hundreds of billions of dollars off of this warfare state will continue to make that money.
It's at least worth thinking about.
Tucker Carlson Antagonism00:06:43
Yeah, the definition of the red pill I have in my book is that the red pill is the principle that what is presented as truth by the corporate press is in fact a carefully constructed narrative designed to keep some very unpleasant people in power.
Now, that is certainly aligned with everything that you just said.
Even if you think that what you just said is inaccurate and, you know, blah, blah, blah, incompetence and shifting, shifting administrations, the claim that what you just said is absurd is a very useful technique because it's like, yes, we know without a doubt from their own mouths and on paper that they go in other countries and they fuck shit up and they are, you know, they smuggle things here and they have to bribe this guy here.
And that's how politics works, you know, under the table.
Everyone has to do it.
Okay, you grab a head around that.
But they would only do it for patriotic purposes.
Like, so they'll even get you to the point where, like, yeah, like, and they'll like be like a little cynical, be like, yeah, you have to do these horrible things because these are regions where you're bad guy versus worse guy.
And people can wrap their heads around that, but they can't wrap their heads around, well, maybe they're picking these sides not because they're Uncle Sam.
Maybe they're picking.
There was this great moment.
I don't know if you ever saw when Oliver Stone interviewed Vladimir Putin, which was really, it was really worth watching.
It was like a five-part thing, a really long form interview with him.
And look, Oliver Stone is a fucking interesting guy, but he's painfully lefty.
I mean, and he like even in his, he, he had like this history of the United States of America series that was really good.
But I mean, he, oh my God, does he paper over the crimes of the Soviet Union?
Like so much.
Not that he would ignore them, but he'll he'll do his best to apologize for them.
So, you know, you got to get where his perspective is.
He certainly sees Russia in the 20th century and 21st century as a victim of American, you know.
Well, it's binary thinking, right?
If we're bad and aggressive and antagonistic and imperialistic, therefore, whoever is fighting imperialism and, you know, war is by definition the good guy.
And it's like, there's, it's logically true, but false.
Yes.
And of course, if pushed, he would say, oh, yeah, the Soviets did a whole bunch of bad things.
But if he's allowed to construct the narrative, it's always something like, well, you know, I mean, they did have these kind of lofty goals.
And then we kind of put them in a tough situation where they had to do this.
It's just a lot of apologizing for them.
And that part turns me off for sure.
But he's an interesting thinker.
And he, his interview with Putin, there's this one point where he's talking about the wars and the wars since 9-11.
And Putin has got this really, again, he's not a good guy, but it's just an interesting perspective.
And Putin started laughing at one point and going down the conspiratorial route.
And Putin's just kind of laughing.
And he goes, isn't it a coincidence that all these terrorists that America is fighting and justifying for all these wars are always receiving some type of funds from America and are always directly fighting the enemies of America.
Yeah.
And the more you start to think about it, you're like, wow, that is quite a coincidence.
Now, I'm not saying that just because of that, you can jump to, you know, being certain of some wild conspiracy, but it is kind of crazy that we're like funding Al-Qaeda, I mean, funding Al-Qaeda in Iraq, who becomes ISIS, and those guys are fighting Assad.
And then we use ISIS as the justification to get back into the Middle East.
And what do we want to do?
Overthrow Assad.
They are an enemy too.
And there's just something to that where you're like, wow, what's really going on here?
And probably we'll never know exactly the details, but it stinks.
I think conservatives, this is like a moment for them to like, when you, there's a lot of things when you talk to certain types, like it's that they've never heard it before.
And when you bring it up, like, I'm sure this happened with you a lot, they're like, oh, and they put two and two together, and it's really kind of interesting because they're not going to hear it from the left.
You can't expect them to hear it from the left.
And if the conservatives aren't hearing from, you know, Tucker Carlson or something like that, not to disparage Tucker, they're not really going to have a chance to hear it.
And it's very hard to put two and two together when you're a part of a tribe.
But there's an understanding in conservatism that the government and the country are not the same.
And that very often the government is antagonistic to the country, right?
They get this.
Like sometimes they forget, especially when you talk about the military and a lot of that's cultural.
It's very hard to look at your neighbors who lost their son and been like, well, he didn't need to die.
That's really psychologically hard to wrap your head around because then, especially given the powerlessness that you are in that position, and that this is for many people a ticket out of like not having an education and making a name for themselves and people will respect you.
And there's something to join the military and getting your shit together if you're a low status person, no question.
Just in terms of discipline and so on and so forth, it's almost impossible to be like, well, too bad, you know, this is just lies.
So when you say, like, okay, you understand there's a disconnect between the government and the nation.
Do you not think that maybe when they're talking about American interests in these overseas endeavors, they're not talking about the nation, they're talking about the government's interests, which are not at all identical to your interests.
And when you put it like that, it's amazing because they'll be like, oh, and we'll start to turn.
The thing is, because this is, because they are such patriots, and I got to tell you, they're right to be patriots.
I love this country.
I'm really proud I'm an American.
I wouldn't be able to have this life I have in Russia.
I do not take it for granted.
I mean, Rand was, you know, attacked about this and she just yelled at the audience person asking the question, like, I chose to be an American.
What have you done besides being born?
And I'm with her 100%.
But it's very hard for them who've been trained by their entire surroundings and since they were a kid to regard these two things as kind of like intertwined to really fully separate those things out, separate those things out to the extent where they need to be separated out psychologically.
BlueChew Chewable Benefits00:02:04
Because then, just one more point, it's very hard to go from, okay, sometimes politicians make the wrong choice or these are hard choices.
Like, you know, you need to have the war because the alternatives were saying the war is bad to realize they don't care at all.
And that is very different from someone's incompetent or sloppy to they have an indifference to your the lives of your children.
That is a big hill for them to climb.
And understandably.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
I always say when people ask me for like reading recommendations, the first thing I always say is Murray Rothbard's Anatomy of the State.
Because number one, it's very easy to read.
Bedroom Confidence Deals00:15:45
It's like...
You know, I've never read it.
I'm going to read it.
I'm going to write it down.
You absolutely done.
You'll finish it in one sitting.
It's only like 40 pages long.
Oh, I didn't realize that.
Okay.
It's more of like a long essay or a pamphlet, more than an essay, but not quite a book.
But the first thing he starts out with is, which I thought was really interesting because it's anatomy of the state, but he starts out with what the state is not and goes through what the state isn't first.
And the thing that he breaks down is he's like, look, the state isn't the people.
The state isn't the land.
It's not the hills or the mountains or the city.
It's not us.
It's this group of people.
And then kind of breaks down what the state really is.
And it's perfect.
It's like the perfect little red pill pamphlet, like starter kit.
Like, this is what you have to understand going in.
And to the point that you were making before, and I've said this many times on the show, but if you start to realize that what they are talking about, what Lindsey Graham and Hillary Clinton are talking about when they say American interests abroad, they mean the empire.
You're thinking about the people, but they mean the empire.
And once you realize that, what they're saying isn't actually wrong.
They're kind of right.
And honest.
And honest.
Yes.
So when they say Iran is a threat to America, me or you might look at that and go, what the fuck are you talking about?
This is an oil-rich country that can't provide its people with gasoline.
How are they a threat?
They barely even have an air force.
They don't have an air force that can come over here and attack us.
They don't have the bomb.
And even if they were working on this bomb that they don't have, which they're not, they don't have the capacity to launch it over here.
I mean, this is all ridiculous.
They are a threat, this little third world country to the most powerful economy and nation that's ever existed.
But that's thinking that they mean they're a threat to America.
But if you say Iran is a threat to America's ability to control the entire Middle East, they're actually right.
They're right about that.
Now, is Hezbollah a threat?
Well, yes, Hezbollah is a threat to Israel's ability to occupy southern Lebanon.
They really are a threat to them.
They kicked them out of there.
They fought and won against the Israelis in southern Lebanon.
So once you understand that, you realize, oh, yeah, Russia really is a threat.
China really is a threat.
Iran really is a threat, just not to something that we give a shit about.
It's not to us.
It's to the ability to dominate the world.
So you have to kind of understand that.
And then you realize like, oh, now you get what it's the same way when Hillary Clinton goes, no one likes Bernie Sanders.
And you're like, what are you talking about?
He's the most popular senator in the country.
And she's like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
She's not talking about you.
She's talking about us.
None of us like Bernie Sanders.
So she's actually right.
She's just not saying what you think she's saying.
Back in the day when comic books first started in the mid-30s and going on, the World War II period, and this is earlier from the pulps as well, the big super villains, their goal was always world domination, right?
It wasn't a hot wife.
It wasn't a mansion.
Because if they, listen, if you can build a robot as big as the Empire State Building, like you're doing pretty well for fun.
You're doing pretty well for yourself, right?
You could probably get a hot check.
Yeah, but just sell the robot, dude.
Like, why are you building these robots?
Anyway, but the villains all wanted world domination.
And part of it, of course, was, you know, this kind of a reference to Mussolini and Hitler and all this other stuff who were genuinely bad people, obviously.
But we have this idea that when you're the good guy, it doesn't mean bad things.
Like you can't do bad things by definition.
One of the things I point out in the book is that the Constitution was a conspiracy.
It's just a conspiracy you like.
They all got together in Philadelphia, swore themselves to secrecy.
I don't like if I can think of one way to define a conspiracy, like what difference between a conspiracy and a meeting, secrecy would probably be like the defining period.
The other thing might be, okay, nefarious purposes, but that is a very subjective term.
So they got together in Philadelphia.
They said, okay, we're sworn to secrecy.
We're up to some shit.
And then the first thing they do is like, all right, we're here to revise the Arabs Confederation.
We're just throwing down the shit in the trash, right?
And they're like, oh yeah, yeah.
Like we're spelling garbage.
Now, it's a conspiracy that I would argue had positive outcomes and led to a lot of positive things even to this day.
The point is, they can't think in these terms because many people, and I've been talking about this recently on Twitter, perceive language emotionally, right?
So conservative, excuse me, conspiracy is a bad word.
Constitution convention is positive emotion.
Therefore, they can't reconcile because they're hearing with, I guess, their hearts or whatever term you want might want to have.
And the same thing is with world domination.
Like they will say with a straight face, we want a world where our values or however they put it are tantamount.
And basically, like Americanism isn't not that everyone is watching Fox and watching ABC, but basically has sharing our values, human rights to some extent.
And then they're like, well, we're against world domination.
It's still world domination when the good, when who you call the good guys do it.
It's world domination where there's nowhere on earth to escape your power and influence.
It's not world control.
It's domination, meaning you are dominant.
Doesn't mean you have to control every aspect of someone's life.
It just means your power is an important presence in how they make decisions.
Yes.
And yeah, that's really.
And I'll just have one more thing.
And when I say this, you know, conservatives and some people on an emotional level, because even I'm hearing myself, I was like, oh my God, you're sitting there and saying America is evil.
When you just heard me say at the same time 90 seconds ago that I love this country, that I love it consciously, that I'm proud to be here.
Everyone, and you can't pretend this is someone like Elizabeth Ward who's like, well, I love America.
You know doubt anyone who's a fan of mine or followed me at all knows I am damn appreciative of being here because I sure as hell know what their alternative is and it's a hell of a lot worse.
So that's what's funny.
They can't reconcile these two concepts in their minds.
Yeah, another piece that Murray Rothbard wrote later in his in his career, which is a very controversial piece, but one that I really love is called Nations by Consent.
And he was basically talking about the kind of anarchist libertarian point of view about nations.
And that he said, basically, the idea of nations and nation states have been so intertwined, you know, like for the last hundred years that people kind of forget that there is a difference and that you can love and want to preserve a nation without wanting the violence of the state.
And so, yeah, loving the country.
I absolutely love America.
I mean, it's all my friends, all my family live here.
So many great things have been created in America.
It's given a larger degree of freedom to so many people than just about anywhere else in the world is guaranteed.
And there's all types of beautiful things to admire and appreciate.
But what you said about language being perceived as emotional, this has got to be, I think it's the vast majority of people who fall into that category.
And the perfect example of this, which I know you've written a lot and talked a lot about, is democracy.
The way democracy is perceived to basically just be this unquestioned good that you don't really have to argue and defend why democracy is good, but everyone kind of knows democracy is good.
Like fascism means bad and democracy means good.
And that's just what those words mean.
And I've talked about this a lot on my show.
The thing that's kind of interesting is that nobody actually believes in democracy.
No one really does when it comes down to it.
There's no one on the left who, if you really pressed them on the issue and said, well, what if tomorrow 51% of people are against gay marriage and we have a national referendum on it?
And, you know, that 51, when basically, I think a poll, I forget exactly how many states, I think it was 30 plus states had legalized gay marriage.
And then the Supreme Court came in and just dominated, to use the word you were using, the other states.
They just went, look, we're not voting on this.
We're not having referendums.
Gay marriage is legal in all 50 states of America.
And there was no one on the left who said, wait, no, Democracy.
We have to wait.
We have to have votes.
We have to have statewide referendums.
No one cares about democracy.
They care about getting their desired outcome.
And I'm just as absolutely in that same camp.
I don't give a shit about democracy.
I don't care if 95% of people are against liberty.
I hope those 5% dominate the other 95% and get their liberty.
Go ahead.
I just had a clip.
I was playing a nightshade, which is absolutely amazing.
Al Sharpton had MSNBC contributor.
I'm blanking her name.
And she was talking about how as soon as it came out in the press that coronavirus was disproportionately affecting black and brown people, that's when the white people started protesting, right?
It's like, okay, like, sure.
Like, they were happy in their homes earlier, but now they want to be around the black people somehow.
And Sharpton was making the point that if you looked at these protests, they were overwhelmingly white.
And if there were black people, there were just a few of them.
And he basically hand-waved it away.
And I go, so I'm thinking like, so you're saying that when it's an overwhelming majority of white people, we shouldn't care about the few black people.
Like they don't matter.
They don't exist.
Effectively, for all intents and purposes, conceptually, they don't exist.
Like, this is the exact argument of Martin Luther King and people in his vein.
And I hate bringing him up because you sound like such a boomer con, is that like, yeah, just because you have the numbers doesn't mean you're in the right.
And it sucks to be us.
And like, we're not asking for anything.
We just want equality and have a decent education for my kids.
Now, obviously that gets misconstrued and twisted and blah, blah, blah.
The point is, his point is valid.
It's like the role of a republic is when someone doesn't have the numbers, they're not throwing the garbage that you have to make the extra effort to be like, yeah, this really sucks for these communities.
They're part of our country.
Let's see what we can do to help them out.
But the second is like, well, there's very few black people.
Blacks don't matter.
It's like, but aren't those exactly the black people you should be championing that like these people's views are marginalized twice?
They're marginalized because they're positive.
So you're marginalizing them.
It hurts.
It hurts your brain to think about because you actually, I mean, and Al Sharpton just isn't even thinking on the level of noticing these contradictions, but you're actually saying, you're like, yeah, yeah, well, that doesn't matter because these blacks are a minority.
I thought that's your whole point.
I thought your whole point of existence.
It's like the Uncanny Valley.
So it's good when it's like 12%.
Like 1%, you don't have to care.
Then in between, it does like this kind of roller coaster.
It's amazing.
It's just absolutely amazing.
Well, it is.
And, you know, there was something.
So I saw, and I should mention this because I had just been talking about the other day how I was talking a lot about what was going on with Michael Flynn and the new evidence that's come out against in against the state's prosecution of him.
And today, very big news came out that they dropped the charges.
Michael Flynn is done.
He's now he's fucking, I mean, I don't know, maybe through lawsuits, he can recoup some of the money.
I mean, he really had his life ruined over this shit.
You're not going to disagree with me, but let's make things explicit.
You are never going to get unimprisoned psychologically.
Yeah.
There's no way that doesn't do a number on you.
I don't care how hard of a person you are.
This guy went from being the national security advisor to being broke, ruined, imprisoned, found guilty.
I mean, yeah, you're never going to get that back, but mate, hopefully he can get something of it back because it was so fucked up what happened to him.
And so you had like, there were competing trending topics where the, you know, there was one like Michael Flynn was or Flynn was trending.
And then the other thing was like the DOJ was trade.
So because the Department of Justice is dropping the charges, it's very easy for the anti-Trumpers to go, ah, see, this is Trump's corrupt, you know, The Department of Justice, and that's why the charges are being dropped.
And this is just proof that someone who was found guilty and his administration is being let go.
I mean, anybody who looks into the situation with Michael Flynn, the guy was convicted of lying to the FBI.
That was his crime.
And they obviously set him up.
And there's just, there's so much evidence out there at this point that it's like, look, I don't know.
A lot of people, I get it, aren't going to want to look through all of that.
But what did what was interesting to me, it's kind of in related to this talk about democracy, was that James Comey, who of course was the villain of the Democrats and then became the hero of the Democrats and, you know, has been through every step, he tweeted out something along the lines of the Department of Justice has been corrupted, but career professionals, please stay there because we need you so much.
And you guys have been the backbone of the Justice Department and all of this stuff.
And it's just so funny for the Democrats who are so into democracy.
If it's their guy who's opposing the guy they hate, who's opposing Orange Man Bad, then they're championing the career professionals.
What could be more anti-democratic than unelected bureaucrats and spies making the decisions that undermine the guy who was elected?
However you feel about him.
Right.
Right.
Yeah.
I've been beating, you've seen this on Twitter.
I've been beating this drum recently with some regularity when like Stacey Abrams is another example.
Like, you know, there's no evidence whatsoever, like that there was voter suppression or anything like that.
Georgia is a big state.
Like there's never been a black woman elected governor in any state.
So like, it's like, oh my, it's not like, it's not like some huge upset.
It was like, it would have been a big breakthrough if she had actually won and was a Republican year as well.
But they only believe in democracy when it gives them the result they want.
And they'll basically say this over and over.
I mean, like with Brexit.
It's like, we're just going to keep voting until we get the one vote.
That's all that counts.
And again, I have that article that I wrote for The Guardian during 2012, I believe it was 2014, which I know you read, where I just wrote, no, 2016, about voting is just giving them ex post facto justification to do what they were going to do anyway.
And the example I used, which I thought would work for the lefties, is people might remember, George W. Bush wanted to go to Iraq.
Democratic Socialist Labels00:08:53
He went before the UN, right?
To get like legal authorization from the UN.
They voted no.
And he goes, well, we're just going to pretend this other authorization from years ago.
We're just going to misconstrue the words and that'll be our legal justification.
And it's like, then what was the point?
You know, you didn't care about the vote.
This is just giving you some sort of weak illegal or whatever ideological cover to do what the hell you're going to do anyway.
And with that kind of thinking, it makes perfect sense that when Pelosi was pushing for the Obamacare, whatever you think about Obamacare, and a reporter asked her, where in the Constitution is there justification for this?
She literally said, and she's not a dumb woman.
She's certainly not done by how government works.
She goes, are you serious?
Are you serious?
Because yeah, the Constitution will provide you the justification when you need it.
But if not, we have the votes.
So sit down and shut up.
What are you going to do about it?
Make a federal case?
Good luck.
We also staff those people.
Well, it's really, and this is why it's so important to drive this point home.
Because a lot of times, and I've talked about this before when I've debated and talked about democratic socialists, that they will say, as long as you throw the word democratic in front of socialists, then it's really not so evil anymore in their eyes, because look, the people get to vote.
So, you know, it's like, well, whatever.
I mean, yeah, socialism's been horrible in certain authoritarian socialism, but now it's democratic, as if democracy can't lead to authoritarianism, as if that you couldn't get the that you couldn't get 51% of people to agree to some authoritarian policy, as if a minority could never be demonized by a majority and they would be happy to use state force against them, which contradicts all of human history.
But really, if you think about the essence of statism, modern day 2020 in first world countries, all of them do this.
This is their justification for the state, is democracy.
All of it.
If you were to say that, if you were to say to any random person, let's say you didn't get to vote, and some guy was just like, I'm the governor, they would all agree.
Well, that's authoritarianism.
This is horrible.
This is a despot.
You know what I mean?
But if you get to vote, then, well, that's an elected leader, an elective representative.
But the thing that people have to understand is that if that guy wins 53% of the vote, he is still that same despot for 47% of the population.
It doesn't matter how many people voted for him.
It's still, it's still like if somebody goes, you know, like the, the, even the Democrats who are like, well, Hillary Clinton got more votes.
So she get, she should be the nominee because fuck the electoral college.
We like democracy.
She got 3 million more votes.
You're like, okay, but then that's still tyranny for the 63 million people who voted for Donald Trump.
And instead, it's tyranny for the 65 million people who voted for Hillary Clinton.
So I'm on the losing side of this one day and I don't get anything.
Like, you know what I mean?
Like in any other situation, you're going to get, all right, I get the like, I get the line share.
Like I'll get tax policy, I'll get abortion, I get wars.
You got 47%.
You get, let's suppose, education in the environment.
Anything.
But it's just like, well, you win.
So not only do you not get anything, but you also have to submit to someone who you are opposed to with every fiber of your being.
And you're supposed to smile and nod about it and be like, well, I'll shucks.
I'll give it a, you know, go the next time around.
No, no, no.
And the other thing, this is what they tell you.
This is great.
If you don't like it, you can leave, right?
Go somewhere else.
And I say, freedom means you leave.
Freedom means I do what I want, not what you want.
That's the definition of freedom.
It means I say what I want.
If you don't like it, you don't have to talk to me.
You can argue with me.
You can say how I'm wrong.
But freedom means I get to do what I want when I want.
Yeah.
And furthermore, and I wish more people would realize that this really is the impetus for the culture war.
And this is what it all comes down to: is that we all have to vie, like people all have to compete for this power because the loser is going to be ruled by the winner.
And that's why you can't have a situation where you just go like, well, look, in Portland, they might feel one way about what, you know, how to live your life.
And in Alabama, they might feel another way.
But in the same sense that people don't really want to fight a war with, you know, El Salvador because they have a different culture than us, they don't need to war with each other over these issues.
But the problem is that one of us is going to win and one of us is going to lose and the other one's going to be ruled over by the winner.
So we have to fight it out.
This is why, as the state gets bigger and bigger, the culture war also gets bigger and bigger.
And I wish sometimes that both the left and the right would realize that freedom is really your only viable compromise.
And this is kind of my message to even alt writers when I've talked to them.
And it's maybe I haven't done that great a job of selling it or convincing them.
But you're like, if you're like some democratic socialist, or even if you're like, you know, alt-right. neo-fascist kind of type, or maybe that's unfair to call them.
Some of them are that.
I don't know exactly.
But either way, you want to build up this huge state apparatus, but you've got a problem on your hands.
And the problem is that the other side has huge numbers.
You know what I mean?
Like, you're not just going to wipe away the fact that whatever the numbers are, right?
There's 65 million people who voted for Hillary Clinton, 63 million people who voted for Donald Trump.
Neither one of those sides is going away anytime soon.
So if you do build up this gigantic state apparatus, they're going to have a turn ruling it and you're going to have a turn ruling it.
And so whatever state power you want to create, just know your enemy is going to have that power at some point.
So it's not, they're not just going away.
But this is where you're wrong in a sense.
They both, the hardcore base, believe that the victory over the other tribe is imminent and it's going to be permanent.
We have been told, you see it all the time in the cathedral, lefty articles, thanks to Demographics.
It's funny how on the one hand, they say demographics don't matter.
And the next page, flip it over.
Thanks to Demographics, the Republican Party will never win the White House again, right?
They will say this as a good thing.
And the same thing, I have Rush Limbaugh's books from, I think, 92 and 93, The Way Things Ought to Be, and CI Told You So.
And I remember at the time, I just looked at it recently, the last chapter of the second book is about how Bill Clinton's election is demonstrating these are the last dying gasps of liberalism.
And we hear it all the time for boomer cons that the Democratic Party is destroyed.
They're going to be ruined forever.
The Democratic Party in America is the oldest political party on earth.
You can hand wave it away all you want.
That's not an accident.
Like when people say North Korea is like stupid and crazy, I'm like, how is it that they're so dumb and suicidal?
How are they so suicidal and they've outlasted everybody else?
That doesn't happen by accident when you have so many forces who are doing everything in their power, supposedly, to undermine you.
So they're not going anywhere.
And here's another example to that.
Like we're talking about Rothbard saying, what's the state and the anatomy of the state?
In Canada, they had something called the Progressive Republican Party.
They were the right of center party.
Kim Campbell was the prime minister.
This was in 93, I believe.
She fucked it up so bad that the party went from a parliamentary majority to two seats.
There were like, it was like 180 to two.
So she lost literally every election and the party was disbanded.
Do you think all those conservative voters just stopped existing?
That their values, well, I can't vote for the Conservative Party anymore.
I guess I'm a liberal now.
No, the party reformed itself because you have the ideas and the culture and you have the people who believe those ideas.
So even if the Democratic Party and you hate the Democratic Party and blah, blah, blah, they're basically Stalin and they're all kind of social Marxism.
If they vanish tomorrow, do you think the New York Times, your niece who went to Barnard, NPR, maybe NPR would go away, Mattow, these people would all cease to exist?
They're all going to be there.
Conservative Party Evolution00:07:51
This was one of the points that Jordan Peterson made when he was on real time with Bill Maher, which was such a great little moment.
So it's, you know, it's like a liberal panel and Jordan Peterson.
And it's basically like five minutes of like, Trump is horrible.
Trump is dumb.
You know, just like kind of your standard, oh, this president's so awful and blah, blah, blah.
Oh, he's so incompetent, all this stuff.
And then Jordan Peterson just said something as like, and he goes, look, I'm just like a neutral part.
I'm a Canadian.
I'm not a part of American politics, but wouldn't you guys, so you guys all hate Trump so much.
Okay, let's say you get rid of Donald Trump.
What about the 63 million people who voted for him?
They're still here.
Like, how, what's your plan to bring them into the fold to absorb them?
And, you know, no one had an answer for him.
They all were just like, well, he's dumb.
And you're like, okay, fine.
But, you know, he did speak to all these people.
And those people are real.
Are we going to round them up and get rid of them?
Like, how do we do this?
And to your point that you made about how both sides kind of do feel like they're on the verge of victory.
I mean, people get, I'll never forget.
And I'm not bringing this up just to take shots at him because at this point, it's like enough people take shots at him.
I don't need to.
But when I had Christopher Cantwell on my podcast, who you interviewed in your book, who people, you know, if they don't know, he was like an anarchist libertarian before he became a big alt writer.
And he said at one point, and it was really kind of like stunning to me, but he said at one point that he felt bad for me because I'm, you know, I'm like a Jew who's like kind of okay.
But he goes, you know, when the ethno-state rises up, it's going to be a real tough situation for me.
And he was like, you know, I'll vouch for you and I'll try to get you a pass in the ethno-state.
But, you know, it's, I feel bad for guys who are in your situation.
And I remember responding to him by being like, Christopher, I'm doing quite well.
I'm building a nice life for myself.
You know, like, I'm doing absolutely fine.
You are certainly on a path toward death or jail.
But yet he's looking at me and going, dude, when we get this ethno-state going, you're going to, you might be in trouble.
So I feel bad for the situation.
And you're like, dude, this is just complete fantasy land.
The idea that you would ever turn the United States of America, that they're all going to get on your side.
I mean, like, now, again, look, I'm an anarchist.
So I guess you could say I have a fringe ideology as well for sure.
But that was a level of like delusion that I was really kind of shocked by.
Like, you really, you're concerned about my well-being.
And obviously, over the last few years, you know, he's had a real tough time of it, which was fairly easily predictable.
Well, I, you know, what I was hearing in that, what I think is I think Cantwell's a very bright person, which is something people can't wrap their heads around because Nazi equals bad.
I think it's to be dumb.
And if you're bad, you have to be dumb, which is so ridiculous.
You know, like he's, he's a very smart person.
I think it's very difficult when you have a certain ideology.
And, you know, I know that he has genuine, like he genuinely wishes well for you.
It's very hard psychologically to maintain that what you believe.
Let's give him the benefit that he thinks this necessary happened.
At the same time, have this emotional sense of like, I don't want bad things for Dave Smith, like, like objectively.
So I think that's one of the reasons like gay rights happened.
It wasn't the laws, is that sooner people kept coming out.
And then it's, that's your uncle, or that's my neighbor, and he's an asshole, but I certainly want him to marry his asshole husband.
Let them, you know, it gets harder and harder when you meet people who are examples of this kind of whatever it is that you're opposed, even if intellectually you still think, you know, what they represent is something I have to oppose for political reasons.
But an emotional level, it's like, man, I don't like where this is going.
Yeah.
No, I think that's a very fair point.
Also think that's what happened with weed legalization in a lot of these states was that the culture made it more and more accepting for people to come out with it and then all of a sudden, you're like well, I mean, I don't want Steve to go to jail.
You know like, once it's it's personal, it's kind of uh, it becomes a lot harder to fight and uh yeah, that was a.
There was a very weird thing and I actually think that it was uh mutual from from me and you with with Christopher Cantwell, that all of us and part of it is because, you know, when you're kind of running in these anarchist circles, they're small enough that there there is a weird connection to somebody who sees the world the same as you and who's read the same things as you, and they connected with their mind the same way they connected with yours and and I also, you know, didn't want to see anything bad happen to him.
And I know, you know there's some people out there who will give me for that, because it's so horrible to be racist that I have to want bad things to happen to somebody.
But I always thought, like it was uh, you know, I wished he had uh kind of not lost his way from my perspective.
Um, but I didn't want bad things to happen uh, to Christopher Cantwell and and it it saddens me that that bad things did end up happening to him.
A lot of people really don't like that that.
You really can't see any humanity in who's supposed to be your political enemy or something I can tell the.
I can answer them in one sentence, uh, it didn't have to end up this way for him and i'm sure he knows that too.
I, I mean, he's not dumb, like he knew.
Okay, i'm going up against the state and he has no illusions how the state operates uh, and no anarchist does so.
That that's the kind of it's like it's it's it's, it's unfortunate.
I don't like saying that because it sounds condescending whatever, but you know what I mean.
Yeah no I, I completely agree with you.
And there's, like you know, there's never.
On the other hand, look at us now.
Now, we're an addicts.
So he got his wish dear, dear Diary, talk to Dave again.
You guys, all you know you had to sacrifice, everybody else too, but you got the Jews uh, rounded up and locked up.
So so there you go.
It's uh, it's a weird thing, but I do think that more people and I try to do this and i'm I fall.
You know I I go astray at times also, but there are, with the exception of some really, really dumb groups of people there is something that you can learn from just about anyone.
I remember when I had uh Robbie, Uh Suave, on uh, my show Swabe yeah uh, when I had him on on my show and I said something that I thought made him a little bit uncomfortable um, but we were talking about like online censorship and I was like I was like I don't know, like let everybody speak, you can learn something from them.
I'd go like I don't know, i've like there's, there's like some valuable things that like far leftists have to say, there's some valuable things that like Neo-nazis have to say, and I think it made him uncomfortable when I said that.
But it look, everybody's got like at least three points that are pretty good points.
Hey, you may not agree with all of their conclusions, but it's like yeah, I don't know, if nothing else, you know, like you listen to like what some Neo-nazi has to say and you can understand that it's like hey, you know, Like the German people really had it pretty bad in World War I and after World War II and after World War I and during World War II and Stuff.
It's like, oh, yeah, you know, no one ever cares about their suffering, but like they did have it pretty bad too.
And a lot of them weren't like, they're not all just rounded up in this collective of evil people.
Some of them were just fucking people and families who got fucking destroyed.
You know, it's like, I don't know.
Rothbard Essay Insights00:02:14
You can always learn something from these groups of people.
Now I understand why he wants such good things for you, Dave.
See, this is the sliding doors moment.
There's the bad Cantwell who goes to jail.
Then there's the other Cantwell who goes, well, you're in jail right now, grows a beard, dyes his hair, and has a show called Part of the Pilgrim.
There you go.
All right.
Man, I've been getting so much positive feedback from the continued crossover series.
And I'm really glad people love it because when we first started doing this, it was like, you know, like I had, yes, it was rough.
No, but I had texted you and I was like, hey, come on my show.
And then you were like, hey, let's do this like crossover thing to kind of keep this kind of sense of normalcy.
And it'd be cool for people to see us hanging out.
And it's just cool, like, I've enjoyed this so much.
And so it's cool that people listening have enjoyed it.
It's kind of like we're all enjoying the hang together.
And I don't know.
So I'm really glad we've been doing this.
And I'm glad that everybody seems to be enjoying it so much.
And that we're now running out of things to talk about.
Yes.
Yeah.
No, I think.
And I only had like a few things planned in my mind for this.
And I think we only got to one of them.
As I wanted to mention Flynn, and we barely even talked about that at all.
We just kind of go off on, you know, tangents and it's always a lot of fun.
What was your favorite part of this?
I would say my favorite part was, there was a lot of ground.
My favorite part was I'm looking forward right now to reading Anatomy of the State because you really solve it really well.
And I know all the people rolling their eyes, oh my God, you've never read Rothbard.
I always conflate it with Man, Economy, and State, which is like, which makes the Galt speech look like a fortune cookie.
So the fact that I know it's such an important essay of his, and I know it's the title of the book that I guess contains a lot of other essays, the fact that I could just sit down and read it and like this is the Rothbard essay.
Now I'm really excited to crack my teeth and bite into it.