Dave Smith argues the conservative movement lost cultural dominance after the 1960s counterculture and George W. Bush's wars, which enabled Federal Reserve policies that caused economic collapse and identity politics distractions. He critiques Rand Paul's CPAC failure with only 2% support compared to Nikki Haley, noting Rand's inability to limit government spending like his father Ron Paul did with Reagan. Smith asserts that focusing on culture wars ignores root causes like fiat currency and big government, urging a return to gold standards and limited governance while reaffirming Libertarian Party support as the only viable alternative to progressive control. [Automatically generated summary]
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CPAC: The Resistance Rises00:04:04
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What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
Thank you very much for tuning in.
It is I, the most consistent motherfucker.
You know, the libertarian Tupac, Dave Smith, here with a brand new episode for you bitches.
No Robbie the Fire today.
I am flying solo.
Not Rob's fault.
Can't blame it on Rob or Spectrum or Optimum or the AIDS or the COVID.
I just had to switch around the times last minute.
It's my fault and Rob couldn't make it work.
So anyway, I wanted to, for today's episode, I wanted to talk a little bit about CPAC, which I was really interested to watch this year, more so than usual.
And then I just have some thoughts bouncing around my head about the conservative movement and the culture and a few different things that I figured I could just rant to all of you guys about.
And some of this stuff I'm even, I've been trying to work out recently.
And, you know, when I work stuff out, it usually just involves, you know, thinking a lot about these things and long phone calls with Scott Horton and anyway, that's my process.
But so I was really, really interested to watch CPAC this year.
If you guys don't know, CPAC is like the biggest conservative event where they get all the biggest speakers and they throw this event and they've been doing it for a long time.
And I've always had an interest in CPAC.
I've talked about this before on the show.
CPAC was, so when I first became politically radicalized in the Ron Paul presidential runs, you know, I first got introduced to him around 2007 or late 2007 and then really became like a radical libertarian in 2008, 2009.
And Ron Paul used to go and give big speeches at CPAC every year and he would give these killer, just great speeches, break down the history of the United States government and who all the villains and heroes were.
And they were all really great.
And he would just get this unbelievably great reception at CPAC.
And then little by little over the years, it's like the libertarians kind of took over CPAC to the point where he won their presidential straw poll.
Ron Paul was winning it every year and like pretty dominantly too.
And it was interesting because there'd be these other people who the media was telling you were the conservative heroes, like, you know, it was like Sarah Palin at the time, you know, stuff like that.
Like she had just lost with McCain as the vice presidential running mate.
And Ron Paul would just destroy her, you know, like they'd be like, Sarah Palin's going to win this thing.
And she'd get like 6% and Ron Paul would get like 35% or something like that and win the poll.
And Rand Paul won it one year, pretty much just because he was Ron Paul's kid.
And anyway, so CPAC was a really interesting event to me during that time period.
And yeah, well, that changed.
No longer the libertarian event.
Yesterday, they did their presidential straw poll and Rand Paul got 2%, the straw poll that he won previously in 2015.
He got 2%.
And he was tied with Mike Pompeo and came in behind Nikki Haley.
So pretty rough, pretty rough showing for him.
All those years of supporting Trump did not seem to uh to win him any favor.
Um, with this crowd um anyway, but what?
Conservatives As The New Resistance00:08:51
One of the other major reasons, in fact, the major reason why I was so interested in in watching it this year is um, because the, the conservatives, now the, the right-wingers there are the resistance.
This is something i've been talking about since Donald Trump lost the presidency.
They are the resistance now and um, in some ways, that's unfortunate and in some ways, it's better than uh them having their guy in the White House.
So um, you know the unfortunately, you know for, for libertarians like, like myself uh, it's sometimes you feel, like you know, the best thing about the right wingers is just that they're not left wingers and that's pretty much the uh, the highest compliment I could pay them.
So I I, you know, I really do, when I look at these things um I, I feel like i'm that I don't really have a dog in the fight and I think honestly I think that's part of the reason why i'm good at what I do um is because I don't really have a dog in the fight and that allows me to be a better analyst of all the shit that's going on um I, I mean, it's not just that, it's also because I have a, you know, a consistent uh,
philosophical worldview that is irrefutable and correct uh, so that helps a lot.
But also a big part of it is that i'm not on team left or team right, and you know, you see this all the time.
With people who are on one team or the other, it's um they, you know, part of it is that they have blind spots and they always find a way to rationalize why their team is right and the other team is wrong.
Um, and then part of it also is just that they're being machiavellian, which kind of makes sense.
If you're on one side or the other, I mean, you want to get your side to win, that's your goal.
So it doesn't make sense to just tell the truth all the time, especially if the truth makes your side look really bad.
Um, so I I, for better or for worse, don't have any of those constraints.
I uh, I just don't think that way and that's not what I enjoy doing.
Um, so I just kind of can call balls and strikes and, and you know, tell it like I see it, even though, as I said, it's not that I don't have a bias.
I'm extremely biased, you know, like I am a radical libertarian and that is, you know, how I view the world.
That's the side i'm on.
But even like, when it comes to the Libertarian Party or something like that, as you guys know, i'm often very critical of them because i'm just I, I tell the truth as I see it.
Uh again, not to say I can't be wrong, but I really at least uh um philosophically, I really don't think i'm right or left, and that doesn't mean that I can't, you know um, at times, favor one side or the other uh, and it doesn't mean that I can't address the reality of the situation we're living through right now.
But I just don't think in the purest philosophical form.
You know generally, traditionally speaking, the the left, is basically defined, as you know egalitarian um, kind of on the spectrum from like egalitarian to, you know, straight up equity, um and um, I just, you know, I reject all of that not an egalitarian at all.
I don't think um, I don't think people are equal and I don't think they should be treated equal or valued equally.
I think that people are uh, individuals and are uniquely different.
Um, some people are better than others at lots of different things and uh, that that I, you know, I certainly don't believe in equity.
I think that's just um insane.
And then, on the right um, you know traditionally philosophically, they're more in support of tradition and hierarchy and customs and norms, and again, that that's not really how you could possibly describe me.
I mean, i'm an anarchist I, I am uh actively opposed to the most hierarchical structure uh, that exists in societies which are, you know governments um, and so I just don't, I don't really fit into either, and that's why uh I, you know, most left-wingers uh consider me a right-winger and most right-wingers consider me a left-winger um, and you know, we're just over here, as Walter Block puts it, being the third leg on the stool um,
but that doesn't mean that you can't see things for what they are, and one of the things that's the reason why the conservatives they, are truly the resistance now, and so again, we're kind of stuck with them to some degree as the resistance.
I'd, i'd really rather libertarians be the resistance.
But again, I can comment on reality, and that ain't the reality.
The reality is that this country is broadly broken up into left-wingers and right-wingers and right now, right wingers are the resistance and in in a way that nobody no, neither one of those groups has been in my life um they're, you know the, the right wingers when it comes to the culture, control nothing.
I mean okay, maybe that's a little bit of an overstatement right, like they may, they may control, like a couple hours on FOX NEWS by the way, they don't even control FOX NEWS um, and they may have like their little outlets here or there online and and stuff like that, but the, you know the, the cultural pendulum, even when Trump won the White House, did not swing back to the right, it just didn't.
The, the left and the progressives, they remained in control of the culture.
Um they, you know Trump might have won the presidency, but the left just hit the, the on the acceleration, I mean, even more so than under Obama.
They controlled the culture.
And when I say that, I just mean they controlled, you know the um the, the media Hollywood academia, the government, even I mean Trump winning didn't even swing the um, the legislative branch, excuse me, the executive branch of the federal government back into right-wing control.
It's that they basically had the progressives, basically had the, the uh, executive branch.
Um, he had a few people in the executive branch.
That was basically all they got out of it and, of course, Trump being the president, as we all know, uh lit a fire underneath the most hardcore progressives and their institutions and organizations.
So it's not as if, you know, the Southern Poverty Law Center lost funding because Trump won.
No, their funding went way up.
And it's not as if, you know, like Black Lives Matter or Antifa or anything like that, like street level organizations lost juice.
No, it went way up.
So there was no swing back to any type of right wing.
It's not just that the right wingers don't control the culture.
They don't even have a seat at the table.
Everything is controlled by the progressives.
Everything.
Every, you know, the universities and the media and the government and the, you know, the pop culture and just everything you could think of.
Down to the point that, you know, the week going into CPAC, we, you know, we found out that Mr. Potato Head is banned, right?
This Mr. Potato Head evidently is offensive because it's Mr. and that, you know, indicates gender.
So now it's just potato head.
So that's where the conservatives are as they go into this.
You've conserved nothing.
You can't even conserve fucking Mr. Potato Head, which by the way, my daughter has a Mr. Potato Head.
Maybe that'll be worth a lot of money someday.
Maybe he's like one of the last ones.
But so that's the state of the conservatives.
They really are the resistance.
Not in this dumb way that the progressives were pretending to be the resistance during Donald Trump, but they really are the true resistance against everything.
I mean, the fucking, you know, the CIA and the Federal Reserve are pushing critical race theory.
They're pushing whatever, racial, whatever the fuck they would call it, you know, racial policies to right historic wrongs.
And, you know, the JP Morgan Chase and all these guys are sending their execs to diversity training.
And so it's everything.
It's consumed everything.
And they've lost the culture completely.
And so one of the things I was thinking about that I've been knocking around in my head a lot recently is like, how the fuck exactly did we get to this place?
And I think that's a really important thing to give a lot of thought to.
Now, like I said before, the reason why it's kind of interesting for them to be the resistance is not because I'm a right winger, but it's because I am against the whole establishment.
Blue Light Glasses For Eye Strain00:03:02
I am, you know, everything that I really hate passionately is the system that we live under.
It's the, you know, the lockdowns, the totalitarianism, the never-ending wars that slaughter hundreds of thousands of innocent people, the militarized police that's enforcing all of this stuff, the Federal Reserve System that's financing all of this stuff, the debt that we're handing to our children, you know, all of this shit.
And, you know, if you're really against the system, you got to at least pay attention to who the resistance is and, you know, I guess hope for the best out of them and try to influence them as much as you can.
But that's, you know, that's, you have to.
That's the only, you know, way to engage with reality.
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How Culture Fell Apart In Vietnam00:15:35
If you think about how the left took control of this country, of the culture, I mean, there's lots of different points in history that you could start.
And, you know, obviously, like in a podcast like this, I'm not going to be able to cover all of it.
So there'll be holes that are involved.
And not that I'm not the expert who knows all of it, you know.
But I would say that almost like the real modern birth of the culture swinging in the direction of the left, you would have to point to the late 60s.
And that this is when you had the real counterculture revolution.
When you think of the 60s, when people think of the 60s, they really think of the late 60s.
When you think of the 60s, people think of, you know, the hippies and the counterculture and all of this shit that, you know, kind of spiraled out of control.
And when people think of the 50s, you think of what?
A much more conservative culture.
Because it was one.
But what a lot of people don't realize is that the early 60s is what you would think of as the 50s.
Like 1964 is the 50s when you think about it like that.
1964 is like, you know, all of the media and the movies and the TV and just the culture is based around, you know, what would be considered conservative values, very conservative values by today's standards.
And in the late 60s, this all changed.
And you can't remove that from what was going on politically.
And what was going on politically was that Richard Nixon was expanding the war in Vietnam.
And of course, he ran on ending the war in Vietnam, which I guess he ultimately did, but first he really expanded it.
And the war in Vietnam had a really profound effect on the culture.
I mean, so much of that hippie energy, the counterculture energy was about protesting the war, which was much easier back then to get a lot of support for because it wasn't just like these wars today.
They weren't just, you know, wars on the credit card with what they'll call a voluntary force, which is really, you know, more accurately, probably like a bribed propagandized force of the, you know, the poorest, bravest 17-year-olds amongst us who are willing to sign up for this shit.
But back then, people were being drafted.
And everybody who knew anyone who was like, you know, a fighting age male, they were scared that that guy was going to get drafted.
So it was a lot easier to work up protests against it.
And I think that a really profound part of the culture falling apart and the conservatives losing such a big chunk of the culture back then was that it was transparently obvious that America were the bad guys in that fight.
I mean, you just couldn't spin it any other way.
I mean, okay, you could try, but you weren't going to be able to convince too many people.
I mean, you know, say what you will about World War I or World War II.
I know World War II is painted as this.
Obviously, we were the good guys.
The reality is much more complex than that.
I mean, Hitler was really every bit as bad as they paint him out to be.
But, you know, we partnered up with Stalin, who was really, you know, every bit as bad himself.
And, you know, and, you know, Churchill, Stalin, and Hitler were all just, you know, just horrible, horrible, brutal, you know, butchers.
And so it's not as if there was any clear-cut good guy in that fight, but the other side was really, really bad.
And it didn't take too much propaganda to convince people that the Nazis were really, really bad.
And these were advanced, industrialized, you know, serious countries.
And it was easy to sell the idea that we had to fight this war.
This was serious.
This was a threat.
You know, Hitler was going to take over Europe.
And then the myth goes he would come take over America next.
Now, as stupid as that might be, it was more believable.
You know, you weren't going to convince anyone that Vietnam was taking over.
I mean, they tried to convince you that the Soviet Union was, but it was obvious to so many people in Vietnam that America were, we were the bullies.
We were going over there and slaughtering people in this poor, you know, country and imposing our will on them.
And this really destroyed the culture.
And if you're a right-winger who cares about this kind of like love of country and obedience and civil society and all of these things, well, then you got to own that to some degree.
That's a big part of what lost you the culture.
Okay.
Forget about all that.
That's just in the backdrop.
Thinking about more recent times, when was the last time that the right wing or the conservatives had a seat at the table of the culture?
Okay.
It wasn't during the Trump years.
It was not during the Trump years.
They lost seats, if anything, during the Trump years.
I'm not talking about seats in Congress, you understand.
I'm talking about the culture.
The last time that you could say that the right wing was perhaps not dominant, but certainly involved and maybe even in control, I would say in control of the culture was post 9-11.
That was the last time that the right-wingers really, in many ways, you could say, were the ones in charge of the culture.
This is, you know, this is in my lifetime.
I was, you know, I was 18 when 9-11 happened.
So, you know, I have a vivid memory of it.
And the truth is that I'm not saying they weren't anywhere near as dominant as the left is today.
It's not like they controlled the universities and the, you know, the TV shows and Hollywood or that.
They didn't have those things.
The left still firmly had control of all of those institutions, although they weren't as wild as they are today.
They kept a lot more of it in check, whether internal, whether due to internal forces or external forces, they weren't quite as wild with this shit.
Like they weren't trying to ban Mr. Potatohead.
Let's say that.
Okay.
That wasn't even on their list.
But the Republicans, who at the time were, you know, the neocons.
And again, this is who the Republican voters supported.
This is this is who they picked, right?
Was was George W. Bush.
And he had the government.
He had the Republicans had the House and the Senate.
The Republicans had the deep state.
Now, they weren't all neocons, but they were all on the Republican side.
They were all, okay, we're selling this war in Iraq.
That's what we're going to do.
They were all on board.
Again, you can judge whether you consider them to be truly right wing or not, but these are who the right wingers supported.
All right.
But the culture after 9-11, like immediately after 9-11, was one of patriotism.
It was one like the only people getting canceled in that era were the ones who would dare to question our noble brave troops.
The Dixie chicks were getting canceled and not because of the word Dixie, not because they called themselves chicks.
They were getting canceled for criticizing George W. Bush.
They were getting canceled for criticizing the wars.
That was the dangerous position.
The right wing had, you know, they in their last great stand when they had a say in the culture, they put all of their chips in with George W. Bush.
As Scott Horton says, not even Ronald Reagan's son, George H.W. Bush's son, and not even George H.W. Bush's smart son, his idiot son.
That's who the right-wingers put all of their chips in with.
The last time that the right-wingers had a real, that the evangelical Christians and the conservatives and the whole Republican base, the last time they really asserted their dominance on American life, they put all of their chips in on killing a million Iraqis in a stupid war that we never should have been involved in.
And okay, listen, I know most people who are right-wingers who listen to my show, you guys are young, okay?
You're for the most part.
I mean, the people who are 50 and older or whatever, they don't even know what a podcast is.
So you can, you know, you're off the hook if you're a 20-year-old right-winger or something like that.
But just so you understand, this is in many ways how you guys lost the culture.
I'm not saying it's the only thing.
There's lots of different factors, but this was a major one.
And you can't, it's like, it's hard to exactly measure how much of an effect this had, but it had a huge, huge effect.
This is, you know, people say they'll be like, Donald Trump destroyed the Republican Party.
No, Donald Trump didn't destroy the Republican Party.
George W. Bush destroyed the Republican Party.
He lost everything for the conservatives.
As soon as he lost, he lost so big that the left made their move.
The Republicans were destroyed, completely discredited.
This is what got Barack Hussein Obama elected.
And then they made their move on the culture.
Like they, again, I'm not saying they had positions in place, but this is when they made their move.
And the right was helpless to resist to the point that you can't even conserve Mr. Potato Head.
And this is so much of this is how we got to this place.
And it's not all directly a result of that.
There's these other kind of indirect factors that ended up leading to the state that we're in today.
But this was a really big part of it.
And this was kind of the first thing that set into motion all of these other events.
So basically what happened was they spent all of their capital on the wars and the response to 9-11.
And of course, we had to fight these wars on the credit card.
And of course, to finance the wars on the credit card, we needed to bring interest rates way down.
And good thing, we got the Federal Reserve.
They'll bring interest rates down.
They'll print up a ton of money.
No problem.
So then you get the fucking low interest rates.
Well, now when interest rates are so low, what effect does that end up happen having?
Okay.
So now interest rates are crazy low.
Well, what is something that people borrow money to buy?
Well, houses.
That's a pretty big one, right?
And not too many people out there buy their houses in cash.
The vast majority of people, they borrow money to buy houses.
They take out mortgages.
And when you have artificially low interest rates, you can say that there's free market activities that are happening as a result of that, but it's obviously, it's completely perverted the market.
So if the Federal Reserve, if the government department of banking and money artificially lowers interest rates, well, then you know that a whole lot of people are going to borrow money who wouldn't have borrowed money at higher interest rates.
Again, this is just an a priori, logical, irrefutable fact that people who, you know, businesses and likewise just people buying homes, when it maybe wouldn't make sense for them to borrow at 9% interest, it does make sense for them to borrow at 4% interest.
And one of the dynamics you had in the early 2000s was that you had housing prices going up and up and up, interest rates very, very low.
I think the Fed fund rate was down to like 1.5% at one point.
And your monthly bills would end up being lower than renting, right?
So you'd almost be stupid not to try to buy a house because your monthly bills are going to be lower and you're gaining the value of the house, which is going up and up and up.
So no question, a ton more people bought houses than would have if we hadn't lowered these interest rates in large part to finance putting these wars on the credit card.
Okay, so this was the right's last big stand.
George H.W. Bush's idiot son who allowed, of course, Dick Cheney and the neocons to run roughshot over him.
So then we have the housing crash.
We have the housing crash.
And this just devastates American families all throughout this country, just devastates them, which by the way, you know, if you're a right-winger and you really care about families, right?
You want to have a culture that is promoting families, then devastating families is pretty bad, pretty bad for you.
I mean, I don't know if there's even any way to keep track of like how many families were broken up.
I think financial stress is one of the major major factors that leads to divorce.
So I don't know how many families were broken up over this shit, but let me tell you, there were a ton.
And so then you have this.
And then on top of, excuse me, on top of the economic devastation that comes from 2008, then what do you have?
What do you have as a result of this?
Well, you have a huge gap widening between regular people and the super rich.
And this is what happens every time you have one of these big crashes, right?
So you have one of the big crashes, the market goes way down.
And then what happens as a result of that?
Okay, well, people who are middle class and working class, they get wiped out.
They lose everything.
And then for fucking billionaires and rich people, it's everything's on sale, right?
So they come in and buy everything up.
And then as the value goes back up, they make out wonderfully.
This widens the gap.
You know, the economic inequality gets tremendously widened by all of this.
And then what's the left-wing idiot response to all of this?
Well, what do we need?
Communism, right?
Or socialism, whatever you want to call it.
So then that's their response, right?
The rise of the populist left, the rise of the Bernie Sanders.
Then, of course, the Bush administration, their response is you have to bail out the banks.
Obama continues to bail out the banks.
And now this financial situation leads to the rise of a much harder economic left.
And then, as I've been kind of demonstrating, you know, for a while now, one of my major themes.
And then you have this woke shit takeover, which was basically a corporate plot to throw the economic populist left off of the scent of all of this shit.
And that's why after Occupy Wall Street, when they're screaming, we are the 99%, you know, it's like that meme, introduce them to identity politics.
Why Conservatives Lost Everything00:06:20
And that's really what happens.
And that's why it's pushed by all the different agencies of the cathedral, whether it's, you know, academia, the corporate press, the big banks, the politicians.
They all push the fuck out of this woke shit to buy off the fucking left, to make sure that they're not focused on what really matters, which is power and corruption and all of these things.
And instead, they're focused on Mr. Potato Head.
We'll make sure Gina Carano gets canceled while we're at it and all this other dumb shit.
So to me, this is the story of how the conservatives lost everything.
Now, of course, obviously, I'm not pretending that that is the complete story.
It's just a quick shortened version, hitting some points that I think are really important.
But that to me is what's in the backdrop as I go to watch CPAC.
Like, what do these guys have?
You know, what do these guys have to say now that they're in this position where they've just been beaten so bad and lost everything?
And they are now in the position of being the true resistance, the true counterculture is now the conservatives and the traditionalists and the right-wingers and all that.
So they, and their guy is Donald Trump.
And this is the thing.
It's like what I was saying when they go, oh, Trump destroyed the Republican Party.
It's like, no, George W. Bush destroyed the Republican Party.
He shattered them.
He blew all of their credibility.
And to the point where not only did they lose their power in government, but they lost the entire culture.
And then Trump wins because they're just so desperate for a fighter.
And he seems to be fighting back against them.
They'll even, you know, look the other way at all of the things that would make a conservative really not like Donald Trump.
Like the fact that he's fucking, you know, been divorced multiple times and, you know, fucks porn stars while his wife is pregnant and the fact that he's clearly never read a page of the Bible or any other book for that matter.
And all of these other things.
It's like, yeah, but he's fighting.
He's fighting against these forces who are just dominating us in the culture.
So at least there's that.
At least he's pissing off everybody else and he's claiming he'll fight for us.
So there's that.
So that's where that's where they're at.
And as I was watching CPAC, I got to say, it's like, it's not great.
The state of the resistance is just really not great.
You know, Donald Trump is his speech, you know, it was, it was interesting to watch.
He's kind of, this is Donald Trump speaking for kind of the first time since all this craziness ended, all the craziness with, you know, the election and the allegations of voter fraud and then the Capitol riot and all this other stuff.
And Donald Trump came out and he gave a long speech.
It seemed like he wanted to talk.
He has, you know, his Twitter account's been banned and all this other social media shit.
So he hasn't really been able to talk to the people much.
And he knows this is his chance.
And you can see, it's like right away, just a reminder of everything that everything that's wrong with Donald Trump.
I mean, you can see that what actually animates him is him.
It's just all about Trump to Donald Trump.
And so the most animating parts of the speech are when he's talking about how they stole the election from him and when he's teasing the idea of him running and winning again, because I already won twice and I'll win again.
This is what gets him going is him and his legacy and what he's going to do.
And there's like no mention of the fact that the American government is turning the war on terror, George W. Bush's war on terror inward against the people who elected George W. Bush.
And by the way, also against the people who elected Donald Trump.
And that just doesn't even really seem to concern him that much, you know?
And then there's all this talk about the things we should do, which he was able to do none of.
There's all this talk about how we should end the wars and we should break up the big tech companies and we should do all of this.
Meanwhile, it's like almost, it almost seems like we're still in a universe that Donald Trump was in in 2015.
But you were president for four years, you know?
And so we're bragging about your record, but also saying all these things we need to do that no moves were taken on doing while you were president.
So what exactly is the fucking plan here?
What, we elect Donald Trump again or he can only serve four years?
I mean, he's going to have to run as a as a fat 78 year old, but assuming he could even do that.
So then what?
You elect Donald Trump again and he still can't get any of these things done and hands off the presidency to a Democrat, just like he did.
That's the best case scenario.
That's the great hope.
Seems pretty weak.
And listening to some of the other speeches there, I mean, Mike Pompeo bragging about Donald Trump's big, beautiful bombs that he dropped on Syria and the crowds cheering about it.
And you're like, God damn, man, like so much of this movement just seems hopeless.
Like if this is our resistance, fuck, are we in trouble?
Are we in trouble?
Because like, what, oh, Donald Trump dropped big, beautiful bombs on Syria and they're clapping for that.
So Joe Biden just bombed Syria two days ago or whatever when he was given the speech.
Just bombed Syria.
Well, were the bombs not as beautiful?
Is that the that's the difference that Trump will offer you?
If he gets in there, the bombs will be bigger and more beautiful.
So what is it that they're even resisting against?
And it just shows you how much there's no, the problem is that there's no understanding of why they lost and why they lost this culture.
And I got to say, looking at that, it really just solidified my view that I'm doing the right thing in supporting the Libertarian Party and supporting the Mises caucus particular and just all the good people in the Libertarian Party.
And that's not to say there aren't a million problems in the Libertarian Party, and we're going to work really, really hard to make them better.
Beautiful Bombs And Moral Society00:10:30
And we're going to, and we're going to win at that.
But you realize that it's like it's a lot of what, you know, the libertarians were critical of the paleocons about back in the day and the reason why that alliance, that very short-lived paleo-libertarian paleocon alliance fell apart.
Because if you don't realize that this government intervention, that this big government is going to, it's not, you might be, this is what Hans Hermann Hoppe said about Francis and Pat Buchanan and all those guys.
It might, you might be more likely to win politically by, you know, not addressing, you know, spending or welfare or any of these things and kind of combining social conservatism with, you know, big government economic policies.
It's like maybe you can, you're more likely to get elected than some hardcore libertarian, you know, who's like, well, we're going to cut all this shit.
Maybe.
But you're, you're dooming yourself to failure because there is no way you're going to ever win back anything that you want to see in the culture with all of these big government programs.
It's just not going to happen.
You're going to continue to have the same problems that you have right now.
You're going to destroy families.
You're going to, I mean, look, like the problem, like, and I'll say this, maybe I'll almost pause here and say, as I said at the beginning, that I'm really not left wing or right wing.
At least that's how I see it.
Some people might disagree and whatever.
I don't really care, you know, what you consider me.
All right, guys, let's take a quick second.
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You know, culturally speaking, I really think I don't fit into either.
I mean, I'm like, I'm fucking, I'm a Jew from Brooklyn.
I'm a offensive stand-up comedian.
I'm one of the hosts on the Legion of Skanks.
I mean, I don't like, I don't have anything against people who live non-traditional lifestyles.
I think they have the right to do that.
I don't, I know a lot of people and love a lot of people who are kind of degenerates.
And, you know, I don't, I'm not against them.
And in fact, I really love, you know, I really love a lot of those people.
So I don't exactly fit into like some hard, right, conservative, you know, cultural, you know, figure.
But I also have, you know, a wife and a daughter.
And what I really care about are families and like my daughter having a good, solid, stable country to grow up in.
That's what I care about the most.
And I think particularly that the progressives who are dominating the culture right now are like insane.
I think this whole shit is insane.
I think like, I think banning Mr. Potato Head because Mr. is offensive is like that shit insane.
I do not know how any normal person doesn't look at that and just go, oh, what?
Like what?
What the fuck are we talking about here?
I don't care what you're forced to pretend to believe when you're in public.
Like that is really, really insane.
And that is the dominant culture right now.
And that's, it's a real threat.
I think this is like a real threat to like normal family life, which is really what I care about.
And I think that the cancel culture shit is a big threat to just the stability of our country.
I mean, the idea that you're like not even allowed to think, you're not even allowed to question the orthodoxies without having all of these kind of non-governmental, non technically coercive forces, but still kind of coercive, like, you know, you'll just lose your job for saying all lives matter.
Well, then, you know, like if people can't even think or dissent or speak, that's a major threat to the idea of having any type of open, flourishing, prosperous society.
So that stuff is all, I think, very dangerous.
So I want to see some type of counterbalance to this culture.
I want to see something that can kind of, you know, break up the dominance of this kind of cultural stuff.
But I also understand that if you want a society with healthy, well-adjusted families and the things that conservatives claim to care about, even if you want to say religious values and things like that, it's like, well, okay.
I also understand that what is the reason why we don't have that?
Well, I mean, there's a lot, but the main reasons are like, okay, like, you know, when I talked about before, like the Federal Reserve printing up all this money and all of this shit and all of these government programs.
Well, why is it that like some 25-year-old today isn't going to get married and start a family?
Well, I mean, like, what are the major obstacles right in their way?
Well, why the fuck are they ever going to do that?
How are they ever going to pull that off?
How are they ever going to buy a house or fucking, you know, afford health care or pay off their college debt or any of these things?
These things that 25 year olds are like living at home with their mom and working at Starbucks in $100,000 college debt.
Now, why is it?
Why is it that this is the situation?
It's all because of government intervention in the market.
All of it, every inch of it.
The housing prices are so phenomenally high because government intervened and bit up the prices of housing.
The college prices are so incredibly high.
That's why they have this debt to begin with, because government got in the business of guaranteeing and then giving out the loans and pushing the idea that every, you know, fucking, you know, every kid with a fucking 100 IQ has to go to four years of college and get drunk with his buddies and come out with $100,000 worth of debt.
Just this insane system.
And it's all pushed by the government intervention.
And why is it that, you know, like mutual aid societies and churches and all these local community organizations have been completely undermined?
Well, it's because we have a welfare state now and that's where people go.
They don't have to go to their local community.
They don't have to do any of that shit.
And in some cases, for decades, we'll even pay women for every baby they have without a father around, right?
So the government has destroyed all of these like bonds that have kept the community together.
They've destroyed the ability of young men to provide for their families.
And then as the government gets bigger and bigger and the corruption gets bigger and bigger, they push this fucking woke shit on everybody to throw them off of the scent.
And that's done, you know, a whole lot on top to destroy the culture and all of these things.
But so you're never even going to get, you know, if you're not going to take that on or, you know, or you just can't be bothered to learn about any of that shit, then you're never really going to improve the culture at all.
You're just never, you're, you're out there fighting, you know, you're just out there saying, no, we shouldn't ban Mr. Potato Head when they're saying, yes, we should.
And that's not how you fight this.
You got to get at the underlying root cause of all of these problems.
And so this is why I'm for pushing the Libertarian Party, because what we need is something else here, some other force that's going to be an educational vehicle to kind of, you know, insert these issues.
There's still too much education that needs to go on to push both sides, you know, as much as we can, both sides to just be better, to be better on these issues.
And like I said before, with fucking Nixon expanding the war, George W. Bush getting us into these stupid wars, conservatives are going to have to fucking pick.
In the same way, in many ways, true, decent leftist progressives are going to have to pick.
You know, like, what do you want?
Do you want, you know, JP Morgan Chase to send their white execs to diversity training?
Or do you actually want them to not rape the American people?
You know, you're going to have to fucking pick whether you're on their side or you're against them.
And in the same sense, conservatives have some choices that they have to make.
And they, you know, it's like, do you want these fucking wars?
Or do you, you know, like even like we've said for years, right?
But you look at the migrant crisis flooding into Europe.
And it's like, well, what do you want?
Do you want to destabilize Iraq, Syria, Libya, you know, and all these countries?
Or do you want, you know, to not have this migrant crisis?
Can't have both.
Got to pick one.
Got to pick one.
Which was more important to you?
Overthrowing Qaddafi or making sure that Europe wasn't flooded with all these refugees?
Because you're not going to have both because that's the reason why you have that.
So that's, you know, you got to live with that.
And what conservatives really need to start grappling with is fucking monetary policy.
And if they don't grapple with that, then they're not even in the fight.
You're not even engaging in the fight.
If you want to not have the left turn into a bunch of fucking commies, then you have to have something, a gold standard of some type of force limiting the fiat currency, which I guess wouldn't be fiat currency if it was limited on a gold standard.
So, you know, if you're not going to have that, you're not going to have a society where people can save and be productive and build families and do what I think we all want to see.
Just have a moral, stable society.
With fiat currency, you're not going to get any of that shit.
You're going to constantly get, you know, inflated prices and bubbles and these artificial booms and then these very real busts.
And the left is just going to go more and more socialist.
Rand Paul And The Heart Of Power00:05:17
And then they're going to, you know, be conned into pushing all their crazy cultural views to throw them off the scent, which by the way is the same thing that happened to the right back in the day.
It's the same thing that happened to the right in the post-war period.
You know, the right wing, the old right, used to be concerned with like fucking, you know, sound money and limited government and non-intervention.
And then when they wanted to fucking fight the Cold War and become the world empire, what did they fucking convince the right to be about?
Like, no, we don't care about any of that shit.
What we care about is the homos and stuff like that, you know, and throw them off the scent.
This is how the culture war stuff always gets played to throw people off the scent of what matters to the powerful, which is power.
That's what they care about.
That's what the powerful care about.
They don't care about any of this shit with the fucking culture.
They care about their power.
Now, I know that seems counterintuitive because you see these powerful people and you're like, oh, they talk about is the culture.
But understand, that's to distract you from having any conversation about their power.
So that's, that's where that all comes from.
And this is, is if conservatives are not, they just don't seem to really be grappling with any of that shit.
And so that's the thing that's disappointing about all of it.
And you look there and you see Rand Paul getting 2% and losing to Nikki fucking Haley.
And what does that tell you?
Well, what it tells you is that Rand Paul really fucked up.
And, you know, I admire Rand Paul.
I think he's the best senator we got.
And I'm glad he's there.
It would be worse if he wasn't there.
But man, he was the chosen one.
And he really, really fucked up because now he doesn't have the ability, even though he knows all of this shit.
He doesn't have the ability to effectively make that case to the CPAC crowd the way Ron Paul did.
He can't do it anymore.
You know, I remember one of the first times I ever saw Rand Paul speak was at a campaign event for his father.
And this was at a campaign event for the 2008 campaign.
And I didn't even know Ron Paul had a son.
I didn't know.
I was very new at the time.
And I didn't, you know, and this was before Rand Paul was even thinking about running for senate.
And he was speaking at one of his father's event.
And I was like, oh, isn't that cool?
Ron Paul's got a kid who kind of looks like Ron Paul, but it's younger and he believes all the same shit.
And he's really smart and good on all this stuff.
Like, isn't that, that's fantastic, you know?
And he was speaking about how consistent and principled his father is.
So Ron Paul, he was telling this story.
Rand Paul was telling the story.
And he goes, so Ron Paul was one of the, I believe, three members of the House to support Ronald Reagan's run for president in the primary.
So all the rest of the other powerful people were against Ronald Reagan, that he was one of the few who was for him.
And Ronald Reagan was up there talking about limited government and all this stuff and being against socialism and for free market capitalism and all this shit.
And so Rand Paul's giving this speech and Rand Paul goes, do you know how long it took my father to stop supporting Ronald Reagan?
And he goes, his first budget and his first budget, his first budget proposal.
And Ron Paul went, what?
No, that's not what this was about.
That's not what I was supporting.
I'm not supporting this increase in the size of government.
You were here because you said government isn't the solution.
Government's the problem.
And I'm walking.
And he didn't support Ronald Reagan anymore.
And he just criticized him.
Okay.
So that was Ron Paul.
And that was the story that Rand Paul was bragging about when he told his father, look what a great guy my father is.
He's really got principles.
This is how much he has principles.
So he can speak to you.
And even if you don't agree with him on everything, you got to respect this guy.
He believes what he says.
Now, Rand Paul also came in to the Senate preaching this small government message, right?
He was part of that Tea Party wave.
He really, I mean, he became a senator because his father was Ron Paul.
That was it.
That's the reason why he's there, you know?
And what did he say?
We're here to take our government back.
What was his major issues, you know, aside from like the war stuff and the spying was the size and scope of government and budgets.
And like this stuff might sound boring to a lot of people, but this is actually the heart of the issue is power.
And government spending equals power and it equals corruption.
And it's what's torn this country apart.
It's totally responsible for the culture wars and all of this other stuff.
And I, you know, it might sound nerdy or wonky or whatever, but this is the fucking reality.
And Rand Paul was dead right about that in 2010 when he ran and became a senator.
And then to see Rand Paul endorsing and supporting throughout Trump's presidency, Donald Trump, who presided over the biggest government in the history of the world, signed every last one of those spending bills into law.
And I think every time was like, I really don't want to sign this, but I'll sign it.
But this is the last time.
And then signed it again and again and again.
And Rand Paul's out there just supporting him.
So now what can Rand Paul say?
What voice does he have to be to CPAC to push them in the right direction?
Reality Behind The Culture Wars00:01:22
Well, I mean, the, you know, we ran this experiment and it's in.
He went from winning the poll in 2015 to 2% just behind Nikki fucking Haley.
Nikki Haley, who supports every last one of the neocon policies that George W, that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were all about, that lost this whole country for the right wing to begin with.
That's who Rand Paul came in behind.
He was tied with Mike Pompeo.
So I just thought it was an interesting event to watch.
It was, you know, it was depressing in a lot of ways.
It was entertaining because when Trump speaks, it's always entertaining.
But that's more or less what's been floating around in my head and what I've been thinking about with all of this stuff.
So I was happy to come and share that with you guys.
All right.
I think I'll wrap there.
Oh, and shout out to Maj Tore.
I haven't gotten a chance.
I just, someone just sent me his thing.
I missed it, but he did this whole panel there at CPAC.
So that's cool.
That's my guy, Maj, and I'm glad they had him on.
So I'll go watch that after this, and that'll be refreshing.
That'll be one of the bright spots of CPAC, I'm sure.