Dave Smith and Robbie de Fire Bernstein critique the HR1 bill as a Democratic strategy to eviscerate state election laws by banning voter ID, mandating automatic registration for Medicaid recipients, and removing criminal penalties for non-citizen voting. They argue this allows 20 to 30 million illegal immigrants to vote without verification, ensuring permanent Democratic control through low-information voters while framing the move as a civil rights expansion. Ultimately, the hosts contend that majority rule inherently overrides individual rights, making it politically impossible to roll back these expanded powers once implemented. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Stamps.com Shipping Solution00:02:00
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Democrats Voting Bill00:10:13
All right, let's start today's show.
We need to roll back the state.
We spy on all of our own citizens.
Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
You're a state to part of the problem on the Gas Digital Network.
Here's your host, Dave Smith.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
Libertarian Tupac here, the most consistent motherfucker you know.
And I am joined by my partner in crime, Robbie de Fire Bernstein, the king of the caulks.
What's up, my brother?
Nothing much.
How was your weekend, Davey Smith?
Not bad, not bad.
Can't complain.
Spent some good time with the family.
Reflected on where I've come over these many years and my plans to take over the world.
What you're looking for in it.
Is that really a conversation you'll have with your daughter?
Yeah.
Try and strategize with her.
It's basically all her plan.
She's the puppet master pulling the strings.
I'm just doing what she tells me to do.
It doesn't make sense.
It's incoherent, you know.
Like, I'm like, so how am I going to take over the world?
And she says, Plato.
And I'm like, I don't see how they're connected.
But then I got to think like, it's kind of like a puzzle that she gives.
You just haven't tasted it.
If you eat it, you get good ideas.
That's what she's trying to tell you.
Yeah, my whole house smells like Plato, by the way.
Kids obsessed.
Is Plato still a thing?
In my house, it is.
I don't know.
I can't speak for the rest of the world.
I'm sure that we'll find out in a few months that Plato is like transphobic or something and has to be canceled.
But for now, for now, we got a Mr. Potato Head up there too.
So we're really, we're breaking all the rules.
You know what I mean?
But she has a Barbie, and I don't think it's one of the new fat Barbies.
I think it's like an original Barbie.
I don't think I think I'm supposed to have her play with like an obese Barbie.
Is it straight up fat or just chubby Barbie?
No, it's not.
I'm saying it's not.
It's not one of the new fat Barbies.
No, I have a terrible father, evidently.
I didn't know that they've made fat Barbie, but is she like legit fat or just kind of chunky, cute on the weekends?
Showing some cleavage.
I couldn't tell you.
She's like, Barbie was like, if you had a few at a bar, you'd still be like, all right, it's kind of, you know.
She dresses a little sluttier.
But she's got to do what she's got to do to compete in the marketplace, Rob, as you know, as you know all about competing in the marketplace.
It's a today is a rough news day if you don't give a shit about the British monarchy at all, because that seems to be what everyone's obsessing over.
I think there's some valuable life lessons from that, which is no matter how wealthy and powerful you are, you're still at risk for marrying a total bitch.
I mean, who the hell?
Like, I hate, I don't know.
I did watch the interview.
My wife wanted to watch it.
Yeah, my wife wanted to watch it.
Is the whole thing even up?
I thought it was just clips.
I didn't even realize the whole thing.
Well, it aired last night.
So, so we watched.
I mean, I was only like half paying attention.
It's kind of a sleazy way to make a living just selling out your own family on public TV.
It doesn't matter who you're like.
It's just like if your dad's Hitler and you're telling the inside story of Hitler, I get it.
But, you know, have some dignity.
I just don't, I don't care.
And it blows my mind how many people do care so much.
And, you know, I guess they would say that it was their family who sold them out, not them selling the family out.
They wanted to set the record straight.
Yada.
I just, whatever.
One of you is telling the truth.
One of you isn't.
Who cares?
Like, how the fuck do you still have this dumb monarchy anyway?
Like, why?
What is this?
Like, look, I'm not saying you can't, they don't have problems.
And I'm sure it's very challenging to be in the royal family as some like, you know, American chick who's like, what?
Now I got to take care of my kids.
And I, I, I, you know, I'm in the tabloids and all this shit.
Difficult.
It's a payday.
You wouldn't go date him unless you were interested in that.
Well, that's it.
You want to be a fucking princess and then you got it.
On the list of like, it's like, it's like focusing on like a billionaire who's depressed.
I mean, I'm not downplaying that.
And, you know, it might be really tough.
You might have your problems.
Money isn't everything.
You know, it doesn't solve all your problems.
Even Justin Bieber's lonely.
Yeah.
No, he is.
It's got real, real, real sad life that Justin Bieber lives.
But in the grand scheme of things I give a shit about, if I'm ranking on how many giveaways I have, rich people problems just doesn't rank very high to me.
And I'm like, I don't even understand how you can begin to have a conversation about the royal family in England without at some point going, why do we have this whole dumb thing?
It's a big welfare program.
You're living in a castle off the taxpayer.
That's the only queen you are as a welfare queen.
Get a job, queen.
And you're not a queen.
You're just some lady.
Well, where do they have their money from?
Didn't they like pillage India or something?
I don't really know history.
I'm sure.
I'm sure.
I'm sure during the Empire days, they stocked up a lot of money for the His Highness or Her Highness or whoever the fuck it was at the time.
I don't know.
I just think it's all goofy and ridiculous.
And that's my American sensibilities about it.
But everyone else seems to really care.
They're just like OG Kardashians.
That's all it is.
It's like, you know, the way that we all care about reality TV and these idiots who make a ton of money on Instagram just for being good looking.
So they've been doing that for like 10 generations.
Yeah, at least the Kardashians did something.
Didn't their pops help get OJ off or something like that?
Didn't he hide a bag?
At least they had to.
He sucked some big black dicks on camera.
Everyone likes that.
That's a service.
Yeah, that's the market, baby.
They earned.
They earned where they're at.
Yeah.
Anyway, it's all it's all pretty weird.
But so other news that I actually care about that's going on.
And there is one thing that I really think is interesting and very consequential that's been getting a decent amount of coverage is this the HR1 bill, the for the people bill or something.
What is it called?
Hold on, let me get the name exactly right.
It's something like that.
This is your first your first hint that something's something's really bad is the when they name the bill something like this.
Okay.
So the bill is called the For the People Act.
That's when you know anytime Congress says, you know, like names a bill, something that just sounds really great and wonderful, grab your wallet because things are about to get things are about to get bad.
So it's HR1, the For the People Act.
A couple of days ago, Nancy Pelosi gave like a little speech in the Capitol about it.
It's expected to pass the House, I believe, this week.
And we'll see if they get it through the Senate, because of course the Democrats do control the Senate by the slimmest of majority.
It's there.
It's 50 Democrats, 50 Republicans, and then Kamala Harris is the tiebreaker.
So we'll see if they can get it through or if the Republicans are able to filibuster or whatever.
But it's a pretty interesting move, even if it doesn't get through, because to me, this seems to be kind of the culmination of what a lot of people have been concerned about, something that me and you have talked about quite a bit over the years as it relates to the immigration issue, as it relates to Democrats' kind of long-term strategy for how to overhaul voting in the country.
And this is it.
This is not, you know, at the very least, you kind of have to acknowledge, even if this doesn't go through, that this is what the Democrats want to do.
This is no longer like some conspiracy theory or something like that.
They're putting it out there that this is their plan and this is what they'd like to do.
And if you were a Democrat and your concern was power, this makes perfect sense.
This is the thing to do.
So we'll get into a little bit of what's in the bill.
But let me just say from the beginning, because always with these conversations, I think we come at it from a very different perspective than most shows, even most like alternative media shows, in that we are not big fans of democracy.
There's nothing about voting that I think is inherently good.
And in fact, I think there's a pretty strong argument that it's inherently bad.
Certainly voting can be used in good ways if the majority of people vote for something good.
But it's really just a vessel of majority rule.
And if the majority is on the right side of an issue, then voting can work out well.
And if a majority is on the wrong side of an issue, then it's a disaster.
And there's no, in my opinion, no sound argument for why any issue related to freedom, which pretty much every government issue is in some way related to freedom, namely that it's violating it, why that should be up for a vote.
Like, why should anyone's rights be up for a vote?
And then there's like this perversion of language where they call voting a right itself.
And so now if you're against that, you're against a right.
And the right now, it's really so Orwellian when you think about it, right?
Because the language is so perverted.
But now, if you don't believe that someone gets to vote on your rights, you are denying their right to vote on your rights, which is just goofy, you know?
Harry's Quality vs Price00:03:02
Like, so by the Democratic model, if you have, you know, three people in a room and two of them would like to beat the shit out of the third one.
By the Democratic model.
They get to do that because two votes to one right, um.
And then if the one person who doesn't want to have the peat out of them was like no no no, I don't want to vote on this, you know, I don't, I don't want to vote, i'm going to lose this vote and I don't want to be hurt.
Uh, that person is now denying the other two people's rights, their voting rights.
You know uh, and and this is the, the language of rights is really uh, a big part of how we all get mind and lose more and more liberties.
All right guys, let's take a quick second.
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No I, I had a big thought uh, while you were talking, which is uh, sometimes on the, i've actually held on to the idea that we could have this uh, democracy constrained by a, the document which was supposed to be the uh, you know um, what's it called.
Now we started the constitution, thank you, And so you could have this version of democracy, but I just realized while you were talking, the Constitution, though, we didn't vote on the Constitution.
Constitutional Voting Principles00:05:16
It was based off of principles that we said, if we're going to have voting, it needs to be restrained by the following principles to ensure that at least we're with it.
But then why have the voting altogether if we're only saying that we can come to better conclusions without the voting part?
No matter what.
We didn't even decide.
The Constitution doesn't even represent us deciding.
Just some men, some powerful, established, you know, wealthy men.
We're like, this is what we're giving you.
This is the government.
And that's what we hold up as being like, well, this is the most important thing.
We got to at least abide by these principles.
But if the principles aren't decided through voting, then there's a better way to establish principles, laws, and government.
Yeah.
No, it's an interesting point.
And right?
Like it's, it's not, it has to have a starting point in a way, democracy that's undemocratic, right?
Like no one ever had a vote on whether we should vote because who would then, you know what I mean?
Like it starts by someone just being like, no, this is what I'm deciding.
We're all going to vote in a kind of dictatorial way.
But yeah, I just think that there's major, major problems with democracy.
Hans Hermann Hoppe laid a lot of these out.
But one of the major problems is that it allows votes to be bought.
It allows votes to be kind of propagandized out of people, you know, and it in fact, I would say, incentivizes all of that.
So if you're, you know, if there already is a welfare state and somebody is running on repealing the welfare state, well, for a whole lot of people, you're running on taking money away from them.
Why would they vote on that?
Why would someone who is a net tax receiver, right?
So somebody who doesn't pay taxes, maybe they're unemployed or they just don't make a lot of money or something like that, and they're on government assistance.
Why would they vote for somebody who's going to cut that assistance?
Now, I'm not saying there's no one who fits that maybe, you know, for like moral reasons or for philosophical or economic reasons, but come on.
I mean, most people, if you're directly financially incentivizing them to vote one way, are going to be more likely to vote that way.
And, you know, so there, and these problems are all over the place.
And the other thing then is that, you know, like most people aren't politically informed.
And that's not a knock on them.
Good for them.
They know a lot about other shit.
But most people don't know that much about politics and government and how it works.
And there's a lot more of them than there are of the informed ones.
So you end up getting the, you know, the opinion of low information people.
And those people are particularly susceptible to political propaganda.
So there's a lot of problems with voting.
However, there's a flip side to that, which is that under the system that we live in, in many ways, voting is the Achilles heel of the ruling elite.
You know, the truth is that if you have a system that's a completely rigged game, they can rig the economy, they can rig the media, they can rig academia, all these other things, but everyone still gets a vote.
If people wise up, they can use that as a tool, you know?
So there is that.
And as unfortunate as it is, it's really kind of tragic in a way that Donald Trump was the guy to be the like, I'm the against the establishment billionaire from New York who's friends with Hillary Clinton.
I think that's somewhat the proof, though, that the wise up idea doesn't work because the wise up is actually just someone else promising you different free goods and you go, oh, well, I'll try the new guy.
The issues with the system of people continuously promising you the free goods.
Yes no, I think that's absolutely right.
Um, but if you are the uh ruling elite, you might look at that and go hey, that's a little bit of a concern though right, because we like.
Yes, from our perspective yeah, it really hasn't been demonstrated to get us anywhere better, but from their perspective, it's like oh, if someone runs on, I hate all of you guys and i'm gonna overturn this whole thing.
That's pretty attractive to the average voter.
It's the average voter, but to the powers, it be.
That system just allows a new thing to come in, like.
In other words, like, I mean, you talk about all the time.
How many things did Obama lie about?
That he didn't change wars and those kind of things.
So to them, you know, it's like they're both playing for the same team.
They pretend like they're going to do something.
They get in there.
They do the exact same thing.
So the fact that the power structure continues to exist helps everybody that has that power structure yeah, so so the voting anybody out is just an illusion of the system, where they get to promise you that they're going to do something different that they never execute on yes yes uh 100 agree, um.
The other thing that uh ends up happening right, is that and this is a really, really dangerous thing with the, the language I was talking about before, where you, you know, they use these terms rights um, it's a real perversion of essentially what we believe in, because that's kind of what we're all about is is rights.
Natural Rights and Liberty00:14:52
You know, and that's kind of the whole Enlightenment classical, Liberal to libertarian tradition is believing that human beings have rights.
You know you, you can, if you don't um believe that human beings have rights, and I mean like natural rights the, the type of rights that libertarians care about you get yourself into some very um, difficult and evil uh situations like if you're, if you were just um a consequentialist or like a utilitarian right, and you're just saying like well, I believe in whatever's best for society, or something like that.
You know um, then you, you know, there's like these old libertarian, like thought experiments but uh, the one that I really like to use is, um, you know, if you, if you go to the doctor's office for a checkup and he just uh uh, sedates you put, puts you unconscious and uh, kills you, harvests your organs um uh, he could probably save like seven lives with your organs.
Right there's, somebody needs a kidney transplant, someone needs a heart transplant, a liver transplant, whatever you know.
Um, so that would, by a pure utilitarian standard, be a good, a noble act.
I gotta I, I gotta challenge that and that to me, in order for it to fall into the definite definition of being utilitarian, is that it's actually helping that guy as well.
So it's like well, utilitarian is the greatest good for the greatest number of people.
Right, so you're, you would save seven lives and only cost one life.
Okay, so i'm just saying, if your goal was just what's best for the larger number of people, and that's the, that's the true definition of being utilitarian.
Well yeah, I mean I could.
Okay, I'll take your word for it.
Well, let me just look it up so I'm not getting this wrong because now, you know, sometimes now you made me question whether I'm saying this right or not.
Hold on.
Okay, maybe I'm using the word incorrectly, but then I would say that just if you were just saying a consequentialist approach or just like what ends up being better for the group, then you know what I'm saying?
You run into a problem there where just killing one person can help a lot of other people out.
Or another example of that would be like, look, if you just rob from one person and spray, you know, divide their money up evenly with the rest of the community, you've helped more people than you've hurt.
But the problem with that is that like it's obvious in front of all of us that it's like, yeah, but that's like, you don't really have a right to do that to that one person.
You don't have a right to kill that person to help some other people.
And then you kind of end up getting back toward individual rights and self-ownership and all of that good stuff, right?
If you don't have that, anyway, so this is like what we're all about is this kind of belief in natural rights.
And this is how you get to a voluntary marketplace and all these great things.
But what happens now is that the people who are the biggest villains, the people who violate rights the most call everything they're doing rights.
And this is kind of the distinction between negative and positive rights.
So if they take money from you, a libertarian like us might look at that and be like, hey, you violated this person's rights.
But they're like, well, no, I'm giving this money to someone else and that's their right to the money.
So if you stand up for your rights, you're now violating that person's rights, just like with the voting stuff.
And it's very dangerous when you start calling all of these things rights because it makes it politically impossible to take them away without being labeled in this very Orwellian sense.
The person who's actually standing up for someone's rights gets labeled as the one who's denying somebody rights.
So I remember, you know, like when Obamacare first passed and it'd be like three years later and the Republicans would be, you know, pretending that they wanted to appeal, repeal Obamacare.
And then what would the talking point be?
Well, you want to strip people's rights to health care away from them.
And you're like, but this was just the thing three years ago.
They're just saying, let's go back to what we just had.
Like, we don't like this system.
It's not working well.
Let's go back to not having this system.
And it's like, well, you, you want to violate people's rights.
It's like these rights didn't exist just a few minutes ago.
And this is always true with like government spending in general.
I mean, if you were just proposing to go back to the spending levels of three years ago, people would be like, these are like insane draconian cuts.
How are we going to live with this, like, you know, like with all of these cuts?
And you're like, but we just lived this way three years ago.
And it's like, no, that's in the past.
This is all now basically just assumed as the starting point.
And this happens with voting a lot.
So already this is the real problem.
I think, you know, this is the ratchet effect stuff, right?
That it's very, very easy to expand the powers of the government.
It's very, very difficult to bring it back.
And if you, if you expand it five clicks, the best you can ever get is like one click back.
You know, you never like, and then the thing just keeps growing and growing.
But so in the year 2020, we overhauled the voting system and now everybody's voting by mail.
And now, if anyone moves to be like, hey, hey, hey, let's go back to the system that we have.
Well, you can guess what are they going to be accused of doing?
Well, this is voter suppression.
You're violating people's voting rights.
What do you mean they can't vote from mail?
This is how we've always done it as of yesterday, you know, like, and so this is like what's going on right now is that there are these attempts on state levels by Republicans to be like, hey, we don't really like this.
We don't like this voting by mail thing.
Let's go back to how we used to do it.
And the Democrats are going, this is an attack, you know, an attack on voting rights, not seen since Jim Crow or all of these things.
And in some weird way, if you, you know, follow their Orwellian speak, they're kind of right.
Because yeah, you're right.
We haven't really rolled back voting rights at this drastic of a level since whenever, whatever period in time you want to think of.
But we also haven't expanded them like we did last year ever.
So, you know, if you're missing that point, where whatever's already been done just becomes the given.
And now it's like, well, you're taking away from the starting point.
They're like, but the starting point just got instituted just like five minutes ago.
I guess on this one, the Republicans are going to have to figure out how to print more ballots than the Democrats that the Democrats decide, hey, we need a different system here, which isn't advocating for a really good solution.
That's kind of like advocating Republicans need to offer more free goods so that at least they can get in power and then unwind, you know, government benefits, which doesn't really even make sense.
But if I, sadly, we never really got an investigation into the election.
So we don't know if there was voter fraud.
Right.
Right.
And there's this, there's this thing where it's like, and this is one of the things that I just hate about democracy in general, not actually about democracy, but about the way democracy is discussed, is that it is just viewed as an a priori good.
If you're talking about democracy, if you ever hear it discussed on in the news or, you know, in written about in newspapers or in any type of like political environment, it's just good.
You're not allowed to ever dissect it.
No argument ever really needs to be presented for why it's good.
It's just an a priori.
Like democracy is good.
And so of course, the expansion of voting rights, you know, rights has to be good.
I mean, who's against rights?
What do you not like rights?
What do you not like democracy?
Are you insane?
You know, and that, so that's it.
It's like you're not allowed to ever go like, well, actually, why is this good?
How does it make sense?
Why, why is it good that more people have a say in our government?
Why?
Like, what does that mean?
I mean, at the end of it, you're just the 51% are going to rule over the 49%.
So why is it necessarily good?
Why should that necessarily be the case?
Why shouldn't the 49% rule over the 51%?
What's more moral about that?
Just because you have more numbers?
Like, there's no logic to this.
And the idea of expanding voting rights, like more people voting, it kind of sounds nice on some level.
But if you really think about it, there's not really a strong argument for it.
I mean, like, let's say we, let's say we limited voting, right, to only people who had read a newspaper in the last three years.
And if you haven't read one newspaper in the last three years, you lose your voting rights.
Now, that would be a tremendous, whatever their language would be, you know, that would disenfranchise the voting rights of millions of Americans.
But there's a kind of strong argument that it'd be a good thing, right?
I mean, I'm not even saying that's the way to go, but like you could make that argument.
You could make an argument that like, yeah, well, I mean, if you can't be bothered to put in the minimal amount of effort to inform yourself about what's going on, why should you have a vote?
Now, again, I'm not advocating this.
I'm not saying there wouldn't be problems with the implementation of this or how they would.
I'm just saying that in theory, it's not such a slam dunk that that would be a bad thing.
And yet it would be, you know, disenfranchising millions of people's rights to vote.
And so like anyway, you're just, you're not like really allowed to think these things through or have a conversation about it.
But, you know, that's what we do.
I think the issue with what you were saying of like creating some sort of a voting standard, it becomes very similar to like the conversation about gun rights.
Hey, let's have reasonable gun control.
Well, who gets to decide what's reasonable?
What kind of standard do you put intact?
So like the way I don't fully understand the gerrymandering, but somehow I guess Republicans have more control over these districts and they're able to rig it for more votes.
Whoever will control the system by which the criteria or whatever the test is for voting, they're going to figure out how to limit the other team, which is a problem.
That's the whole name of the game.
And in general, I think it is true that high turnout tends to favor Democrats.
And so Republicans are more in the business of suppressing the turnout and Democrats are more in the business of rallying it up.
Part of the, to me, the biggest question to establish on that one is, does the larger voter turnout because it's being easier, is that in part because of illicit votes?
Is that because when we weaken the standard, they're able to forge more, you know, they're able to sneak more people that are not supposed to be voting through.
They're able to fake more ballots.
Or is it actually that people who should be voting are now allowed or not should be voting, but people have a fully legitimate vote legally are now able to vote.
Yeah, well, it's, but your question in itself is, by the nature of it, is an impossible one to answer because you're asking how much is being snuck.
And the whole point of sneaking is that we don't really know.
We don't know.
We can kind of look at some information and take a reasonable guess.
So, but the idea that you're just supposed to unquestionably nod along an agreement, that the more people that vote, the better.
Even if we're talking about legal votes, as you just were saying, even if we're talking about American citizens who are 18 or older, like legal, legally legitimate votes, the idea that we're just supposed to say as a given, that that is, you know, a good doesn't make sense to me.
I don't see a strong argument for that.
And in fact, there are other arguments that can come in.
Forget just the libertarian ones, right?
There are practical arguments that you can bring up.
So for example, right, the libertarian, to me, the pure libertarian argument is like, you shouldn't, you don't get a say in someone else's freedom.
And like, you know, like whatever obvious libertarian thought experiment you could use.
But like if slavery was 60%, you know, had a 60% approval rating.
And so in a national election, 60% of people would vote for slavery.
That doesn't change the morality of slavery.
Like it has no effect.
It means nothing.
It doesn't change the character of the action if more or less people support it.
And if we lived in a world where if we were living in slavery times and there was going to be a national referendum on slavery, and this is what was going to decide it, we're either going to keep the institution of slavery going or we're going to abolish it based on this national vote.
And someone was like, well, but I really want to make sure we get out the vote in this pro-slavery Confederate area.
Why am I supposed to just support that?
Like, why, why am I supposed to just think, well, that's got to be a good thing.
I mean, it's an a priori inherent good thing if more people vote, because I wouldn't want to disenfranchise their voting rights.
It's like, no, fuck their voting rights.
I don't care about that.
I don't recognize that as a right.
I do recognize this slave's right to be free.
So I would be fine with doing everything you could to suppress the vote from the pro-slavery side and get out the vote from the anti-slavery side because that's what I care about is human liberty.
I don't care about your right to write something down on a piece of paper or pull a lever.
Like that doesn't mean anything to me.
So that's just a pure theoretical.
That's not the situation we're in today.
Not that people aren't enslaved, but that there's not 40% who are opposed to it.
But more practically, right?
Like just if you were just looking at this from, forget the libertarian philosophy, right?
Which is what we believe in, but just if you're looking at the country and the state of America, it's like you have now a situation where after this last vote, tens of millions of Americans don't believe in the system anymore, which, you know, I think is probably more a good thing than a bad thing.
It's certainly an interesting opportunity.
But for all these people freaking out about, you know, like the Capitol insurrection and all of this, wouldn't they kind of go like, well, I don't know, overhauling this whole voting system and having this vote by mail had a lot to do with why these people don't believe in this system and see it as legitimate.
Cuts Sport Business Apparel00:02:53
It's not just that Donald Trump told them that, you know what I mean?
Like it's also partly has to do with the fact that, you know, it's like when you talk about the terrorists, like they don't, you know, the like Al-Qaeda isn't just attacking America because bin Laden told them to.
I mean, he might tell them to, but there's also a reason why they were, you know, convinced by what he was saying.
It makes it a lot easier if they've seen America, you know, slaughtering people in their countries.
So in the same way, it's like, well, what Donald Trump said was much, was a much easier sell when we just overhauled the whole voting system.
So what practical effect do you think this is going to have on the country to overhaul the whole system again?
Anyway, so.
Make me think a lot here, Davey Smith.
Yeah, that's my job.
That's my job.
Once every couple of years, I make you think.
It's in the contract.
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All right.
Let's get back into the show.
This bill, this For the People Act, HR1, that Nancy Pelosi is pushing.
This is really a sweeping overhaul of the voting system.
And what it would essentially do is it would basically eviscerate states running their elections.
And they would all have to conform to the federal standard.
Okay.
So the, you know, there's different states that are that some states already have voter ID rules that would all be wiped out.
Now you would all be, you know, conforming to the federal standard.
Which is what.
Well, well, it's not even the federal standard.
The old, it's funny.
The old conversation just about suppressing the vote was requiring a license or identification in order to vote.
And the idea that you could vote without, you can't do any like, listen, government shouldn't be a part of our lives.
If a cop stops you, maybe you shouldn't have to have that interaction where you have to give them an ID.
I'm fine with all that, but you can't fucking do anything without an ID.
Like, that's just crazy to think that you can do, like, I can't buy alcohol without it.
Sure, sure.
So, so to your point, stated differently, right?
Because I agree with you that I don't like the whole show me your papers state.
Like, I really don't like that.
I'm against that, right?
But to your point, just stated differently, you would go, if it is oppressive and restrictive and racist or whatever other term they call it to be forced to present ID in order to vote, then also it is every, you know, state building is oppressive and racist and restrictive.
Amtrak, airplanes, cops, you know, like everything you can think of, you know, liquor stores, as you said, like all of these things, if you're going to make the argument that requiring ID is wrong for X, Y, and Z reason, well, then it shouldn't just apply to voting.
And of course, in the democratic worldview, the voting, all these other rights are kind of like little things on the side, but the one most important right is the right to vote.
And that's why it's like, ah, you know, your right to alcohol or your right to enter a government building or get on a plane.
You know, that's all kind of silliness.
But the right to vote, this is the precious right that comes above all others.
And we're just saying that's bullshit.
That's complete bullshit.
Like the right to vote, the only reason I would ever care about the right to vote is to the degree that it allowed you to vote for freedom.
And if you were voting for your other rights, then maybe it's a useful tool.
But I don't even see a compelling argument for that.
But so this bill would eviscerate all state ID laws.
You would no longer be allowed to force people to show an ID.
It would also include automatic voter registration.
So anyone who goes to the DMV, anyone who's on government social services, like Medicaid or food stamps, if you attend a public college, you're all automatically enrolled to vote.
All people that would normally vote for Democrats.
I mean, DMV, not so much, but public college or public goods.
Well, it's just what it's doing is just ensuring that way more people will vote.
We'll make it way easier.
But that's not just that.
That's your core customer are the people who you're giving these social benefits to of college.
So yeah, you want to make sure that those people are voting for their own benefits.
Well, that's right.
And like, as we were saying before, it's, it's this dynamic where this is presented as an a priori good, that more people voting has to be better.
But like I was saying in these other examples, that's not exactly so true.
And if you just think this through, there's no reason to just accept as a given that this is a good thing.
I mean, we talked about this before on the show, but the idea that you're going to automatically enroll somebody to vote.
Now, registering to vote is not a tremendously difficult process.
It's really not that hard, you know?
But why is it that someone who wouldn't be willing to put forward this minimum amount of effort is somebody you really want to be voting?
Why is that that the person who wouldn't go through 15 minutes of work to get the right to vote now having it done for them?
Why is this inherently supposed to be a good thing?
Because I can think of like 50 good arguments for why that's really not such a great thing.
That somebody who is that unmotivated to even care about voting to begin with, having all the work done for them, I just don't really trust that this is somebody who's a well-informed citizen who's going to be casting their vote after giving it a lot of thought.
And I think that those people tend to be the ones who are more easily propagandized or bought off.
So I don't know.
Now, here's another interesting part of it that I think you might find a little alarming.
Non-citizens are obligated to identify themselves and opt out.
So, okay, they will all be automatically automatically enrolled.
They will be automatically registered to vote and they are now obligated to identify themselves and opt out.
So in other words, if you're a non-citizen, but you get food stamps or if you've gone to a public college or perhaps whatever, one of these other programs, you would be automatically registered to vote.
What's the penalty if you don't opt out?
Is it treason?
It should be treason.
That's it.
You're voting against the public interest.
So that's a fascinating question you ask, Rob.
You say, if these non-citizens are going to be automatically enrolled and then they're obligated to identify themselves and opt out, you might ask, what is the punishment if they don't identify themselves and opt out?
No criminal penalties.
That's a problem.
Yeah, that might be a little bit of a problem.
There are no criminal penalties if they do not opt out.
Opting out also, it requires you to take action, which means that you're required, like you mentally have to take ownership over your decision to go, I opted out.
And you're actually creating the norm that people that are not supposed to vote are included within the voting rolls.
It's not going to be too long before it just becomes socially acceptable.
Well, they included me.
So yeah, I'm going to go do it, especially if you're not going to penalize them in a very harsh way.
That's insanity.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, there's a little bit more of the insight.
Oh, it gets worse?
Oh, but wait, there's more.
Also, so in addition to people being automatically registered and voter ID being banned.
What's the theory to automatically registering them?
Like, why would you even take the approach of saying that this person should be allowed to vote unless they preclude themselves?
Rob, I've already explained the theory to you.
This is the greatest expansion of voting rights since the civil rights era, blah, But you're expanding it to the people that don't have the they shouldn't have the right.
You're getting hung up on the details.
But in addition, if you're registered or if you're not registered, anyone can show up on election day to vote.
They will be required to sign a statement that they're a legal voter.
Again, with no criminal penalties.
So this is, look, I mean.
It's hardly a stretch or conspiratorial or anything like that to say that this is the Democrats game.
Now, this hasn't been passed yet into law.
It's got a decent shot of going through.
It looks like it's going to pass the House.
But regardless, even if it doesn't pass the Senate or doesn't pass the House, which I think is very unlikely, but even if it doesn't become the law of the land, it is kind of revealing and some useful information to have of what the Democrats plan is here.
Okay.
Now, you can kind of tie this together with some of the immigration stuff that Joe Biden's already been doing through executive order and executive fiat and stuff like that.
That this is the plan here is to just have that they are trying to set up a system where the Democrats are going to basically win forever.
We're going to be the United States of everybody.
Yeah.
Well, that's everyone can vote.
Doesn't matter.
Free benefits for everyone.
Print as much currency as you can.
Let it go belly up.
Yeah.
Now, I will say that this is, it puts a lot of, I would say, some of the libertarian open borders types in a difficult spot.
I mean, a lot of them won't recognize it and just go like, well, we're against this and we're against that and whatever.
But the reality of the situation is that this is the plan is to say like, okay, we've got millions of illegal immigrants coming in to the country.
I mean, I don't know what the numbers for 2020 were.
I imagine it was a little bit slowed down with all the COVID stuff and the travel restrictions.
But, you know, we were having like a million a year legally coming in and then a few hundred thousand illegal immigrants a year coming in, something like that.
Again, it's hard to know the exact numbers.
The estimates for how many illegal immigrants were living here are something between 20, 30 million, maybe a little bit more.
And, okay, so we've got tens of millions of illegal immigrants living in the country.
And now this is going to be like basically make it impossible to ever determine how many of them are voting in elections.
And in an election like in 2020 or in 2016, or for that matter, in previous years, you know, 10 million votes, you know, especially if concentrated in the right areas can really make a big difference in who ends up winning.
This is going to shatter everything in the past if it were to go through.
And that the fact that you're going to have so many people who otherwise wouldn't be voting automatically enrolled.
Even if they're not automatically enrolled, they can still show up and just sign their name.
They don't have to show ID.
They don't have to prove where they live.
They don't have to do any of this shit, right?
In addition to that, they're going to fight to roll back any of the vote by mail stuff.
So voting is just going to be a whole different thing going forward than it's ever been before.
And I'm sorry, I'm just not seeing any argument for why this is a good thing.
And I can think of quite a few for why it's not a good thing.
So by the way, I'm open.
I'm open to arguments.
If someone's got an argument for like why someone who cares about human liberty should really be like enthusiastically supporting all of this, I really am open to this.
I've just been reading about this bill today and kind of thinking about all of this stuff.
But it seems to me that this is now, if you were a Democrat who just wanted complete power over the system, then I really get why this is good.
This is really, really good.
I mean, if I were like a progressive Democrat, I would be all about this because look, you're going, we're going to get all of these low information people who don't even really care about voting that much, weren't going to bother to register.
Some of them aren't the person they're claiming to be.
Some of them aren't living at the address they claim.
Some are illegal.
Some are legal.
Some are whatever.
A lot of young people, all these people who just don't bother to show up.
And we pretty much have complete control of the culture, of the media, of Hollywood, of all of these things.
So now all of these campaigns, we're just going to sweep them up.
You know, eight out of 10 of them are going to end up voting for us.
So for them, I think this is like fantastic.
Just I don't see how the Democrats taking complete control of the country is very good for anyone other than them.
There won't be a Democrat out there who defends the idea that illegals are allowed to vote.
The conversation will only, and they will ignore everything else, but they will only focus on nope.
We just want, you know, every American to have the easy access to voting.
We don't want them to be restricted.
That's not what democracy is about.
Biden's talking point, I only saw one article, but he was even saying like it's a war of ideas.
So, you know, let people, as many people vote, if you've got good ideas, you're going to win.
There won't be any conversation about the fact that they're trying to, you know what I mean?
That's not going to be defended or discussed by them in any capacity.
The Republicans will bring it up and they'll just say, no, you're just trying to, you guys are just being racist and trying to fearmonger all this shit.
Now, the irony is that, Joe, and this is, you're exactly right, that Joe Biden will say, well, look, it's a battle of ideas.
Let's let everybody vote and we can have those ideas, but you're not allowed to have the battle of ideas of should everybody be voting.
That's just got to be that idea has got to just be taken as a given and you're not allowed to push back on this.
And I think you're exactly right that this is, it's brilliant.
It's, it's like everything about this is so brilliant from the Democratic side because they can position themselves as we're just for voting rights and you're the ones restricting voting rights.
And so we're standing over here on the side of democracy, which after all is what gives the government its legitimacy or whatever, you know, their bullshit, which the Republicans have completely bought into as well.
So once you, once you accept that premise, it's like, yeah, well, then why shouldn't we all be for this?
But for the rest of us, I don't know.
And I'll say this, right?
Even to libertarians, and I know there's a lot of libertarians who listen to this show who are completely opposed to immigration restrictions of any kind.
And I will say that there's a lot of really smart, really great libertarians who feel that way, who are for open borders or stuff like that.
And okay, I get that there is a strong libertarian argument to be made for that.
But can't you at least admit that this is pretty bad?
Like even if you don't want to do anything, you don't want to advocate for any type of government restrictions of immigration, which, you know, to be honest, I, you know, I don't like either.
But even if you feel that way, can't you admit that like, okay, but there's kind of a problem with somebody coming to the country who's never paid into the system and then just coming in and getting a vote over how tax dollars are allocated or getting a vote over what, you know, what degree of freedom the rest of the population gets to have.
State Libertarian Restrictions00:07:51
Don't get me wrong, there's problems with American citizens voting too.
I'm not just like singling out non-citizens.
But can't we be honest about that and say, yeah, I'm not so sure that this is very good for the prospects for liberty.
It's funny.
There might be a way to sell it, will never work because no matter how the Republicans sell it, they'll just be called racist.
But they almost got to say, like, we want to make sure that responsible Americans' votes count.
And if you're allowing everyone who's too irresponsible to even get themselves an ID, go and vote, you almost got to make like a media campaign of white, irresponsible people being and like the decisions that they make.
This is going to allow Klansmen to vote.
Yeah, you got to like follow me for a day and make it like, here's the irresponsible people that the Democrats want influencing your decisions.
And so like that, yeah, they almost got to somehow sell it like we want responsible votes to count and you're watering down the votes by making sure all these irresponsible people, you got to have the portrayal of the guy, the broken car, he's leaving his kid in it while he goes to vote, just everything that's going wrong in his life.
And just make sure that every person you portray as being irresponsible is white.
Yeah.
What I'll tell you what does surprise me about all of this is that I would think that the ruling elite would be a little bit more motivated to keep this whole thing glued together.
You know what I mean?
And even if you just look at like the, if you just look at the tens of millions of people who do not believe that the last election was legitimate and you look at the storming the capital, like I would think that to some degree, that'd be like, ooh, if you're like, you know, Nancy Pelosi or something like that, you'd be like, look, we've got this whole thing working very well here.
We've got a really great deal.
We've got this whole system rigged.
All our friends are making out with tons of cash and power.
And we're doing, we're doing very well.
I really don't want to see angry Americans storming the Capitol.
You know what I mean?
Like, you, and, and I would think that there would be some motivation to really try to like, like, I was going to say prove, but that's the wrong word, but really try to increase confidence in this, in, in the system.
You know, you wouldn't want people waking up to this.
And this seems to be the exact opposite.
So I got to say, I'm a little bit confused as to what their motivation is to, I mean, obviously, I understand the motivation to have permanent control.
And maybe that's, I just answered my own question and that that's just so tempting that they can't resist the urge to grab permanent power.
But I'm surprised that it's not more of a of like a hindrance in their own thinking to be like, let's not risk everything, you know?
But I guess not.
So that'll be, you know, this is going to be interesting.
It does seem to me like there's some pretty obvious moves to start opening up a little bit of the economy more.
It seems like there's, you know, I know in like Los Angeles and Michigan, they're opening up restaurants and stuff, even though the COVID data doesn't really support that at that time, we really had to ban indoor dining.
But at this point, like in Michigan, I think the deaths are worse than when they banned indoor dining.
But now they're going to open it back up again.
Of course, Texas just opened.
Other states are flirting around with this stuff.
New York is at least moving in a better direction.
And so I don't know.
You know, if you were there were a lot of people out there on the Republican side who said that this was an intentional effort by, you know, governors and politicians to tank Donald Trump's economy to make it harder for him to get reelected.
I don't think me and you ever took a conclusive side on that.
We discussed it as a possibility.
Their argument is looking stronger than ever, as you see, just a couple months after Joe Biden's in all of these uh states starting to reverse course.
Um, and so you know, you wonder, you wonder what's going on here.
Yeah well, it's a little bit strange uh, that the Republican states that are now formally like Texas why didn't Texas do that before the election?
Like I get, I get all the blue states, but Texas, like I mean why?
Why did they suddenly change their mind?
Yeah, I mean it's, it's a, it's a good question.
You look at Uh Desantis in Florida who, who kept the state opened, and he's he's been getting nothing but praise it.
Just, you know what it seems like whoever the real power is behind the scenes, like whoever really exerts power and influence, said, you're staying, you're staying shut till the election.
Yeah yeah well, it's I.
I mean again, I don't know that that's the case, but I think the argument for that is stronger than it's ever been.
I mean the.
The truth is they obviously couldn't just do it the week Joe Biden got in, or it would have been too obvious, but it's really only been a couple months.
It's not like Joe Biden has done anything magical.
Now you can argue that the vaccine or or whatever is, is getting out there, but really, if you look at the percentage of the population that's been vaccinated, if you wanted to do the whole Fauci, follow the science thing, it really doesn't.
It doesn't follow their science at least.
Um, don't get me wrong.
I I don't think any of these lockdowns are saying we need more masks.
Yeah right, exactly so it's just, it's just a little bit strange and and hard to exactly see what uh, their goal is.
But um anyway, I guess i'm i'm happy that it's nudging in the right direction.
None of these lockdowns should have happened in the first place.
They're just have done nothing to mitigate the virus and they're, you know, just outrageous violations of, you know, basic human rights and the you know whole spirit of the bill of rights and constitution and all that.
But uh yeah, it's interesting, it's interesting to to keep an eye on that, interesting to keep an eye on all of this.
Um, and yeah, all right, I guess we're gonna, uh we'll wrap up there oh some, uh some stuff.
So I will uh shit, I meant to mention this up front, but i'm gonna be speaking at the uh, NEW Jersey, uh State Libertarian Party convention, uh that on on march 20th here in New Jersey.
Uh you, I think there are still some seats available for that.
If you guys want to come out, I also believe you can attend it virtually like watch the uh the speeches online.
Uh go, check that out.
I'll tweet out some information about it later on.
Today there are like some covet restrictions, so it's not going to be able to be as big a crowd as we we would like to have there.
Um, but there are.
I believe there are still some seats available, so that's going to fill up quickly.
If you want to come out, I i'd appreciate that.
Come uh, say hi, come watch me.
Uh, give a speech to the State Libertarian Party.
Uh, i'll tweet out all that information, so check it.
Uh, at Comic Dave Smith, i'll.
I'll tweet that out.
Uh, and Pork Fest, we're.
We're gonna be up there thursday.
Uh, so get your tickets Tickets.
You still, I think, one week left on the early beer tickets for $30.
You said you're doing Freedom Fest, which is out in South Dakota.
I just booked Childerberg.
I'll be, if you're in Texas, I'm out to Childerberg.
That's going to be fucking fun.
And hopefully, you might line up some more of these, you know, more of these libertarian events.
They're fun.
Yeah.
They're a great time.
If you can make it out to any of these events, to Childerberg, to Freedom Fest, to Porkfest, to the New Jersey State Libertarian Party Convention, try to make it out to any of them.
They can.
It's always a good hang.
A lot of fun, interesting people there.
So, yeah.
All right.
That's our show for today.
Thanks for listening.
Oh, follow Rob on Twitter at Robbie the Fire and check out Run Your Mouth, Rob's other great podcast.