Dave Smith details his Texas travel ordeal and potential 2024 Libertarian presidential run, then defends Derek Chauvin's guilty verdict while criticizing both police defenders and activists. He analyzes Florida's new Anti-Riot Act, supporting accountability for inaction but condemning clauses criminalizing peaceful protesters nearby. Smith argues road-blocking is aggression justifying lethal force, likening police to a "gang of the state" deserving no sympathy when incarcerated, ultimately framing civil unrest as an entitlement issue violating non-aggression principles. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Roll Back The State00:14:35
Fill her up.
You are listening to the Gas Digital Network.
We need to roll back the state.
We spy on all of our own citizens.
Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
You're listening to part of the problem on the Gas Digital Network.
Here's your host, James Smith.
What is up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I'm Dave Smith.
I'm very happy to be joined by my partner in crime, Robbie the Fire, Bernstein, the king of the caulks.
It's good to be back.
I apologize for this week's schedule getting all screwed up.
As I assume most of you know, I was in Texas.
As I assume many of you know, I lost my wallet.
There was a whole thing.
Update.
I got an email this morning.
United says they've found my wallet.
So we'll see.
I'm not going to believe it until.
How'd you get back on?
How'd you get on a flight back?
How did that work?
Oh, it's fucking stressful.
You got to go to TSA and kind of, they ask you a bunch of questions.
Dude, it's so ridiculous.
Such a government agency.
So the extra checker butthole?
Yes.
Yeah.
No, pretty much.
Yeah, they do.
They pat you down extra.
They go through all your bags, extra, go through all your shit, just fucking palm fuck every, you know, shirt that you have.
But they have their extra molestation process for people without, well, if you don't have your driver's license, then we're going to have to make this extra fun for us.
But so, you know, you kind of go to them and it's like, look, I got my boarding pass on my phone and shit, and I don't have my ID.
And I'm like, you know, look, I have this report that I filled out that I lost my wallet on the flight coming out here.
And you're like, okay, so I don't have my ID.
So I have to prove who I am.
Well, what I do have, and by the way, this is 100,000% credit to my wife.
I would never have even in a million years thought of this, but I have pictures of all of my ID strictly because my wife took them and she's just smarter than me.
So literally, as soon as I called her, I was like, ah, shit, I lost my wallet.
She's like, I'll send you pictures of all your ID.
I'm like, we have pictures of our ID?
Of course she does.
So I go, I'm like, look, here's what I have, right?
I have pictures of my ID.
I'm also pretty easy to Google.
You can, like, we could, we could, as two rational human beings, in about five seconds here, prove that I am who I am.
None of that is good for the TSA.
They're like, nope, sorry.
Doesn't matter.
Doesn't matter.
We can't accept that.
Not valid.
Nope.
Instead, they have to ask you a million dumb questions.
Anyway, they just grill you for like 20 minutes.
And then eventually they were like, okay, you've passed.
You can come through.
But I have to go with one TSA agent who has to like go through all my shit and pat me down and all this stuff.
Anyway, all that matters is I got home.
It added a little bit of stress because I was just worried that they weren't going to let me on the plane.
And then I'm like, oh, shit.
Well, I'm in Austin.
I got to get home.
I got a wife who's pregnant and a two-year-old.
Got to get back to them.
So I was starting to think about like, what's my alternative here if I can't get on this plane?
Texas is pretty far.
So anyway, whatever.
It all worked out.
I'm back home.
Supposedly they found my wallet.
I'm not going to believe it until I have it back, but that'd be real nice.
So I don't have to get all my, you know, cards and IDs and stuff like that.
But it was a really, really fun trip, man.
Really fun.
Really enjoyed the show with Rogan.
That was legendary, dude.
Oh, well, thank you.
I've gotten an unbelievable response from it.
Probably the best and biggest response I've gotten from any time I've been on Rogan.
This was my sixth time on the show, my fourth time solo on the show.
And this one, I think it was in a lot of ways the best.
Could you turn that off?
I turned it off.
That's what I just did.
And then I'm like.
If you could make it louder and closer to the microphone, that would be great.
Thank you.
It's okay, Rob.
It's our first time doing a podcast together.
So we'll get this.
We'll get the kinks hammered out by episode 600 or wherever the hell we are.
Anyway, it was great.
It was a lot of fun.
We talked about a lot of the shit that I wanted to talk about.
I think, you know, Rogan really gets it.
And it's powerful to use the correct adjective, to have somebody with such a huge platform who's really good on so many of these really important issues.
And on top of that, Rogan's just such a great dude.
Such a great dude, man.
So for all his success and fame and all that, he's just an incredibly sweet, down-to-earth guy.
It was a lot of fun hanging out with him.
Hung out with Scott Horton.
Scott took me out on the boat on Lake Austin.
He's got a boat.
Scott's got a boat.
It's just fucking.
I've met Scott a couple times.
I love Scott, and he's the most knowledgeable person I've ever met.
I would not trust him with a boat.
I've seen him.
He's a boat guy.
He's good on the boat.
Oh, yeah.
He knows everything.
He put the whole thing together himself.
He was great.
It was fun.
It took me out to this dope barbecue place.
He paid because I didn't have a wallet.
So I know Scott Horton a dinner.
And, but yeah, anyway, it was the whole thing.
It was a lot of fun hanging out with him.
And again, another great human being.
So a great trip.
Thank you for all the positive feedback that I've gotten on the episode.
I think I was happy with how it went.
I was glad I got to say a lot of those things to such a big audience.
And, you know, there we go.
A lot of fun.
So let me address now on part of the problem.
What I mentioned on Rogan, which has gotten a lot of buzz and a lot of the Liberty Twitter and the libertarian community talking about this, is that I said, and I meant it, that I am seriously considering running for president on the Libertarian Party ticket for 2024.
I'm thinking about this.
A lot of people have been really trying to push me toward doing this.
And the reason that I'm considering doing this is simply because I just know how to message this shit the way it should be messaged.
And if there's not going to be anybody else who can do that, then I'll step up and do it.
But here's the thing.
I'm only going to do it if my people are on board with me doing it.
So if you want me to run for this, I'll do it.
We could create something really big here, really inspire the Liberty movement to join the Libertarian Party, message the correct way, really force the conversation to go back toward things that matter, like ending the COVID lockdowns, ending the COVID regime, ending the foreign wars, auditing slash ending the Federal Reserve, ending corporate welfare, the really important issues that libertarians have been right about this whole time.
I'll do that.
But what I need is a wave of you people joining the Libertarian Party.
Now, I know a lot of you guys have already done this, but those of you guys who are on the fence, if you're down to do this, then we got to do this.
And the real first step is to get Angela McArdle as the chair of the party.
That's a very important step if we want to do this.
Now, don't get me wrong in what I'm saying here.
Angela is not my, like, how do I put this?
It's not that Angela is my chair of the party.
It's that she's our chair of the party.
Maybe I'm saying this in the wrong way, but what I mean by this is that it's not like, oh, I want her there because she'll do what I ask her to do or something like that.
What I'm saying is that we want her there because she's that damn good.
She is that damn good of a libertarian.
And to have someone that good in the highest position in the party, that will really set, like lay the foundation for a really great campaign in 2024, whether it's me or anybody else.
So that's the mission right now, is to get into the Libertarian Party, do everything you need to do to become a delegate.
Doesn't matter what caucus you're a part of.
Doesn't matter if it's Mises Caucus or one of the other ones.
It's great if you want to join the Mises caucus with us, but it doesn't matter.
But you have to get into the party.
You have to support Angela McArdle for being chair.
And then we could really do something pretty goddamn incredible.
So that's what I'll leave it on that.
I'll give you more information as things move along.
But I'm very seriously looking at this.
When you win, can I be press secretary?
I want to be out there doing what the press on a daily basis.
I've been loyal, done some podcast episodes.
I'm willing to come on the campaign trail.
I want that press secretary job.
I just feel like you've got this inclination to consolidate power and turn against me.
You've done it before on much lower levels.
Do I trust you as press secretary?
Maybe.
I'll let you audition for the role.
We'll find something for you in my cabinet, Rob.
Ministry of Sandwiches.
I'll create a whole new department.
Hell yeah.
I'm just going in the opposite direction.
We're creating new departments now.
Keep all the old ones, plus some sandwiches.
All right.
Do you get a Dave Smith tour bus if you run?
Do they put a new picture on the side?
I have not thought about these logistics.
But look, here's what, look, here's to me are the pros and cons, right?
I am certainly, I mean, look, I don't know who else would be running against us.
You know, in 2020, the candidates were a college professor and a podcaster.
So it's not as if, you know, I don't have the credentials or something like that in order to be serious in this.
Now, before that, they picked two governors.
There are other people who are Congress, former congressmen or have more serious titles or serious, you know.
And so there's something to be said for that.
And there's something to be said for, you know, different things that a lot of people bring to the table.
What I bring to the table is that I can get on, I have a lot of media experience.
I've been on all types of cable news shows.
I've been on all the biggest podcasts in the world.
And I can really deliver the message the way it needs to be delivered.
And that is something that libertarians haven't had since Ron Paul and Harry Brown.
And to me, that's the most important thing.
And that's the essence of why I'm considering this.
I would really prefer not to.
I would really prefer not to do this.
I very much like my life, my career, my family.
I really like the way things are right now.
It's not that I want to do this.
It's that we need somebody who can deliver the message the way it needs to be delivered.
That's what I bring to the table.
Now, you can say that, you know, I don't know, whatever, that I don't, I'm not a politician, which is certainly true.
But I don't know.
To me, that's kind of the most libertarian thing.
You can say that they'll find old clips or controversy of me or jokes that I've made.
But honestly, that doesn't really worry me.
To me, that's like the easiest transition to talk about what we really want to talk about.
Let some corporate press, you know, pundit be outraged about some joke that I made.
Like, okay, how easy is the transition there?
Okay, you're outraged about jokes.
I'm outraged about genocide.
So I'm glad that you guys have more outrage about a joke I told than the genocides going on, but I'd like to end those.
It's really to me just not that hard to battle around these things and refocus on what matters.
And that's what my campaign would be about.
Only the things that really matter.
And we're not focusing on privatizing sidewalks or repealing driver license laws.
We are focusing on ending wars, ending mass incarceration, ending banker bailouts, ending generational debt, ending lockdowns, you know, the shit that matters.
Good slogan.
Focus on the shit that matters.
Yeah, I'm just workshopping things here.
Hey, is Bear going to be a part of this campaign?
Yeah, VP.
Obviously.
Why would you even?
I'm just happy you're keeping the ticket together.
I just wanted to check in, you know, if you're first putting it together.
I am nothing if not loyal to Hate Speech the Bear.
So anyway, I'll consider this, but I, you know, you guys gotta, you guys gotta have my back on this.
And if you don't, then we won't do it, and that's fine.
But if we do, we'll change the world.
So let's go do that.
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Reacting To Police Response00:11:59
All right, let's get back into the show.
Okay, let's talk about some things that happened over this last week.
Again, I do apologize.
My plan was to record a podcast as soon as I got to my hotel.
I wasn't able to check in right away for, you know, they have this ridiculous policy about needing an identification to get into your hotel room.
So anyway, so I wasn't able to do that.
And then the flight home ended up, you know, being a whole thing.
So I do apologize for that.
We're doing this episode.
We'll do another episode tomorrow, and then we'll only be one behind.
We'll make that up at some point over the next week.
So obviously, the big news over this last week, which we're a few days late talking about, but that's not necessarily a bad thing because you have a little bit more time to reflect on this stuff, is the Derek Chauvin guilty verdict.
Guilty on all counts.
So let me just say, just to recap, I really was not confident that he was going to be found guilty when the trial first started.
I did not follow the trial like super closely, like watch every detail and keep up with all the news every day.
But I did say on the show that what really turned it around for me was when the police department threw him under the bus.
And even they came out and said, yeah, this was not consistent with his training.
That was a big moment to me where I started to say, oh, okay, they might get this guy.
Because that is usually the defense, as BS of a defense as it is.
That's usually the defense that gets cops off.
As well, this was consistent with their training.
And if it's consistent with their training, then you can't really blame them because they're just doing their job and just following orders and blah, blah, blah.
As bullshit a defense as that is, that's usually how they get off.
More often they get off with a grand jury that way and it doesn't even go to trial.
But there's still, you know, that's still the defense that they usually get.
And once they took that away from him, I think he was in a lot of trouble.
I also think that it's just, you know, the guy was on his fucking neck.
And I know people argue the details of this.
Like, no, it wasn't the neck.
It was lower than the neck.
Like, okay.
So he was on the back of his lungs.
Like, all right.
He was on him for nine fucking minutes.
And like three minutes after he was unconscious, possibly dead already.
That's very hard, I think, for people to look at, see the video of that, and feel like that guy should walk.
I understand that completely.
I will say, and I'm not sure, let's just start with just your feelings on the actual incident and what should have happened in that trial.
I will say this.
I think the guy's fucking guilty and I think he deserves it.
Now, I am not a lawyer.
I'm not a legal expert.
I've heard some people making legal arguments about whether he should, you know, have gotten murdered too or not, or whether it should be some other charge.
I don't know.
That's not really my area of expertise.
I kind of focus on the bigger picture and the philosophy and what I think is right and wrong.
And this guy is goddamn wrong.
And I'm sorry.
I don't care if the guy was on drugs.
I don't care if the guy was, you know, had a criminal history.
I don't, it's not a binary where I have to say this guy was either a saint and did everything perfect or this cop was a fucking criminal.
The truth is, after watching the full body cam video a couple times, the guy was having like a hysterical panic attack.
He was definitely on drugs, but he wasn't a violent threat.
And once he was cuffed and on the ground, there was just absolutely no need to sit on the guy for fucking nine minutes.
And I'm sorry.
Like that, to me, I just, I have no sympathy for that.
Cops go around locking people up.
Cops will lock somebody up for a gun possession charge, not even doing anything.
Literally, we'll put someone in handcuffs and throw them in a cage for having a gun, a basic natural human right.
And they'll throw you in jail for that.
They'll throw you in jail for drug possession.
And they know that these crimes carry decade-long sentences at times.
And they don't fucking lose any sleep over that.
So what I'm supposed to like feel terrible that some agent of the state who grabs a fucking dude, throws him on the ground, cuffed, sits on his neck for nine minutes and the guy dies, that he should have to get locked up for that just doesn't do it for me.
I'm fine with this guy going to jail.
I don't know.
Any thoughts on that you have?
I'm fine with your takeaway.
I don't have a counter argument.
I don't want to go back and rewatch that long video.
I just don't want to.
I don't like watching that kind of stuff.
I also would be fine with a lesser charge on account of the fact that I think that this guy's more of a dumbass than anything else.
And he probably shouldn't have been in the job as being a cop.
And I also think, you know, if you're approaching it, you think you're somewhat like, I think he crossed the line of being a total, you know, enjoying his power, utilizing it in the wrong way.
And there's definitely responsibility there.
I also think the fact that the guy had federal in the system, which does create a little bit of a curveball in terms of trying to address the situation, I'd be okay with a lesser charge, but in the overall, actually seeing the cop response, like the responsibility here, I think you're right.
Like it's better.
We're now better as a country that these cops just can't get away with, you know, murdering people.
So I don't know.
I didn't watch the whole trial.
I'm not, I don't want to go back and re-watch that footage.
I watched it once a year ago.
It was pretty painful to watch.
And like you said, I agree with everything you said.
I also would have been okay with if he had, if he got four or five years as opposed to if it was treated as, you know, intentional murder, like I walked outside and shot somebody.
I could see that.
Well, I don't, I guess it's unintentional murder is what he got convicted of because murder too.
Well, he's got like three counts.
I mean, there's enough there that I think he can spend life in jail.
Well, we'll see.
We'll see it sentencing.
He certainly, I don't know if he'll get life, but he's going to go, he's going to be sentenced to a long sentence.
I think probably around 20 years is what I was reading the other day.
But I will say that one of the things that is a real, you know, I was posting about this the other day and I had a couple people like call me a social justice warrior, which is always just so funny, man.
It's like, dude, I fucking, oh my God, like, could the people who call me a Nazi and the people who call me a social justice warrior just get together and battle it out and pick which one I am?
Because it's really hard to get called both.
That'd be a fun debate if we could actually host it.
One to represent each side.
And I'll just moderate.
Like, I don't even have a sake.
Nazi guy made excellent points.
Social justice warrior.
But the thing is this, right?
Is that the problem, and this is one of the major problems in our country, is that everyone's just so goddamn reactionary.
So everyone's reacting against what the other side is doing.
And when you do that, you end up just losing your North Star.
You're not like following anything objective or anything moral.
You're just reacting against what the other side is doing.
Now, it's appropriate sometimes to be reactionary, especially if you're reacting against something really horrible.
And oftentimes, today's reactionaries are reacting against the entire establishment.
And it's hard to not have a little bit of sympathy for that.
Because fuck this whole establishment that commits genocide and robs working people to bail out bankers.
And, you know, like, how do you not, you know, how are you not driven to react against them a little bit?
But, you know, in reacting against that, when you have this, the corporate press kind of race obsession where they make every police encounter where it's, you know, a black person versus a white person and that becomes the whole story.
And then they just ignore the times that cops murder white people.
And, you know, it's like this, like, it's very easy to react against that.
And so then as soon as they're going with their whole narrative, you kind of want to poke holes in that narrative.
And then on top of that, people, and this is true for all of us to some degree, but there's a matter, you know, there's a level of degrees, but people are binary thinkers.
And so everyone's reacting against the other side.
And if you're not reacting against that side, then they go, well, then you must be in this other camp.
And that's basically the only way anyone could call me a social justice warrior or a Nazi for that matter.
But so to me, I go like, okay, well, you can react against the race obsession dumb propaganda of CNN all day long, but let's also objectively look at what happened here, what is right and wrong, and then also have some priorities.
I mean, it's like, you know, seeing these right-wingers who are defending Derek Chauvin, and it's like, and particularly like the libertarians, maybe the libertarians on the right half of the spectrum, you're like, even if you think this guy got murdered too when he only deserved manslaughter or something like that, you know, what?
This is who you're going to defend?
A fucking cop who fucking, what?
What was this guy's crime?
He passed off a counterfeit 20.
Oh, did he have, did he counterfeit the Federal Reserve's already counterfeit money?
So what, what we need the enforcement arm of the stanked, of the state to protect the big banks by going in and fucking throwing some guy on the ground?
What did he eat his stash because the drugs are illegal and he knows he'd be looking at a serious crime if he didn't?
Like, okay.
So what we're defending this guy now.
Oh, was a cop wrongfully convicted?
You know how many wrongful convictions there are in this country?
By the way, don't get me twisted.
I don't think this guy was wrongfully convicted.
I'm just saying, even if you think he was, is that the one I have to shed tears over?
Is a cop?
Like, I'm sorry.
I look at it like this.
You know, people can make this argument that like, oh, there's good cops and there's bad cops.
Yeah, I mean, like anything, everything's relative.
There are certainly worse and better.
But every cop, every last one of them agrees to enforce the laws of the state, whether they be moral or immoral laws.
I think, who is it?
Robert Higgs, I think, broke this down like this, right?
It's like, look, if you believe that not all laws are moral laws, then you're acknowledging that there are some immoral laws.
Well, the cops sign up to enforce those ones too.
So every one of them is signing up to enforce the immoral laws of the state.
Now, you can, maybe some of them are misguided or this or that, but I don't know, man.
How many times do you see a cop turn around and arrest another cop for committing a crime?
Pretty rare.
Pretty goddamn rare.
And the cops over the last year in America, they've enforced the lockdowns.
They've backed off when people are rioting and they throw people in jail for nonsense.
They're just not gaining my sympathy, even if one of them was wronged.
And I don't think this guy was wronged.
I don't.
So I'm absolutely fine with this verdict.
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Setting A Dangerous Precedent00:14:45
All right, let's get back into the show.
The other thing, I guess, just on a practical matter, is that there were almost certainly going to be mass riots if the guy was let off.
Now, let's transition into that side of the conversation.
Now that I got some people calling me a social justice warrior, let me get some people to call me a Nazi.
There is a fair, absolutely legitimate critique of this whole situation to say that, look, whatever a judge instructs a jury to believe, whatever is admissible or inadmissible from court, we're dealing with human beings here.
And the fact is that it was a goddamn given that there were going to be massive riots if this guy was acquitted.
And it's very hard to imagine that that doesn't play some role in people's thinking process.
You know, it's not going to be completely out of your thought process that this will, if you vote a certain way, this will lead to massive amounts of property destruction, assault, and almost certainly deaths.
No, nobody is going to be above that.
So that part is definitely not great.
And there's absolutely no excuse for the would-be rioters, whether or not, no matter how this trial went.
There's no excuse to riot.
You don't get to be a violent savage.
It doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter whether you get the results you want or not.
From the footage I watched of the trial, that judge seemed to be a very sharp and fair guy.
And I liked his general process and the way that he was trying to speak to, hey, this is the process so that we can have justice here.
When he kept saying, hey, I've instructed the jury not to watch the news and I have no reason for them to, I have every reason to assume that they're following my instructions.
That's some bullshit.
There's no way these people are going home being a part of this thing and not checking the news.
There's just no way.
It'd be very hard for me to imagine.
And I did hear when the judge said that and I was rolling my eyes at it as well.
Like, okay, come on.
But even regardless of that, even if they weren't checking the news, have they been alive for the last year?
Do you have a member of the jury who was unaware that there were riots over George Floyd's death?
Is that possible?
If you have that person, you probably don't want them on the jury because that person is fairly dim if they did not pick up on this kind of big development over the last year in the United States of America where, yeah, there were massive riots over George Floyd's death.
And I'm sorry, they're just, it's inexcusable.
You don't get to riot.
Like in the same way that you can't claim this victim status and then somehow justify attacking innocent people who had nothing to do with it.
Sorry, that's not how that works.
In the same way that you can't justify the war in Iraq by saying, but 9-11 and we were really upset about that.
It's like, I don't know, you know, a bunch of Saudis and a couple Egyptians who were hiding out in Afghanistan attacked America.
Therefore, we get to slaughter people in Iraq.
Well, no, you don't.
That's evil.
It doesn't matter how much those people did to you.
These people didn't do it.
And it's the same exact, this is so easy.
It's the same exact logic with the riots.
I don't care.
Doesn't matter what these cops did.
You don't get to just go smash some store window.
You don't get to beat up some old man.
Like, sorry.
That shit needs to be put down.
And also, as I've been saying for, you know, basically the last year, this shit, this childish, barbaric, like grown adult temper tantrums that were happening all last summer were the absolute worst thing for anybody who wants to see a movement toward reducing police violence in this country.
It's the absolute worst thing you could do.
If your mission in life was to build up a brutal police state, even more than the one we already have, the riots were your best friend.
You couldn't have been happier than to see those riots.
What would help your cause more than that?
What would make normal, you know, rational people demand more of a police presence and more of a police crackdown?
I mean, like, how stupid do some of these people have to be?
And I'm not saying that the actual violent rioters, although some of them are, but I'm not saying all of them are like attached to this cause.
Most of them are just opportunists and thugs.
But if you're the one who is actually attached to the cause, you should be the loudest condemning them, the absolute loudest, doing everything you can to separate yourself from those people because they're working diametrically opposed to what you're trying to push.
And again, like the perfect example of this was that they, you know, almost as soon as the verdict was read, you see all of these activists now talking about this other case where the cop shot this other girl, this teenage girl.
By the way, I saw a bunch of the libertarian, the woke libertarians jumping on this.
These idiots, these fucking idiots.
Like, how many of these things do you have to go through before you realize?
Find out a few details before you force your narrative onto the latest incident.
So I saw some of the woke libertarians posting about it.
I saw, you know, like LeBron James posted about accountability for this cop.
And then you find out the details of the situation.
This was nothing like the George Floyd case.
This was nothing like the Breonna Taylor case.
This was nothing like the Daniel Shaver case.
This was nothing like the Duncan Lemp case.
Nothing like them.
This guy showed up to a call and there was an active stabbing going on.
This woman, the body cam has been released.
This teenage girl was stabbing another teenage girl, pulling back and thrusting toward her head and neck area with a knife.
And he shot this girl.
He didn't murder a black girl.
He saved a black girl's life.
This was the one example, the one time where it is justified for a cop to shoot somebody.
Like the only time, the only time it's actually justified for the cops to shoot somebody is when there's an imminent threat to another person's life.
Or they actually get there.
A cop intervenes in the situation and the person does not stop and continues trying to kill somebody.
If that girl had lived, she'd be on trial for attempted murder.
He was watching an attempted murder and he acted.
And I just can't, I mean, for the people who are like, oh, he should have tried to disarm her with an, yeah, okay.
You have no idea what you're talking about.
No fucking idea.
First off, it takes more time.
We're talking split seconds make all the difference.
It takes more time to try to disarm somebody with a knife.
Second off, it's not, there's no guarantee it's going to be successful.
There's no guarantee you're going to take this knife away from her before she gets a few stabs off at this other girl, at you.
This is just stupid.
There's nothing to complain about with that shooting.
This is open and shut.
I mean, so again, what could you do more to discredit your own movement than to go after, you know, to treat a justified shooting with the exact same outrage that you treat these horrific murders?
It's just so stupid.
So counterproductive.
So anyway, they're not all the same.
They're not all the same.
Just because the cops are the enforcement arm of the state and just because they do a lot of fucked up things, that doesn't mean it's impossible for them to have a justified killing.
And in this case, it was one.
One of the very few, you know, there's not a lot of them.
There's not a lot of situations where it's justified for a cop to shoot someone.
So you're going to pick this example.
And then the irony of LeBron James being like accountability.
And then he just deletes the tweet when he starts finding out the details.
Like, oh, where's your accountability?
So, you know, the whole spirit of your thing was accountability.
Maybe you should really apologize.
No, just delete the tweet.
Move on.
Anyway.
All right.
So we could transition from that into the other thing, which I think is kind of related to all of this.
And that is the Anti-Riot Act that Ron DeSantis just signed into law in Florida, which if you haven't been keeping up over the last year, Florida has gone from being America's laughingstock to our best state by far.
Somehow Florida went from the ones we all make fun of to the ones that were like, turns out they're smarter than all of us, and we're all trying to move there.
So Ron DeSantis signed this anti-riot bill into law.
I know you were reading up on this a little bit.
So you tell me, what are your thoughts?
It's an anti-riot bill.
Traditional conservative where it's 50% good.
And so to speak to what's good about it, cops are now responsible if they just ignore their, you know, their duties.
If there's people fucking up a store or doing something else, cops can actually be sued and be held accountable for not doing their job, which is huge.
It's unbelievable to be paying our tax dollars, being told that you're in some areas not allowed to have guns or you're not allowed to just defend your business.
But then the people that we're paying to have that job can also just not do it.
So I believe that this changes that and they can be held accountable, which is great.
Also, people who are arrested will actually face some charges, which is big.
If you go look in Portland, everything's been dropped.
Literally, from what I understand, there was an article in the Wall Street Journal about two weeks ago.
They've been told that they don't want to.
And we know that government can get these people if they want to.
They're still going through the footage from the Capitol riots.
They're rounding people up.
There was a whole summer of violence in a lot of cities in our country.
They could find these people, even the people that were arrested in Portland.
From what I understand, they don't want to prosecute.
It's like in New York when they said, hey, quit prosecuting these marijuana charges that you're loading up our Brooklyn office with bullshit.
They're just getting off.
So DeSantis changed that, where if you're arrested for doing something, you're going to see a judge.
You're not just walking out of jail.
You can't just organize people on buses to go into these cities and get arrested.
What he did, which is not good, is that if a riot turns violent and you're, or if people are out protesting and it turns violent, from I, the way I understand his law, if you're just there, you can be arrested and be held accountable the same as the people that were violent.
That's an infringement on freedom.
I understand there's some utility to that, that if the thing turns violent and then you're standing around, you're offering some protection to the people that are like in the front smashing a building because you're there.
There's some logic to it, but you can't put that in the books because you're creating a precedent where cops can show up to any protest.
One person can throw a rock or something.
And now everybody's guilty by being there.
And that's just crazy.
Right.
Like that was, that was kind of my takeaway from it too, where I was like, well, look, there has to be some like reasonable application of that principle to justify it.
So you are right that, right, certainly if a riot, you can imagine a scenario where a riot has been violent for, let's say, hours and you're marching with them in the crowd.
And what happens is a lot of people in the crowd are kind of hiding behind the ones who aren't being violent, throwing a rock.
Right.
You are kind of giving cover to these people.
And then I do think that the police or, you know, anarcho-capitalist society, the, you know, property owners, whoever you want to say, have a right to say, everyone needs to go home.
And if you don't go home, you're now, we're going to treat you all as part of this violent mob because it's impossible to just have individual justice here.
And it's not reasonable to expect everybody else to sit back and just be victimized.
So I think there's a solid case for that.
We've talked about this, you know, over the last year to some degree.
But that being said, if you're out in a peaceful protest and three people start becoming violent, are you all of a sudden a criminal?
So that does seem like to be a you know, like a principle that could be applied in a poor way, which it will be.
And almost certainly will be, right?
So that part is a little bit troubling for sure.
The stuff about like making tearing down a statue a felony now, I'm fine with that.
I don't know.
I agree.
You can't, you can't just, we can't operate a society where you're just allowed to go tear things down if you feel like doing it.
Like, so I have no problem with that.
I have no problem with cops having to protect people and property.
That's the one thing.
I mean, you know, short of privatizing the police, the one thing that is legitimate for cops to do is protect people and property.
So I really don't have a problem with that.
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Gangs Versus Law Enforcement00:14:26
Kind of in the spirit of what I was saying before is that if you do think that a bill like this goes too far and is going to be that's going to potentially or will end up violating civil liberties.
Again, you can't look at this in a vacuum and not give not be somewhat upset by the rioting.
I mean, like, this is, look, if you're going to have massive riots like this, you're going to not only have demand, but then you're going to have massive support for bills like this.
And this is what I've been talking about for the last year, that you're going to have, you're going to push a lot of reasonable people to support whatever you got to do to stop riots.
And if you can't understand that, then I just, I don't know.
You're not spending enough time around regular, decent people.
Most regular, decent people, they work, they have friends and family and people who they care about, and they try to build things.
They don't try to destroy things.
And if there's a violent mob of people out there destroying things, they're going to be like, yeah, whatever we got to do to stop that.
And okay, does that mean cracking down on the civil liberties of some protesters?
Well, then I'll be okay with that as long as people and their properties are secured.
Now, if we want to find a way to protect people and property and not crack down on civil liberties, I think the only answer is to be really passionately in opposition to the rioting.
And this is like what I've, it's been so weird for me to see that this was even like a controversial position amongst libertarians over the last year.
It's like, so this is, you kind of have to pick one or the other.
Either oppose the riots or accept that you're going to have bills like this.
And honestly, it could have been a lot worse.
So, you know, there you go.
We almost have to see how this actually ends up being enforced.
But, you know, that's, I don't know.
Those are more or less my thoughts on it.
And I think that it looks to me like DeSantis really has political aspirations.
I think he wants to run for president.
And I think this is part of it is that this is going to help him as being like, I'm the anti-riot guy.
You know, that's a powerful thing to have.
He now owns being the anti-lockdown guy and now the anti-riot guy.
And that's going to have a lot of appeal.
And the state with the best tax policies.
Yeah, sure.
No, that helps too.
By the way, one other aspect that he changed is you can mow people over if they're blocking the road.
And I actually think that's a good move.
I think it's because it lets people know that if you're in the road, you're creating the threat.
And so it's your responsibility.
You know, it reminds me, I have the, sorry, a little, little Talmud law, but there used to, I remember this from back in my old days.
There was this whole, it's like this whole book about situations if a guy breaks into your house.
And they created this weird one that if a guy like comes into your basement and they called it like breaking the barrel or whatever, you actually have an obligation to kill him because the assumption is if a guy's breaking into your house, he's coming with violence.
So they just like initiated that as the law that like you're now obligated to defend yourself.
But it's like once you create that as the law, then that becomes the norm is that if I'm in the road, I'm creating the violent situation.
So I've initiated it.
You see what I'm saying?
It's like you change the framework.
And it's true.
If I'm driving on the highway and there's a group of people standing there, I don't know what their intentions are.
They shouldn't be in the fucking highway.
It's a dumb place to be.
No, look, I agree.
And I'm sure I could, you know, I could envision a hypothetical scenario where you wouldn't want the person to run people over, right?
Like if you're coming down the road, even though I just don't believe in blocking roads, I argued with Spike Cohen. about this on the podcast, but I absolutely, and I think unquestionably, think it is a violation of the non-aggression principle.
Like it is an act of aggression to block someone on a road in the same way that like blocking someone physically.
If you're just walking down the street and I get in front of you and just start blocking you, that's an act of aggression.
You are bringing aggression to this person.
And it's not on that, the onus is not on that person to like deduce, does this, is this person about to hit me?
Are they about to threaten me?
You know, like that's, it's a, it's an act of aggression to block someone and essentially trap them on a road.
Now, that being said, could I picture a scenario where there's like some hippies in a drum circle being like, hey, man, we're blocking the road because we just, you know, we don't want anyone to go through.
And you just mow them over and I'd be like, oh, Jesus, that's horrible.
Like you didn't need to do that.
I can picture that scenario.
However, I've seen a lot of video over the last year of people blocking traffic.
And that has never once been what I've seen.
What I see is people screaming, cursing, bashing on their, their, you know, the hood of their car, breaking windows, in some cases, dragging people out of the cars.
I mean, in a scenario like that, I have absolutely no sympathy or hesitation to be like, that person has every right to get themselves out of that situation in any way that needs to be done.
If that means driving over people, driving around people, whatever option is there for you to get yourself, you absolutely have the right to protect yourself and your family first and foremost.
That is like the most basic God-given right I think that people have.
That you can say, nope, I'm not going to sit here and roll the dice over whether I live or die.
I am going to take matters into my own hands and protect myself.
100%.
I support that.
And then stated differently before, I guess there was a little bit of a gray area if you were in that situation.
And like we said, it could be that they actually have intentions for violence.
And now if you're just forecasting, well, how do I get rid of that gray area so that if you actually are in that situation, you mow someone down, you're not held.
This is the only way to fix it.
I don't really see how you would create the law any other way.
Yeah.
No, I think, I think that's right.
And, you know, I just think that you're better off just creating a situation where you let people know right away.
Like let them know, stay out of the goddamn street.
Don't block cars.
You are not protected in that environment.
Now, I've always just been appalled by the just the outrageous entitlement that some of these protesters and rioters have, that they think they can just block people's cars and then, you know, be outraged when the car drives off.
Like, oh my God, who would have seen that coming?
You know, I blocked a car and then the car drove.
Like, oh my God, they didn't listen to my edicts of, you know, whatever.
Stay out of the fucking road.
You want to protest?
Stay out of the goddamn road.
You don't know when, you know, I do think that just, I mean, I think of it, I'll say like having a family and stuff like that, but I think probably just getting older just changes your opinion on that.
Like, I think it's a very, it's a very 19-year-old mentality to be like, whatever, man, we're just protesting.
Like, no need to drive us over.
Just like the older you get, you're like, dude, you have no fucking idea where I need to be.
You have no idea what my, what is going on in my life right now.
Like, I got to go pick up my kid.
And now my kid's just going to be waiting for me and like worried about where his dad is.
Maybe I got my kid in the car.
You know, if I got my wife and kids in the car, if I think there's a chance that they're threatened, I don't care who I take out in the process of defending them.
Like, that's just, it's like your mentality just changes, I think, the older you get.
And yeah, that shit is just totally unacceptable.
Totally immature, entitled behavior.
And I just, yeah, I think that it's not the worst thing to just send a message loud and clear.
Don't block the road.
Don't do that.
And again, it goes back to the whole point of all of this, which is that you don't have the right to punish innocent people for whatever grievance you may have, even if you are legitimately victimized.
As New Yorkers were legitimately victimized on 9-11, they still don't have a right to bomb Iraqis because they didn't do it.
You do have a right to be happy when cops who are violent go to jail.
You know?
You have every right to celebrate that shit.
I saw that there were a few people, right, who were like, when I was basically like, I was tweeting after Derek Chauvin was found guilty.
And I was like, you know, just saying whatever.
Like, I was like, oh, really?
I was like, are you saying he shouldn't go to jail?
Well, you know what?
I don't think anyone should go to jail for a gun possession or drug possession.
And I bet this cop wouldn't have hesitated to lock them up and throw them in a cage.
So why am I supposed to cry now that he's getting locked up and thrown in a cage, right?
Like, that's how I look at it to me.
Even if, and by the way, I think he's guilty.
I'm not mincing words on that.
I think he's fucking guilty.
But even if he wasn't, I go, to me, it's like, you're in the business of locking up people who shouldn't be locked up.
Did you get locked up?
Okay.
It's almost as if like, if you're in a gang and you just go around mugging people and then you got mugged, like I feel less bad for you than I do for just some innocent person who gets mugged.
In the same sense that like, you know, when there's like a gang shooting and then they'll always be like, and then a stray bullet hit this kid who was just like a straight A student who was going to school and all that.
And we always feel worse about that.
Like obviously, right?
Because like if two people are shooting at each other with guns over some drug turf, you know, dispute, you don't feel as bad if they get killed as if someone who wasn't like a part of it gets killed because they didn't do anything wrong.
They didn't bring this on themselves.
And so I'm, I'm, you know, I was tweeting out stuff like that.
Just like, I don't know.
I look at it like you, you got into the, you voluntarily got into the business of mugging people and you got mugged, even if he was wrongfully convicted, which I don't think he was.
And there were a whole bunch of people, both on the right and the left, who are like, wow, I'm really disappointed in your take, Dave.
They'll be like, or on the left who are like, oh, I'm actually surprised.
This was actually a decent take.
And then she's like, like both of you, do you guys not follow me?
Do you not like, who, it's so funny when people like project their own thing onto you.
I have never been anything other than this.
It's like, yeah, no, this is how I feel about cops.
I'm an anarchist libertarian.
How do you think I feel about the enforcement arm of the state?
I just go with, you know, the most viral clip I ever had was arguing with that Christine Quinn lady about the cops.
This is like, you know, it's like the people being like, I can't believe you'd say something like this.
Well, follow me closer then, and you will believe this.
You'll find it very easy to believe.
I don't know if I agree with you 100% on this one, but I also don't want to lock myself into a rank and file argument as I saw what you did to that lady and it was pretty phenomenal.
I do think there's a little bit of a difference between a gang and the cops and that if you're joining a gang, well, I guess in a free market, you should be allowed to distribute your drugs.
And so maybe you're in a gang to distribute drugs.
There certainly are some people that join the police force without the intention of going, hey, like that actually want, look, at some point in a function society, we're going to need somebody who is applying, you know, force in order to ensure private property.
And you might end up with a highly libertarian thing where it's done, you know, there's competing forces.
But, you know, you, as you're considering your run for president, chances are you're probably going to be relying on our police force when you win.
And you're going to be trying to come up with better policies for how we can make sure that they're engaging in this in a more just way.
But there's certainly, I'm just saying, there certainly are some cops that they're not thinking they're joining a gang.
They're there because they want to make a better contribution.
And so you're going to need people who are in that job.
They are like, in other words, there are people and they're in that job.
That doesn't mean that if they get a specific order to go, you know, knock in someone's door and rape someone, like a Nazi type situation.
Hey, I want you to go around this guy and throw him on it.
That's pretty transparent.
And maybe you can make the argument for drug laws is the same thing.
But I'm just saying to make an absolute statement that just by the fact that the guy's given out tickets, you know, is like a gang member.
I don't know that that's a perfect person.
What you're talking about there is just the practicality of it.
Like if you were ever in a situation where you need cops or what you could actually do or what you could actually get done.
But if we're just talking about the morality of it, gang members protect private property sometimes.
They'll certainly protect the private property of their own gangs, maybe even of some of their other friends.
I mean, cops protect private property sometimes, but no, the vast majority of the job is not that.
The vast majority of the job is, I mean, look, if it wasn't the state and someone else was doing what cops were doing and just, you know, I don't know, pulling over a car, surrounding it with armed men, shaking someone down for money, we would see it pretty clearly for what it is.
They're just the gang of the state.
And so that's, you know, that's the way I look at it.
They're just a more efficient, more effective, more legally legitimized gang.
But that's more or less my take on cops.
But listen, we got to wrap the show on that one.
We'll be back tomorrow with a brand new episode.
I appreciate all of the kind words that I've gotten from a lot of you people over the last few days.
Thank you very much.
We will be at Porkfest this summer.
Me and Robbie the Fire Bernstein doing a live stand-up show and a live podcast.