Dave Smith and Robbie the Fire Bernstein critique Facebook's partnership with Life After Hate, noting its $750,000 DHS funding creates a state agenda feedback loop. They argue rising urban crime stems from lockdowns and police stand-downs rather than defunding alone, proposing libertarians shift toward private property defense and armed citizens. While acknowledging the "broken windows" theory's dangers, they insist taxpayers deserve safe public spaces free of drug addicts, urging serious solutions over passive acceptance. The episode concludes with a tribute to Lou Rockwell and announcements for upcoming comedy shows in Providence, Boston, and Nashville. [Automatically generated summary]
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Facebook Extremism Warnings00:15:01
Fill her up.
You are listening to the Gash Digital Network.
We need to roll back the state.
We spy on all of our own citizens.
Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
You're listening to part of the problem on the Gash Digital Network.
Here's your host, Dave Smith.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I'm Dave Smith.
He is the king of the caulks, Robbie the Fire, Bernstein.
He's in the studio.
I'm in my office.
Hope everybody's doing well.
How you feeling, brother?
I'm doing pretty good, Davey Smith.
How about you?
Very good.
Very good.
I wanted to start the show off by asking you a very important question.
Are you concerned that someone you know is becoming an extremist?
We care about preventing extremism here at Part of the Problem.
Others in your situation have received confidential support.
Just putting that out there.
I'm starting every show like that.
I'm trying to be good citizens, just like Facebook is, warning people of the dangers of extremism.
I'm not going to lie, that made me feel a little bit uncomfortable.
Made me feel like I got pulled into the office and they thought that maybe I was one of the people that got molested.
And so they started asking those questions and you just get that creepy feeling over you that Jesus Christ, why wasn't I molesting?
Was I molesting?
I don't remember.
I'm just saying you're putting that kind of energy out there.
No, don't worry, Rob.
These people are fine with molesting children.
It's extremism that we're trying to root out, not rational pedophilia.
That runs rampant.
We'll probably give you a sweetheart deal if you get busted for that.
Okay, I do want to get into that topic in a second, but very quickly before we get into the meat of it, just a quick announcement.
Oh, two things, I guess.
I did Pete Quinones' show yesterday.
If you want to, go check that out.
That was a lot of fun responding to some critics I've had, a new round of all that drama.
So check that out, Free Man Behind the Wall.
Excellent podcast.
Pete Quinones, he's the man.
Also, me and Louis J. Gomez, one night only, Friday 9th at the Comedy Connection in Providence, Rhode Island, co-headlining.
Come check us out there.
So that should be fun.
Just doing one quick show with my brother Louis J. Gomez.
And then, and you know what?
You do some plugs too if you want to up top.
Why not?
Oh, hell yeah.
Nashville, August 14th, Summer Porch Store.
We're going to do a live podcast with CPU God.
Me and BK Chris doing stand-up.
July 3rd and 4th, there's still some tickets available for Maryland.
And then July 17th in Boston, live smokeout bug out, rap show, you know, live podcast, stand-up show.
That's going to be a party.
So hit me up and come party.
Good shows.
And of course, me and Robbie the Fire Bernstein will be in Rochester, New York in August.
The full weekend there.
So make sure, come get some tickets.
Come check out the show.
Should be a lot of fun.
All right, getting into it.
So yeah, what I was alluding to before that my guess would be you have seen, Rob, if you've logged into Facebook, because I know that you and a lot of your friends are extremists, is this warning that is now coming up to a lot of us when you open Facebook, which I very rarely use.
I actually went on Facebook because I saw people on Twitter posting about this Facebook thing.
And sure enough, I got it right there.
Are you concerned that someone you know is becoming an extremist?
Extremist, of course, is fairly vague.
Report your most left liberal friends.
Well, right.
I mean, like, there's a funny question to ask.
Are you concerned that someone you know is becoming an extremist?
I mean, yes, everyone.
That's my answer to you.
Yes, everyone has become an extremist.
Like, I don't know.
The entire country has become extremists over the last decade or so.
So, yeah, there are a lot of them out there.
It's a great word, extremist, you know?
It's completely, it's kind of like radical, but a little bit more cutting, you know, but has this kind of like negative connotation, this dangerous connotation, without really having to back it up with anything.
I mean, what is an extremist?
How do you define that?
You know, I like to use this kind of thought experiment at times just to kind of get people thinking about what these terms actually mean.
But like, if you call someone else an extremist, it's all just a matter of perspective.
It's like saying someone has an accent, you know?
Like, yeah, if you're in New York City and someone has a southern accent, you go, they have an accent.
But if you go down south, now you have the accent.
There's no, it's not really a constant.
It's just, it's all relative.
It's all like a matter of perspective.
The idea of an extremist, it's like, okay, well, let's say that extremist took over the government and the society and they enforced their will.
Well, then don't you become the extremist automatically because you oppose this extremist.
So the word really means nothing, but it also invokes the image of danger and violence and all of these other things.
You're being fucking cool.
I'm extreme, dude.
Drink a mountain deuce.
Well, yeah, that is true.
It also sounds pretty badass.
That is a fair point, Rob.
You just respond, fuck yeah, I'm extreme.
And then all of a sudden police are at your door.
But it's funny, right?
Because you'll see, like, during both World War I and World War II, the anti-war activists were called extremists.
And I think that to me was like the best example ever where you'd be like, there are these people going, let's not fight a war.
Let's have peace.
And they are labeled extremists.
But then, of course, the moderate, reasonable people are saying, let's fight a world war.
Like somehow that is not labeled an extreme position.
I mean, if you just looked at that on paper and you were like, okay, one person is saying, hey, let's not slaughter each other.
And then the other person is saying, I think every industrialized country in the world should go on mass slaughter campaigns.
And yet you get to decide that guy is the extremist.
That's a very powerful control of language, you know?
So that right away jumped to me.
But of course, this speaks to a much bigger trend of one of the biggest themes that is really important right now in 2021 in America.
And it's really dangerous.
And I don't think we can overstate how dangerous this is.
But the ruling elite have openly declared war on the American people, or at least on one group of the American people.
And this isn't like a small, this isn't like, you know, in the 90s when they declared war on like racist right-wing militias or something like that.
And this isn't like declaring war on, you know, I don't know, drug dealers or something.
You know, again, not justifying any of those wars, but those are relatively small groups of people.
This is basically a war on people who don't support Democrats.
Right?
I mean, John Brennan, no, no clown, I mean, he's a clown, but he's a former head of the CIA.
He even lumped libertarians in there too.
And what was he really talking about?
You know, he remembered the whole rant where he was like religious extremists, white nationalists, whatever, the other names he said, and then the libertarians.
So basically, he just went through saying, what?
Trump supporters, you know?
And then libertarians also.
So basically anyone who didn't vote for Joe Biden.
I mean, I suppose if you're far to the left of the Democrats and didn't vote for them, then maybe you escape.
Maybe.
Not exactly clear.
But it would have been easier if he just said people who don't vote for Democrats.
That's the real target now of the war on terror.
And he directly compared them to insurgencies in countries that we've invaded under the guise of the war on terrorism.
So that's what's happening now.
And of course, this is openly discussed.
This is not like a conspiracy.
We're not speculating.
This is what they're talking about doing.
And then when you see these companies doing it, it's just no, it's all working in tandem.
It's all working in tandem.
And for one more, you know, like this is something that me and you have discussed quite a bit over the last couple of years when we talk about, you know, when we really take apart the it's just a private company argument when you're talking about these social media companies.
And you're like, well, look, man, if giant corporations that are incredibly intertwined with the government are marching lockstep with the government and really enforcing their agenda, then I'm sorry, but the correct libertarian position is not to sit there and say, well, they're a private company.
They can do whatever they want to.
It's to object to the whole thing.
I tweeted this quite a while ago.
I said, you know, something along the lines of call me crazy, but I don't think the libertarian response to fascism should be to praise the private aspect of it.
I think we should oppose the whole thing.
But just in case they wanted to make that even clearer, and I got this from you because you sent this Zero Hedge article to me.
So at the end of the message, Facebook says that they have partnered with a group called Life After Hate.
It's a nice topic.
Kind of gives you a share vibe.
Life After Hate, a group that is, quote, committed to helping people leave the violent far right to connect with humanity and lead compassionate lives.
Now, of course, just...
You're going to bring them on like yoga retreats to pet some goats and just remove the because I'll go on those retreats.
I'll sign up.
I'm curious to see what these centers for removing hate look like.
What's the whatever a compassionate life looks like to you?
I bet it's like when you took driver's ed classes and you sit there and they just play you videos of like where hate can lead to.
And it's just like, you know, like neo-Nazis violently beating somebody.
Now, yeah, that's right.
Now, of course, it is fairly interesting and I think revealing that this group, you know, when Facebook will kind of put these things out there as if this is like, this is like a non-partisan thing.
We're just against hate and for compassion and against extremism.
I think you've got to remember going into this that the person who is in charge of censoring COVID misinformation on Facebook turned out to be the exact guy who apparently, according to Fox News, has some relationships to the CCP and was the one who gave the money to the lab that was then there to remove.
And also the, remember when they, when that bipartisan commission that was reviewing whether or not Trump could come back from Facebook and like 10 out of the 12 or something had made like, you know, the Trump is Hitler comments.
I don't know if it was that far-fetched, but I do remember that I think 10 of the 12 were clearly not a bipartisan commission to review whether or not Trump could be there.
So the idea that Facebook is working in tandem with anyone other than the CIA unit that works in conjunction, I'm not literally.
I'm saying there's some team on the left that is very clearly the ones who are pushing a non-partisan agenda, and that's who Facebook is hiring here.
Let's not pretend like no, listen, it's even more blatant.
Like, I don't even have to walk it back, right?
So, first off, like I said, they say leave the violent far right.
I mean, that's clearly what they're talking about.
It's not, we're not concerned with left-wing extremists.
Of course, there's none of those.
Like, we have to pretend that last summer didn't happen.
There's no left-wing violent extremists.
Anyway, this company, Life After Hate, last year was awarded $750,000 in grant money from the Department of Homeland Security to, quote, disrupt domestic terrorism.
So here's how they're disrupting domestic terrorism.
I also just want to point out that there's a problem of creating your own evidence in the same way that like Hillary Clinton was talking about as the intelligence agency.
So now all of a sudden you could potentially have a news anchor saying that this was so important that the Homeland Security had to give nearly a million dollars to this agency.
And then also you can have enough people be being reported on Facebook as, hey, I think like you can even have bot accounts going, hey, I think that this guy is an extremist.
And then all of a sudden you can be in the media as a person who was deemed so dangerous by Facebook that 300,000 people deemed him or 300 people deemed him to be an extremist.
It's a way of like, this even happened when you guys had your little stint with Anthony Jeselnik, and even though he walked it back, but he was trying to say, I think he made some, like they were kicked off YouTube, whatever the claim was, it's very easy for someone to go, hey, that guy, Dave Smith, part of the problem is so bad, Facebook even had to kick him off.
And then just wait till, you know, in the creek in the cave, couldn't even host the Legion of Skanks podcast anymore.
That's how it creates its own evidence.
Yes, it's circular logic, right?
So it's like that you're creating your own feedback loop and then using that to prove your case, right?
So that, yeah, that's a very good point.
By the way, on that topic, I do, I give Jozlinette credit for walking that back.
I appreciated that.
And I appreciated that.
It's not too often that people will go, eh, yeah, you know what?
That was dumb.
I got that wrong.
I shouldn't have said that.
So I'll say that for the record.
I'm fine.
I don't need to talk about that anymore.
But I get your point that you're making.
And I think it's a very important one, that this is a thing that it becomes this kind of proof.
Well, that domestic terrorists and even the Department of Homeland Security had to get involved.
And so, of course, we have to fight domestic terrorism.
And look, well, this guy, do I have to prove that he's a domestic terrorist?
But all I can just say, well, he was removed from Facebook under this plan of preventing domestic terrorism.
Anyway, there are a couple of points that I wanted to draw out of this.
State Funded Terrorism Labels00:03:25
Number one is just like the obvious point for libertarians to notice that it's like, hey, you could say we're opposed to the state and we believe in the market.
But if a company is getting nearly a million dollars from the Department of Homeland Security to then go and partner up with Facebook to then start warning all of these people about extremism, what's really going on here?
I mean, can you really parse this out from just the state doing it itself?
Now, of course, if the state was doing it itself, every libertarian would be up in arms opposing it.
So just saying it's basically the same thing.
They're just paying someone else to do it.
And in the same way that, and this is the new game, right?
This is why Fauci can stand up and say with a straight face that we never funded gain of function research.
Because it is kind of, on a technicality, true.
They just funded a group that funded gain of function research.
But we didn't fund the research, right?
So this is what, and we were talking about this on the last show, Tucker versus the NSA.
Where it's like, so now they go like, oh, the NSA isn't collecting your... information.
I mean, the phone companies are, and we can go take it from them anytime we want to, but you know what I mean?
So like, this is the new game.
This is the corporatism that we're living under.
And at a certain point, you have to just treat it all as the state.
I mean, it's all orchestrated from the state.
They're getting taxpayer dollars.
So that's what it is.
They're doing their bidding with, you know, using the funds raised from the initiation of force against people from taxing them.
So it's kind of all the same thing.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
The other thing is like, okay, you got to look at the situation we're in, right?
It's pretty funny for guys like me and you to be getting these messages on Facebook that we're concerned you might be an extremist.
Now, the word extremist is used, but when the Department of Homeland Security was passing out three quarters of a million dollars to this group, what term did they use?
January 6th Conspiracy Theories00:08:46
Domestic terrorists.
All these terms are kind of being blended together.
And, you know, we have a war on terrorism, and now we're talking about domestic terrorists.
And then that same group that's fighting them is labeling you an extremist.
So you're kind of being lumped in to this domestic terrorist label.
And for people like me and you, who literally just believe in peace, that's the entire essence of our philosophy.
It's like peace.
That's it.
That's all libertarianism is.
That's all free markets are.
It's peaceful, voluntary exchange.
It's like, we don't want to fight wars.
We don't want people stealing other people's stuff.
We don't want people's rights being violated.
Just advocating peace.
And the fact that you can get called a terrorist for advocating peace is, you know, that is a strange feeling, you know?
Because, you know, traditionally, you would have thought that in order to be a terrorist, there would have to be some type of violence present.
But that's not the case, at least not anymore.
So, you know, there's that.
But as I said before, the people who opposed the world wars were also labeled extremists.
So don't think just because you advocate for peace that they won't label you with this stuff.
But the thing that I want to-9-11 conspiracy, if it turns out that the FBI created its own news in terms of having their own people storm the Capitol and try and get that rallied up, so then they could go, hey, we need a 9-11 style commission because look at this Capitol insurrection leading to some sort of a domestic terrorism law.
I mean, I never dug too deep into 9-11 conspiracy theories and I didn't really care to, but this one we're watching live and it seems to be pretty transparent.
Well, and you know, whether or not the initial event itself is a conspiracy almost becomes irrelevant, you know?
Because either way, the reaction is both bullshit and removing freedoms.
Yes, that's right.
I mean, whether even if it was all completely legitimate and it was a real thing that happened, they're still jumping on that and using it as an excuse to act in this way.
But I understand.
I think it does, it leads one to view things that way.
And I think this is part of the reason why the 9-11 conspiracies gained so much traction for a while, because it was so obvious how they were using this event to achieve all of these nefarious goals.
And so then it leads people to go, you know, I bet they created this whole event just so they could do this, which doesn't necessarily follow logically, but you understand why people start looking into that stuff.
So what I want to say, and I think this is really important, understanding, like, we got to really have our eyes wide open about the world that we're dealing with.
And I say this to the people listening to this show, to the people following the Mises caucus and the LP stuff, but just to anyone, to anyone.
I'm going to imagine that just about anyone who listens to this show, even though we got a lot of left-wingers, a lot of right-wingers, a lot, a lot of libertarians, you're probably all considered an extremist by these people.
And this is not a joke.
This is, you know, this is real shit.
And I think there's been a lot of people, as I've been saying, I talked about this before with the Proud Boys, and I've talked about this with the January 6th people, that a lot of people in those groups did not quite understand what they were dealing with here, what they were up against, and what position they had found themselves in.
And a lot of them were like, nah, whatever, we'll do this.
This is going to be fun.
And they didn't really think through the fact that you might be looking at decades in prison.
You know, like you can really get yourself into a bad situation.
And the more our movement is growing, the more there's a risk of being labeled, you know, domestic terrorists or whatever.
So I would just really urge everybody, be super careful and really be aware of this shit.
I would say, listen, if anybody is ever encouraging you to do anything illegal or, God forbid, anything violent, treat that person as a fed, okay?
And don't do it.
Do not do anything illegal.
Do not do anything violent.
Do not do anything that will give them an excuse to say, oh, look, this is a domestic terrorist and this is how we're going to handle this person.
We got to really be careful.
And I would also say to people, just with your social media accounts, I'm not telling people not to shit post.
I learned my lesson on that already.
Do not make any jokes that even could be construed as threats of violence.
Just don't do it.
I think the times coming up are going to be a little bit bumpy.
And we are not exactly sure how serious this is.
Because right now, this all just kind of seems funny.
It's like, oh, a dumb Facebook warning.
But if you really peel it back a little bit, like they're kind of calling us all terrorists, or at least suggesting that we might be kind of close to a terrorist.
Are you a terrorist?
Come let me know.
We'll help you.
We'll turn you into a good lefty.
You come pet a goat on a retreat.
You know, so you got to just like have your eyes open about that.
There's a lot of those people, man.
This is what we were saying when we were streaming live on the night of January 6th.
And I remember talking about this and being like, these people are like farting on Nancy Pelosi's desk and taking selfies and all this shit.
And they think it's hilarious.
And in some ways, some of it was.
But you're like, do these people not realize what they just did?
What's going to happen to them?
This is no joke.
There are people who were there at January 6th who are still being held in solitary confinement.
And on top of that, like almost no one really cares.
No one's like, who's out there?
Who's their advocate?
You know, like, it's, it's really sad in a way that, like, even Trump doesn't speak up for any of those people.
In fact, he threw them under the bus pretty quickly.
There's no point where he's like, hey, like, what's happening to these people is wrong.
You know, nobody is, no, no Republicans or right-wingers have the courage to do that.
And it is wrong.
It is wrong, people being held in solitary confinement this long over a lot of them there.
I'm not talking about someone who was like violent or beat someone up or something like that, but the people there who are just guilty of like going into the building, it's awful.
And it just doesn't matter.
It doesn't, you know, the media became so hysterical about labeling this whole thing an insurrection and an attempt to install a dictator and all of this that no Republican would dare say, hey, I think it's wrong that these people are like looking at whatever, 20 years in prison and are being held in solitary confinement, all of this.
No one's saying anything.
So just take all of that in and be cautious.
That's not, I'm not trying to, you know, like sell you on the idea of like these terrible things are going to happen to you.
From what I've seen with all of these things, with the Proud Boys, with January 6th, with all of this stuff, they get sloppy and give themselves an opportunity to be persecuted like this.
I'm not saying in all situations they deserve it.
I'm just saying that you can't be sloppy with this stuff.
You got to be really fucking careful.
And I would encourage everybody who listens to me to do that.
Be careful.
Don't be violent.
Don't break laws.
You know, I mean, you know, if there's like real stupid laws and you're not going to get in trouble, then no comment.
But don't do anything that, you know, do not throw your life away needlessly.
That is my message.
Okay, we weren't recording.
Don't Throw Your Life Away00:02:34
That was all just for you, Rob.
I just wanted you to hear that.
Do not throw your life away.
I see you making big plans.
I've definitely made the jokes.
So, you know, jokes, people.
CIA for going through the content.
I'm a lazy guy.
I'm not partaking in any violence.
We're not leaving our homes.
We're just yelling in sheds.
So.
Well, listen, just be careful about it.
That's all I'm saying.
Be careful about anything you put out there.
All right.
What was the other thing that I wanted to talk about?
Oh, yeah.
I wanted to talk a little bit about crime.
Crime is a risen.
It's also something that we've been addressing over the last year or so.
I guess it really has been about for the last year that crime's really been up.
I mean, maybe not for the first couple months of the lockdown last year, but then pretty much by last summer, crime rates really started spiking.
And predictably so, right?
I mean, if you kick tens of millions of people out of work and lock people in their homes and scare everybody to death and all of this stuff and all of this, you know, it's quite likely that crime is going to rise.
Also a lot of footage of people getting away with rioting and looting.
I would have to guess that as people get testy, it's like in Jurassic Park when they start testing the fence and they realize the fence is down.
It's the same thing.
You realize like, oh shit, they're not really going after people for stealing or doing other shit.
Let's get out there.
Yeah.
All right, guys, let's take a second and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is IP Vanish.
Very happy to have them back on the show.
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Defending Property Rights00:12:23
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All right, let's get back on the show.
So Brian just texted some stats that were interesting.
For the month of May 2021, the overall index of crime in New York City rose 22% over May of 2020.
So this is even in, and I think in 2020 had been up from the previous year, 46.7% increase in robbery, 35.6% increase in grand larceny.
So yeah, this is a real problem.
I mean, I was just reading today.
What do I have the numbers here?
California homicide rate jumped 31% last year, the highest rate in years.
And this is going on all over the country.
And it's really, it's awful.
This is the reality of cities all throughout the country.
And of course, it's one of the consequences of just all of the last 18 months of insanity.
But it poses an interesting puzzle for libertarians, for people who are preaching human liberty in the middle of these, you know, these wave of very high crime.
It's tough to sell to a lot of people, particularly right-wingers, but I think even the more common sense people on the left as well, to sell the idea that you're say, like, you know, think police budgets should be drastically cut or even defunded completely, as some of us believe.
And so I think that this is an interesting puzzle and that people who want to push liberty have to really figure out how exactly to attack this stuff.
Because what's going to happen more and more is that what happens, number one, is people blame the defunding of the police for the increase in crime.
Well, we still haven't tried out the Rainbow Commission.
So, you know, until we fund the alternative, how do we know defunding the police didn't work?
That is a good point.
That is a fair point.
But this is the thing, right?
Is that there's so many goofy people who are unironically saying what you just said that it does, it's easy to have the knee-jerk reaction of being like the right-wing reaction of like, no, no, no, this is why we need more funding for police, not less, you know?
And I understand why people have that reaction.
Now, the kind of irony of this whole thing that's interesting is that, so for the last 18 months, right, the people like us who believe in human liberty have been opposed to everything, like everything that the government's been doing, from lockdowns to, you know, all this stuff.
And after all of this leads to high crime, well, people come right back and they're like, well, the answer is we need more government agents.
That's why this is a problem.
And I would just say that there's a few ways to attack this thing that I think are the best ways to do it.
And there are some that are not such great ways to do it.
I think, unfortunately, the term defund the police has basically been poisoned.
You know, if you can have that conversation in an effective way, then more power to you.
Go do it.
But the problem now is that...
Huh?
Repurpose the police.
Is that the new...
Yeah, I'm inventing it right now.
I invented the meatballs in a lot of success.
Repurpose the police.
Let's start using them for enforcement of private property and that only.
Let's let, you know, we're going to repurpose them for actually efficient methods that will benefit society.
Well, the thing that's interesting is that when you look into what's actually going on, you know, because I was like, I was on Kennedy the other night and we were talking about this on the panel.
And one of the Republicans who was there was like saying this.
And we were talking about the crime in California and the homeless problem in California.
And what is the problem?
Homeless people are being awesome.
Just living on beaches, not having bills, collecting all the benefits.
If you're homeless, it's the spot to go.
And that's why so many of them are there.
But so he said at one point, he goes, well, this is what happens when you defund the police.
And this is now the right-wing talking point, you know?
And it's as far as these talking points go, it's a strong one.
I mean, it sounds pretty good.
You know, if your average right-winger is listening to that, what do you see?
You see an encampment of homeless people, and then you see these Democrats saying they want to defund the police.
And you look at it and you go, yep, that's why you can't do it.
That's pretty stupid if this is what it results in.
So you see where it comes off pretty good to a lot of people.
But what I tried to point out is I go, well, look, what are we specifically talking about here?
Like, what's actually going on?
I mean, if you look at how inflated local and federal police agencies' budgets have been over decades, so much of it is like going to these fucking fancy toys, these like, you know, like SWAT teams, like all this stuff.
Like having tens of thousands of SWAT raids a year is not what was keeping the homeless people out of LA, right?
Like these things aren't related.
So what's really going on here?
Dig into it a little bit deeper.
And then what you realize is what you said, Rob, about repurposing the police.
Is that actually in these areas, what they've done is they've decided to say, we're just going to allow people to live on public property.
We're not going to give them any pushback at all.
That's it.
Set up.
Take over.
You know what I mean?
Take over entire blocks of public streets.
And also that they're not going to enforce property crimes.
That they're not going to enforce shoplifting and petty theft and things like that.
So that's very different than just, oh, the problem is that we defunded the cops.
That's a very different thing.
The problem isn't that.
The problem doesn't even necessarily have to do with funding.
I mean, there's a bunch of problems with funding cops to begin with, but I'm saying this specific problem.
What we really have to advocate as libertarians is that what we're for is the defense of property rights.
That's what we really believe in.
That actually is why we oppose the state, because we believe in defending property rights.
And that's got to be the message.
So I'm not saying I have this perfectly figured out, you know, but like that's the message has to be something strong about property defense.
And then you start to realize like, okay, how do the state security agents really do when it comes to defending property?
Well, in many cases, not just in the riots, but just like all throughout these liberal cities, they've straight up given up.
And they're like, no, we don't do that.
We're not in the business of defending property anymore, even defending people.
You know, if you get beat up, if you get, you know, robbed or mugged or, you know, your store gets stolen from, maybe we'll come and fill out some paperwork after.
But we're certainly not in the business of defending that property.
It's just not what they do.
So that's how we have to flip this whole thing so that people understand it because that is what's really going on.
And the truth is that the only real answer to how you're going to defend this stuff, well, it's twofold, right?
It's guns and private security.
That's what we need to be pushing.
The fact that they will do, like armed citizens and private security forces will do a much better job at actually doing what people care about, defending people and property.
And the wealthy elite are very into private security.
I think even vendors go with some private security.
So maybe that's what we should all be saving more of our tax dollars for is contributing to our own little private security forces that we can have some of the nice things that the wealthy elite can have.
Bernie Sanders can even take up this case, perhaps.
Yep, sounds good.
Less taxes that we can all contribute towards our own private security.
Sounds good to me.
So I'm on board.
Yeah, there you go.
Bernie Sanders is, we just got to win that.
Just the one percent.
That's the nice police force.
Yeah.
But this is what you see.
It's a big part of what's happening.
And I got to say, I also do think that, you know, and I don't know.
I'm still kind of like working this out in my head.
So I'm not like saying that this is definitely the case, but I think that this is plausible.
So, you know, like Rudy Giuliani had the whole broken windows logic or whatever you used to call it, broken windows policing or something like that.
So his theory was that if you allow like petty crimes to persist and don't stop them, then that leads to more and more violent crimes.
So in other words, if you don't arrest kids for jumping a turnstile or smoking a joint, you know, outside the subway, next thing you know, people are getting beat up and robbed in the subway.
I've heard this explained two different ways.
One is the kind of the definition you're giving, which at least logically makes sense to me.
It's essentially if you're walking around and you're seeing graffiti all over the place and broken windows, you think, hey, cops aren't enforcing anything.
And that's when people start getting testy.
It's almost like a um, you ever seen the movie Padding?
Great, great movie.
Uh, even though you're not a you know, you're anti-World War II and all that stuff, it's still a good movie.
But he's one of the generals.
He shows up and he goes, Yeah, of course, we're losing battles.
It's because everyone's lazy here.
They're not waking up at 8 a.m., they don't have their shirts tucked in.
So, it's a little bit of like that military philosophy of if we're disciplined about this, then you know, people will stay in line.
But then I've also heard a way more negative explanation of it.
Not that I necessarily even agree with the first one, but I've heard actual cops say that it was more about keeping people in the system so that they couldn't commit other crimes.
So, if a guy like even just breaks a window and you label him a criminal, so you keep him in jail, and then that same guy doesn't ever get around to stabbing somebody or robbing somebody.
That's almost like a really horrible status preventative crime thing of you know, preventing crimes that haven't even happened yet.
Uh, and I'm not sure which one of those Rudy Giuliani was going for, but I'm just saying that I've definitely heard cops explain it that secondary way, which is really terrible.
Well, Rudy Giuliani, at least publicly, would say the first now, what he really was going after, who knows.
So, I agree with you.
I think it's terrible.
I also think there's a very strong counter argument against that, which is that actually, you know, when you like arrest, you know, people for petty crimes, put them through the system, put something on their permanent record, let them even do some jail time in some cases and all this stuff, you might actually be creating more of a long-term criminal than you're thwarting.
So, there's there's arguments all over that.
However, I will say that I think that the last year of uh, yeah, sorry, that I think that the last year of basic stand downs in the face of violent crimes and property crimes.
So, we're not talking about stand downs with petty nonviolent crimes, we're talking about standing down while people destroyed stores, just you know, viciously assaulted people, uh, dozens of murders.
But, you know, nothing, this is not a small thing.
You're talking about like billions of dollars in property damage and police doing nothing, not even pretending like they're going to do something.
I do think, and again, like I said at the beginning, this is just, I'm not saying this is like a worked-out, you know, like definitive thing, but I think it's an interesting, you know, possibility that I think that that really did have an effect psychologically on a lot of these big cities, and that a lot of would-be criminals or criminals already realized that ooh, we can get away with a lot more than we thought we could get away with.
Take Matters Into Own Hands00:02:13
And you do see it's not just that violent crime is up, there's been a lot of just like brazen violent crime.
Like, you see these videos going around Twitter all the time, just out in New York City in the middle of the day, people assaulting women and stuff like that.
And you're like, wow, this guy is really like, I think that there are those people amongst us, there are these like violent predatory types, and usually they are kept in line by the threat that something will happen to you if you do this.
And after the whole last year, they're a little bit more emboldened to say, I think I can get away with this.
And what's it's disturbing that some people, if they can get away with that, will.
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Sidewalks And Drug Addicts00:08:55
So anyway, what I'd advocate is more or less that people got to take matters into their own hands.
Like if you like Batman, hit the streets.
Yes, we need Batman.
Well, no, listen, if you see, you know, I've seen these like videos.
It makes me disgusted about like the society we live in today, but I see these videos where like, you know, some guy will attack a woman.
And I see a bunch, like there's men around who get on their phones and start calling the cops.
It's like, what are you doing?
They need to have guns and laws that they can shoot that guy.
That's what you're saying.
I did not say that.
No, I was saying it should be legal.
That there should be laws that if a violent attack is taking place and you're not a man of physical strength that you feel comfortable interrupting that fight, perhaps you should be able to draw your gun and resolve the situation.
I'll just say I'd like to see some legal protections.
I would like to see a different reaction than jumping on your phone from men who see a woman being attacked by another man.
You know, I'll say that.
But yeah, this is a problem.
And who knows?
I mean, perhaps this will kind of level off and crime will start going back down.
But if this rise in crime continues, that's going to be something that libertarians have to deal with because it's going to be this big opening for law and order right-wingers to come in and say, well, we know what the solution to this problem is, and it's cops, cops, cops.
And as we've seen, they're really actually, if you understand what the problem is, they're not so good at addressing it.
The other thing I will say, and I know that this ruffles the feathers of a lot of left libertarians, but I really don't care.
But I got to say that I think Murray Rothbard was right that when he said the thing about how cops should be in the business of protecting people and property.
People freaked out when Murray Rothbard said that the Unleashed the Cops line, even though he said subject to liability if they beat up the wrong person or whatever.
That's more or less the closest within the statist model to a private security force.
And I also think that something has to be done about the homeless problem.
And I'm not going to pretend that I have the exact answers to it, but I am very sympathetic to the Rothbard argument of clearing out the streets.
Now, I do not think that homeless people should be like beaten up and assaulted or anything like that, but I do think that it is just, it is outrageously unacceptable and just There's nothing like libertarian about it either, that we should just accept that me and you are robbed to pay for these public sidewalks and then other people just get to claim them as their home.
And we're literally talking about like piss covered mentally ill drug addicts just like living in on the streets.
And then like what the families with children who whose parents work hard and pay the tax dollars for these roads have to just deal with their kids walking through that shit.
I mean, I just don't think that's acceptable.
And I don't think that's the right thing to do.
So I think should be unafraid to like support whatever solutions are available to that problem.
Just to expand off of that, if you're a business owner and you start renting from the mall, right?
So you're in a partnership with the mall where you spend your rent to be a part of the mall and you wouldn't tolerate it if the mall was just letting homeless people live inside of it because that's going to ruin your investment of paying the rent.
Same as you rent from a building.
The building doesn't just let homeless people live within the building because that's where you live.
Your city streets should be no different.
If you're a business owner and you spend a shit ton of rent to be in the downtown area because you think there's going to be traffic and people come into the downtown area, you're in a partnership with the government that they're supposed to be maintaining that street so that you can operate your business there and they get their tax dollars and your landlord's going to make money.
Everyone, like it's a partnership there and the government's just not kind of taking care of their end of the bargain.
Well, yeah.
And so I think even what you're demonstrating by saying it that way is that the problem is really solved when it's all private.
Like when they're private agreements, it's just nobody even said, like nobody, if like in your example of living in an apartment building, if homeless people just come in and move into the vestibule and then the owner of the building hires a few people to physically remove them from the building.
No one is sitting there going like, oh my God, you can't just clear out the hallway of these people.
It's like, well, of course I can.
This is my building and people live here.
Homeless people can't just move in.
The people who live here pay to live here.
Like, no, you know, no one really can have a moral objection to that.
No serious person can, at least.
And same in the mall and all these other places, like people getting kicked out of a mall.
That's no, no one has a problem with that.
It's only when you get the government involved that then all of a sudden there's like this weird like, well, I don't know.
Can we just kick them out of the streets?
I mean, the streets belong to everyone type thing, but that's not the libertarian position.
Or perhaps you can be there, but with some level of decorum, like anywhere else in the world.
Like, I guess, yes, you can sit down on a park bench at night and go to sleep, but not if you're covered, like, not if you're yelling at random kids.
You know what I mean?
Like, it's like anywhere else.
Like, yes, you can go loiter at the mall for the day.
You just have to kind of behave yourself and sit in a chair and not bother people.
Like, there's a every place kind of has an etiquette.
You know what I mean?
So it's not so crazy to go, I'm like, there's businesses here.
I got to maintain the businesses.
No one's, no one's getting off at you that you're having a rough patch in your life and that you're homeless right now.
You just can't look and behave like this and sit here.
Like, you know what I mean?
Kind of, and yeah.
And I think that there should be, and there are, you know, but maybe there should be more, but there should be organizations that are trying to help homeless people and get their lives together and get them the psychological help that they need or whatever.
And I have in the past and I'm happy to like voluntarily contribute to some of these organizations.
However, if the libertarian position is that on private property, you can absolutely handle it just like you just said, right?
Like at the mall, where the reasonable rules that all organically arise in a market are something like that.
Like, oh yeah, you can just go window shop at the mall all day long.
No one's going to really, so you could just go sit there at the food court and sit down and, you know, whatever, get one soda and sit there for six hours.
No one's really going to do anything.
But if you start yelling at people, you're cursing, you stink, like all these things, then you're probably going to be asked to leave.
And if the libertarian position is that anyone on private property has a right to throw you out.
Okay.
And then the libertarian position is also that since your money is your private property, the government is stealing it from you when they take your money.
Okay.
Well, the government stole your money and then built these sidewalks or whatever with the money or built a public park with the money.
It's like, okay, well, just the fact that they stole that money from you and we oppose that does not in any way imply that then they must just not have any of these basic common sense rules on public property.
It just doesn't follow.
And the truth is that, yeah, this is the point I made on the late Rothbard episode that we did last year.
But like, it's like, okay, yeah, I understand not wanting the government to do something to the homeless people.
But the point is that if they're stealing your money to maintain these sidewalks and parks and then just allowing them to be occupied by, you know, psychotic drug addicts, which is what they are in most cases, that is also doing something.
That's not doing nothing.
And I don't see any reason why we can't say that, yeah, it's reasonable.
I certainly think as like, you know, a taxpayer and a husband and a father, my priority is more that these families who are, you know, taxpayers and fathers and mothers and that they get to not have their kids in a park with, you know, just seeing all of that stuff.
So that, you know, that's just more of a priority to me than people being, you know, forcefully evicted from said park or sidewalk.
Celebrating Lou Rockwell00:03:05
I don't know.
But I do think the more that this stuff is getting worse and worse, the more libertarians have to have like serious grown-up answers for this stuff.
And the answer can't just be, well, we're going to just let it happen.
If there's violent crime, we're just going to let it happen.
If there's homeless encampments all around your house, we're just going to let it happen.
That can't be because it's not serious.
And there's a very real world problem for real, regular people.
And we got to like understand what they're, you know, dealing with.
So yeah, I don't know.
I don't have a problem with any of that, any of that late Rothbard stuff.
Okay.
So I did want to say before we wrap up here today, that I just saw on Twitter that it was Lou Rockwell's birthday today.
So here, in the spirit of praising Rothbard, Lou Rockwell, for people who don't know, is the founder and the chairman of the Mises Institute.
People ask me a lot of times, like, how I have the foundation that I have and understanding kind of this philosophical worldview, which really is what allows me to kind of, you know, break down the corporate press and the news of the day and all this stuff.
And really, there's no institution that I credit more than the Mises Institute.
If you, man, if you're interested in anything, go to Mises.org, M-I-S-I-S, M-I-S-E-S, excuse me, dot org.
And they've got the answers to like almost any philosophical question you could think of.
Just a phenomenal organization.
And Lou Rockwell had a huge impact on me.
And he's been nothing but just like an incredible person to me.
And I've been fortunate enough to go to the Mises Institute a few times, and I really look forward to going back.
So, happy birthday to him.
Thank you for all of your contributions to Liberty.
For people who don't know, Lou Rockwell really did more than anybody else to keep the ideas of Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard alive, which they quite possibly would not have been kept alive without him.
He was Ron Paul's chief of staff at one point, and I believe he ran his 1988 campaign for president on the Libertarian Party ticket.
And the guy is just, he really created the institution that was the intellectual backing of the Ron Paul presidential runs, not just in 88, but in 2008 and 2012.
And yeah, helped red pill me a whole lot.
And I really, really recommend people, if they haven't already, read his book Against the State, an Anarcho-Capitalist Manifesto.
Just a phenomenal book.
Phenomenal book.
And yeah, he's a great guy and he's done a lot for Liberty.
So happy birthday.
Hope he enjoys it.
Read Against The State00:00:49
And yeah, just wanted to say that before we wrapped.
Okay, once again, next Friday, or is it this Friday?