Dave Smith analyzes the Libertarian Party's 50th anniversary, arguing that despite local victories and figures like Ron Paul, the movement failed to stop global totalitarianism caused by an "insane COVID regime." He outlines a strategy to scale the party from two million to twenty million members by utilizing the Free State Project, crypto communities, and the Mises Caucus to remove "woke" elements. While acknowledging the unlikelihood of winning a national presidency soon, Smith concludes that the party's true value lies in undermining government propaganda and fostering a mass movement to ultimately overthrow tyranny. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Fifty Years of Failed Liberty00:14:45
Fill her up.
You are listening to the Gash Digital Network.
We need to roll back the state.
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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, Dave Smith.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I'm Dave Smith, and I am flying solo for this episode.
I got a bunch of stuff coming up.
So if you're interested, I'm debating Nick Fuentes tomorrow night.
Although by the time you're listening to this, it's probably already out.
So it's up, I think it's on Odyssey.
I don't know exactly where it's going to be posted.
I'll share it.
I'll tweet it or something like that.
So that probably already happened.
Hopefully, I did a good job.
And then I'm going to be at a bunch of the Libertarian Party state conventions coming up.
I'll be in Arizona in January.
Then I'm also going to be in Connecticut, Colorado, California, a few other ones as well.
So a bunch of that stuff coming up.
And the Libertarian Party is actually what I wanted to talk about on today's episode.
So the Libertarian Party just turned 50 last week, was the 50th anniversary of the formation of the Libertarian Party.
And I planned on talking about it last week, but that never happened.
There was just other shit going on in the news.
But so I thought I would do a video about the Libertarian Party and talk a little bit about my thoughts on it, why I'm a member, why I'm very excited for where it's going in the future.
I know a lot of people dismiss third parties, and understandably so.
But I want to kind of try to make my case for why I think it's valuable and why I think it's going to go in a very positive direction very soon over the next few months.
So anyway, the Libertarian Party turned 50.
So it was created in 1972.
And it was a small group of people, very small group of people at the time.
And the first meeting, I believe they tried to, they nominated Murray Rothbard to run for president, who is, of course, my favorite libertarian thinker and the person who's influenced me more than any other libertarian philosopher.
So they tried to get him to run for president and he was like, no, are you insane?
There's like, there's 12 of you.
I'm not doing this.
And he was kind of skeptical about the party, but he ultimately did join and then ultimately did leave the party.
But the Libertarian Party, I think, has a really cool tradition.
And the high watermarks probably were running Ron Paul for president in 1988 and then running Harry Brown for president in 1996 and in the year 2000.
And neither of them did tremendously well.
Neither of them came close to winning the presidency.
But I don't know.
To me, I just, I thought it was really cool that they ran those two great men who stood up and told the truth.
And I, you know, I think there's real value in that.
And people can downplay that as much as they want to and, you know, say like, well, this is, you're not really running for president and third parties can't win in America and all of this.
But I look at it a little bit differently.
And I see two men who knew that they weren't going to win, knew that they were destined to lose, and were still willing to get up there and put their neck on the line and tell the truth in order to move one inch closer to where we want to be, to move one inch, that Al Pacino speech from any given Sunday.
That's how winning is done is one inch at a time.
And I think there's honor in that.
And I appreciate what those guys did.
And the Libertarian Party since then has gotten a lot bigger.
And candidates get a lot more votes.
They've gotten a lot more people elected since then.
There's hundreds of Libertarians in small offices across the country who have been elected.
And I think that's cool.
And it's certainly better than that not being the case.
So happy 50th birthday to the Libertarian Party.
But I saw some other people who made videos like about this, who it was just kind of like celebrating the Libertarian Party and saying, we're going to set the world free in our lifetime.
And look at everything we've accomplished and all of this.
And I, of course, being me, am going to be a little bit different about this.
And also for those of you who listen to the show, I'm going to try my best to not just make this an episode like about insider Libertarian Party stuff.
I want to, you know, connect this to the bigger issues in what's going on in the world today.
So the problem with these videos where people are just saying like, well, congratulations, the Libertarian Party.
You know, we're going to set the world free in our lifetime and everything's going so great.
And look at what we've done in the last 50 years is that, well, everything's not going so great.
And to most people who are outside the Libertarian Party, who care about liberty, which are, let's be real, the majority of people who care about liberty are outside of the Libertarian Party.
And even to people who are just maybe opposed to the current regime, who see the Libertarian Party and they see people in it saying everything's going really great.
Well, the problem there is that things are not going really great.
And when people see you acting as if they are, it makes it very easy for them to dismiss you.
So the first thing I would say is that we have to acknowledge that things are not good.
Things are very, very bad, in fact.
And back when Ron Paul was running for president as a Republican, after running in the Libertarian Party, of course, he ran twice in the Republican Party.
He would talk about how we were on this unsustainable course that was destined for failure.
And that, I think, seemed a little bit hyperbolic in 2008 and even in 2012.
But I don't think it does in what is soon to be 2022.
I think it seems pretty accurate.
Now, I, of course, as I've been talking about forever, and you guys who listen to this show know I care a lot about these ideas and particularly how they relate to the real world.
I thought we were on a suicide mission in 2019 and quite a bit before that, but my point is before all the COVID insanity.
And I thought that the insurmountable debt, the military expansion, the cultural decay, many different factors, the destruction of the currency, all of these things, they were pretty apparent then.
But things have changed a lot in the last Just under two years.
And at this point, when you, if you're somebody who promotes liberty and you're looking at the totalitarianism that is sweeping the world, and I don't think that's an overstatement, I think that's just the reality.
You look at what's going on in Australia, you look at what's going on in Austria, in Germany, and France, and in New York City, and I guess New Orleans, and Los Angeles, and many parts of this country, it's hard to really make a case that Liberty is winning.
And I think if there's one role for the Libertarian Party, like I said, the best thing about Harry Brown and the best thing about Ron Paul is they stood up and told the truth.
And I think we should do that as well.
The truth is that Liberty is not winning.
Liberty is losing very badly.
And if we're going to be honest with ourselves, the Libertarian Party has not done anything to stop that.
That's the truth.
Sometimes the truth hurts, but I think it's still important to say it.
Okay, so I did start by saying I'm very optimistic and I am bullish on the Libertarian Party.
But again, that doesn't mean we don't, we can't tell the truth.
So that's the truth.
The truth is that Liberty is losing.
The Libertarian Party hasn't done anything.
Look, we got 50 years on the books.
And in 50 years, there has been a whole lot of expansion of the size and scope of government and a lot of loss of freedom.
And we have not in any way been able to effectively stop that or even slow it down, as far as I can see.
Don't get me wrong, there's been some libertarians elected to local offices and they've done some good things, and that's great.
There's been some Liberty Republicans who were elected to local offices and done some good things.
And there's even been some Democrats and some Green Party people who have done some good things on, you know, in local wins.
And all of that should be celebrated.
It's better than if that didn't happen.
But in the grand scheme of things, no, we have all failed.
The Liberty movement so far has failed.
The Libertarian Party so far has failed.
So here is why I'm excited about the Libertarian Party and the future that we can make happen in there.
All right.
If we're going to be honest and say that the Libertarian Party has failed, well, let's also be honest and say so have the Republicans and the Democrats.
And the difference is that they've actually had power.
They've had power and they have not only failed, failed is an understatement, if you're referring to those two parties.
They are guilty of borderline treason against the country.
They have destroyed the most prosperous country in the history of the world.
That's not a small task.
And that's what those two parties have done.
And any other third party has failed as much as the Libertarian Party or even more, because they're all fairly small and irrelevant in comparison.
Although, granted, we're small and irrelevant compared to the big two.
But we're at a point now in America where things have drastically changed.
And this is why I'm excited about what the Libertarian Party can do.
So first, let me say that I see, and I've been in this libertarian world for a little bit now.
I've been, You know, I really was introduced to the ideas of libertarianism in around 2007.
2008, 2009 is when I was kind of sold on them.
And then since then, shortly after, I've been kind of, you know, in this space.
And I didn't really take off and become like, you know, someone with a following in this space for a few years after that, but I remember those days very well.
And I'm aware of kind of like all the players and all of that.
So I've been here for a while and I watched kind of like there was this kind of uptick and like boom in interest of the ideas of liberty.
And then it kind of faded down, it seemed like after Ron Paul's run in 2012.
I think 2013, 2014, there was some hope of Rand Paul, still some, you know, hanging on to the Ron Paul days.
And then 2015, 2016, 2017 were kind of like dark years.
And the rise of Donald Trump and the crazy, you know, opposition to Donald Trump all kind of like sucked all the oxygen out of the room to some degree.
But as far as I'm concerned, there was it's been an interesting moment where even though the liberty movement kind of receded a little bit during that time, there was an anti-establishment tone that took over the country.
So you had, you know, of course, like during this kind of time or more or less around this time, you had like the Tea Party movement, the Occupy Wall Street movement.
These were both, I guess, around 2010, 2011.
Then after all of that, you had the in the rise of Black Lives Matter initially, that rise, which is kind of very different than the Black Lives Matter, what it's come to be known and what it became in 2020.
But you had the Bernie Sanders campaign in 2016, and of course, the Donald Trump campaign in 2016.
But aside from that, there was just the rise of internet political commentators and I guess not just political commentators, but kind of philosophy, you know, commentators or whatever you want to say.
You know, I don't know.
I'm thinking like, you know, Joe Rogan and Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson and on the left, a whole bunch of those guys too, that just rose up, like all these alternative voices that were challenging the regime in one way or another.
You know, a lot of them get a lot of stuff wrong, but a lot of them really get some stuff right and at least really oppose what we're currently living under.
The Blue Blox Renaissance00:04:49
And what I've noticed recently in the last couple years, and I'm convinced of this, is that I think we're seeing a resurgence in the liberty movement.
I think this is pretty clear.
Like, and I would almost, I think anybody who's a libertarian who's out there, if you were from what I was talking about, where there was kind of like the dark period of time to now, like from whatever, let's say from 2014 to 2021, you can see there's this enthusiasm all of a sudden again.
There's this energy.
There's a lot more of the figures are like, you know, just growing and growing.
And I think about people like Eric July, like Michael Malice, like Tom Woods, Scott Horton, like all of these guys who are just Gaining tremendous popularity from what they previously had.
And, you know, and then within the Libertarian Party now, you know, you have people like Justin Amash and Spike Cohen, I think myself, and the entire Mises caucus and what they've been doing.
And of course, you still have people like all the people at the Mises Institute, the Libertarian Institute, which is now a thing.
There's just a lot of different people.
Sorry if I've left anyone out of that.
I'm sure I have that there's people I should be mentioning.
But I even see more of the people now, like this newer generation of people like coming up, the kind of Reed Coverdales and the Clint Russells and like all these guys, all kind of coming up.
Pete, of course, Pete Quinones, you know, like all of these guys.
And again, I apologize if I'm leaving people out here because I know I'm going to do that.
But you get my point.
It's like, it seems like there's a rise again in the Liberty movement, both inside and outside of the Libertarian Party.
And I think that the reason why this is hitting so hard right now is fairly simple.
And it's because we're right.
We have the truth on our side, which is a powerful advantage.
Sometimes it doesn't seem that way, but it really is.
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Can a Third Party Come Back00:14:49
All right, let's get back into the show.
Back in like around 2016, 2017, I remember, you know, being very disappointed when the Ron Paul energy had kind of faded and the Rand Paul presidential campaign just, you know, kind of fell flat.
And there was all of this different kind of like the Trump populist energy that kind of sucked everything, sucked all the oxygen out of the room.
And then, as I said before, and then the counter to it was just like insanity.
I mean, it was like everyone to the left half of America, it seemed like got worse.
And it's not completely true.
There were some really principled left wingers who were great through all of this.
And I just give some shout outs, I guess, like Aaron Matei, Jeremy Scahill, Jimmy Dore.
You know, there were a good amount of them who were actually very solid throughout this whole thing.
But in general, it seemed like the Trump outrage and the woke insanity just dominated everything to the point that like, you know, what were considered like left wingers were quite happy to make alliances with like Bill Crystal to oppose Trump.
And MSNBC became the home of just kind of like somehow like woke hysteria and neocons all at once.
And it was just, it was a bizarre moment.
And this was all, and the liberty movement that we had, the energy we had going at the time kind of receded.
And I remember at that time, it was very weird because at that time is when I started coming up and I started kind of getting like a big following and making a nice career for myself in this space.
And it was kind of this weird dynamic where I'm like, well, you know, in 2012, there was all this energy in the liberty movement.
I was like a nobody in this space.
But then by 2017, I was like a person in this space, but there was like no energy in the movement anymore.
And so I remember being in that spot.
And I do remember thinking that I was like, okay, this thing's going to come back.
I really believe it is.
I believe all this momentum that we have, I think it comes in waves.
I think it's going to be a few years, but it's going to come back.
And I remember talking about this.
You can, if you're a subscriber to the podcast, if you go back and listen to some of the episodes around that time, you could find me talking about this, where I was saying, this is, this is going to come back.
And I thought primarily because we had the truth on our side and that so many people were looking for truth everywhere.
And the problem was that they weren't getting the real answer.
They weren't getting that Ron Paul shit.
They were getting all of these other kind of cheap versions of it.
You know, it's like, yeah, they were getting like Ben Shapiro or something like that, but what they really needed was Ron Paul.
And I also felt like when the crisis emerged, that's when we were going to look our best, which is unfortunate.
You wish it didn't have to go that way, but that's, I think, kind of part of the human condition to some degree is like, you know, you know, like a buddy is like, you know, a junk, or like some guy's like a junkie and then his buddy ODs.
And then he's like, oh, shit, I got to get my life together, you know?
And it sucks that it has to take that.
But sometimes things really going bad is what it takes for someone to realize like, oh, shit, this is why we don't want to go in this bad direction.
But I knew that, you know, part of the reason why Ron Paul blew up in 2008 was because it had been exposed that the war in Iraq was a disaster and the economy crashed.
And it was like, holy shit, what's going on here?
And then there was someone who could explain it to people and be like, well, okay, here's what's going on here.
You shouldn't fight stupid wars of aggression and you shouldn't, you know, have artificially low interest rates and government policies that encourage everybody to buy houses because the bill is going to come due at some point and then the bubble bursts.
And, you know, he was the only one who had the answers for any of that shit.
And so, anyway, I guess my point is that now we're in a position where it's almost really hard to deny.
I think it's hard for people to deny that what is the problem in America?
Like, what is killing this country right now?
And everyone knows the country is being destroyed.
And what is it?
I mean, what is the problem?
Is the problem that we need more government authoritarianism?
Or is the problem that we've had too much of that?
I don't think there's, I really don't see how too many people can mistake this.
The problem with America is that it's being destroyed by this insane COVID regime, the insane monetary policy, the insane foreign policy, and of course, the, you know, the police state that enforces all of it.
And that's it.
So we're now at a perfect point.
We're perfectly positioned to kind of explain to the American people what happened here.
And what happened here is that we deviated from the ideas of liberty, which we've been doing for a long time.
And the answer, of course, if that's the cause of the problem, then the answer is to stop doing that.
That's it.
That's essentially the answer.
What's the answer to lockdowns?
Well, don't do them.
And, you know, what's the answer to stupid wars?
Stop them.
And what's the answer to, you know, the war on terrorism being turned in domestically?
It's like to stop that.
Now, okay, granted, I'm not saying that that's the strategy for how to achieve that goal, but the first step there is at least to recognize that that's what you want to do.
You want to end these tyrannical policies.
Okay.
So that's all I'm saying.
And we're still in that first step phase where people need to be convinced of this, to be woken up.
All right.
So there's the situation that you have.
You have this kind of new, as far as I'm concerned, this is how I see it.
You have this situation where we have a crisis.
The crisis is caused by like horrifically evil, stupid, and blatantly corrupt government tyranny.
Libertarians, at least all the good ones, have been right about it the whole time and have the perfect explanation for why this all happened.
That seems like a cool moment to me.
That's something I'd be excited about.
Now, the Libertarian Party is in a very interesting position here.
It's in a position where they are the third biggest party, okay, by a long distance, third, but still they're in the position of being the other party.
And that's not so bad in America right now.
It's not such a bad thing to not be one of the political parties that's been in charge over, say, the last 20 years, while the other two have blown everything.
And I mean, everything.
That's not such a bad position to be in.
And they've got this name, libertarian, and they've got this philosophy, the one that we love, that they also, you know, are claim at least to be all about.
And we're in a position now where, okay, the, well, Traditionally speaking, right, the what was the argument against a third party?
Well, it was like, well, all the rules are rigged against a third party, and you know, they're never going to let you in the debates.
You know, even if they say you need 10%, if you get 10%, they'll say you need 15%, and on and on.
And they'll, you know, they'll rig the whole thing against you.
And that's true.
That's true.
But you kind of got to think about what your goals are, what you're actually trying to achieve.
What's the game plan here?
So all of that is important.
So the Libertarian Party, think about it like this: as crazy as you might think that a third party could really affect some type of change in the country.
And I understand feeling that way.
It does, you know, traditionally, at least in this country, seem a little bit unlikely.
But, you know, traditionally in this country, Donald Trump winning seems pretty damn unlikely, too.
Traditionally, in this country, Bernie Sanders is not supposed to give Hillary Clinton a run for her money, you know, and then require DNC cheating in order to ensure that that doesn't happen.
And he's definitely not supposed to come back again in 2020 and be the front runner up until basically Super Tuesday and then the whole COVID thing.
Like that's none of that's supposed to happen.
The corporate press is not supposed to be ruthlessly mocked everywhere they go.
You know, like there's it, if you're not paying attention, maybe you could miss it, but a whole bunch of interesting shit is going on in this country right now.
It's a really fascinating moment.
And of course, you know, everybody in the corporate press is freaking out.
Like, oh my God, everything's so horrible.
You know, there's, oh my God, the right-wingers don't believe the election was real.
And they were even willing to trespass on the Capitol.
You know, like that's supposed to be, we're all supposed to freak out.
Like, oh my God, that's the worst thing right-wingers have ever done.
I mean, sure, when they lined up lockstep to support wars of, you know, mass murder for no reason, like that's, well, that's just what right-wingers do, right?
That was, that wasn't a big problem, but this, I mean, trespassing on government property.
This is, you know, a whole new, a whole new thing here.
So they're freaking out.
People are dying for alternative voices.
And also, we've got these rising voices in the liberty world that are really speaking to large groups of people.
I mean, like, again, if you, you know, if you combine the audiences of all of these, you know, popular figures I mentioned in the libertarian space, it's a lot of people.
I'm not saying it's enough to win a fucking national election or anything like that.
I'm just saying it's a lot of people.
And a lot of us also have become friends with a lot of the most popular alternative voices.
You know, the internet group of people.
You know, you think about Michael Malice and Bob Murphy being on Jordan Peterson's show and just doing great, both of them just making like great arguments there.
And you think about, of course, like so many of us like going on Rogan's show and Tim Poole's show and all of this.
And of course, Rogan being the biggest of all of them, but Tim Poole is very big also.
I mean, these are substantially bigger audiences than you would get going on, you know, CNN or MSNBC or something like that during the day.
Even Fox News, you know, aside from their biggest shows.
But anyway, this gets kind of to my next point about what the goals are.
Now, if when libertarian, when the Libertarian Party says, well, we're going to, you know, take over the government to leave you alone, or we're going to set the world free in our lifetime.
That I understand where people can say, that seems a little bit high in the sky.
And perhaps.
I mean, I hope so, but set the world free in our lifetime.
Let's do everything we can to try.
Take over the government to leave you alone.
That seems unlikely.
Again, I'll go back to what I said at the beginning.
I think we should tell the truth.
And I think the truth is that that's not going to happen.
I mean, it's just not.
And the idea that any of us, you know, libertarians who I believe are maybe they have one statewide election victory ever, but the idea of getting a national victory is, let's just say, highly unlikely.
So you take that highly unlikely scenario and then imagine that you could actually get in there and implement your will.
I mean, I think you'd almost have to be buying into the myth of democracy to believe this could happen.
And, you know, it's not, we don't actually live in a democracy.
We live under an oligarchy.
You know, the politicians who are democratically elected have substantially less control than these shadowy figures who are unelected and stay there through all of these different administrations.
And I'm not just talking about like the three-letter organizations.
I'm talking about just like bureaucrats throughout the federal government.
And the truth is that if anybody was ever elected to, so you could look at Donald Trump and how much he just became a pariah, how much he was just completely opposed by everybody, you know, within the federal government, within the, you know, from the executive branch to the legislators, from, you know, the corporate press and Hollywood and academia and all of this, right?
Like just completely opposed.
Now imagine somebody who actually was more of a direct threat to what is, what is the U.S. federal government really other than the biggest honeypot in the history of the world.
So imagine someone who is a direct threat to them.
Like, I'm coming in here and my goal is to make everybody here worse off.
I want to fire a whole bunch of you.
Cutting Through the Noise00:02:37
I want to cut off a whole bunch of your money making, you know, like, how do you think they would respond to that person?
I don't even think it's like, I used to say, oh, like they'd probably just, you know, you'd probably take a limo ride through Dallas, but I'll tell you, after all the Trump years and everything, I don't even think that's the truth.
I think they would just box you in, just make you look terrible, all of that.
And just not allow you to enact your agenda.
So, okay.
So that's probably not how it's going to happen.
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The regime certainly seems to think it's very important to propagandize people.
Strategic Repeal and Propaganda00:12:22
They go through extreme lengths to, you know, they talk about disinformation and other, you know, alternative media, but man, do they go through some extreme lengths to convince people of their BS propaganda?
You know, think about what we've seen over the last couple years.
It's pretty bananas.
And so, what are all of us really out here doing?
Well, we're cutting through that.
We're undercutting that propaganda.
And I think that's a huge part of what the Libertarian Party can do.
You know, a libertarian national campaigns can do a lot of different things.
It's not just because we can't take over the federal government and start abolishing everything.
Just take over the federal government and go, you know what?
We're going to, I mean, think about, by the way, how much we would want to abolish if we even got in there.
Oh my God, that would be, that would be seven full-time jobs to even go like, okay, we got to abolish, you know, we want to abolish the affordable, we want to abolish all the COVID tyranny, right?
And all of that stuff.
And then we want to abolish, you know, Obamacare and everything he did in his time.
And then we want to go back to George W. Bush and we want to abolish all of the, but you know, the Department of Homeland Security and we want to get rid of the NSA and we want to get rid of the TSA and we want to get rid of, oh, I guess that's under Department of Homeland Security, but all the George W. Bush things.
And then, you know, we want to get all the way back to like whatever, like Lyndon Johnson, and we want to repeal the whole great society.
And then we want to get back to the Harry Truman and we want to repeal the whole national security apparatus.
And then we can get back to FDR and repeal everything from the New Deal and Social Security and all of this.
And then we get back to Woodrow Wilson and we repeal the income tax and the Federal Reserve.
And then we get back to like Teddy Roosevelt.
We repeal, you know, like public schools.
And like, I mean, it's, it's a lot.
We've got a lot of repealing to do.
And it's probably not going to happen that way.
But that doesn't mean it can't happen.
It's just probably not going to happen that way.
Probably we're not going to play their same game that they played to install all of this shit to repeal all of it.
But that is what needs to happen.
And I would say this: that Undercutting their propaganda is an incredibly powerful tool, especially as they're hyperventilating and things are spinning out of control.
And that's something to keep in mind.
Keep that in mind for the rest of what I'm going to say right now.
Undermining propaganda, especially while those people pushing the propaganda are hyperventilating, is incredibly powerful, incredibly powerful.
This whole thing doesn't work unless people buy into it.
That's essentially the way the whole game works.
Otherwise, if that wasn't the case, why would they spend so much energy trying to convince everybody to buy into this, right?
That's the whole point, is that you have to believe it.
They need everybody to, you know, pretend to say the emperor has clothes, right?
And then just one person says he doesn't and things can start to domino and fall down.
And I think that's what we're on the verge of.
So if the Libertarian Party's goal isn't realistically to win national office, what should the goal be?
And here's what I think.
I think it should be kind of like a two-prong attack.
There should be the local strategy and there should be the national strategy.
And the local strategy should be to grab power wherever you can and repeal it.
Actually implement those policies.
If you can go grab any local office and you can convince them to have less, you know, if you can grab some local office and enact less gun controls or less stupid laws or whatever it is, right?
Like great.
You just got more tangible freedom in real people's lives.
And we have to keep going after that stuff.
And in terms of the more like statewide elections, I think we should be really smart about how we wield our power because there is power.
And this is something that's a very interesting kind of dynamic that you, even if you're losing, you can have a lot of power and sway things, right?
So what we should do is we should think about these elections on a statewide level where we can, you know, where we can hit a decent enough number that that could be the difference, that that could cost these other candidates.
And in those elections, we should really focus on doing everything we can to destroy the worst candidates.
And we should, and this might be kind of controversial to some people in the Libertarian Party, we should not damage the good candidates.
And I will say this, and I don't care, you know, again, like the whole theme of what I've been saying this whole time.
We got to tell the truth and we got to actually care about liberty and not just care about being, you know, party loyalists or puritan, Jesus, Puritans in our own libertarian philosophy.
So we should not primary the best liberty Republicans.
I'll say there's probably even examples of Democrats, although I don't know.
They've gotten pretty crazy.
It's harder and harder these days.
But for example, like if we, let's just say Tulsi Gabbard, for example, was, you know, someone who's really going to be a Congresswoman, right?
Like when she was elected to Congress, when she was running, I know she's out now, but when she was running, if a libertarian could run in Hawaii who was going to steal a few percentage points of the anti-war vote away from Tulsi Gabbard, and then because of that, some Republican war hawk was going to get in.
Like if that was the situation theoretically, then we just shouldn't challenge her.
We just shouldn't do that because what are we doing?
If we were going to do that, what we should do is run someone to get to that point in the polls and then make a deal with Tulsi Gabbard and say, hey, you got to be better on X. You got to back down on your stance on the Green New Deal or Medicare for all or something like that.
You got to be a little bit better on the market on that, and we'll throw our support behind you.
I think that's what we should do.
Like, that's just, it's not, it doesn't, because otherwise it's like, what's really being achieved here?
What are you going to do?
Oh, you're going to keep Tulsi Gabbard out.
So, some like theoretically, if it was like a neocon versus Tulsi Gabbard in a close race, okay?
Like, I know that wasn't exactly the case in Hawaii, but I'm saying theoretically, if that's the case.
No, you don't do that.
Now, in the same sense, we should not be actually like launching primary challenges to, you know, say Justin Amash when he was a Republican.
I mean, he's a member of the Libertarian Party now, but when he was a Republican, should we have been challenging him with the Libertarian Party candidate?
I don't, that doesn't make sense to me.
That's just stupid.
Like, if our, if our highest goal here is liberty, our highest political goal is liberty, then that's what we should fight for.
And if it's Justin Amash or Rand Paul or Thomas Massey or someone like that, you could have whatever problems you have with Justin Amash or Rand Paul or Thomas Massey, but you know what?
We don't want their opponent to win and them to lose.
Okay.
So we shouldn't be primarying them.
And if we do, it's just to float out the idea to then make them a little bit better and then support them.
And I'll say the same thing about the COVID tyranny.
We should not primary the, what is it, three governors who are good on COVID.
And I guess that would be DeSantis, Abbott, and what's her name?
Geez, blanking on her freaking name.
South Carolina.
South Dakota.
Excuse me.
Sorry.
I've made that mistake before.
And I apologize.
I'm especially a dick because I literally did an event with her in South Dakota this year.
So I should really remember the name and the state of the place where I did an event with the best governor on COVID.
But anyway, whatever.
The governor of South Dakota, Jesus, Brian, pull this up for me.
Yes, Noam.
That's right.
I'm sorry.
Christy Noam.
My apologies to Christy Noam and her husband.
I met them both.
They were very nice people.
Best looking couple in governorship.
Anyway, so I think we shouldn't challenge those people.
And that's not anything about how, you know, it's not that libertarians aren't better than them.
It's just that's how serious this COVID tyranny thing is.
And by the way, there was also this Democratic governor who just recently basically came out and said he's just going to make this a free choice issue.
And I say same for him.
Don't challenge him.
We have to pick our spots a little bit and be smart here.
But when there's a bad Republican who's like not doing good on the COVID stuff, who hasn't stood up to it and did lockdowns in his state, which is the vast majority of them, then we fucking ruin them.
Then we go, okay, we will ensure that you can't win.
Then we really sink our teeth into it.
So we got to be strategic about this.
But these things can be powerful.
We can make it so that the really bad, you know, Republicans who don't support freedom at all can't win and only the ones who do can.
And same with the Democrats, although it's, I will grant, it's there's less of them on that side, but there's not zero.
And so that's something where we can be really smart and really strategic.
And the whole time, pumping our ideas out there and making them focus on the things we want them to focus on.
And then there's the national level.
And on the national level, I think like all bets are off in terms of like whether we should, you know, I mean, I guess I talked a little bit about the national level with, you know, Whatever with congressional state, but I'm talking about national elections, not just national governance.
But in terms of like running presidential candidates, we should recognize that we're not going to win those races.
We're not going to win the presidency short of, I mean, something humongous happening.
Now, if there has to be, it would have to be like an incredible situation.
I mean, if you think about the fact that, you know, Gary Johnson, who's the all-time vote leader for libertarian presidential candidates, got like around 4 million votes.
Well, I mean, he'd have to double that, right, to get 8 million votes.
And then he'd have to double that to get 16 million votes.
And then he'd have to double that to get 32 million votes.
And then he'd have to double that.
You know, you get my point.
It's not only would we need our best showing ever, we'd need our best showing and then double that and then double that and then double that and then double that.
So this is a crazy long shot to actually win.
And you're probably not going to get your best showing and then double it and then double it and then double it and then double it without making some noise.
Like you're, you're probably not going to do that by just like run like playing it safe.
Okay.
So if you're even thinking about trying to win this thing, you better be throwing Hail Marys left and right and just going crazy, trying to get like all the attention you can and really taking on, you know, just trying to tear everyone to shreds.
But if your goal is just like, okay, well, I want like a few more votes.
I want a few more votes, a few more votes, get a little bit more funding, get a little bit more TV time.
Okay.
What does that really do?
What does that really do for us?
So I think what can really help is that what we can use at this point in time is a presidential campaign.
I'm not saying this should be me.
Anybody else better than me, I'd much prefer you do it.
Why Get Involved Now00:09:43
I'm quite happy with the life I have now.
But I am saying that whoever the Libertarian candidate who runs for president is, just recognize that you have an opportunity right now where you can tell the truth, not like Ron Paul in 1988, not like Harry Brown in the year 2000, the year 1996.
You can now tell the truth to a larger audience than what the corporate press has to offer easily.
Who cares if they let you in the debates?
You can now stand up there, plant your flag as we're the third party, that party not responsible for the destruction, the party not responsible for presiding over the bankruptcy of the richest country in the history of the world.
Not that, not those people.
We are the alternative to that.
And we have all of the answers, at least politically, for what's going wrong in this country.
And I just think that could be so fucking powerful.
So powerful.
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So that now, now, okay, I should just say after that, that what I think that can lead to ultimately, if you have enough people woken up, is then we move into the next phase, which is like, how do we actually achieve like, you know, overthrowing all of this tyranny?
And the answer to that is once we've woken up enough people, I mean, libertarians, like true hardcore libertarians at this point in America, I think are somewhere.
I think there's a million of us, maybe 2 million, somewhere in that range.
And I think we need to scale that.
I think it needs to be 10 to 20.
But once we've got that, then I think it's a full court press.
A thousand flowers bloom, you know, a full court press.
You know, there's the Free State Project.
There's the crypto community.
There's, you know, seasteading and nullification efforts and all of this stuff.
There's everything you can throw at the wall.
We all kind of do that.
There's just retreating from the system, undermining the system, homeschooling your kid, just all of this, like a mass movement of everything you can think of.
And I think you'd be shocked at how much that could actually accomplish.
And that's, and also, I will also say, and seizing, you know, political offices on whatever level that you can.
I think all of that combined, and we could actually rein this thing in.
That's kind of, that's what I think our best bet is.
Okay, so let me transition from that to the Mises Caucus and what the role that I believe the Mises Caucus plays in all of this is.
So this is the Mises Caucus is what got me to join the Libertarian Party.
And essentially, because they were the ones who were saying, hey, let's bring this Ron Paul real shit into the Libertarian Party.
Let's try to convince this new budding libertarian liberty movement and bring them into the Libertarian Party so we have a home.
Okay.
So we all are kind of like together.
And this has been going incredibly well, incredibly well.
And this is part of the reason why I'm going to be at all of these state conventions coming up because we are basically everything that I told you was going to happen with the Libertarian Party is happening with the Libertarian Party right now.
Mises caucus is dominating.
We've been taking over state by state by state.
And I'll just tell you over the next few months, big things are going to be happening.
And part of what's going to happen in all of this is that the people who I've debated with on Twitter and on podcasts and stuff like this, the woke libertarians who are just like literally insane, just out of their minds, they're going to be exiting the party.
Don't worry, there's only seven of them, but they're going to be exiting the party.
More and more of our people are going to be coming into the party.
We're going to make this thing more of what we want it to be.
And the people who stick around in the party who have been there are really great people.
There's a whole lot of great people, not Mises Caucus, who've been there for a while.
And so What we're doing right now is kind of de-wokeifying the party, getting the people who have bought into all this woke insanity out, getting the better people in and making this thing the machine that it needs to be.
That's how I look at it.
And I'm happy, by the way, for anyone in the Libertarian Party, whether this is on the LNC or in state offices or anything like that.
I'm very happy.
I should say state positions within the libertarian parties.
I'm very happy to talk to any of you guys if you want to discuss this stuff more.
But I think what's going to happen over the next few months is going to be really awesome.
And I'd really encourage you guys to get involved if you can now.
The Mises caucus, this is the time.
If you want to support them, right now is the time to go try to pitch in.
Go to takehumanaction.com.
That's where you can figure out what's going on and how exactly you can help everybody out.
But there's some real exciting shit happening right now.
I think the Libertarian Party's future is bright.
I understand where people will be skeptical of this because it hasn't been traditionally what's worked in America.
But I'd look at it like this.
Even if you think what I'm saying here about seizing local office, being strategic where you challenge other offices and just using presidential runs to spread a message and wake people up.
I understand where someone could say, I'm skeptical that this is going to be enough of a solution.
I get that.
But think about it like this.
What is?
What is going to be the solution?
Vote for another Republican.
Vote for another Democrat.
What, Donald Trump's going to run again?
Is that going to solve everything?
Well, if we just get Trump in there, we can be what?
Locked down again by all the Democratic governors and he'll just sit there and say, you know, wish they wouldn't do that.
You know what?
What?
Who's the guy?
DeSantis, the best friend of Israel, Ron DeSantis.
Is he really going to be the guy who gets in there?
Please, anybody who cares about Ron DeSantis, please keep him as the governor of Florida.
We really need him there in case there's another round of lockdowns.
We really need someone to fight those.
But do you really, there was just a big article the other day talking about Trump versus Hillary part two.
Is that what we need?
One of them two?
Like, I'll be honest with you.
I don't even know.
I think it might be, and I've said this before on the show many times, but even from a right-winger's perspective, I think it might be better that Joe Biden is in there than Donald Trump is in there.
What would you be so happy about with Donald Trump being the president today?
It's like, what?
That all the inflation would fall on his watch and all the Democrat governors would be going even more crazy and all the woke activists would be going even more crazy.
What would you really gain from that?
I don't think that much.
I think what we need, what would be beautiful, is if it was Trump, Hillary, and someone telling the fucking truth and telling the truth on all of the biggest fucking platforms.
I don't care if they get on the debates with them, just ruthlessly, just nuking them from every big platform available.
That to me would be pretty cool.
And I think we could really create something beautiful here.
So that's kind of my, we'll call this episode the state of the of the LP.
And that's kind of where I think things are at.
I'm very excited for everything that's going to come up.
And I don't mean in the distant future.
I mean in the next few months.
So pay attention right now.
Right now is the time to get involved if you want to.
I appreciate you guys hearing me out on all of this.
And okay, I promise next episode, just back to attacking the press and the empire and all that good stuff.