Jeremy Kauffman details his New Hampshire Senate campaign, where 6,000 signatures and a viral "War is Gay" ad challenging LGBTQ+ military inclusion have sparked over 500,000 views despite intense backlash. He links current inflation to pandemic-era monetary expansion and rejects support for any figure opposing lockdowns by June 2020. Addressing the Libertarian Party's internal culture war divides, Kauffman argues that ignoring "woke" institutions is impossible and advocates for radical decentralization via the Free State Project as a superior alternative to forced homogeneity, framing political success as a necessary step against authoritarian regulatory overreach. [Automatically generated summary]
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Why Government Is Too Big00:15:14
Fill her up.
You're 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.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
Very happy to be joined today by my guest, Jeremy Kaufman.
He is the Senate candidate up in New Hampshire on the Libertarian Party.
He's also a free stater, member of the Free State Project.
I love those guys and support them.
Missed them all at Porkfest this year.
Unfortunately, I'll be back next year.
He's also got an interesting court case going on.
So a lot to talk about.
Thanks for coming on the show, dude.
It's great to be here.
All right.
So where should we start?
Let's start with the Senate campaign.
So you're in the middle of running for the United States Senate.
What's that experience been like?
I can't say I recommend it, but it's been a lot of fun at the same time.
You know, I always kind of thought I didn't want to be a politician, and now I can confirm that I don't want to be a politician.
But I've got to say, it's going well.
And I've had tremendous support from the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire.
There have been a lot of people who have been coming out, putting the time in.
We just finished collecting 6,000 signatures so that we can get on the ballot.
And that's almost all done by volunteers.
National helped a little bit with some money, which was also great.
But that's all volunteers.
So there's a lot of energy.
There's a lot of momentum.
Something that's pretty cool to see is, you know, I see these Republican events.
We can get out just about as many people as they can.
Our base is of similar size in terms of the amount of people who are activated and want to be involved.
We've got to figure out how we can translate that into results.
But the energy is there.
The people are there.
Yeah, I think, I mean, look, I think that's been something that's been really interesting to me to kind of see in my time in the Libertarian Party in general.
With the whole kind of Mises caucus takeover and everything, it was the probably central reason why we ended up taking over the party.
I mean, there's several, but the major reason is just like, there's tremendous energy on our side.
There just wasn't on any other side.
And probably New Hampshire that maybe is the best example of that in the country, where there's just like this real, very tangible energy.
You feel it when you go up there.
And the truth is, no matter what type of political, you know, action you're taking, if you want to see some type of change, you have to have this type of energy.
It's the only thing, it's like a prerequisite for doing anything.
I completely agree.
It's all about, it's building up that base, that core.
I actually liken it a lot to startups, which is my experience before politics.
It's the same kind of thing where every great product, every great new thing, sort of starts with this core of people who are really passionate about it.
And they become your evangelists.
They become the way that something actually spreads.
The message, a product is rarely sold directly by the messaging from the company.
Some of it is, of course, but a lot of it is the peer-to-peer, right?
Like you trust when your friend says to buy a pair of shoes more than you trust Nike saying to buy the shoes.
It's that peer-to-peer energy that really sells things.
And I think that's actually, there's this attitude I see sometimes among LP people that where they have this idea that like, oh, it's all about, you know, you have, you have, it's very naive.
You have to, you construct the best policies.
And then what every voter does is they look, they study, they say, which are, you know, and then they pick the politician with the best policies.
Couldn't be further from the truth.
But most people are very casual about their political decisions.
And what's really going to impact them is their peers, is the things that other people are saying.
They're not going and directly looking at your policy positions.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, you can see this all the time with guys like whether it's Obama or Trump or what people got on board with those guys about was not specific policy issues.
Trump could have had, take it, take any one policy of Trump's, maybe not immigration or not a couple major things, but he could have flipped and just been on the other side of it.
They were buying into him.
They were buying into the energy.
They were buying into the idea that this guy's going to win.
He's going to win for me.
We're going to do it.
And same with Obama.
It's really like, you know, it's really not as much as I, and this is maybe something we could get into a little bit more, but there is something that libertarians struggle with, which is dealing with the world as it exists rather than as we would prefer it to exist.
And this is like a major theme that I come across a lot.
It's a lot of times why people tell me, you know, they go, oh, I think, you know, like the agorists will say, well, I think politics is evil and corrupt.
And why would you even, you know, get involved in it?
And I'll be like, well, do you think it's important that we all keep talking about libertarianism and trying to persuade more people of this?
And they'll be like, yeah, absolutely.
I'll be like, well, that seems to be a lot more effective when it's centered around politics.
And that's just demonstrably true.
Like, you know, I debated an agorist guy who I was like, how would you get introduced to libertarianism?
He's like, oh, it was the Ron Paul campaigns.
You're like, hmm, well, that's kind of something, right?
Like the world as it exists, people do care about these political campaigns and they do care about like it being attached to a political narrative.
So, and there's many other examples like that where libertarians struggle sometimes to deal with the world as it exists rather than we'd like.
And I think there's something appealing to libertarians about the idea that people would make their decisions based on who has the best policy.
Because we're like, hey, we have the best policy.
And to be to credit these libertarians, a lot of them do act that way.
A lot of the people who believe this are the serious people, they're intellectual people who dig into this stuff.
But what they're doing is I'm a big fan of this concept called typical minding, which is where we, you know, we sort of naively expect others to be like us, to think like us, to act like us.
And this is true a lot of the times, but it's really not true.
People have people do have different preferences.
People do have different perspectives, different abilities, different views of the world that aren't necessarily logical or that you can engage with through reason and this kind of thing.
And I think, because this sort of class, this like the class of people who are very into the policies, and I maybe was one of these people a decade ago, they, you know, they do really care and they want to believe that other people care.
And they don't want to confront the reality that the vast, vast majority of people don't.
And so, and it's we, but we've got to get out of that mode of expecting that just because we are a certain way, that other people are going to be that way too.
Yeah, I think it's one of the things that holds human beings back in general, because the vast majority of human beings are not predators, but there are predators amongst human beings.
And it's very easy to project onto them that like no one would actually be this way.
And I think that's one of the real problems that a lot always drives me crazy is in libertarian circles when you hear things, you know, like kind of talking about how the government are a bunch of idiots.
You know, this kind of thing, oh, these jokers, all their unintended consequences.
And it's like, no, you're just projecting onto them that they mean well.
This is not the case at all.
How much evidence do you need to suggest this?
It's just, it's outside.
Most people do project their own values onto other people and it's dangerous.
Absolutely.
100%.
Yeah.
I mean, it's the same as, you know, communists or anything else, right?
They're believing that everyone else Would be like them.
In fact, you can probably see this at the root of a lot of people's beliefs are, you know, them believing that if everyone was like them and they had this system, then things would be fine.
And by the way, I'm not trying to claim that libertarianism is somehow above this.
I think it's, I think this is a plus ever.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, no, no, no, absolutely.
No, I just care about our guys getting better because I want to see us successful.
I'm fine with other people tripping themselves up.
So one of the things about your campaign that is probably what you're known for most at this point online, or at least what the campaign's known for most, has been some of these ads that you've run that you've done something very different than what most people do.
You've made these like very funny ads over the top, really kind of ruthlessly mocking the system.
The war is gay one, I imagine, has got to be the biggest one.
I've seen a ton of people passing this around.
It's really hilarious.
I'll put the link in the episode description.
But it's great.
Was this like all your idea or was it like a team that came up with this?
It's absolutely a team.
A lot of the work is done by Dan Smott's system is down in the editing room.
There's a guy, Bill Barger, Bill is a joke on Twitter, who also helped Reed help Reed Coverdale, helped with the last round, which isn't out yet, but is about to come out.
I'm going to be doing an ad on abortion to finally bring unity to the Libertarian Party.
I think, you know, I think if anyone can do it, it's me.
But these, you know, these ads, they're mostly unscripted.
Like what we do is we write down some concepts.
I ad lib, just kind of say, you know, shit for 30 minutes or so.
And then Dan takes the best two minutes of it and makes an ad out of it somehow.
So a lot of, you know, a lot of that's him and his work.
And that's, you know, that's me on Twitter too.
I mean, a lot of it's, those aren't scheduled posts.
Those aren't scripted.
They're not focus grouped.
You know, it's kind of me ad living.
And some of those ended up actually becoming ads.
You could probably find a tweet that's a precursor to every ad that I've made because you're kind of explored with the idea, you know, what happens if you say this, does it resonate?
That's Twitter.
Twitter, part of why I find it so interesting is it's like, you are like, you're almost like being, I don't know, like a shaman.
You're like, if you're trying to like channel tribal energy, you know, and if you do it well, you know, then it, then it resonates.
And so it's a very interesting, I find it to be a very interesting space for that reason.
Yeah.
Do you think the other thing that's very interesting about particularly like stuff?
So if for people who don't know, they can go check out the ad, but basically the ad is real is really mocking the kind of woke covering that goes on the savage military industrial complex.
That's kind of like the idea of it.
It's mocking the idea that there's kind of all of these powerful institutions within the military, you know, the Pentagon and the CIA and all this stuff are bragging about kind of like having trans people and gay people in the military and this kind of thing and really kind of, you know, ruthlessly mocking how insane this whole way of looking at things are.
Sorry, did you want to?
They're so desperate.
I mean, these people are so desperate to continue what they're doing.
They're making billions, billions and billions of dollars that they'll drape themselves in anything.
I mean, they're already sociopathic enough that they're happy to kill people to make money.
But so if you're already there, you'll wear any ideology you need to to continue to be allowed to do what you're doing.
And that's what this is about, you know, making fun of.
Some of the woke libertarians, of course, didn't like it, but my intent is never is actually never, at least with the ads, my intent is not just to sort of stick a thumb in their eye or anything, right?
I think, but I think most people got it.
I think, you know, 90, 90 plus percent of people got it.
And it's got some big shares.
You know, I know as libertarians, we can get, um, you know, oh, the media doesn't treat us fairly or whatever, but you know, more so than ever, we can bypass the media, we can go direct with this kind of stuff, and we can get it shared peer-to-peer.
So, I mean, the war is gay ad is, I think, over 500,000 views now.
My climate change ad is has several hundred thousand, and as does the lizard person one, um, also has a you know, also has a decent number.
And this is all peer-to-peer, we didn't pay anyone, we never asked anyone, and that doesn't even count.
You know, they've gotten plays on podcasts.
You're like, um, what's the gamers?
Uh, there's a big gamer show, I think Eric July's on it.
They played it on there, got like another 50,000 that's not even recorded.
So, they're getting Cernovich shared it the other day.
You know, so we're getting traction with this, um, you know, completely organically, which is uh really cool to see.
Yeah, and it's almost, I don't know exactly because sometimes it's hard to separate these things into camps.
Um, I try in general to treat people as if they're good faith actors unless they've given me reason to you know believe otherwise.
Um, I really did start that way, by the way, in my whole libertarian party journey.
I was a big part of the reason why I was willing to go and do all of these shows and debate so many of those woke retarians and talk to them.
It was like, I kind of had this, but possibly somewhat naive.
But, like, my view was kind of just like, well, look, we're all libertarians here.
And if I have superior arguments, you're going to respond to that because you're a libertarian just like me.
We care about superior arguments, you know?
So, like, let's do this.
And it was an interesting experience going through the whole thing.
But some of them, you know, like they would attack that ad and be like, oh, you're just making fun of the LGBTQ community or something like that.
And you're like, it's really hard for me to believe that you don't get what this ad is doing.
These are not like idiots, but there might be.
I don't know.
Some of them are maybe.
But anyway, then I do get some people who I do think are coming in good faith.
Like I had one guy just I interacted with on Twitter just earlier today who said to me, maybe it was yesterday, he said, he goes, I love Dave and Angela, or he said, I wish Dave and Angela would focus more on COVID tyranny and stop talking about all the woke stuff, all the culture war stuff.
And I responded to him and I said, look, I mean, is it really a fair criticism of me that I haven't focused on COVID authoritarianism enough?
I mean, like, I've been obsessed with the issue for the last two and a half years.
Like anyone who follows any of my stuff that I do, there's no, you couldn't even possibly argue this has been my number one focus has been like completely opposing everything about the COVID regime.
And then he was like, well, well, no, it's not that you don't talk about that.
And I was like, so really, your problem is just that I ever go after the woke shit.
And this does seem to some degree to be a divide among some camps of libertarians that they'd rather you not talk about any of this stuff.
Just make your anti-war ad, but don't have any message about this, this kind of woke nonsense.
To me, I just go, again, this kind of gets back to what we were talking about at the beginning.
It's like, guys, even if in your mind, in your preferred reality, cultural issues wouldn't be what people cared about.
And libertarians just want to talk about economics and freedom, and we don't want to get into how you live your life or anything like that.
The Inflation Crisis Reality00:04:56
It's like, well, we're in the middle of a white hot culture war.
And this woke ideology is the dominant ideology being pushed by all the institutions that we oppose.
So how do you exist in that as a human being and not have something to say about it?
It's not just that it's insane, which it is.
It's also that it's what every literally every political power center is pushing on people right now.
That's right.
And one of the things we have to accept if you're part of a political movement and you're smaller, it's like, It'd be nice if we can drive the narrative and we can certainly try.
But for the most part, you got to ride it.
You, you know, I can't make an ad about the Jones Act and how we should repeal it and get 500,000 views on it.
Like, I don't, even with Dan's tremendous editing skill, I don't think that's on the table, right?
You know, and so even with talking about the COVID stuff, I mean, I, I was, uh, I was against COVID in March of 2020.
It was very unpopular, publicly went to a protest, was talking about it as soon as possible that the government shouldn't be doing this stuff.
And I think, by the way, if you weren't against it by the summer of 2020, then people that weren't against it by the summer of 2020 shouldn't really be supported, in my opinion, this coming election.
I completely agree.
By the way, I was literally saying this when I was down at an event for Tom Wood's School of Life thing.
I just did an event down there in Orlando, and we all, a bunch of us went out to dinner.
And I said, I said, June 2020 was the cutoff for me.
If you didn't get COVID right by June 2020, you should, I'll never take you seriously on another topic again.
I'll never support you on anything again.
Like if you, I'll grant you, I'll give you the first few months that you were freaked out and you hadn't looked at all the data and you hadn't figured it out yet.
But if by that point, you hadn't figured out that this whole thing was just an insane rise of totalitarianism, then I don't know.
If you couldn't fight for liberty in the most important time, how do I give you any value in this space?
Yeah, I mean, I could not, I could not agree more.
At the same time, unfortunately, people have a memory of a goldfish and people are kind of over COVID.
Unfortunately, I mean, that's just my impression.
Maybe it's different in different places, by the way.
Like I hear California's like doing mass on kids again.
So maybe it's still an issue there, but like it does feel, it feels like it's over.
And it feels like I don't, I don't know how to necessarily get people to talk about it at this point.
Well, I think, I think the most important thing now is to really relate it to what's going on right now.
So like what I try to focus on is kind of like, okay, this inflation crisis, this is because of the COVID crisis and how it was handled.
And they are like directly related.
And I think that's very clear.
And so if you can make that, then you can get people kind of to care about it.
But yeah, just being outraged about lockdowns that happened two and a half years ago is, it is, it's challenging.
Yeah.
This is, and this is a tough one for me as a libertarian.
I try, I'm not trying to be, you know, overly negative.
I'm trying to be realistic.
Same conversation we were having earlier about like, well, like, look, this is just reality.
You know, if you look at something like inflation, where to me, I'm like, man, libertarians have had this issue right for five decades, right?
You go back to Friedman, it's always a, it's always a monetary phenomenon.
And libertarians are dead right.
The evidence is so strong.
Even mainstream economists, for the most part, like this is not fringe.
I'm not talking about like, I'm not, not to call astrizism fringe or whatever, but like this is mainstream stuff.
And you have zero credit, still nothing, you know, and it's like, and I don't know what could be done differently because it's like, we were right about this one.
And it feels like, you know, still kind of getting zero credit.
Yeah.
No, there's something there.
It's such a foundational thing for the modern libertarian movement.
I mean, the Libertarian Party was started in response to the Bretton Woods agreement collapsing.
Ron Paul ran for Congress in response to the Bretton Woods agreement collapsing.
Like going off the gold standard was literally the thing that the modern libertarian movement was like, this will usher in big government and inflation and all this.
And to be completely right about it and get zero credit for it is something you have to at least try to take some lessons from to go, okay, so what does that tell you?
And it's not even as hard of an idea as like understanding like bottom up, like why things can't be centrally planned is actually kind of a complex idea.
It's not necessarily intuitive.
The idea that if you make more money, your money will be worth less is like, it's a pretty basic idea to be getting across.
It's not, you know, and it still feels like it's one that we're not able to, you know, reach sort of common understanding.
You go, okay, like the government made it illegal to work and printed $5 trillion in a year.
Protecting Wealth With iTrust Capital00:02:51
That's not good.
Like that will lead to bad things.
And it's still kind of like, hmm, I guess.
I don't know.
They got this inflation act they're talking about.
That might solve the problem.
It is, it is something.
We've been thinking about, so none of the ads we've actually put on TV.
And of course, the ads I've been putting out have been like 90 seconds.
So they're not good for TV.
We have been thinking about, you know, can we do a 30-second one and actually put it on local TV here?
And maybe that's the one I'll do.
It's like, you know, I'm going to talk to you.
Like, that can't be too disdainful, but, you know, like, do whatever it's like, just like really, really simple language, like comically simple, you know, like second grade level of like communicating.
I've got to see if there's something there.
Yeah, yeah.
No, it's a good idea.
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Crypto Trading Tax Free00:15:43
All right, let's get back into the show.
So the other thing that I thought I, you know, what I liked about the War is Gay ad and all of that stuff is it's also look, I understand what you were saying where you're like, look, your goal isn't to like trigger the kind of Wokertarians or the regime, you know, kind of Beltway type libertarians.
I saw David Bose the other day, who's, you know, just nothing but useless.
And he tweeted out, you know, his moral outrage about the ad or something, you know, how horrible it was.
And I understand that's not the goal, but there is something kind of interesting in this outrage.
And there's a couple things that I think about.
Number one, my big thing that I've been pushing from the beginning of being involved in the Libertarian Party.
And I think that, as is general, in general, this is the case.
Look, you have an organization, something like the Libertarian Party.
There's tens of thousands of dues paying members.
There's 50 different state affiliates.
There's a lot of people involved.
And so we're obviously not all going to have the exact same preference or style or strategy for what exactly the message should be.
You kind of have to get to a point where you settle for like, okay, I more or less agree with the way these guys are doing it.
But my main thing that I've been saying for years now is that we've got to go for it.
There's got to be some attempt to do something big because obviously doing what we're doing is not working.
And it's just funny to me to see people like David Bose, like someone who's been at the Cato Institute for decades and has been quite happy to just sit there and write policy papers and lose, is so outraged that someone else is trying to do something that at least you'd acknowledge has the potential to like get a lot of eyeballs on it and has.
And like at least is trying, you know, it's like if you're down, the analogy I always use is like, if you're down seven touchdowns with three minutes left in the fourth quarter, and you're like, oh, dude, that's a wild pass you just threw.
That could be intercepted.
And you're like, at least he's throwing the ball down the field, man.
Like you're sitting here and you're like, okay, so we're going to run with the fullback.
You're like, wait, what?
Like, this is insane.
That's sure death.
I'd rather at least throw the ball down the field.
Let's try something.
That's one of the ones that's always confused me as well.
It's like, where does the confidence come from from people who have been failing entirely?
We're like being honest about it, right?
Like libertarians have been losing for decades.
And there still seem to have some of them, of course, not some of them, this minority, still has such confidence.
And we know the right way to do libertarianism.
And I don't, I mean, it's impressive, but I don't know where they, I don't know where they get it from.
Yeah.
And, you know, and the other thing is that I've also, look, I've accepted, obviously, in the spirit of what we were saying, accepting the world the way it is.
I've accepted that it's like, look, there's this group.
They're pretty small in numbers, as was demonstrated in Reno.
But there is a group.
And I don't mean like everyone who didn't vote for Angela McArdle or something like that, because the truth is, like probably about 50% of the people who didn't vote with the Mises caucus still don't like hate us.
I talk to a lot of these people.
I go around the country.
A lot of them are good people.
I have nothing but great experiences going around the country to all the different state conventions and going to national convention.
I think I maybe had one negative interaction with anyone ever.
It was one guy who was like protesting at Tom Wood's speech.
Everyone literally just 300 people walked by this one guy and laughed in his face.
It was like, whatever.
But there's a small group that it's like, no matter what we do, they're not going to like us.
That's fine.
They're just going to, they're just furious about this.
They don't, for whatever reason, they'll call us all types of names and all this stuff.
Now, I would prefer that they just get better and join with us.
And we all fight for like the same things that we all want.
I don't want this divide, but I have accepted that it's going to be there and that I think it's necessary.
That the way I look at it is that like my main goal, what I'm in the business of doing is kind of like attempting to mainstream these ideas as much as is possible.
And me and you might have a little bit of a disagreement on this.
I'm not sure.
We could get into this and see if we do.
I don't necessarily believe that like a majority of the country can be introduced to libertarianism and embrace these ideas.
I don't know that they can't, but I don't necessarily believe that they can.
I very passionately know that more people can be, that like more people than we currently have.
And I think whatever strategy we end up taking, we're going to need as many people involved as we can, as many as we can.
So my goal is always to try to get the message out in a compelling way and get and try to get a big movement going for libertarianism.
Like if we could get to as much energy as we had under the Ron Paul thing, well, why can't we get twice as big as that?
Why can't we get three times as big as that?
You know, five times as big as that.
I don't know exactly where the ceiling is, but let's try to get as big as we can.
And my feeling on this is that we, in order to do that, we have to be divorced from some of these toxic views that the woke libertarians have tried to incorporate into libertarianism.
If we're seen as the group of people who is for every, you know, just completely buys into kind of the corporate woke narrative, whatever it is, you know what I mean?
That like if you if you question whether men should be swimming in girls swim teams, then you're somehow an evil Nazi or whatever this.
If we're married, if we marry it to that, I think we have zero chance.
Like it just kills the whole thing.
If you're seen as the person who just wants to lecture everybody in the same way that a CNN anchor would, and plus we're for open borders, like, you know, like if that's like your message, there's no chance of this succeeding.
And so I just think it's like, well, if me divorcing libertarianism from those views, which have nothing to do with libertarianism, in my opinion, is going to get me hated by this tiny little group of people.
Yeah, it's a calculation I'm fine with making.
It's like, okay, you, you 25 people will hate me.
And then I now have the ability to go get way more people than that on board with us.
I'm fine with that.
I'm inclined to agree.
It's a tough one because libertarianism as a political philosophy, like really doesn't take a stance on these cultural issues.
If you're taking a thin definition of libertarianism, you know, property rights, bioautony, voluntary association, it says nothing about any of this stuff.
The problem is, as you, as you said, and I agree with you, is like the culture war stuff touches anything.
And we're playing the game of politics.
And so it's like, you know, well, what are you supposed to do now?
Because you can't just say, well, I have no opinion.
People want you to have an opinion.
That's what they're looking for.
And so it kind of seems like you can't not have one.
And I, of course, personally have one.
I'm not trying to suggest that I don't have one just because I'm a libertarian.
But I don't understand that it doesn't seem like it's possible to just not have an opinion, to not have an opinion on whether people with penises should be competing against women when swimming, you know, with just because that doesn't have anything to do with property rights, you know?
Yeah.
No, I agree.
And I also think that, at least in my experience, as I've seen it, it's kind of like finding a true atheist.
Like there's no, I don't know if it actually really exists.
Like everyone almost has some type of worship to something, like some type of, you know what I mean?
Like almost religious value.
I know I trigger some people when I say this.
Maybe you're the one listener.
I don't know.
I'm the one true.
Yeah.
Like, but in the same sense, what I've noticed a lot with these kind of issues is that people, and this is, I think, there's something natural about this to human nature.
People who accept the dominant cultural views look at themselves as like, I don't take a position on this.
Like, I don't take a position on this culture war stuff.
And it's like, no, you do.
You're just in the dominant position.
Like, I've seen this so much on the libertarians who would say something.
I posted a question once in this libertarian group where they, you know, there were people saying, it was in response to a post that was saying, what I hate about the Mises caucus is they get involved in the culture war fight.
They're all about the culture war fight.
That's really what animates them, which I do not think is accurate, but they see it that way.
And I said, okay, let me ask you something.
Let's say there's somebody who is a perfect libertarian on every issue that you agree with, you know, perfect on non-aggression, property rights, everything that's libertarianism.
But they say at one point, they go, I don't believe that you can change your gender.
I don't, biologically, I don't believe that you can change your gender.
Now, grant you, that's outside the scope of libertarianism, as you just said.
I go, is that guy a fine libertarian with just a different cultural preference than you?
Or is he somehow an evil, bad person?
And all of the people who were criticizing the libertarian, the Mises caucus for being too much culture wars all said he's an awful person who I wouldn't want to associate with.
And it's like, oh, okay, but then don't act like you're not also involved in the same battle.
You're just on a different side.
So it's not as if, it's not as if there's these people, like it's our group who has some preference on these cultural issues versus another group that has no preferences and is just about strict property rights.
They hate the person who is about strict property rights, but disagrees with them on this culture.
You know what I'm saying?
Like they're involved in this fight also.
They just don't want to acknowledge it.
Oh, absolutely.
I mean, honestly, it's actually at the center of it, in my opinion.
Like, if you, if you were like, I, a while back, when I actually still interacted with him some, I think Nick Sarwar posted one of those quizzes, those ideological quizzes with all the different axes.
And I happened to take it.
Nick and I had the same score.
There's like eight axes.
Nick and I had almost the same score in every category, aside from one, which was related to like identity politics stuff, where they were the two, you know, opposite extremes, essentially.
And so it's like, we would have, we don't actually agree on policy.
We don't actually disagree on like what the government should be doing.
Like we'd say we want the same.
Now, there are certain issues in the world where Nick sees a noose where I see a rope, you know, this kind of thing, right?
Right.
That influences the way that we see the world.
But in terms of what we want out of government, we wouldn't disagree.
But that doesn't matter.
But that's the thing with a lot of the shows that that actually doesn't matter because politics is not about policy.
As much as we want, I'm not saying I want it to not be, but it's not.
I wish it was about policy.
I like policy actually.
It's not.
It's a tribal battle.
And this is why it's also also heated, right?
It's because, you know, in our sort of ancestral environments, being on the wrong side of a political struggle was a life or death issue.
And so all of our, we have, I think, some sort of dispositions towards these things becoming so vicious, right?
I mean, I've done honestly much more important things in my life than run for Senate as a libertarian in New Hampshire, even in terms of business competitors, more impactful things, more money on the line, more at stake.
None of them ever got any as vicious, anywhere near as vicious as what is, I think, the relatively small stakes of running for Senate on the libertarian ticket in the state of New Hampshire.
And so it's like, you know, there's a, the viciousness is almost inversely proportional to the importance of what's at stake.
You know, it's, it's, people, I mean, there are people who have become like obsessed with me who want to just like hate on me all the time and say, I don't know who you are.
Where did you come from?
Why do you even care?
You know, like I did have, and I had a problem with the Libertarian Party.
I think, you know, I had a couple of like angry tweets and then I got involved, but it's like, it was never even that big of a thing.
But some people have become really obsessed with it.
Yeah, it is.
There is something interesting about that.
And it really, again, what my interest in kind of even talking about this is kind of like, okay, so what are the like lessons that we can extrapolate from this?
Because that's a really good point.
It's, it's really something interesting to see.
Look, that you have these, which I would say all the time.
And to be fair, this did win a lot of people over, but I would very steadily make this argument that I'd go, well, look.
If we are like libertarians in different camps, if we are all united that we are completely against the warfare state, which is, you know, is responsible for the deaths of like four or five million people in the 21st century alone, something in that ballpark.
Okay, we're all against that, right?
And we're all against just the raping and pillaging of the American people by all of these big, you know what I mean, like government crony corporate schemes.
And we're all against the war on drugs and we're all against the police state and the spying apparatus and we're all against the COVID restrictions and all of that.
Like that is so much.
Can't you at least say like, oh, okay, that's a lot of really important shit that we're all together on.
So couldn't we even, whatever other differences we might have, couldn't we kind of be like, okay, we'll get behind that.
And okay, that is some people are able to do that, but a lot of people, like you said, viciously hate people, even though they're together on all of those issues.
So there's some, that tells you something.
And this is something libertarians should be aware of.
Like we'd be the first one to point out that like, look, Barack Obama and Donald Trump, like in terms of policy, they're actually not that far away from each other.
You know, like in terms of policy, in terms of like their monetary policy, their foreign policy, their economic policy, now there's some differences, more differences than your average president.
You know, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are identical.
There's literally no policy differences.
Barack Obama and George W. Bush are identical, like down, down to the T, down to even the things that Obama criticized him when he was running against him on.
When he governed, he even kept the Bush tax cuts in place.
Like even the difference between 35% and 39%, he bailed on.
He went, no, no, no, we'll stick with the same one, you know?
So if you see that, if you see that, oh my God, there's all these policy similarities between Donald Trump and Barack Obama, and yet their haters, their supporters viciously hate each other.
What does this kind of tell you?
Right.
I mean, well, what was the, what was the worst thing the Jorgensen campaign did?
It wasn't a policy issue, right?
You and I did not have a problem with Joe Jorgensen because she advanced some anti-libertarian policy, right?
Yeah.
And also, it's not even, and by the way, the thing with Jorgensen, at least from my perspective, it wasn't even that I hated so much that she said it.
It was I hated how stupid she was to not know what a big deal it would be that she said it, if that makes sense.
It's like, I hated that you're like, oh, you're so, you're so tone deaf that you don't even realize like this, what I was saying before, like this kills it.
This kills your chance.
Now no one wants to hear from you.
Vicious Attacks On Libertarians00:03:53
All of the people who would be interested in liberty, whatever like that type of person is who might get on board with this, as soon as you say it's not enough to be passively, you know, not racist, you must be actively anti-racist.
They're like, well, they just wrote you off.
Your entire potential audience just wrote you off.
And that's, yeah, that's, I think that is all tied into the same lesson.
Right.
And it's certainly, you know, if we're trying to build momentum, you're being able to point to statements from, you know, the middle of 2020 as being strongly against COVID and strongly against lockdowns.
And how about even being strongly against BLM?
I mean, because, you know, a lot of that was basically a fad at this point.
And so we could have been, you know, so while a lot of the, even the Republicans were going along with it, you know, we could have been the ones who said, you know, we didn't fall for all that crap.
But whatever, you know, so it's over.
Well, we can go where you want to go, but something that this reminded me of as we're having this conversation is right now in New Hampshire, there are some absolutely vicious attacks that have been coming out on the libertarians here.
The Democrats just did a whole mailer about the freestaters.
New York Times wrote multiple articles.
A progressive organization said that we were worse.
There was a real insurrection happening in New Hampshire, worse than one sixth, and that's actually successful.
This is the leading progressive organization in New Hampshire.
That was about us.
And so it's been really vicious.
A lot of money coming in.
And so it's been interesting to see what happens, even in a small state like New Hampshire, what happens when libertarians are actually starting to make some progress.
Yeah, this is something I've been talking about and trying to kind of warn about as we got into this whole Mises caucus project of taking over the Libertarian Party.
I've talked about this in every single speech that I gave going out to state conventions that I was like, look, something that libertarians are going to have to accept and grapple with is that, and I think a lot of people have been pretty removed from this because libertarians have been failing for so long and are not seen as a threat.
But it's like, if we ever start gaining some success, you really have to be prepared for what we're going to be looking at.
And it's, I don't know if any of us really are prepared, but at least you have to start trying to think like, this is going, it's going to be vicious.
And of course, I mean, you can already see, you know, since taking over the Libertarian Party, there's been, we've already gotten quite a wave of hate pieces, some of which I was honored to join you in.
But there's been a wave of a lot of these, these publications who you would have thought we weren't even on their radar, really, but all of the sudden you realize we very much are.
And yeah, it's libertarians better toughen up to some of this stuff or we're never going to get anywhere.
There was a woman on Twitter the other day.
I saw her say, libertarians are fine, but I hate free staters because they're cutting my school budget or something like this.
Now, freestator is just a word for a libertarian in New Hampshire.
That's how I define it anyway.
So it's not about, there's no difference there.
It's just if you reside in New Hampshire and you're a libertarian, then you're a free state.
So it's like, and I thought that was really interesting because she was basically, well, libertarians, they don't, they never get anything done.
The freestaters, that they're a problem because they're actually getting somewhere.
Right.
So libertarians are fine unless they're cutting my budget.
So libertarians are fine if they're just talking about it.
But if they're doing it, no, that's a problem.
Right.
So, I mean, yeah, this is this is what this is what we can expect.
You know, libertarians, if they're ever successful, you know, and in some of their policies, like they're not, there's going to be a lot of people who aren't going to like them.
That's how politics works.
Dealing With Political Hate00:04:45
A lot of people will not like you.
We'll be angry about at you.
We'll lie about you.
We'll slander you.
You know, we'll say malicious things about you.
Like that is all of those things are going to happen.
That's all the price you're going to pay for winning.
Yeah.
And I find it, it's really pretty interesting too, when you see, it's an interesting thing to be the object of some of these like hate pieces and some of this slander.
And I do think, I mean, I don't know.
I'm sure you could find moments of mine where I've like said, you know, like, you know, ah, fuck this guy or someone on Twitter or something, you know, like I'm pissed off.
But I don't really, it's very interesting.
I know you get this too.
I see a lot of it directed at you from the hatred.
People really like personally believe they're like, You are a horrible person, and it's based off like a Twitter exchange.
I always find this to be very bizarre.
It's like, I don't know, dude, like, I'm, I mean, I know you, I've like, uh, because I've seen pictures you post and stuff.
I know you have like a beautiful family and stuff, and I know you've run businesses, and I know all that.
It's like, you, how would you judge someone based off of a Twitter exchange?
Or yeah, I always find this very like uh funny, like me and my wife will joke about this sometimes, where people will be like, They're like, Dave Smith is the biggest piece of shit on the planet.
And then, if you cut to it, it's like I like sit here and talk to a camera, and then I'm like giving my daughter a bath, singing the wheels on the bus, or something like that.
It's just like, I don't know, yeah, like I like somebody looking at it, you'd be like, It doesn't seem like such a monster to me, right?
Well, I mean, I don't take any of it seriously because it's, I have you know, such a track record in my real life of these things not being true.
Like, I'm actively helping multiple brown people get to the United States right now from Africa and Pakistan.
And it's like, yeah, I'm pretty sure, pretty sure that I'm not making decisions about people on the basis of their skin color.
So, I, there's a guy, Paul Graham, in the startup scene.
He has this great essay on haters that I think explains it very well.
It's the same, um, it's the same actually as being a fanboy, but in reverse.
So, it's like, you know, why do you, why is, and I have, I'm a fanboy of some people, you know, and so you know, why is someone a fanboy?
It's like, well, because you have a lot of respect for them, their status, you think they're so great, you think everything they say is so awesome, and you think they deserve to be more popular.
You think more people should be, and the hater, it's it's just the exact opposite.
So, like, hating the hating is motivated by someone.
It's like the haters are never, they're never completely, they're not the stupidest people, they're people who have some intelligence, who have some ability, who don't like what you have achieved comparatively, partially because they feel like it should be done and stuff.
They look at you and they say, How is this guy getting so much attention?
He doesn't deserve it, and it makes them angry.
And that's it's it's it's substantially motivated partially by envy and by this sort of lack of that you don't deserve it, and that is what is motivating.
Um, I think the hating, yeah, I think I think that's true, and then I think there's something uh in addition to that where there's a thrill of the kind of like mob thing, like there's a thrill of going after somebody.
There's um, you know, I uh, me and uh, and my buddy, uh, Lewis, uh, who's a very funny comedian I do Legion of Skanks with and so we were talking about this once, I can't remember what show it was on, but we were talking about this on a podcast where it's like, one of the things that's really interesting is that, like, so when people, you know, the people who are like offended and then go to try to cancel someone, when they like, if we're just being honest, and we all know this, when they see someone say something, you know, that they deem to be offensive, and same thing,
when your haters see something you say that's like they deem to be wildly offensive, their reaction is not like, oh my God, I'm outraged.
Their real reaction is excitement.
They go, oh, yes, he just did it.
Oh, yeah, we're going to get him with this.
Like, they're into this.
This is like a fun.
It's not, they're not actually outraged.
This is all like a game that they're playing where they get to be the ones.
I'm the moral police and I get to now be like, I get my public faces that I'm morally outraged.
You know, anyway, to your point that you said before about this, I think having kids helps a lot with this.
Having a business helps a lot with this.
Having your own, like, it's, it's just much harder for it to bother you how anyone else defines you as being.
You're like, yeah, I kind of know who I am.
I kind of know who I am.
It's not really going to be altered by your tweet, your tweet about me.
That's right.
And it does actually, I will, I have a little sympathy for these people because some of these people who are so angry, like the Libertarian Party was their thing, right?
What Motivates Libertarianism Now00:09:25
And there is a sense in which I didn't come in to take their ball from them.
That wasn't, you know, I didn't want to see them cry about it.
That's never why I did it.
But I can still have some sort of sympathy for, like, look, if the Libertarian Party was taken away from me, I wouldn't like that, but it's not the most important thing in my life.
Whereas for some of these people, it was.
Yeah, I agree.
I also, I felt like, you know, particularly with, I don't even really like talking about that.
But with, no, we'll move on.
But I'll just say with a guy like Sarwak, for example, I just kind of felt like, I felt like with a lot of these guys, they declared war on us.
It wasn't like we declared war on them.
Like, I don't know what to tell you.
The, the, um, having the national chair of the Libertarian Party of the United States of America trashing Ron Paul was unacceptable to me.
That was unacceptable.
And I was going to do something about it.
Like, that was just, sorry, that's a deal breaker.
I'm not going to allow that.
So that's just it.
But I tried at every turn to leave the door open where the cool thing, it's like none of them are like, I don't know, like none of them could just get that.
Oh, the cool thing here to do would actually be to flip the script and then kind of like walk back through the door and go, hey, you know what?
Okay.
I did kind of declare war on these guys, but you know, I challenged them to show up and they showed up.
All right, let's work together.
You know what I mean?
Like there were so many opportunities to do that.
They're just, it's not their personality type or they, they've painted themselves into a corner or whatever.
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The more important thing out of all of this is kind of what we were getting at before.
It's like learning the lessons that if we're going to move forward and actually make a difference here, there's going to be lots of vicious attacks like this.
There's going to be vicious attacks might be like in terms of online and stuff.
That's the least of what we actually have to worry about dealing with.
And so then you have to get ready for that, prepare yourself to that and really strategize about how to like kind of navigate these waters.
What do you think from the other free staters and other members of the Libertarian Party up there in New Hampshire?
How have they been dealing with some of these attacks you were talking about?
You know, they've been very supportive.
So like, I don't, I don't think it's stuff that's hurt too many people in the sense it's like affected their personal lives.
I mean, no one likes it.
I don't think anyone like likes getting attacked, but I don't think there have been too many consequences.
I think a lot of it's been motivating, quite frankly.
It's it's and that that's something to consider to make sure that, you know, this is uh you know, groups like having enemies, actually.
Like they like having a bad guy.
Uh, it's helpful.
It's very motivating.
Uh, and um, so I think that certainly in the case of the Mises caucus, like there were these people that the Mises, a lot of the Mises caucus didn't like and it was motivating.
I we're past that now, though, right?
Like it's not about beating them anymore.
And obviously, of course, the state, you know, and you can, you know, whatever, but that's not, you know, so it's, I think, a little abstract.
Yeah, it's a little abstract.
We cannot like the president or whatever, but, you know, I think it is actually helpful.
And maybe who should be the next bad guy for the Libertarian Party is maybe a good question, a bad guy we can actually beat.
And because you can't, that's gone.
And so what, you know, and obviously we want to be building, but having having that opponent, I mean, I've seen it in sports.
I've seen it in the business world.
You know, we're very competitive people.
And if we, when we have that, either that guy that we want to catch or that guy nipping at our heels, we work harder.
Yeah, I think that's true.
It's a really good question.
I don't know if I have the exact answer to that.
It's because you're right.
It was very, it was motivated.
And I very, I mean, at a certain point, I mean, I will admit that I very consciously used that.
Like I knew, you know, like there were a lot of people who would tell me they were like, you know, like a year and a half ago or something like that, two years ago, where they'd be like, dude, why are you even interacting with some of these guys on Twitter?
Like, why are you even boosting their signal?
I'll be like, you know, because they're our best recruiters.
I don't know.
It's like everyone wants to see them lose.
And so it's like, yes, this is like how I'm kind of rallying a lot of this energy.
And they, they, in my opinion, kind of deserved it.
But like you said, now that that battle has been won, it only holds us down to be fighting that fight anymore because it's kind of irrelevant.
So we've got to pick one.
But I agree with you.
It's hard to just make it the president.
You know, you almost want it to be like, like if you were in a town, you want it to be like the people on your school board, you know, on your local school board, like they are the people because you could actually show up and win this fight against them.
And like you, you want to kind of make it these fights that you can win.
So that is a really interesting question.
And it's true that this is what motivates people.
And if you can find a way, I think the magic that the Mises Caucus has done is it's like, you find a way to kind of mix these things together.
You want to have something you really believe in, a cause you really believe in.
You want to have an opponent to defeat that's winnable, that you can actually win.
And then you also want to make the whole process really fun.
You want people to enjoy themselves as they do it, because that's what's going to like you keep those things together with a sense of community and you can really build something, you know, like something special.
Let me ask you this because I want to move on and ask you about the kind of court case.
What would you say, like, what, what to you is like the purpose of running for Senate?
Like, what is it that you're looking to kind of get out of this?
I know you're like, you're a big believer in the free state, like kind of strategic relocation, the idea that like libertarians should concentrate in an area and be around other libertarians.
But what's the goal of running for Senate?
Is it to kind of like rally the troops?
Is it to actually try to win?
Is it to actually, you know, like, what, what are you in this for?
So, so there's several things.
So one is like in terms of a concrete, this is something that we can accomplish.
Getting to 4% is very big.
It means that we will save a bunch of effort on future ballot access.
And Justin O'Donnell has a very clever plan for how we can actually use ballot access.
So I don't want to explain it all actually, because I think if it's known, the government could actually adjust.
But there's some things that we can do inside of New Hampshire with ballot access that will actually give us power in the state house without directly winning a race.
And so this is a really cool idea that Justin has that I think is achievable.
And we need to get to 4% to do it.
And so that's a clear thing.
Less clear, but also achievable is that we can impact the race.
Can I force my opponents to take stances on issues that they wouldn't have otherwise?
Can I force the press to talk about me and issues that I care about?
So these are achievable things that are slightly harder to measure, but you can kind of tell whether you did them or not.
Right.
And then also building, you know, so building the party, building the base that it takes time.
And so if the numbers are higher, if we're able to do that, that's another measurable thing that you can achieve.
And then to be honest, one of the reasons I want to do it is I do want to be, I am like one of the chief New Hampshire shills.
The Libertarian Party is here in New Hampshire.
I was critical of the Libertarian Party in 2020.
And I'm the kind of guy who likes to put their money where their mouth is and not on the sidelines.
So if I'm going to make fun of you because you can't throw a good pass, well, I'm also going to get on the field, you know, after that and at least try to throw the ball myself, right?
So that's my kind of attitude.
So it's like, if I was being critical and now there's a chance to be on the field, well, I'm going to take it and I'm going to at least see what happens when I do it, you know?
Yeah, I got, I can, I can really relate to a lot of that.
That's kind of a lot of the stuff that motivates me within the Libertarian Party is like, it's like, you know, when I've people have been talking about me potentially running and stuff, that's a lot of the stuff that motivates me.
It's like, well, number one, it's like, I think that you can, it's a real opportunity to try to dominate the narrative as much as you can and make people make people talk about the things that we want them to be forced to talk about rather than things that they'd prefer to talk about.
I think it's a way to help grow the party and the movement and really set it up for future success.
And also that it's just kind of like, yeah, I mean, look, I've kind of been saying for a long time, and I think I'm right, that I'm like, no, you don't do it like this.
You do it like that.
And if I'm going to say that at a certain point, you have to go, all right, well, let me show people how to do it like this, which I really believe is a better way to do it.
SEC Regulating Cryptocurrency Tokens00:04:04
Okay.
So what's going on with you in this court case?
This is separate from the Libertarian Party business, but what was this about?
Because I've seen a little bit about it on Twitter, but I don't know that much of the story.
So tell me what happened here.
So this case is a very big deal.
It's also funny because there's some people who only know me from Twitter and they're like, Jeremy's just a shit poster.
And it's like, no, actually, I've spent five years of my life and millions of dollars fighting a case that will have tremendous impact on the future of an entire industry, the cryptocurrency industry in the United States.
So this will almost certainly be, assuming it goes all the way through, a precedent-setting case in terms of what is or is not a security in terms of what can be regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
So there's a law from the 1930s that regulates, that regulates how securities are done in the United States.
And the SEC is taking a very aggressive interpretation.
Their interpretation is basically that every exchange of every token by everyone, except maybe Bitcoin, is a security.
And that might sound crazy, but that is actually what they're doing.
They argued it in court the other day.
They're arguing it in their briefs.
Some of the stuff they're saying is absolutely crazy.
And so what the SEC would like to do is pull all of the cryptocurrency industry under their jurisdiction.
And so this the SEC originally opened a case against us four and a half years ago.
So I've been fighting them for that long.
And the judge is likely to rule on it in about eight weeks.
So would your position, what you guys would be arguing is that this isn't a security at all, that it's what it's a commodity or something, that it's a.
Yes.
And so in court, the SEC, so the SEC isn't even disputing in the case of our token, which powers the library network.
It's used by millions of people every day.
So 2 million people will probably watch a video through the library network today.
Most of them do it through odyssey.com, O-D-Y-S-E.com.
And so like, this is a real like popular thing.
I mean, this was big.
We were keeping the COVID videos up, but they were getting deleted.
This was a real impactful thing that we were doing.
This is a difference in the real world, right?
This is not being a shit poster.
I spend my life building stuff, building teams, building companies.
And so it's had a real impact.
I think this is part of why the SEC is so mad at us, quite frankly.
I don't think it's how we got their attention because we weren't big enough.
But in terms of does a center-left regulator like that we're keeping 3D firearms files available?
Do they like that we're keeping this content available that's generally getting scrubbed for the internet?
They absolutely do not.
And they've been using their power accordingly to really mess with us.
And so they think that even though they admitted in court, a bunch of people are buying the token for its intended purpose, that the vast majority of our statements, you know, we're just talking about a technology.
They agree the network is decentralized and can't be shut down.
And they think that, but they think that whenever our company sells the token, that that is a that we have entered that we that that's an investment contract with the anonymous person on the end of a screen who has no idea they were even buying it from us in a in the first place.
And it wouldn't even matter if it was us.
They think that third-party sales.
So if you sold some to someone else, that was also a securities offering and you were breaking the law.
And so what they but what they actually want is all this stuff to be under their thumb.
Because that's what regulators do.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, it's pretty crazy because the idea that you know anything that could what because I guess they're arguing that because it can uh appreciate in value, that therefore this is a security.
But the, I mean, that argument could lead to a lot of things, not just cryptocurrency being justified, being regulated.
Like, I don't know, Rolex watches appreciate in value.
You know what I mean?
Like, yeah, baseball cards, right?
Corporate Wokeism And Regulation00:04:15
Yeah.
It's a good example.
Like, right, like, could you argue that all of this falls under the SEC's control?
So that is a very important case.
Yeah.
Well, they try to actually.
For example, the Magic the Gathering, that kind of company that makes that, they don't acknowledge prices in the secondary market, specifically because they're afraid of running a foul of securities law.
So securities laws are pretty messed up.
I mean, the SEC is secretly one of the most powerful organizations in government.
A lot, I mean, even a lot of the wokeism in corporate stuff, you know, if you wanted to identify some of the root causes, I wouldn't say it's the primary one, but the SEC is certainly aiding it along with what they've been doing.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, that's right.
And it's, and this is in many ways, I think, the battle that's really going to be the important battle for liberty going forward.
I guess maybe that's where kind of like this all ties in together.
But it's not just that corporate wokeism is like an annoying distraction or that it's stupid, like, which it is, all of those things.
But this is really becoming kind of like the new tool for like the kind of like authoritarian agenda.
And it's, it's all tied together.
It's like weirdly, it all, this is something I've tried to talk about on the show.
And I don't know if I've gotten this exactly right yet.
I'm still kind of working it out in my own head, but it's all like there is this thread that runs through the entire rise of what we call wokeism, which, you know, I think to define it more, you know, a little bit more concretely, I mean, it's just the rise in kind of like an obsession with like identitarianism being at the absolute center of the being the most important thing about human interactions,
a perception of bigotry and evilness in areas where it's wildly exaggerated or just doesn't even exist at all, an obsession with collective guilt, like all of these things.
This is very new.
It really started to rise up.
I mean, like, critical race theory has existed buried in universities for decades, but it did not become mainstream until Obama's second term.
Like, this is very new stuff.
The idea that we'd even be having some of these cultural debates that we're having now would have been insane 10 years ago, 15 years ago, just insane.
And there's a thread between the rise of that, everything that happened through COVID, the stuff that goes on in the UK in the Ukraine war, and really now with this next push for climate change legislation, where it's kind of just like this thing that it's like, there's this insistence on obedience and conformity, and also that there's going to be this real marriage between the state and corporations, specifically financial institutions,
judging people on how inclusive they are, on how good for the environment they are, that this is now going to be the new standard of how you have access to capital, how you have access to like kind of do business with giant corporations.
This is a very, very big deal.
And it's a very scary thing for the prospects for liberty.
Yeah.
Well, so I agree.
I agree with you to put forth a theory that I'm not sure I even believe, but as a possibility as to the sort of common thread of all this stuff, that it's actually just egalitarianism.
That one of our deeply seated sort of ongoing political struggles, even in terms of why does someone like Obama versus Trump when they have the same policies, is actually our orientation towards egalitarianism.
So why does someone, why would someone who's on the side of this stuff, you know, potentially not like Elon Musk, even though he's done more for the environment than practically anyone?
Why is it not enough?
Why do you not like nuclear energy, but you do like programs, these other green energy programs that involve all these subsidies or whatever?
A lot of the underlying, I think, psychological motivation for this stuff is how much are people interested in compressing one another and sort of making sure people are closer, which is a deeply seated human instinct.
The Beauty Of Subjective Freedom00:12:51
Almost everyone has it to one degree or another, you know, and that that is like what's actually motivating a lot of this.
Just a theory.
I'm not sure if it's true, but I think it's a possibility.
No, I mean, I think there's certainly something interesting about that.
And the more, particularly with like the climate change stuff, the more you really look into it is that it is in many ways.
It's, you know, as Rothbard called, you know, egalitarianism is a revolt against nature.
In many ways, it's a revolt against civilization.
It's a result, a revolt against progress, ironically enough.
That it's like, because the problem is that, look, to really achieve a true egalitarian society, the only way to do that, you could never achieve it entirely, but really the way to do that is to make it as primitive a society as possible, as poor and as primitive.
That way, at least we're all, nobody's not poor.
You know what I mean?
Like everybody, even the like alpha leader of the tribe still has to deal with the fact that he could get a splinter and die of an infection.
You know what I mean?
Like it's, it's, that's that.
And So in a lot of ways, you do see that as almost like a desire that there's something so wrong with what we've done to this society where we build these big, great, you know, civilizations and people are filthy, rich, and others are not.
It's interesting.
Yeah, it's very, it's very triggering to people.
But I think it explains, I mean, because to me, it's like, how else can you reconcile some of these beliefs that are so like obviously like incorrect in the sense like, why does someone want, because if you look at some of these like neoliberal, you know, bleeding heart libertarian types, for example, these are the ones who will say, you know, well, like a UBI or a negative income tax would be, you know, a more efficient way of solving poverty, you know, than raising the minimum wage.
Minimum wage creates deadweight loss, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
So this is all completely true, right?
That's a completely true argument that a negative UBI, a negative income tax would be way better for ameliorating poverty than a minimum wage or UBI or than a minimum wage.
And it's like, but there's no interest in that, right?
Why?
And again, I think it comes back to like, right, about that impulse.
Like if everyone just gets a job for $15, you don't get, you don't feel like that fast food worker or whoever, they don't have to go in and feel like they're lesser.
But it would be, they would suffer an indignity if they were getting a special check back and it would be in their face that they were getting paid, that they were getting the subsidy because they weren't capable of earning enough.
But when you just make the minimum wage $15, that indignity that they would suffer from getting that check back goes away.
And so it's not about the policy outcome of how many resources do these people have, but it's about the subjective experience of the policy and that by having these other policies, we can let people feel like we're all equal, more equal and closer to one another.
Yeah.
And of course, the issue there is that, man, that this impulse really does run through so much of humanity.
And it's like the most destructive force.
The idea that we should be on a mission somehow to make everybody feel more equal when the real beauty in life is how different we all are.
That's right.
That's right.
I mean, I think libertarians, you know, we've got a, this is one of my more, this is another one.
I'm not sure if I buy it, but I'll put it out there as an idea.
You can tell me what you think of this one.
It feels pretty like that's the stupidest thing I ever heard.
But that, you know, that libertarians, you know, you look at what successful civil rights movements have done, right?
If you look at how gays fought for acceptance as an example, like they didn't go around convincing you to be gay or that being gay was right.
They said, like, I'm genuinely gay.
And like, you can think it's weird or whatever, but I'm still a person and I'm gay and I really am this way.
Right.
And I kind of wonder, like, you know, if we're ever going to get rid of Social Security, as an example, there's 98% of Americans support, by the way, you know, maybe making the gay argument of like, well, you might feel this is fine, but it's a, I really don't like it.
It really hurts me psychologically.
Like, you know, you don't know what it's like.
You know, I'm like, when I have to fill out my taxes to the IRS, it actually is a sincere psychological harm, not just because of the money, but because I'm being subjected to, you know, this whatever.
I don't know.
I don't know.
We have to weaponize identitarianism on behalf of libertarians.
Well, not necessarily the identity politics aspect, but the aspect of rather than trying to persuade someone that their belief is wrong or incorrect, getting someone to say, well, I really feel this way.
Can there be an exception for me or can you accommodate me?
So rather than asking them to reject things that they believe, let them think that you're a little bit different or a little bit weird or whatever, But you may be getting some carve outs or some exceptions or getting getting some, you know, getting some things that you wouldn't get otherwise.
Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting idea.
I mean, I will say that I do think there has to be some type of reckoning within the libertarian movement of what exactly libertarianism really looks like if it were to be successful.
And this is, I had a conversation with Zach over at a reason that just was released the other day about this idea of a national divorce.
However one feels about this and the idea of secession and breaking up the United States of America, there is this real interesting question of, so does libertarianism really look like us gaining control of a government apparatus and forcing it on people who don't want it,
forcing non-aggression on people who don't want it, or does it look like much more decentralization and localism and allowing there to be kind of like much more competition amongst local groups of people.
And if people do want to live to move to more socialist like areas, that is going to be their option to go do that.
Of course, I would ideally love that there's a button you push and all governments are destroyed and people can organize the way they want to live completely voluntarily.
That seems unlikely to happen.
There is no magical button.
And what would be probably what libertarians should focus on, I believe, is really pushing as much radical decentralization as possible.
That doesn't necessarily have to be secession.
It could be strong federalism or the 10th Amendment or something like that.
And then within those smaller governing units, I think trying to still push individual liberty, which is our ultimate goal.
Like it's not as if if some local government was being horrifically tyrannical, that I'd just be like, well, that's okay because they're smaller.
I'd still be like, no, I'm against that and try to push against that.
But I think that's more what the ultimate path should be.
That it's not going to be, you know, there are certain cultures that don't like guns.
And we're probably not going to convince them that they all need to arm themselves.
I'm completely with you.
I might honestly take this one even farther than you do.
I mean, because I see libertarianism substantially as a preference rather than universally correct in a lot of ways.
And I just want some space where I can be that way with other people.
That's why I'm so big on the Free State Project.
That's why I, you know, and so yes, a lot of people really don't like guns.
I think they really do deserve a place where they attempt to outlaw guns.
I mean, a lot, like there are a lot of people.
And I got in trouble.
One of one of my tweets I did that a lot of people didn't like was like, of course, if white nationalists want to have a town, I don't care, black nationalists, Jewish nationalists, I don't care.
If these people want to have some place where they can be that way, why would you care?
Why would you want to force that person to be your neighbor?
Like if a bunch of people, if you, if I, I support gay's right to marry, I've got no problem with gay people.
There are a lot of people who have a genuine problem with gay people.
There are people, right?
And who, and who think gay should be, that's a real opinion that people still have.
Why would you want to force that on your neighbor versus letting that person go somewhere where you aren't to live the way that they want to?
Like, you know, to me, like one of the few, we can, you know, what even is a right is a debatable question, but like one of the few universal rights that I would actually advocate for, I wouldn't advocate for a lot of libertarian rights to be universal.
The one I would is that you have the right to leave.
You have the right to exit.
And then you can have all kinds of different spaces with different rules.
And as long as someone is allowed to leave that place, then I don't really care what I don't see it as wrong if a town wants to ban guns or wants to ban various things because it's a very large earth.
And if people are allowed to leave, then they can find a space where they can live the way that they want to.
And I don't know if I, I don't agree on a philosophical level, but on a practical level, I think there's something to that.
Like I don't, look, I do think that it's like.
You almost get into the situation where it's like, well, look, if they're banning guns within this town and someone in this town, you know, grew up there and owns property there and wants to have a gun on their property and defend themselves, then yes, they are imposing on that person.
And I'd rather they didn't.
However, it's just in terms of like a practical strategy, it's much more likely than at that that you could, a group of people who believe in liberty could actually influence a very small town government, whereas trying to influence the federal government is nearly impossible unless you have billions of dollars.
And even then, you're very likely to be corrupted.
And so there's all of these logistic, like logistical problems.
I would say that on the point of one of the things I always thought was interesting is that this is a lot of what you're describing is kind of the beauty of libertarianism to begin with, that it's kind of like, well, look, okay, fine.
We can have radically different views about the way we want to live our lives.
Go in peace and let us go in peace.
And the idea that anyone would object to you saying that like, look, if a bunch of white nationalists want to like go buy some land somewhere and make it a whites only area, that anyone would object to that.
Like even the people, if you think white nationalists are the worst people on the planet, it's like, okay, well, this is your way to have them all leave.
Exactly.
They will all leave and go away from you and not be bothering you.
And the rest of people who don't care about racial identitarianism can all intermingle and be happy together.
Like, what about this?
You know, yeah, yeah, no, you find much more, you're going to have much more problems if you force all of these people into a collective somehow than you're going to have if you let them go their separate ways.
So on that, I certainly completely agree with you.
You can look forward to that being clipped as Dave Smith advocates for white nationalism.
There you go.
Whatever.
I've already given them more than enough to clip up and use against me.
So, you know, at a certain point, I almost feel I'm glad if I can bring some excitement into some of those people's lives.
All right, dude.
Well, listen, we got to wrap this up.
I really enjoyed the conversation.
Would love to do it again.
How can people, if they want to help out with your Senate race or if they want to support you in other ways, where can they go?
So Jeremy 4NH, number four is the website for the campaign.
All the ads are on there.
You can check them out.
The ads are also on every social media platform, which I'm also on.
So whatever one you use, you can follow me on there.
So you can see them.
A donation would go a really long way.
25, 50 bucks goes a really long way for a campaign this small.
We're going to use the money very effectively and in nimble ways to make a real impact.
You can follow me on Twitter where I'm very active at Jeremy Kaufman.
And then I'll also say for anyone listening, strongly encourage you come check out New Hampshire, come for a visit, come for a vacation.
You don't have to be sold on the whole idea to just come on a trip and check it out.
The Libertarian Party in New Hampshire would love to meet you.
Lots of free staters would love to meet you.
And it's really worth coming and checking out once or twice if you're a liberty-minded kind of person.
A lot of people come here and they can't really believe what the scene is like because they've never seen anything like it in their lives.
And I'm available if you ever want to reach out to me.
I'm happy to help you plan a trip, make introductions, that kind of thing.
Yeah, it's there's no question about it.
There's something really special that the Free State Project has going on up there.
You feel it when you go up there.
There's a special energy about it.
And more and more, as we kind of said at the beginning, that's kind of one of the things that I'm interested in in the liberty movement.
It's one of the things I really love about the Mises Caucus.
It's one of the things I really love about the Free State Project.
When you feel an energy about a group of people, you go, that's kind of what it's going to take to succeed at something.
You kind of need that.
It's the most important prerequisite that you could have for success.