Dave Smith and Robbie Bernstein critique government overreach, alleging the US sabotaged Nord Stream pipelines to manipulate energy markets while dismissing climate change narratives. They analyze Giorgia Meloni's defense of national identity against consumerism, contrasting it with Nick Gillespie's conflation of individualism and libertarianism. The hosts argue that true liberty would revive Christian family values, rejecting "woke progressivism" and central bank-driven credit expansion in favor of savings and production, ultimately framing the conflict as a struggle between genuine freedom and state-enforced conformity. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Government Too Big00:03:42
Fill her up.
You are listening to the Gash Digital Network.
We need to roll back the state.
We spy on all of our own citizens.
Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
What's up, what's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I am Dave Smith, the most consistent motherfucker you know.
And he, of course, is my lovely co-host, Robbie the Fire Bernstein, King of the Caulks, COVID Jesus.
What's up, brother?
How you feeling?
I'm glad to be here.
What was that, a sixth or a seventh Rogan?
That was number eight.
Wow, putting up numbers.
I believe number eight, if you count the two with Lewis and Jay, which I choose to count.
Asterisks.
I choose to count.
Not the best, but you know, whatever.
I count them.
But yeah, dude.
Yeah, it's fun time.
I just got back yesterday from Austin.
We were supposed to record an episode yesterday, but I was just so goddamn exhausted.
I was like, let's do a good one tomorrow.
But yeah, fun time in Austin.
Thank you to everybody who came out to the shows at the Creek in the Cave.
And of course, thanks to the great Joe Rogan for having me on again.
And then went and did some stand-up shows with him and hung out a bit.
So that was a lot of fun.
I love Austin, Texas.
Goddamn great city.
I think one of the best cities in the country.
Do you get some Blackson?
Hmm?
Do you get some Blackson?
No, I said Texas, Rob.
We're not going crazy.
Yeah, come on.
That's the barbecue spot.
Oh, I thought you were just talking about Black people.
Yeah, I wasn't suggesting that.
A few of them.
A few of them.
We had a limit, though, for each show.
No, I didn't.
I went to some other barbecue joint with Scott Horton.
Scott Horton took me out on his boat.
And then we went down Lake Austin and then we grabbed some barbecue and stuff.
It was fun.
Good time.
Hung out with Scott, hung out with Michael Malice.
Went and did Dr. Drew's podcast.
Really?
And yeah, he's great.
By the way, Dr. Drew's great guy.
But yeah, good time.
And getting, you know, like always right after doing Rogan, just get like this fucking insane response.
At last, I was trending on Twitter as of when we started this show and getting a lot of response from the Russia-Ukraine stuff, which I was so glad I got to talk about.
And just like the last few times I'm on the show, then an army of angry blue check Twitter journalists are just furious with me for getting everything right.
And then they just come back with all this nonsense, but it's kind of interesting to try.
Oh, man, they get so angry.
They're so angry.
Like these blue check mark journalists who have like 60, 70,000 followers or something like that.
And they're just, they're like, how do these two comedians have this conversation?
And there's not the real journalists like us talking about it.
And it's like, oh, yeah, because you guys have systematically failed at your job for decades.
And now somehow you've left it up to us.
I agree.
I shouldn't be doing any of this.
You should.
You should be doing this, but none of you guys ever tell the truth.
So that's why this is happening.
How do you have such a good handle on the history of that situation?
Like, did you refresh before you went on or you just got that down?
Well, I mean, I've been, I've been paying attention to that shit for a while.
And like, you know, Scott Horton is one of my closest friends and he's like a fucking expert on it.
And we just did an episode with him, the last episode.
So we were just talking about all this shit.
And then I did go over a bunch of it with him.
And then I go and then I double check him too.
Comedians vs Journalists00:07:34
You know what I mean?
But I kind of know like who all, who the people to listen to and read are.
And I knew, like, I went into the episode like, oh, I want to talk about this because I think it's like the most important thing going on right now.
So, I was real ready to have that whole conversation.
And people give me shit because they, you know, they'll be like, well, you know, you left out this thing or some piece of information.
You left out this thing that makes Putin look bad or something.
They're like, yeah, okay.
That's true.
I didn't cover everything that's ever happened in the history of Vladimir Putin.
I also left out the fucking neo-Nazis and the Azov Battalion.
You know, I didn't mention that either, but there's, but I was hitting all the shit that no one talks about that I think is the most important thing.
They give you some proper understanding of what's going on in the conflict.
Now, interestingly, to get into some shit for this episode, what was interesting is right before I recorded.
So I didn't talk about this at all on the show because it happened like I think a half hour before we sat down to record.
So I wanted to like, it wasn't like nothing was verified yet at the time.
So I just.
This is the global warming thing with the pipelines.
It's making the oceans too hot.
Yes, that's right.
It's to combat climate change, we have to release tons and tons of methane into the Baltic Sea.
But yeah, so Nord Stream one and two were both destroyed by like underwater explosions that are very clearly were some type of military operation, right?
A kind of form of terrorism, you could say.
So if people don't know, Nordstream is the name of the pipelines that were built from Russia to Germany.
There was a big deal.
The idea was that, you know, to have a natural gas pipeline from Russia into Germany so that Vladimir Putin could sell them natural gas, which is something that the Europeans desperately need.
And it was the second one hadn't been activated yet.
The first one had been basically shut down since Russia invaded Ukraine.
And there was enough pressure put on Germany to agree to not purchase natural gas from Russia, which was a great way to punish the German people for Vladimir Putin invading Ukraine.
Seems a little bit weird.
It's also kind of crazy that, like, you know, the position, and this was true even in the Trump administration, was the position was basically the pressure from America was like, don't do this, Germany.
Don't you get into a relationship with Russia, you know, which is pretty funny when you think about the fact that Germany and Russia once fought a war in or twice fought a war in the 20th century, and it was like the worst thing that's ever happened in the history of the world.
You'd think you'd kind of be like, oh, this is good.
Now they're like, they're trading partners.
They're less likely to go to war.
But so, of course, we'd want to put an end to that.
But what's interesting about this is that the question is still out there, which is a very big question, is who did this?
Who did this?
And we don't know for sure.
Jews, but it's almost certainly us Jews.
Let's take it from a guy named Bernstein.
He knows there were Jews involved in this.
But you know what I'm saying?
But it does seem like, you know, they're trying to say right now, they're trying to point the blame to Vladimir Putin.
The problem is, it just makes no sense.
Just makes no sense at all.
Why would Vladimir Putin want to blow up his own pipeline?
He could just not give them the natural gas.
He can shut it off from his end.
There's no reason.
There's no reason for him to blow it up.
It makes no sense at all.
And of course, from Germany's perspective, it makes no sense for them to blow it up.
They had already stopped taking it.
Would just be destroying their option to start taking it again.
So um so.
So basically the only side with a motivation to do this seems to be the United States Of America's side.
There is one more uh theory that they're floating for Russia, but it makes equally less sense is that it's a false flag attack.
But it doesn't seem to me like Putin is looking to justify more war.
He's already in a war.
He's already done it.
Like what does he need more justification for?
And his primary business is exporting oil and natural gas, or maybe it's just natural gas.
So why would he want to ruin his own business model, even if at the moment, like you said, he can just turn it off?
Why would he ruin already built infrastructure that, if this ends, he can and this is the main thing that other people might want to let him just keep the territories he's conquered over is, hey, let's go back to just buying that natural gas.
So why would he pin himself into a war that he already has as a false flag?
There's really just no part of it that makes sense to me.
Yeah, it's like uh, it's like I chopped my arm off to frame you for chopping my arm off, so we have an excuse to fight now that I only have one arm just doesn't make any sense.
So so basically, the situation here is that, after a lot of pressure was put on the Germans, they agreed to stop uh taking the natural gas in from Russia, but the pipeline is still like active, like there's still natural gas in the pipeline but they're not drawing from it um, so that's the that was spilling into the Baltic Sea um, but so basically Germany, much like a lot of other uh European countries,
is having major power issues and they're headed into the uh into this winter, and there's a whole lot of concern.
I thought somebody had said that uh um, I think the quote was that firewood is going to be the, the gold in Germany this winter.
Like these people are going to be chopping down their own trees to burn it for, you know, for heat this winter.
It's a pretty scary situation and of course, this is, you know, due to a whole lot of insane policies um, you know, doing away with nuclear power while also implementing these crazy climate change, you know, restrictions on, on fossil fuels, and so they're left with what everyone who does that is left with not enough electricity for a modern first world country.
And so uh, Vladimir Putin was in this position of being able to sit there and say and be like, all right well, let's see what happens this winter.
They might you know what I mean they might have to kind of cave and be like, all right well, we'll take your natural gas, we'll buy it from you.
So for the idea that Vladimir Putin would blow up his own pipeline, just so he has no leverage now coming into this winter, it just makes no sense.
Um now, of course, from the Biden administration's point of view, it would make a lot of sense.
That's, who benefits from this is that now they can go oh uh um, you know, we don't have to worry about them caving this winter or when they don't have power, and going and trying to get uh, trying to get it from from Russia.
So you know, we don't know for sure who did this, who has the, the means and the motivation.
That would be the Biden Administration.
Backbone Console Review00:02:04
Now that yeah, but it's, it's not clear that they have the means to pull this off.
But yes, Ukraine would be motivated to do this sure um now, who would do this?
You know, you go.
It is the type of thing we would do and you might think it's.
It seems a little bit crazy.
It certainly does to me, but there's a lot of the we're doing right now seems a bit crazy.
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Hurricane Spending Politics00:14:59
Sometimes I think maybe I'm just insane and I spend too much time paying attention to the news now.
And then I start reading weirder things, pulling lines together.
But doesn't it feel like the plot of a James Bond movie where some evil person sitting in a room and trying to get a war going?
I'm just saying, like, doesn't, don't these moves just feel that way?
Even though you don't know specifically who?
Maybe it's the United States government.
Maybe it's Bill Gates.
I don't want to get our channel banned.
But I'm just saying it feels like there's some asshole who's very specifically trying to get a very big war going.
Well, it certainly seems like, and this has been said by many people in the administration and other just like powerful people or former powerful people, Hillary Clinton and people like that, that the goal here is to bleed Russia dry.
The goal here is to get them more and more extended into this war.
That basically we're trying to give them their own Afghanistan, you know?
Yeah, but it doesn't work when you fund the other side.
So like when we were in Afghanistan being bled dry, I mean, Afghanistan was funding Afghanistan.
So we were just the suckers.
We're losing.
And what are they fighting us with?
They're, you know, their cheap old guns.
I mean, there's an article today that we're running out of military equipment because we're sending so much over to Ukraine.
We're spending as much money, it seemingly, that we were spending in Afghanistan.
So the strategy doesn't work of trying to pull your opponent into a fight if you're also in the fight.
Then you're bleeding yourself, dry.
Well, the idea is that we're spending the money, right?
Because if we didn't spend the money, Russia would just crush Ukraine, take what they want, and it would be over.
So we're spending the money to keep Ukraine fighting, you know, to push them.
In some cases, as I mentioned on Rogan's show, there's been a lot of reporting that Boris Johnson was actually the guy who insisted that Ukraine didn't negotiate with Russia when they had a tentative agreement to negotiate a peace early on in the war.
And so we're pushing them not to negotiate.
And then also, of course, giving them the weapons is incentive to not negotiate in a situation where without those weapons, they may have no other choice than to talk to Russia.
But now that they have all of these billions of dollars of weapons coming in, well, now they can afford to fight at least more than they otherwise would be able to.
So the idea is that we're spending the money, but we're not taking the losses that Russia is taking.
So they got to spend money too, but they also got to send in hundreds of thousands of troops and really bleed themselves dry.
And the idea with this brinksmanship stuff is that, which is true, is that our economy is substantially bigger than the Russian economy.
So if it's a dollar for dollar thing where we're both spending it, then the idea would be like, well, we can bankrupt them before we go bankrupt ourselves.
But it's pretty goddamn sick, you know, if you don't, if you, if you care at all that, you know, there's human lives in this war and all sane people should want it to stop.
And that's not even mentioning the real thing, which is the nuclear threat.
But look, if it does come out, if it's able to be proven that this was done by the US government, which again, we don't know for sure, but they just do seem, this does seem to be the type of shit we would do.
And that we are the ones with the means and motive and all that shit.
This is a, I mean, one way or the other, this is a major escalation in this conflict.
It's a huge moment.
And if it comes out that the U.S. did this, then we got to be prepared for what the response to that might be.
But there's even short of nuclear war, there's a lot of things Vladimir Putin can do.
And it just, if you look at the history of our wars, this feels like it's out of our playbook.
Like the way we kind of, because we like to sit back and counter punch and pretend like, oh, yeah, we didn't, we didn't start it.
But, you know, you look at Japan, from what I understand of that with the oil embargoes.
You look at World War I with the, what was it, the Lithuania or whatever we're sending over.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It just feels like this is within our playbook.
Yeah.
No, that is, that is true.
And, you know, the other thing is that there are these.
Now, again, this isn't proof of anything, but there are these people like, look, Joe Biden was on record talking about how Nordstream will be shut down if Putin invades Ukraine right before it happened.
And then Victoria Newland was on record saying that we will take out Nordstream one way or the other.
Victoria Newland, of course, was one of the people in the State Department who organized the coup in 2014 in Ukraine.
She's also one of the people who pushed for the Iraq war.
Just really good people with very successful policies.
But so you're like, would they be reckless enough to do this?
Like, would they actually commit an act of industrial and environmental terrorism in order to damage the Russians?
You'd like to think no.
You'd like to think the answer to that is like, no, there's no way they would do that.
But I mean, when you just think about how reckless this policy in Ukraine has been, how much they're bragging, they're bragging about killing Russians.
You know, they're bragging about how the weapons we sent in is why Ukraine won this last battle.
And they're bragging about every billion dollars that they send in there.
They have to like spike the football and be like, yeah, we're giving them more money.
You know, I mean, this is all pretty goddamn reckless.
It's interesting to see.
I don't understand why if you did it, you wouldn't take credit for it.
If you're threatening, hey, if you guys go through with this, we're going to take out your pipelines.
And then their pipelines get magically taken out.
And you're the only one with the technology to do it.
I don't quite understand.
I don't know who did it.
Why are you looking at us?
Well, I think the idea of not taking credit for it is that you, you know, at that point, once you do it, you're like, well, we want this to be done, but we also don't want, you know, the heat that will come from doing this.
And, you know, probably a little bit concerned about what Putin would do in response.
But I think the issue is that it probably, you know, if like saying, if the Biden administration did this and it came out that they did it, makes it a little bit more difficult to keep lecturing everybody about climate change.
You know, like, really, there's, you just spill, there's, there's a, um, a huge, like half mile long circle of methane in the Baltic Sea right now, just killing all types of, you know, marine life and not to mention getting into the air and all that shit.
Like these people, and it is funny because it's like the people who are at the top of the military industrial complex are also the ones who bitch about climate change the most.
It's like these people like truly don't care about the climate at all and actually like destroying our environment.
You know, like anyway, the whole thing is pretty goddamn nuts, but we will see what happens with this.
It's for those of us who are hoping to see an end to this war, who are hoping to see like a de-escalation of all this, this is this was a very bad thing that this happened.
So we'll have to keep up on it.
Yeah, they'll go, that's totally different.
We're just trying to save the Ukrainian lives in the war that we're funding and provoked.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's right.
And escalating.
Yeah.
So that's totally different.
That oil spill is necessary.
Yeah, we really, we care about peace so much that we uh lured Russia into a war that we're now trying to extend as far as and will escalate to save the lives.
Yeah, right, right.
Um, well, it admits this is just a fun storyline, but amidst all the uh Biden hypocrisy in regards to like green energy, he's already used up 30% of our strategic oil reserves.
So while they're trying to pretend like, oh, yeah, what we need to do is get away from our reliance on fossil fuels instead of drilling and creating more, he's just taking from like the strategic reserves.
Apparently, it's like the amount that like Venezuela and other countries, like I like, it's a significant amount that he's drawn down and trying to pretend like we can be uh reliant on not having the fossil fuels.
Yeah, yeah, well, it's unbelievable.
Yeah.
Well, and you know, this is uh, it's look, it's hard to say exactly what the long game of all of this is, but yeah, there's certainly hypocrites from what they're officially saying versus what they're officially doing.
So, anyway, we will see what happens with all of that stuff.
I, it has been interesting to see the response to there's these big hurricanes that are the this big hurricane hitting Florida right now.
And I hope everybody who's uh who listens out in Florida, I hope you're doing good.
Hope you evacuated if you were supposed to evacuate.
And if you're still there, hope you don't get too fucked up by it.
But there are some great clips.
Actually, Brian, could you look for that?
I meant to look for it and send it to you, but Don Lemon getting put in his place about connect trying to connect this to climate change was pretty great.
It's really amazing how many, there's a hurricane hitting Florida.
You know, this is something that's just kind of always happened.
It's a very predictable, not surprising weather event.
You know, like it's, it's, I mean, it's a serious thing, but this is, they're in a hurricane zone and it's hurricane season and they're getting hit with a hurricane.
And the amount of people in the corporate press who are just desperately trying to be like, see, see, this is what happens.
Like they really just want you to see like pictures of like wind going crazy and flooding and stuff like that and go, yeah, this is what we were talking about.
This is climate change.
The problem is that there's absolutely no evidence that there's any connection.
Do you think they have classes for the guy who's holding the mic in front of the camera for how to pretend like wind is moving your body?
Maybe.
Those, yeah, those guys who like really are out there flipping out.
Yeah, we saw another one today.
Let's oh my god, the wind's crazy.
And then there's just like an old lady walking behind them and just kind of like, you know, this is madness.
All right, here, let's check out Don.
Can you tell us what this is and what effect the climate change has on this phenomenon?
Well, we can come back and talk about climate change at a later time.
I want to focus on the here and now.
We think the rapid intensification.
So right away, this guy who's actually an expert is like, he's just trying to be kind and be like, he's like, yeah, dude, I'm not here to like try to play politics with you.
I'm here to tell everyone about this storm that's coming in now.
So at first, he's just like, we could talk about this at a later time.
But so what's going on right now is we've got this hurricane, you know, and so he's trying to be kind.
But here, watch.
I like how D-Dog's not even confident in the question where he's like, and you can tie this into climate change, right?
Yeah, right.
Almost done.
There could be a little bit more intensification as it's still over the warm waters of the eastern Gulf of Mexico, but I don't think we're going to get any more rapid intensification.
If you look here, you can actually see, pretty interesting for your viewers, you can actually see a second eye wall forming around the inner eye wall.
And that's basically the second eye wall has overtaken the original eye wall, and that should arrest development.
So listen, I'm just trying to get that.
You said you want to talk about climate change, but what effect does climate change have on this phenomenon that is happening now?
Because it seems these storms are intensifying.
That's the question.
I don't think you can link climate change to any one event.
On the whole, on the cumulative, climate change may be making storms worse.
But to link it to any one event, I would caution against that.
Okay.
Well, listen, I grew up there and these storms are intensifying.
Something is causing them to intensify.
So this storm is just, it's a massive one.
Its effects are also being felt.
Okay, that's all basically, that was the whole thing.
But you just see him desperately trying to be like, you know, it's Don Lemon, such a fucking idiot.
He goes, well, I mean, they're intensifying and something's making them intensify.
It's like, yeah, right.
Maybe it's a black hole, Don Lemon.
Maybe that's what it is.
Remember we started talking about how the plane, that plane that was missing?
I asked if it could have been a black hole.
And the scientist had to tell him, no, there's not a black hole on Earth.
Because if there was, we would all be dead.
So anyway.
But the thing that's really crazy about this and so revealing is that, look, you're whatever.
You're a pretend newsman, you know?
You're an actor pretending to be a journalist.
But there's, you know, when there's storms like this, like these are really fucked up things.
I mean, you know, they're acts of God and it just is what it is.
But people's, you know, lives are being ruined.
People die in these storms.
People lose their houses in these storms.
It's like a real crisis that's affecting real people.
And the way these motherfuckers think is like in that moment, they're like, well, how can I help the Democrats with this?
That's what's like so ugly about politics is like in these moments, your first thought is like, ooh, how do I use this for my like political purposes?
What can I do?
Hey, weather guy, help me out on this one.
And you could kind of see the frustration in this guy's face that he's like, you know, these guys are, he's a nerd, you know, and I don't say that as an insult, like it's as a compliment.
You know what I mean?
Like, he's a guy who's like, you know, he's like, wants to be there and talk about this storm.
You know, this is like, oh, look, this is a thing that I'm an expert in that's actually like really affecting people right now.
He's like, hey, you know, it's pretty neat for your viewers.
You can actually see here how there's two eyes to this storm.
And the second eye is overtaking the first eye of the storm.
You know, he's trying to like nerd out about like, let me explain, let me give some people some information.
And that is my area of expertise.
And now they, they're, it could really benefit them to know this.
So he wants to tell, and you could just tell how annoyed he is that Don Lemon's like, yeah, yeah, but how does this help the Democrats?
Can you tell me that this helps the Democrats?
Tell me.
Here, let me use it in a way that'll we could really throw it in the Republicans' face.
And he's just like, they're just playing two different games.
Like, he's like, I'm not trying to play that game.
I'm trying to be the nerd expert guy who explains shit to regular people who need to hear this.
And Don Lemon's like, yeah, we don't really do that here.
This is CNN.
We don't really do that.
We're trying to politicize stuff.
So anyway, I found that to be rather entertaining.
All right.
You want to add something?
No, just more stupidity.
Yeah.
Oh, that's great.
That's good.
We're allowed to.
So the other thing I wanted to talk about today, which I found really interesting, was a big story that was dominating social media over the last few days was the rise of the new Italian prime minister.
She is with the brothers of Italy, which is a political party.
They have black people there.
Huh?
They have black people and Italian black people.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
These are the brothers.
They're a rap group and they went over to Italy.
Democracy and Elites00:04:39
They've been there for generations.
Well, this party is a, from what I can tell, like a kind of right-wing populist party.
And they've really taken over.
They went from being a tiny little party to really taking over and winning, you know, their candidate becoming prime minister.
Now, she, of course, has been smeared throughout the entire corporate press of them being like a fascist party, that this is a return to like Mussolini style, you know, Italian fascism.
It's very hard.
Listen, I'll be completely honest that I'm not an expert in the brothers of Italy and exactly everything they stand for.
But it is very hard to take the corporate press seriously when they call people right-wing fascists, seeing as how that's what they call everyone who's not a progressive.
Everyone who's not like a Davos, you know, progressive is now considered a right-wing fascist.
So it's very hard to take seriously.
A couple clips I've seen, they almost feel Trumpian.
It's got a Trump quality to her.
Yes, but a little bit more, even maybe a little bit more sophisticated than Donald Trump.
But yeah, there is something a little bit more focused on cultural stuff than now.
I have to ask, I don't know European politics all that well, but doesn't Italy have like a huge debt problem?
Like, aren't they just behind Greece in terms of massive debt issues?
And so I would think, aren't they kind of forced into the European model because like they kind of need German bailouts?
I might have that picture wrong, but I would think you're, I think you're pretty much right about that.
They were not as reckless as Greece, but not far behind.
And yeah, it's, it's, you know, the European Union in many ways, this has just been a disaster economically by allowing these countries to over-leverage themselves in a way they never would have been able to.
And then, of course, for Germany, having to kind of bail out a lot of these other countries.
So England, I mean, they're not on the Euro, but I understand England and Germany wanting out of the system because it seems like they're funding the others.
But I would think if you were Italy, you would kind of be like, yeah, the socialism thing is great because aren't they the benefactor?
I'm really talking out of my ass.
No, I think you're well, no, I think you're right about this.
But then again, just like all these other things, I mean, who's really been who's really benefiting from it?
It's probably the government certainly is able to over-leverage itself in a way that it wouldn't be able to, but our government is able to over-leverage itself in a way that it wouldn't be able to if we were on hard, you know, like on a hard money.
But right, would you really argue that that helps Americans, like average Americans?
Because I would certainly argue that it's the fact that they allow the government to over-leverage themselves so much more ends up hurting the people there.
So it's, you know, it depends on exactly how you want to look at it.
But I think what this is much more about is not the economic stuff, but the fact that, look, there's one of the things you have, and this is true in America and throughout Europe, is there's this real kind of irony of all of the people, all of the ruling elite, the kind of progressive elite establishment who love to tout democracy.
Like that is their, that is the greatest thing in the world is democracy and protecting democracy.
And the worst thing in the world are is like, you know, Trump and January 6th, because they are undermining our democracy.
But the problem is that what animates all of these people is like there's the issues that they seem to most passionately defend are like floods of immigration, climate change, you know, and kind of woke ideology.
The problem is that there is no majority of any of these countries who support any of that.
There's nobody, you just cannot find any polling to suggest that any majority in any one of these European countries or in the United States of America, that there's any majority that goes, yeah, those are also the most important issues to us.
The most important issues to us is climate change and making sure that we don't crack down on illegal immigration and just woke ideology.
That's the most important thing to us.
None of the people ever voted for that to be the priority of their governments.
And yet this is the priority of all of these governments.
Identity and Health00:14:32
And, you know, none of the people, and there's so many things like that in America, particularly with the warfare state, like you never had a mass vote of the people being like, yes, we think we should constantly be looking for wars to fight.
And yet that's what all of the politicians are there for.
And then they brag about democracy, but you're like, in no way are you actually representing the will of the people here?
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All right, let's get back into the show.
Anyway, so here's let's play a little clip from this.
I also wanted to get into something.
Nick Gillespie from Reason Magazine responded to this clip and it kind of set off a big debate, if you will, within the libertarian world.
So I wanted, let's play this clip.
We could turn the volume down kind of low.
And I'll just read the transcript at the bottom because she's speaking in Italian, obviously.
We hear it, Reason, support the touch.
And that's what Liberty is all about.
Okay.
So she starts by saying, Go ahead, please answer this question.
This is about what we are doing here today.
Why is the family an enemy?
Why is the family so frightening?
She says there is a single answer to all of these questions because it defines us, because it is our identity.
Because everything that defines us is now an enemy.
For those who would like us to no longer have an identity and to simply be perfect consumer slaves.
And so they attack national identity.
They attack religious identity.
They attack gender identity.
They attack family identity.
I can't define myself as an Italian Christian woman mother.
No.
I must be citizen X, gender X, parent one, parent two.
I must be a number.
Because when I'm only a number, when I no longer have an identity or roots, then I will be the perfect slave at the mercy of financial speculators, the perfect consumer.
So let's leave it there.
That's that's really what I wanted to play.
But I thought there was something really interesting and powerful about her saying that.
Now, again, I'm going to disclaim this by saying, I don't know everything about this woman.
I don't know everything about the party.
I am not like, I know a lot about American politics.
I don't know a ton about Italian politics.
I'm not like trying to put myself off as like an expert.
And I'm not trying to say that, like, no, I know this woman doesn't mean anything bad by this.
But there is something when I heard that little sniff.
And as I was joking around with Rogan on his show, you go, I'm also really relying on the fact that the words at the bottom of that screen is actually what she's saying.
Just throw that.
Yeah, literally, that's exactly what I said.
Is it like she's just going round up the Jews?
And I'm like, this sounds completely reasonable.
They're calling her a fascist for this, just for this.
But anyway, taking as a given that that is what she's saying here, it's which, you know, if it wasn't, a lot of people would be pointing that out, I'm sure.
But to me, I look at that and I go, oh, I completely get what she's saying.
And I get why that message is resonating.
And I get it.
And this is kind of, it's very interesting to me, kind of the split of like the Reason magazine type libertarians who look at this and see something really horrible and the more my camp of libertarians who look at this and go, oh, yeah, I totally get what she's saying, like completely.
This totally makes sense to me what she's saying.
And it totally makes sense why it's resonating.
And again, she, just to be clear, at least in what she's saying here, she wasn't saying that these values ought to be pushed on everybody.
She was saying, why do they need to be attacked?
Why is it that they're constantly attacking people's identity as a mother, as a father, as a man, as a woman, as a Christian, as an Italian?
You know what I mean?
Like, why is it that they're constantly trying to undermine this?
And she's saying it's because this is how people identify.
This is like the identity to people, and that there's basically this attempt to undermine identity.
And I think there's something really true to what she's saying there.
So let's play, Brian, you have, I just want to read Nick Gillespie's tweet that he wrote on this.
By the way, I like Nick Gillespie very much.
I have a good relationship with him.
He's interviewed me a ton of times.
I've had him on the podcast before.
I'm always happy every time I see him at an event at the Soho Forum or something like that.
And I like Nick, but we do have, I think, you know, it's interesting because we would both consider ourselves libertarians, but we really do have very different views when it comes to so much of this cultural stuff.
So let's just read his tweet.
Do you have that, Brian?
So Nick Gillespie says, I'm going to butcher her name.
How do you pronounce it?
Giorgia Meloni.
Italians, their language is so beautiful.
Her invocation of individualism, quote, unique genetic code, is incompatible with her invocation of collective identity, nation, family, gender, and attacks on consumerism.
This is incoherent.
This is the incoherence of conservatism when faced with libertarian modernity.
Now, this is, to me, I go, this is just such a backward way to look at everything.
Like, it's so backward because number one, there's so many like assumptions built into this that I think are just like false.
Number one, believing in individualism is not in any way in conflict with identifying as a Christian or an American or being a father or being any of those things.
There's nothing in conflict there.
You can be an individual with a unique genetic code, as we all are, and also still voluntarily group up because that's what human beings do.
Whether we like it or not, that's what human beings do.
And libertarians, man, particularly those on the other side of this, they got to stop being so goofy on this issue, man.
Like you, this really is a problem of almost like, well, there's two problems.
You're living in like the world of abstract principles rather than having abstract principles and applying them to the real world.
And you're not even getting your principles right in your head.
So there's no contradiction, again, between believing in individualism or believing in individual rights and also recognizing that people have collective identities.
There's nothing wrong with that.
It'd be on the level of like, if someone said to you, you're like, oh, I just joined a league.
I'm on a basketball team.
And I was like, you're on a basketball team.
I thought you were a libertarian.
You should only play one-on-one basketball.
You know what I mean?
Like, it makes no sense.
It's like, yeah, no, you still, you can go join a team and identify as a group and all of that stuff.
But the other thing that libertarians really need to understand, and this was something that Jeff Deist tried to really point out in that speech that he gave, which they all freaked out about because he uttered two words that you're not allowed to utter, evidently.
And so that means his speech on decentralization made him a Nazi sympathizer or something.
I don't know.
But he was just making the point that he was like, look, just take a look at the 20th century.
Take a look at the 20th century alone.
How many people fought and died for their national honor?
Now, I'm not saying we like that.
We don't like that.
We don't like wars.
You know what I mean?
And we certainly recognize that nationalism has been used in many examples to manipulate people and manipulate people into doing very bad things.
But the point is that that national identity is powerful.
And a lot of people like that.
And that's just something to notice: that these things that are constantly being attacked, like Christianity, like national pride, like gender, like families, these are things that people really care about.
Things people are willing to die for.
And I don't mean like in some abstract, in your theoretical model in your head.
I'm saying like in real life, people are willing to fight and die for their families.
They're willing to fight and die for their religion.
They're willing to fight and die for their nations.
Now, that's if you want to just ignore that, okay, fine, but then you ignore that at your own peril.
Like this is this is an important lesson.
This is very valuable information.
And the truth is that as long as these identities are voluntary, then libertarians should have no problem with it whatsoever.
And so there's nothing about like there, there is this one camp of libertarianism that seems to think in a way that all of these identities are inherently, you know, anti-liberty, and therefore we should kind of be okay with the constant attacks on them and the undermining of them.
But from my perspective, and I think most of the people in our camp are like, no, there's absolutely nothing wrong.
In fact, that's an understatement.
Not only is there nothing wrong, but I think it's actually a really great thing to be like a Christian mother or Christian father or something like that.
I think that's great.
And so if there's a constant attack on that, you'd be like, no, this is like, this is wrong.
You're attacking people for choosing to live their lives the way they want to, which is, you know, is their right.
And this, the reality of the situation is that given if people were given their liberty, hundreds of millions of people are going to identify with Christianity and family values.
That's the reality.
So let's deal with that.
She says that he says that it's incompatible with collective identity and the attack on consumerism.
And then he says, this is the incoherence of conservatism when faced with libertarian modernity.
Now, this is something that I find a really interesting thing, too, that I think is really kind of the split between the within the kind of civil war within libertarianism that I was talking about with Rogan a little bit.
And the way I put it to Rogan and his, you know, his audience, because, you know, I'm talking to people who don't like live in this libertarian, goofy world that we're in.
But I just said, well, it's basically like the Gary Johnson people versus the Ron Paul people.
And I'm in the Ron Paul camp.
And partly, if you look at that, on one hand, you might just see, oh, okay, well, what's the difference between Gary Johnson and Ron Paul?
Well, you could just see that, okay, like Ron Paul is a bit more of a principled libertarian and a little bit more radical.
Gary Johnson would stop short of being a pure libertarian.
He'd say, oh, let's legalize pot, but we don't have to legalize other drugs.
Whereas Ron Paul would just be like, no, government has no right to prohibit any of these things.
You know, like, but it's more than just that.
There's also kind of this like cultural component to it as well.
And a little bit of like, you know, what we call like the red pill, blue pill distinction, like people who really get what's going on versus people who don't.
And I think it's interesting that Nick Gillespie conflates consumerism with libertarianism and then asserts that what conservatives are faced with is libertarian modernity.
As if, so that's what we have right now, right?
The conservatives are trying to deal with libertarian modernity.
But no, Nick, that's not what they're dealing with.
We don't have libertarian societies here.
In fact, we have the biggest nation states in the history of the world.
All of these governments are gigantic.
There's a government, the size of government has just grown and grown and grown.
This is not, and it's not as if they're faced with libertarian modernity.
Quit Smoking Naturally00:03:32
That's not what consumerism is.
What they're faced with is woke progressivism.
That's what they're dealing with.
They're not even talking about libertarianism.
And consumerism is not libertarianism.
That's not free market capitalism.
In fact, it's quite the opposite.
The consumerism is all that is, you know, central banking.
That's what leads to this consumerism, which by the way, they'll tell you, like all the politicians and the central banks will tell you that that's the goal, right?
It's been, I mean, now I guess they're worried about reigning in inflation a little bit, but what's the goal always been, Rob, that they talk about?
Stimulating demand, right?
That's always what they say.
What did George Bush tell Americans to do after 9-11?
So he goes, go shop, go to work, extend more credit, flood the economy with easy money.
That's been the goal of all this shit.
The idea that to associate libertarianism or laissez-faire capitalism with present consumption is all wrong.
Like capitalism should be associated with savings, investment, production.
These are the things that build a healthy society, not just consumerism.
Not just, oh, yeah, like that's like, oh, yeah, if you just make it, if you just extend credit at artificially low interest rates, that promotes consumerism.
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Libertarian Cultural Norms00:03:08
All right, where were we?
In terms of like the libertarian, like kind of social values, I feel like this Nick gets this all wrong.
And then equating consumerism with libertarian modernity, that's not what they're dealing with.
None of this has to do with libertarian modernity.
What it has to do with is cultural norms, which by the way, are pushed by the people who support not only the biggest governments in the history of the world, but they constantly support making them bigger and bigger and bigger, the clear enemies of libertarianism.
And the cultural norms that they push are that, you know, we ought to be an atheistic, genderless, woke society.
None of that has to do with individual rights and the non-aggression principle and laissez-faire free markets.
In many ways, it's pretty damn close to the antithesis of all of those things.
So, anyway, it was just, it was kind of interesting to me to see that be Nick Gillespie's response and then to see all of the responses to him.
He really was taking some heat from a lot of what they would consider the right-wing libertarians, I guess, which is like us.
It's interesting that those guys kind of like they think that we're all right-wing libertarians, which whatever.
I don't even care about arguing the semantics of that.
Like, fine, you consider me a right-wing libertarian.
All right, whatever.
I don't care.
But they don't like being considered left libertarians.
And I don't even know how to describe it.
It's not even, they're like, they think that this kind of like cultural, like cultural opposition to traditional values is inherent in libertarianism.
And it's just not.
That's just not the case.
It's not true that if you, you know, if you believe people ought to be free, that therefore you have to also have some type of hostility toward cultural norms.
It's just not true.
In fact, you could recognize that if people are given liberty, many of them are going to choose traditional lifestyles because there's a reason they're traditional.
So like that's that's something libertarians better wrap their heads around.
And, you know, if they don't, I think they do it at the they do it and guarantee that this message will never spread.
And that the truthfully, the people who right now are absolutely just furious with modern statism.
And they may not put it that way, but I'm saying like the people who are furious with the political class and the corporate press and the deep state and are totally, you know what I mean?
Like totally have lost all trust in those institutions.
Those people also hate wokeism.
And if you want to say that libertarianism says you got to be free, but we also have to attach it to all this woke shit.
Pay Per View Skank Fest00:02:34
it's a it's a non it's a non-starter that's the truth so all right we could wrap there anything you want to add rob uh i'd love to plug my gig this saturday in uh maryland uh at fifth street brewing company with justin silver menu and heart bk chris 25 tickets unbelievable this guy's got just a wall of beers it's just taps you can just pay with your card walk over they got pumpkin beers fifth street brewing in uh perryville maryland it's going to be an awesome saturday so come hang out Hell yeah.
Well, me and you, Rob, will be in November, November 25th and 26th.
We'll be at Laugh It Up in Poughkeepsie, New York.
So yeah, we'll be doing a weekend out there.
We'll see.
Maybe we'll bring if BK Chris can come out as well.
I'll give him a call today and see if he can join us for those shows.
So yeah, I'll get those ticket links up on my website today.
So go check it out over at comicdave Smith.com.
New Year's Eve, I got shows with the great Louis J. Gomez at the comedy store in Los Angeles.
I'm going back to Los Angeles for the first time.
I've been there a couple of times, but I haven't done the comedy store since New Year's of 2019.
So before back when it was a normal world.
So looking forward to that very much.
Of course, Skank Fest coming up.
Lot of fun stuff.
Me and Rob are going to be out on the road hard in 2023.
I think I don't even know because I'm not in the loop on this, but are we doing like the pay-per-view stuff again with part of the problem?
Yes.
Yes, we're doing another.
Yes, I should mention that too.
Be doing another pay-per-view, very special part of the problem episode.
I'm planning out some fun stuff for that right now, but it'll be another real fun thing like we did last year with some stand-up and like probably a big roundtable part of the problem thing with a lot of cool guests.
So look forward to that at Skank Fest coming up in just a couple of weeks now, man.
Very excited.
Yeah.
So there you go.
That's our episode for today.
Catch you next time.
I'll just one more note for people who last year, I mean, the pay-per-view went true live and then that full episode did not go on to YouTube.
So first is if you want to be able to watch it immediately, you should be subscribing.
Even I bought it the day after because I wanted to watch it back.
So go buy it.
Whatever we do, the full version of it is not going to make it to YouTube.
And if it does, there will be a lag in time.
So it's worth grabbing.
Yeah, no, we're not putting this one out at all.
The only way to get it is to go pay-per-view, get it.
So go buy the pay-per-view.
I'll have that all that stuff for next episode.
I'll make sure I give you guys all the info on how to go get that.