Dave Smith and Robbie Bernstein dismantle Dennis Prager's claim that Libertarian voting aids the left, arguing Republicans are the true architects of leftist gains through expanded government under Trump and Bush. They refute the "spoiler" theory by citing Gary Johnson's 4.5 million votes and polling data showing his support skewed toward Democrats in swing states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Ultimately, the hosts assert that prioritizing party loyalty over principles empowers institutional overreach, urging libertarians to hold Republicans accountable for lockdowns and corporate welfare rather than enabling them as a lesser evil. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
|
Time
Text
Welcome to Part of the Problem00:03:43
Fill her up.
You are listening to the Gash Digital Network.
We need to roll back the state.
We spy on all of our own citizens.
Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
You're listening to part of the problem on the Gash Digital Network.
Cheers your host, James Smith.
What's up, everybody?
What's up?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I'm Dave Smith.
He is the king of the caulks, Robbie the Fire Bernstein.
How you feeling, brother?
I'm great.
I'm all repented and I don't have to go to synagogue for another year.
So I feel great.
Well, there you go.
All right.
You don't have to go for another year.
Very good.
So you don't have to miss any more of our episodes.
Come on.
It was a great one for you to be on.
Fucking God.
I know.
I was excited for that one, but I messed up because I'm not good with times and dates.
You would appreciate this.
I rushed over to my parents' house in a suit and like I stormed into the house and they're just sitting around.
I'm like, why is everyone sitting around?
We got to go.
And they're like, that's tomorrow.
And I was like, I am Richard.
Really?
That's hilarious.
Oh, that is hilarious.
So then you just had to sit there and hang out in a suit with your mom and dad.
Yep.
I sat down and I had dinner with them and I was like, all right, I'll be back tomorrow.
The same suit.
Yes.
The exact same suit.
And then the second day was kind of stained because I really shouldn't have worn it during dinner.
But what are you going to do?
That is pretty great.
All right.
Well, we'll do another one of the roundtable with the four of us sometime real soon.
So that'll be, that'll be fun.
All right.
So let's get into today's episode.
First, real quick, do want to tell you that, you know, if you guys know next week is Skank Fest and we are doing once again this year, we're doing the pay-per-view live streams.
We're going to do a part of the problem.
This is not going out anywhere else.
We're not putting it up on the YouTube or the RSS feed or anything like that.
The only way to see this is to go to mintcomedy.com and purchase it.
It's 10 bucks for the stream.
I'll tell you guys, we have something really cool planned for this one.
So make sure you go check that out.
I'll be announcing the details in the next couple of days, but it's going to be an awesome show.
So go check this out live from SkankFest, part of the problem, mintcomedy.com.
Plus, there's a bunch of other great streams from the festival.
So definitely go check that out.
It's definitely going to be something you don't want to miss.
In November 25th and 26th, me and Rob will be doing some live stand-up shows in Poughkeepsie, New York at Laugh It Up.
The ticket links are up at my website, comicdavesmith.com.
Definitely go grab some tickets to that.
New Year's Eve, I will be returning to Los Angeles to be at the comedy store with Luis J. Gomez and a bunch of other great stand-up comedians.
So come ring in the new year with us if you are, if you're in the area, in the Los Angeles area.
All right, Rob, anything you got to plug before we start up?
Yeah, I got a really cool date coming up, November 5th in Austin.
It's a backyard show.
I'm going to be doing stand-up and then I'm going to be doing a live pod with Scott Horden all about Star Wars.
It's going to be a real nerd fest.
So I think you've heard Scott go out on Star Wars.
He's as informed on that as he is the wars.
And every bit as passionate about them.
Yeah.
So I got the link for that November 4th, Dallas.
I'm trying to find a place for Houston, maybe the next day, and more dates coming at you.
So be on the lookout.
Hell yeah.
Sounds good.
All right.
So for today's episode, there's, you know, people love when we do these response episodes.
They always do very good numbers.
So we got another one coming up.
This time, someone just sent this to me yesterday.
Why We Need a Third Party00:15:25
This is Dennis Prager, who is, if you don't know who Dennis Prager is, he's been around forever.
And I guess he has a radio show that he then puts out as a podcast.
And he did a show on libertarians, and I assume he's being critical of them here.
I have not had a chance to really listen to this.
I played like a minute of it just to see like where it starts up.
So we're going to respond to this going in kind of blind.
I assume he's being critical of libertarians.
That's what I was told.
This will not make for much of an episode if he's just agreeing with us.
I just play.
Yeah, see, exactly.
But he will be.
I'm sure he'll be critical.
Dennis Prager is, you know, I remember watching him like on Bill Maher's show when I was a teenager and stuff, but he's like a longtime conservative radio show host.
And he runs that Prager University that would put out like very well-made videos.
A lot of them went viral.
You know, kind of like a boomer con Zionist neocon type.
I think broad strokes.
That's more or less, he falls into that camp.
So anyway, let's get into it.
Let's respond and break this down.
Here is Dennis Prager on libertarians.
American Greatness, one of the finest sites there is, has an article.
Will libertarian candidates again deny GOP the Senate?
We use libertarians on the program.
We have them make videos for Prager U.
They have excellent, excellent ideas and critiques of big government, which is critical.
However, the Libertarian Party to vote libertarian is an exercise in answering the following question in the wrong way.
Will I do good or will I feel good?
All right, let's all get right there.
So that's an interesting framing of this whole thing.
So it seems almost to start off with a conceit that, well, I can't really argue with any of their ideas.
I mean, these libertarians sure do have great ideas.
Man, they sure do make a whole lot of sense.
We use them on our content and, man, their criticisms of big government are pretty damn on point.
However, I got a real beef with this Libertarian Party.
So you can kind of already take a guess of what direction this is going in.
But okay, so that I don't know what can I say about that.
I suppose my initial thought would just be like, well, if you can't argue with us on any of the ideas, then why is it that we should be joining you?
Maybe you should be joining us.
It just seems to be my first thought.
And then he sets up this question, do I want to do good or do I want to feel good?
Bullshit.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, okay.
I mean, yes, I think doing good is preferable to feeling good.
What kind of a contradiction is that?
If you do something that's good, doesn't that make you feel good?
How often do you go out and do something good and then you feel like shit?
It's like the main reason people do good things is that they can feel good.
How did you create some contradiction between doing good and feeling good?
I don't very often go out and do something good and go, wow, I feel terrible about myself.
Yes, I mean, it does seem to be somewhat of a false binary, but perhaps he's going to elaborate.
And the point is going to be that it feels good to join the Libertarian Party, but it's not actually doing good.
So let's see what his argument is.
In the human species, people choose feeling good over doing good most of the time.
That is what happens when you vote for the Libertarian Party.
You are doing bad.
That's right.
You are doing something bad.
You're probably a wonderful human being with great ideas, and I share most values with you, but I don't share the biggest single value right now, and that is defeating the left.
You have wasted your vote and taken it in most cases from the Republican Party, which is certainly imperfect.
I couldn't agree more, but it is the only alternative to the Democratic Party, which is destroying this beautiful, wonderful free country.
So let's pause it.
Let's pause it right there.
So, you know, I can kind of understand where there is something compelling.
about arguing that like, look, the biggest threat right now to Western civilization is what Dennis Prager calls the left.
You know, we could, you know, quibble about what exactly they should be called.
But certainly, if you were to say, hey, the push of like, say, combine a few things here, the entire COVID regime, all of the COVID restrictions, the flirtation with nuclear war with Russia, the just outrageous propagandizing of children in public schools and the insanity of like Green New Deal, climate hysteria, just anti-civilization policies.
If you were just saying like, okay, this bucket of like the people pushing this, call them the left, fine, for the sake of this conversation, that defeating them is more important than like purity between whether, you know, I don't know, whether we have Bob Dole or Ron Paul.
Obviously, we might like Ron Paul more, but what's more important is just that these guys don't win.
You know what I mean?
So his, the way he puts it is like, the, the greatest priority here is destroying the left.
And okay, I will acknowledge that there's something compelling about that argument.
If we could say, destroy all of those threats that I just laid out by voting for Mitt Romney or something like that, it's like, okay, so stop wasting your time with Gary Johnson and just vote for Mitt Romney because it'll destroy all of these threats.
Okay.
Yes, if that were the case, in theory, that would be correct.
There's a major problem with this analysis, though, which is that voting for Republicans doesn't destroy the left.
I mean, we know this like empirically.
This is true.
The left was pretty out of control in 2014, 2015.
So Donald Trump won the presidency.
And the Republicans, by the way, your party also had the House and the Senate.
Did they destroy the left?
No, they in many ways became the left.
They spent more money than even Obama did in his highest spending year in their first year.
The left is only crazier.
All of the threats that I just laid out have either been has started or gotten much worse since the Republicans took control.
So you can't just take it as a given that supporting Republicans destroys the left.
It doesn't.
It's demonstrably false that this destroys the left.
And why is that?
Well, I think the libertarian argument would be that at the core, it's that if what are you going to do with this power when you get it?
And unless you're going to actually abolish the power that the left takes over, then you're never going to do anything to destroy them.
So just for the sake of argument, let's say, not that Trump would ever have even had a thought to do this, but what could Donald Trump have done to really say destroy?
Again, we're using the term the left in kind of a sloppy way, but I'm just using the term that Prager is using.
Let's say, let's take the COVID shit, right?
What could Donald Trump have done to like really prevent All this COVID insanity from happening.
Well, there's little things he could have done, certainly that would have been much better.
I mean, he could have like not kept Fauci on the job, right?
He could have fired Fauci.
That would have been good.
He could have, he could have called his guys who he knew were good.
You know, this is what even Styx, who was arguing the opposite point as me, but he came up with this idea when we were debating, and I very much liked it.
He goes, he could have at least called his buddy Rand Paul and been like, ah, you're a doctor.
I mean, I know you're an eye doctor and you're not this doctor, but like, hey, you're a doctor.
What doctor do you think I should be listening to?
Can you tell me who's a great epidemiologist who's, you know, not insane on all of this stuff?
I'm going to make him the doctor.
You know, that would have been like, but that's a little fix because then Joe Biden wins.
And what does Joe Biden do?
He reappoints Fauci.
So even a little thing like that doesn't know.
That's, by the way, what I just laid out is way better than you get from the Republicans.
They don't do that.
They just keep Fauci on the job.
But even so, but here, if you wanted to be serious here from the libertarian point of view, how about before COVID or any of this shit happened, Trump or Republicans or anything like that, they get in, they abolish the CDC.
See, now you've got something.
Now you've actually abolished this government agency.
And so now, even if the Democrats take back control, now at least they have to start, they have to create a whole new government agency.
It's going to be much, much more difficult for them to do this.
You see what I'm saying?
So that's if you want to actually defeat this real problem that we have with all this shit, what you need to do is have a group of people who are committed to drastic rollbacks in the size and scope of government.
And that's not the Republicans.
That's why we're going to another party.
Not because we're like, hey, I just, you know, the Republicans are better than the Democrats, but, you know, we just want to be purists and feel good about ourselves.
We're saying, no, this has been tried over and over and over again.
And all the Republicans ever do is expand the size of the government and then hand that bigger government back over to the Democrats who can then expand it from there.
It's insanity to keep doing this over and over again and thinking this is going to work.
No, I'm curious to know.
So I guess for a long time I felt like don't vote because you're empowering them and make them earn your vote.
Because if you're always just voting against the other side, you're making it very easy for the government to have policies that don't actually represent you.
Like you've done, you made it very easy for them to have your vote because you're just voting against something.
I do feel like with some of the expansions that I've seen in the policies that the left is pushing over the last four years, the biggest way, you've already mentioned them, but it's the global warming.
It's the reduction of, you know, it's the war on fossil fuels.
It's the pushing, making your kids trans stuff.
It's the censorship.
Like there are some really big issues that seem to be a lot more aggressive that for me, like I would almost advocate if you weren't doing what you were doing, the Mises Caucus didn't exist.
I would be more motivated to go, you know what?
Just vote down ticket Republican just as a fuck you to the left to try and at least maybe strangle some of that power and really just like almost make a statement.
I'm not voting for Republicans.
I'm voting against this because I hate this.
And maybe we can get rid of it.
And I think that, and that is kind of where the right gets its power is going, well, we like right now, there's some serious stakes on the board and we need a win to roll to roll this stuff back.
And like, I kind of understand the plea.
Well, at least in that case, then you'd at least have to say, like, you got to really make sure who you're voting for, right?
It can't just be like any Republicans.
So then you almost bring yourself back to the argument being that like libertarians should run in the Republican Party or something like that.
Right.
There's an argument there.
I kind of tend to disagree with that.
But the point is that you'd still only want to vote for Republicans who were really going to fight this stuff.
Well, I think the other thing is Republicans, and I know that you might even agree with them on this, but the abortion kind of showcases a good story.
So I'm okay with fine.
You're a state, you don't want to have abortions in your state, great.
But they ramped up really quickly to, hey, we're going to prosecute people.
And I'm just saying that that's one example of like the second you give Republicans power, some of the things that we haven't heard about a lot as of late, which is like strictly enforcing drug laws or Christians trying to, you know what I mean?
Christians trying to say, hey, that's inappropriate rap and music videos or, hey, let's go to war in the Middle East.
Like there's a lot of stuff that Republicans love that since we have, they're not in power right now, we haven't really had to confront.
Oh, yeah.
And let's get real.
The element of the Republican parties that Dennis Prager has been, you know, supportive of for his entire career are the ones who have given us half of this shit.
They're like a Republican created the EPA.
A Republican created the Department of Homeland Security.
Republicans created the Patriot Act and the war on terrorism and all of this stuff.
So it's just not exactly clear that this is going to be anything that solves the problem.
In fact, all empirical evidence points in the other direction.
And I'll just point out one more thing, which is if you really did have a strong Libertarian party that came out as a third party, I would think that there would almost definitely then become a fourth party, which is a split of the Democratic Party between the extreme socialists and kind of the middle of the party.
And that would probably benefit us quite a bit to splinter off the kind of Democrat, because there's some people with those extreme ideas that do at least force in the debates for the Democrats to pretend like they're fully socialist.
Here's the other thing that having a strong libertarian party does, right?
Is that you go, look, is if we get the thing big enough and get enough energy involved in it, then you essentially will force people to recognize our grievances.
It's like, okay, yes, well, this voting block could be the difference to you winning or losing.
It's like, okay, well, then win us over.
I mean, look, I'm like probably one of the biggest figures in the Libertarian Party right now.
Certainly the biggest, according to the people who are all, you know, in control of the LNC and the caucus that's just kind of taken over the whole party.
So do you, but I'm not like a party loyalist.
I'm loyal to principles, not to my political party.
So do you think if there was some Republican who was running and convinced us that he was serious about this, who said, look, I'm running on abolishing the FDA and the CDC.
I am running on peace negotiations immediately with Russia.
I'm running on completely removing all restrictions on fossil fuels.
I'm running on, you know, whatever.
It doesn't even have to be completely perfect radical libertarianism, but like, you know, banning CRT in public schools or something like that or school choice or whatever, you know, abolishing the Department of Homelands, abolishing the Department of Education, you know, things like, and said all of that.
Do you think we wouldn't go support that guy if we believed he was serious about it?
Winning vs Supporting the System00:02:48
It's like, of course we would.
But the point is that if you're not serious or even saying, you're not even pretending to be for any of these things.
So the fuck should I support you then?
And you have to win our vote.
And that's your job.
A strong party changes the coverage of the ideas.
So like if you're having a conversation about inflation and you actually have a strong third party that's pointing a finger at the Fed, it changes the censorship where you can't not acknowledge and have that conversation.
Yeah, look.
Same with the Ukraine war.
If you really have someone screaming about why is NATO expanding, it forces you to have a different conversation about what's going on.
Yeah, 100%.
And so, and basically, that's kind of like whether it's through the political party or not, that's kind of like what we do.
You know, like that's the kind of the goal of all this shit that we're a part of here.
And, but again, the problem is that when you start having that real conversation, then you start going like, oh, well, when Donald Trump was president, NATO was expanded.
And in fact, weapons were sent into Ukraine.
And in fact, $6 trillion was printed in his last year of presidency.
And it's like, oh, okay, yes, you're not, this isn't destroying any of the shit that we actually care about, destroying.
In fact, it's growing all of it by every metric.
All right, let's keep going.
So, wait, can I put you put a tough question to you?
Sure.
All right.
So, you might be running this whole Mises ship, or at least, you know, behind the scenes, you dictate some policy, the momentum.
So, I think the low-hanging fruit of who we could be converting to the party, it's Republicans, because I find generally speaking, Republicans are libertarians.
They just don't realize that libertarians are a thing, or they are aware of libertarians, but they just want to win.
And since they want to win, they'd rather be on a winning team.
So, like, what's your pitch as to how supporting this movement is winning versus kind of just getting Republicans in?
Well, my, what I always respond to that is with people like kind of like whose concern is winning.
I just try to suggest like, but what is winning really?
Are you winning?
Like, were you winning when Donald Trump was in?
Was 2020 a great year for you?
Was that you winning?
Was the was the economy being locked down, you winning?
You know, like what if we actually want to win and not just win in like, yeah, our guy got in there, but win in terms of like the human flourishing, then we actually look, it's the challenge is just a lot tougher.
You actually have to get your guy in there who's going to do the right things, who has a plan for how to actually enact these policies, who's going to be committed to that.
So, that's the challenge.
It's not just getting a guy with the letter next to your name in there.
And I think probably over the last few years, you know, Republican voters more and more have seen how so many people who have an R next to their name hate your guts.
What Is Actually Winning00:03:01
They hate your fucking guts.
Look at all these neocons who are now on the Democratic side of the aisle.
And what are they doing?
They're demonizing all the right-wingers who they used to rally up to vote for them.
It's really, it's like right in front of your eyes.
And I guess you could also say it's like a vote for a Republican.
You're still supporting the current system.
Sure.
And how's that system working for you?
There's not, I'm not saying don't ever support a Republican.
I've been on record talking about this a lot, but I think wielding a third party, there's a responsible and an irresponsible way to do it.
Like I would, if libertarians were running someone against Rand Paul or against Thomas Massey, I would think that's that's insanely stupid.
There's just, it's just so ridiculous.
But what are you going to do?
Just take away liberty-minded votes from someone who gets, so that doesn't make any sense.
But if you're talking about Lindsey Graham or fucking, you know what I mean, or Mitch McConnell, then like, yeah, absolutely run someone against them because they're horrible.
All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is fastgrowingtrees.com.
I don't know about you guys, but one of the most important things you can do for your own mental health is spend time making your house into a home indoors and out.
That's why I love fastgrowingtrees.com.
The experts at fast-growing trees curate thousands of plants so you can find the perfect fit for your special climate location and needs.
You don't have to drive around to nurseries or big gardening centers.
Fast-growing trees makes it easy to order online and your plants are shipped to your door in one to two days.
Whether you're looking to add some privacy, shade, or natural beauty to your yard, fast-growing trees has in-house experts ready to help you make the right selection with growing and care advice available 24-7.
I got to tell you, this is a really unbelievable company.
My wife is super into this stuff.
And so it's really, it really does make a big difference to have like the right plant life inside your house and in your yard and all of that stuff.
So I'd highly recommend people go check this out.
Even if you've never had a green thumb, they'll make you feel like you do, just like over 1 million happy, fast-growing trees customers across the country.
Plus, with their 30-day alive and thrive guarantee, you can trust that everything will be healthy for years to come.
Right now, go to fastgrowingtrees.com/slash P-O-T-P and you'll get 15% off your entire order now through October 15th only.
So go take advantage of this.
Get 15% off at fastgrowingtrees.com/slash P-O-T-P.
That's fastgrowingtrees.com/slash P-O-T-P.
All right, let's get back into it.
All right, let's keep playing.
Weaken the battle against the left, which is what every libertarian vote of a conservative does.
You are harming the country, though you mean well.
But you know what?
As you probably do know a lot, meaning well means nothing, absolutely nothing.
The Trap of Two Parties00:08:05
And if you ask, am I doing good or feeling good?
You won't vote for the Libertarian Party.
You will vote for the Republican Party.
It's a great article on that fact in the American Greatness, as I pointed out.
We pause again.
Political reality.
I just always hear propaganda when someone's telling me don't think.
When everyone's good, it has some sort of a, hey, don't look at your own logic or even your feelings, but negate that and just go with what I'm telling you as being the instructions is the right thing to do.
I just go, okay, this guy is, this is propaganda.
Yeah, just be blindly loyal to this party.
Forget about your principles.
And those principles are just making you feel good, you know.
And then even just like little rhetorical tricks, like going like, if you ask yourself, are you doing good or feeling good?
Then you won't vote for the libertarians.
You'll vote for the Republicans.
And there was an article on this fact.
It's like, wait, that's a fact?
I mean, I don't even know if it could be classified as an argument.
It's just a blind assertion that if people ask themselves these questions, then they won't.
Well, here's how much I can disprove that it's not a fact.
I'm asking myself that question right now, and I'm still going to vote libertarian.
So there you go.
That is not true.
It is not a fact that if you ask yourself that question, you know, just like, I understand I'm being a little nitpicky here, but it's like these rhetorical tricks that are like, you're not really presenting an argument here.
You're just like you said, it's got a very propaganda-y feeling to it.
You're telling people, fall in line because be scared of the other side and fall in line with this side, which has the only chance of beating the other side.
And again, just my major issue with this is that you guys don't beat the other side.
You know, listen, in the year 2000, Republicans had the presidency, the House, and the Senate.
And they spent more money than the previous Democrats had spent before them.
And then after 9-11, you know, obviously everyone knows how much they fucked up the country.
And then this led to a much more radical leftist Democratic Party, which coming in in 2008 or 2006, they took the House and then the Senate.
And then in 2008, they win the presidency, right?
And then in 2016, we got the same thing.
Republicans in the White House, Republicans taking the House and the Senate.
And then this just leads to a much more radical leftist Democratic Party storming right back.
So it's just not true that this defeats your enemy.
The question has got to be like, what is the actual plan to defeat the enemy?
And as of right now, what you guys seem to have is like, well, just keep doing the same thing.
That just keeps making the problem worse over and over again.
All right, let's keep playing.
In America today is that of a two-party system.
Embracing this reality means if you want to change the political direction of the nation, you have to transform one of the two major parties.
Denying this reality by running as a third-party candidate can also transform the political direction of the nation, but it's unlikely to change in the direction of the third party candidate.
The third party candidate wants to go.
Third party candidates rarely win elections, but they're very good at splitting the vote.
All right, let's pause it for a second there.
I mean, again, there's just none of this is, there's just no arguments being made at all.
It's all just a series of assertions, some correct and some not correct.
So like his assertion that, you know, like third-party candidates are very unlikely to win.
I mean, that is correct.
But his assertion that we live in a two-party system and the only way to change the only way to change the parties is to join one of the two parties and change them.
It's like, well, I don't know.
I don't necessarily think that's true.
I think it's quite possible that you can change one of those two parties from a third party.
I also don't think it's so much of a given that you just have to join one of these two parties.
It's also not like we live in a two-party system now, for all intents and purposes.
That doesn't mean we always will.
And perhaps the goal should be to change it from being a two-party system.
You know, as you just said, Rob, it'd be much, we'd be much better off if we had more parties all around and they weren't able to just play this kind of like uniparty game where as soon as one party fucks up so much that you have to go back to the other one.
And then that party fucks up so much that you have to go back to this one.
And that's kind of the way American politics works.
So again, none of this is really an argument.
And there's, you know, if you want, like if Dennis Prager is serious about this, you know, he starts by being like, look, I can't really argue with any of these libertarians' ideas.
They're right about all this stuff, but they should still come over here and support us.
But if you want us to come over and support you, then you have to make a pitch to us, not just a pitch to you about why you think it's important for you to win.
Like the pitch to me would be that supporting Republicans will increase liberty in this country.
Make that argument and show me a shred of evidence for why I should believe that.
Now, again, in some situations, I would.
Like if I lived in Kentucky, I'd be voting for Rand Paul and Thomas Massey.
But I don't.
And so whatever.
It doesn't mean I just support anyone with an R next to their name.
If I lived in South Carolina, I would never in a million years support Lindsey Graham.
So there's that.
All right, let's keep playing.
This is the only context in which the National Libertarian Party, if you will vote libertarian and you don't agree, I'm very anxious to talk to you, by the way.
1-8 Prager 776.
The party of principle, quote unquote.
Really, the party of principle.
So I will let my country sink and die because I stand up for principles.
I stand for principles too.
Let's pause it again.
So again, this is, I mean, I think everyone could see this by now, but this is just such a bullshit way to like frame the question here.
The argument isn't that like, oh, we just have so much principles.
So we'll let the country die because we want to feel good and feel like we're principled.
The point is that the reason the country is dying is because there are no principles within the Republican Party.
And if the principles that we care about are the principles of liberty, then like, okay, nobody in the Republican Party or very few people in the Republican Party are actually fighting for those principles.
So that's why we're like, well, God damn it, the only way for the country to not be destroyed is to actually have people who are committed to like free markets and individual liberty and a drastic reduction in the size of government.
That's our argument.
You don't want to take on those arguments, like you mentioned at the beginning, because you don't, you can't.
You don't have any response to that.
You don't have any response to like that, that should be the goal.
So your thing is that we should support one of these two big government parties because they're saying that they won't be quite as big government as the other big government party, even though every time they get into power, they're just as big government as that other big government party.
When you actually frame it honestly, it's not a very compelling argument.
Yeah, how are the Republicans doing on debt and war?
I mean, like, and even COVID, dude, you know, like so much attention gets paid to like Ron DeSantis for, you know, a guy who did lock down his state, but reversed course earlier than others and then was good on it after that.
And Christy Noam was the only governor who didn't lock down or have mask mandates or anything.
Now, okay, those are two Republican governors, but it's two.
There's a whole lot of Republican governors in other states.
Refuting Anti-Socialist Arguments00:11:29
All of them lock down.
Lockdown, mandates, all of it.
Okay.
So, so the vast majority, the overwhelming majority, were terrible on COVID, are terrible on money printing, are terrible on foreign policy, are terrible on government spending.
Terrible, terrible, terrible on all of the most important issues.
But they will take a real stand and say, I don't think your kids should be propagandized with, you know, gender ideology until the fourth grade.
Seems like a losing battle.
Seems almost like, you know, basically the way the whole system works and has worked forever is that this is WWF.
It's professional wrestling.
It's literally a bunch of people who pretend to hate each other's guts publicly and then all go out to dinner afterward and talk about how that totally got over today, that little screaming match that we did.
And the Democrats are painted by the corporate press as the good guys, and the Republicans are the bad guys.
But what's the job of the heel in professional wrestling?
It's to get the good guy over, right?
That's kind of what they're there for.
And eventually, you know, some of us were like, yeah, we're not playing this game.
We're not playing this game anymore.
No, I don't think it's a good strategy to go really support the fucking generals against the Harlem Globe Trotters.
I think they're going to lose.
All right, let's keep playing.
The biggest principle might be: I live in reality.
I don't live in a make-believe world.
Democrats, leftists live in a make-believe world where sex is not a given.
It's assigned by humans.
That's make-believe.
America's systemically racist is make-believe.
I will influence the country toward libertarian values by voting libertarian is make-believe.
The number of people who live in a make-believe world is very large.
Well, okay, so let's pause it right there.
I don't know that this is, first off, what he's saying is completely correct here.
I mean, like, I don't know.
Do a lot of these Democrats really live in a make-believe land.
You know, there's something that's just, it's such a boomer con like kind of take.
So you have your, you've got people, right, who rob you of your money, use that money to propagandize your children.
And you look at them and go, aha, you're not living in reality, man.
None of this shit's real.
It's like, well, yeah, I mean, it may not be technically true that you can change your gender, but they're sure convincing a whole lot of people it's true.
Maybe that's the reality they're living in, that they know that they can get away with this shit.
And in fact, they are in reality.
But to just say that, well, you know, the idea, so he says all these things aren't living in reality.
And then he goes, oh, if you're a libertarian and you think voting for libertarians is going to influence the country to be more libertarian, you're living in a fantasy land.
Well, I mean, if you notice, even in that argument, one of these things was not like the other.
Like, that's not the same thing as saying, like, oh, we live in a systemically racist country, or, oh, you could change your gender or whatever else the fucking other shit he was listing off.
There are.
This is kind of like, seems a little bit more plausible that like, if somebody like who was promising libertarian policies were to like receive a whole lot of attention and support, that then other politicians might be like okay, we got to cater to this group in order to win their votes, maybe even throw them some bones, seems much more plausible than the others.
But really, what so many of us, particularly on the national level, particularly the whole group who, uh who just took over the Libertarian Party this has been basically our, our kind of whole pitch, is that libertarian politics, the Libertarian Party on a national level, should really be used to spread our ideas, our message.
That should be, first and foremost, what our our, our primary objective is, and that I I think you're going to be caught in some type of performative contradiction if you deny that that is possible or that's not living in reality.
I mean, what is Dennis Prager doing right now?
He's trying to convince libertarians not to support the Libertarian Party but instead to come support Republicans right.
So clearly, just by doing that, he thinks it's possible that he could convince someone of this.
That's why he's trying to make an argument for why they should behave this way instead of behaving this way, and if you think that that's true, it's like okay well, we're trying to do something else.
We're trying to convince people to support libertarian ideas and if, if you can convince people by spreading your message, then I think you can't argue, like you can't argue against being able to convince people by spreading your message.
While you're attempting to convince people by spreading your message, you know what i'm saying.
It's like you're you're caught in some type of contradiction there, if you are.
And so yes, I think that just the act of voting probably in itself is not going to create a more libertarian society.
The idea of um speaking to large amounts of people in a persuasive way, I think can.
So obviously, you also believe that speaking to people, a large audience, in a persuasive way can change outcomes.
Otherwise you wouldn't be doing this.
Um, all right, let's keep playing.
What the what's the word i'm looking for, what the payoff is?
I guess that's as good a word as any.
What do you get from taking a vote away from the right and giving it to the left?
Why do you feel good about yourself?
What have you achieved by voting for the Libertarian Party if you are a conservative?
What have you achieved?
Is there any more important question about anything you do in life?
What have you morally achieved?
I'm not talking about what have you achieved financially.
Yep.
This party, with its principled candidates above all else, believes in limited government, which is to say they oppose socialism.
And voila, when you split the anti-socialist vote, the socialist wins.
If you can refute that one line, I will visit you and offer you one of my finest cigars.
All right.
Let's pause it right there.
Now, Dennis Prager, I will tell you, you're going to owe me a visit in just a second, but I'm not really a cigar guy.
Go for a nice bourbon and a Marlborough Red.
That'd be pretty sweet.
That I could really, we could have ourselves a fun time.
So when you split the anti-socialist vote, the socialist wins.
Anyone who can refute that argument, Mr. Prager here is going to come out with some of his nice cigars.
Okay, so here's the easiest way to split that to defeat that argument.
The point is that you're not the anti-socialist vote.
That's the whole point.
You get it now?
You're not the anti-socialists.
Donald Trump, okay, this is what voting for Republicans, like you're talking about on the national level here and stuff.
So here's the last Republican president.
When he passed the biggest spending bill in the history of man, he's in one bill, in one stroke of his pen, he signed into law more spending than almost every nation in the world spends per year.
Okay.
With his two plus trillion dollar stimulus spending.
In fact, I'm not sure.
Is there another government?
I have to go check this.
Is there another government that spends $2 trillion a year on the face of the planet?
Like he may have just signed into law.
If it wasn't for the United States federal government, like that signing into law might have been the biggest government in the history of the world that he just signed.
And you know what he had to say?
He bragged about how it was the biggest.
This is the biggest bill.
I asked for a big bill and I got the biggest bill we've ever had.
So if you're saying that being opposed to big government is being opposed to socialism, essentially, well, here we're talking about the biggest government in the history of the world.
And your last guy bragged about signing it.
And then when Thomas Massey, another Republican there, right, who like actually was like, whoa, I'm kind of against this.
This is insane.
It's nothing but corporate giveaways.
And he actually went through how like you're just like giving away those peanuts for people.
And then it's just nothing but corporate welfare.
Why the hell do we need corporate welfare?
Because there's a pandemic.
Trump not only attacked him, but sent all of his people to like ruthlessly attack Thomas Massey for daring to stand up to his socialism.
So we're not splitting the anti-socialist vote.
We're saying there should be one.
Get it?
That's the point.
We're saying there should be one group who's against socialism.
There should be one group who's actually voting.
It's the only anti-socialist vote.
That's the point.
We're not splitting our vote.
We are the anti-socialist vote.
So there, argument refuted, soundly defeated with evidence to back it up.
I do not wish to cash in the cigar.
As I said, bourbon and Marlborough Red.
That'd be where I'll take this.
And I'm not really supposed to smoke.
I try not to.
My wife convinced me to fucking be on this shit.
I know.
It doesn't look nearly as cool.
But for you, Dennis Prager, you're going to come all the way out to visit me.
You're going to come all the way out to visit me to admit that I destroyed your argument.
I'll sit down and I'll have a Marborough Red with you.
You could smoke your cigar, though.
Do it over here at my place.
It'll be a good time.
But yeah, isn't that just the obvious like refutation to this point?
It's not a matter of splitting the anti-socialist vote.
And in fact, you could easily turn this around and say that, you know, the Republicans are guilty of splitting the anti-socialist vote.
Because if there are any people who are against socialism who are voting Republican, well, they're not voting for the only anti-socialist party.
They're voting for a socialist party.
You know what really makes guarantee?
You know, he said, if you split the anti-socialist vote, the socialist wins.
And we're operating within a two-party system.
So if you're running as a libertarian, you're splitting the anti-socialist vote and then the socialists are going to win.
Okay.
You know what really guarantees that socialists win when you have a two-party system and both parties are socialist?
Refute that logic.
Splitting the Anti-Socialist Vote00:15:06
Okay.
Refute that logic, Mr. Prager.
And I will travel to you and I will give you some fine bourbon and a Marborough Red.
All right.
Maybe a camel.
I don't really care.
I'm more of a camel guy.
You like camel blues.
Yeah, but it just sounded cooler.
Some red.
And I won't smoke a Marlboro Red.
All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Yo Kratom.
Go grab some over at yokratom.com.
Look, if you are 21 or older and you're a fan of Kratom, you got to go get your Kratom from yokratom.com, home of the $60 kilo.
They have high-quality lab-tested Kratom.
It ships right to your door and it's the best price you're going to find anywhere for Kratom.
They're also the marquee sponsor of SkankFest, sponsor of this show, Legion of Skanks, YoMA Rap.
They basically support everything I do.
So if you enjoy Kratom and you're 21 or over, please go get your Kratom at yokratom.com, home of the $60 kilo.
All right, let's get back into the show.
All right, let's keep playing.
Let me repeat that line.
When you split the anti-socialist vote, the socialist wins.
That's a great line, isn't it?
That's exactly what happens.
Why do people vote Democrat who are liberal and not leftist?
Because it feels good.
It would feel awful to vote Republican.
Most people are governed by feelings.
Feelings are human, but they're crappy guides to how to behave.
It's quite remarkable.
I wish I could sit back and just ruminate on the human condition.
Unfortunately, I feel morally obligated to take part in the human condition.
I don't like watching things get destroyed.
That's the most psychopathic thing I've ever heard.
I feel socially obligated to take part in the human condition.
I don't that's some real lizard shit.
I don't, I don't know what exactly the hell he means by any of that.
That whole thing just to me made no sense.
Um, but uh, yeah, these humans and their feelings are so gross.
They serve as a guide.
Yeah, what you're saying might not be true.
You know, and it's just, it's a weird thing because it's like, well, here we are saying, like, okay, well, look, here are the correct policies.
He's even from the outset of this saying, I can't argue against the policies.
Then it's like, oh, but you know, you're just, it just feels good to do this.
And so now he's ascribing motivations to why you would want to go support this party.
And then arguing that, you know, I think what he's arguing more or less is that emotional decisions are not as good as logical decisions.
But we're sitting here saying, hey, here's the correct candidate who's, you know what I mean, like running on the correct issues.
And he's saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're correct, but come vote over here anyway for what?
The guy to own the libs or something like that?
I mean, why is it so self-evident that we are making our decisions based off emotions and you're just making them off this like strategic logic?
And again, if you are just making them off like strategic logic, I'm just telling you, I challenge that strategy.
I challenge the soundness of that logic.
So that I guess he was going to commercial Brian.
Can you just see?
Does he, if we could skip forward a little bit, does he come back and keep talking about this shit?
And now a word from Pfizer.
Remember, if you're vaccinated and support your vets, the human condition is what it is.
Most people don't ask in these macro matters or even in micro matters, will it do good as much as they ask, will it feel good?
The Libertarian Party is, let us feel good about ourselves while we help the left destroy the country.
That is the Libertarian Party in a nutshell.
I didn't exaggerate one iota.
They are one of the greatest helpers of the left in the country, the Libertarian Party.
Libertarian think tanks are terrific.
The Libertarian Party is completely destructive.
Completely.
It helps the left more than any other non-left thing in America.
Let's just pause it right there.
Let's pause it right there because this to me is just infuriating.
It's like, again, this is just an assertion.
Maybe he's going to try to make an argument about this, but he will not be correct to that.
To say that the libertarians help the left more than any other not left thing in the country is such fucking bullshit.
You know what helps the left more than any other non-liberal left thing in the country?
The Republican Party.
That's who helps the left because they not only endorse their policies, they endorse and expand their institutions, and then they just commit heinous acts that just further leftism.
I mean, like, what it's not a coincidence that after the George W. Bush administration, you get Barack Obama because George W. Bush had so destroyed the reputation of anything having to do with the idea of liberty,
Republicanism, evangelicals, like anything like that had been so destroyed by the previous eight years that so many people just switched over and supported the progressive candidate, Obama.
So it's just not true.
It's just not true that the libertarians are the thing that's really helping the left.
Now, think about, just think about the last Republican president, Donald Trump.
Has there ever been a better fundraising tool for the Southern Poverty Law Center?
Has there been anything better?
He literally saved CNN from sure disaster.
And then what happened as soon as he was out?
CNN fucking goes belly up.
They got a whole new team in there, a new guy.
You know what I mean?
Zuckers out.
They're firing stealth.
Or they're like, okay, we got to torch this whole thing and rebuild it because there's nothing there.
But Trump gave them something for four years.
Nothing helps the institutional left more than Republicans who are terrible.
Nothing.
So, all right, anyway, let's hear what his argument is.
Gary Johnson, the libertarian candidate, got over four and a half million votes.
That's great.
That's great.
What message did you send?
You sent the message of, hey, we four and a half million people believe in limited government.
So we're going to try to give the reins of power over to the people who believe in big government.
That's quite an achievement.
All right.
Let's pause for a second here.
Okay.
Two points.
Number one, the Republicans are also the people who believe in big government.
It's just factually true.
Again, Trump came in.
He had an all-Republican Congress and an all-Republican, a Republican-controlled Congress and a Republican-controlled Senate.
And the spending went up pretty drastically.
So it's not, you know, if like just factually speaking, if Obama was big government, Trump was bigger government.
So you just don't get to say, oh, there's this, you're voting against the party that this is going to help the Democrats and they're the party of big government.
No, you're both the party of big government.
We're against that.
So we're against both of you.
If you can't take this on, then you're not going to get the point.
You're going to do a whole radio show like you're doing and not fucking convince anyone because this is just stupid.
The other thing is that there was actually a lot of polling to suggest that Gary Johnson took more votes from Hillary Clinton than Donald Trump.
In fact, this is why the corporate press turned on Gary Johnson and they hung him out to dry in that Aleppo moment was because it had just come out enough several different polls that showed he was pulling more from Hillary Clinton than from Donald Trump.
So it's just all of this is wrong on every level.
It's wrong.
Just doesn't.
You're wrong about your party not being for big government and you're wrong about the fact that Gary Johnson, what, almost hurt Trump in the election.
In fact, it's a much stronger argument that he helped Trump in the election.
So anyway, let's keep playing.
Four and a half million votes in tight elections.
Under foolish must be a picture of the Libertarian Party.
Under I want to feel good about myself is a picture of the Libertarian Party.
All right, just pause it again.
So you could see, again, this is just the first, forget the big government thing where both parties are big government, obviously, but he's just making a technical mistake in his mind.
Like it's just literally like a just a straight up like a flaw in his logic.
Like if you are grading this as a teacher, you would just in big red marker circle this part and be like, no, does not logically follow.
He's assuming that all four million people voting for Gary Johnson would have voted Republican and then voted for Gary Johnson instead, but that's not true.
But like I said, the polling indicated that he was pulling more from Hillary Clinton than from Donald Trump.
In fact, Gary Johnson was out there.
And, you know, I'm a big critic of Gary Johnson, but Gary Johnson was out there and him and his VP were just constantly bashing Donald Trump.
And so if they're they were basically running on we're against Trump.
So they weren't pulling over voters from Donald Trump in large numbers because they were just sounding like everyone else in the corporate press.
They ran awful campaign.
But regardless of that, there's all of these other, it's not just Republican voters, right?
There's Democratic voters.
There's independent voters.
There's people who weren't going to vote at all, right?
So to just add up the numbers and go, oh, look, this was a tight race and you took this many voters, it's making it, it's making it appear that his argument is that they took all those voters from Trump, but that's just not at all true.
There are a whole lot of people who are just never going to vote for Donald Trump for lots of reasons.
And lots of them were stupid.
Lots of them were very legitimate reasons.
You know, Donald Trump said some like, look, I didn't vote for Donald Trump.
Certainly wouldn't have voted for Hillary Clinton.
I could certainly understand an argument why Donald Trump was preferable to Hillary Clinton.
There's a strong argument to be made there.
But at the same time, Donald Trump was saying shit like we should torture the families of terrorists.
And you know what I mean?
Like he was saying wild shit in 2016.
Some good shit, some really awful shit.
And there's lots of people who just saw some of the awful shit he said and were like, yeah, that's a deal breaker for me.
I can't support that guy.
So those people are in a completely different category.
All right, let's keep playing.
Under screw the conservative party and let's elect the left-wing party is a picture of the Libertarian Party.
But feel good about yourself.
You're a purist.
Purists do nothing good in this world.
You know that?
Nothing.
They live.
It's only people who compromise on their principles.
Those are the ones who do real good in the world.
Soiled Republicans.
Yeah, sounds like a guy who's pitched in on some wars with the anti-purity.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's right.
Oh, you with your purity.
You with your principles.
That's the real problem in this country today is everyone's just so goddamn principles.
All right, let's keep flying.
State level Gary Johnson very nearly handed crucial states to Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania, where Trump's margin was just 1.3 percentage points.
Johnson got 2.4 percentage of the vote.
In Wisconsin, where Trump won by 0.6 percent, Johnson got 3.7 percent.
God, I reached out.
It's the same mistake over and over again.
It's the same mistake of assuming that Johnson's votes are all coming from Trump.
But all right, let's keep flying.
Contempt for the Libertarian Party only increases.
Just remember, it's the human condition.
I want to feel good about myself.
That's what animates the left.
Oh, we're going to conquer global warming by banning all gas-powered cars from being sold in California as of 2035.
I feel good about myself.
How exactly are we going to power all of those cars?
I don't have to answer that.
I have to feel good.
The whole left motto is we don't do good, we feel good.
If they wanted to do good, you know what they would do?
They would build desalination stations or power infrastructure in places like California.
We have a drought.
Do what Israel does.
Israel now exports water.
Israel has no water.
It's half desert, the negative.
So they desalinate from the Mediterranean.
They now have all the water they want.
All right.
France gets desalination.
Okay.
70% of its electric power from nuclear power.
But the left doesn't want nuclear power because it does good.
It puts them out of business.
People who think about life at all do not understand the power of the desire to feel good about yourself.
Oh, I'm anti-racist.
That's what the NFL does.
Every end zone has some message on the grass.
Fight racism.
Ah, now we feel good about ourselves.
Does it actually accomplish anything?
Nothing.
Nothing.
Not only did Johnson very nearly.
I'll pause it for a second.
Speaking of nothing.
I mean, Jesus, that was a lot of time with just nothing.
Yes, anti-racism and climate change activism is stupid.
Okay, agreed.
Continue.
The Power of Feeling Good00:09:27
The blue wall intact for Democrats in 2016.
He also took states out of play that might have been toss-ups.
In Colorado, for example, Trump lost by 3.6 percentage points.
Gary Johnson got 4.7 percentage points.
Same mistake.
In Nevada, Trump lost by 2.7 percentage points, and Johnson got to 2.3.1 percent.
Same mistake.
This sounds like a pitch for the power of a third party, and that if you actually have any strength, you got some leverage of forcing representation.
You actually only need 3% of a vote to spoil an entire region and potentially force a party to actually accommodate your values.
It sounds like a really strong pitch for joining up in some alternative party because it's the only way that if you got a view that the current party doesn't care about, let's just say ending the Fed.
Let's say that was your most important thing.
Let's go with COVID.
You know what?
You want to reduce the power of the CDC so they can't tell you that you can't work your job.
And that's not on either party's tickets.
You create another party that let's just say becomes 5%, only 5% of the vote in an area.
And then they realize, oh, if I want to win, I might have to take on that view.
So it sounds like you've actually just given everyone an idea for how you can acquire political leverage.
Well, right.
And this is basically the whole goal of how to wield the Libertarian Party is that on the national level, we're supposed to be spreading a message and making people talk about the things we want to talk about.
On the localist of local levels, you're supposed to be trying to win and trying to get political power where you can to roll back the local, the size of the local government.
And then in the mid-range, you know, in these bigger like city, you know, races and statewide races and things like that, what you're trying to do is be the difference and then exploit that for what you can.
And so you might look at the Libertarian Party and go, oh, well, they're only getting like 2 or 3% of the vote.
And then in your mind, you think, well, you got to go from that up to getting 50% of the vote in order to win.
But really, the truth is that, no, you need to go from that 2% or 3% of the vote to say like 5% of the vote, which is the difference, right?
In many of these statewide races.
And then all of a sudden, yeah, then you have to wield it intelligently.
And so then you would say, for example, if it's COVID restrictions, you're like, and there's a Republican who's bad on COVID, like most of them were, like the overwhelming majority of Republicans.
Don't forget this again, Dennis Prager and everyone else listening.
Don't forget that in the biggest crisis in modern American history, the overwhelming majority of Republicans were terrible on it and went right along with Fauci and the CDC and the whole big pharma industrial complex and all of them.
Okay.
So what we would do in that situation, if the margin of error is like 3% and we're pulling at 5%, then we'd go, oh, well, if you're running someone bad on COVID, then we're going to cost them the election.
And yes, that's right.
We would hand it to a Democrat if you're every bit as bad as a Democrat because it doesn't fucking matter to us at that point.
You're both going to be terrible.
So if you want that, run someone good on COVID.
And if you run someone good on COVID, we'll support you.
Now you have real political power.
This is not just wanting to feel good.
This is wanting to do good.
This is living in the real world, not in some fantasy world.
This is, and honestly, I think this is a much, much smarter, wiser strategy than saying we'll just blindly support Republicans, even though the vast majority of them are terrible.
I think it's a much better, a much better, sounder policy, or a much sounder strategy, I should say.
Okay, let's keep playing a little bit more and then we'll wrap up.
See if he makes a good point.
The election, it is possible that Joe Jorgensen, the libertarian candidate, through the election to Biden in the six states where Trump was reported to have lost by the thinnest of margins, the impact of the Libertarian candidate, either flipped the election to Biden or very nearly did.
Well.
Okay, so I'll just stop it right here.
So, look, I don't know.
It's interesting the way he even sets this up where he's like, Joe Jorgensen may have flipped the election to Biden.
Look, man, if you're the incumbent president and Joe Jorgensen ends up stopping you from getting reelected, maybe it's time to look in the mirror.
Maybe you don't blame Joe Jorgensen.
Maybe it was on you.
Maybe Donald Trump not being good on lockdowns until halfway through the lockdowns.
Maybe that's what cost him the president.
Maybe it was not keeping his promises on anything.
Maybe it was betraying his base at every conceivable turn.
You know, Ann Coulter, who was like the biggest Trump supporter, she had a great column on this where she was just talking about the idea of like blaming that this election fraud narrative is totally giving cover to Trump for him losing the election himself and the fact that he just on every single, in every conceivable way, completely betrayed all of his supporters and all of his promises.
Maybe that's where you should look.
Maybe, you know, the Republican Party, who was always claiming, as even Dennis Prager is claiming in this video right now, that they're the party of small government.
Well, they were saying that over and over again for so many years.
You know, it used to be in the Republican platform to abolish the Department of Education.
That used to be what they ran on until they got in power and then they expanded the Department of Education, right?
So it's like, maybe that's it.
Maybe if you had just actually ever done the things that you were elected to do, then you wouldn't even have to worry about these third parties.
I mean, if we're just talking about possible things that could have cost Republicans the election or many different elections, maybe that's one that we should throw out there.
Maybe them being terrible, not keeping any of their promises.
Maybe if they were actually Republicans, like forget being libertarians.
Maybe if by the meaning of the word, like maybe if they were Republicans, if they were for the Republic and they weren't, you know, for the empire, then maybe they would have won some of these elections that they had lost.
Maybe that's a place to look.
How many Republicans did old Grandma Pants talking about being an anti-racist really win over?
Yeah, I mean, come on.
The entire thing was trying to be socialist left, which is why we hated her.
Yeah.
Well, at least appealing to those kind of like cultural values.
Again, this wasn't even Joe Jorgensen.
It's just the people around her.
But yeah, I just, yeah, I just, the idea that Joe Jorgensen spoiled, oh, Donald Trump is this amazing president.
He would have been re-elected, but there was just this, what, the raw, magnetic charisma of Joe Jorgensen just stopped him from.
Grandma Pants couldn't have more strongly stood for the wrong values.
Yeah, really.
I stand against her.
I vote against Joe Jorgensen.
If she came back, I'll vote for Kamala over her.
Well, listen, when you're the libertarian in 2020 and you don't make the center of your campaign opposing the lockdowns, yeah, you deserve no support.
So she didn't get any from either of us.
The problem is we're not actively anti-racist enough.
Oh my God.
Yeah.
Okay.
She was an embarrassment to us, but still, this argument is just weak.
I'll say, in closing on this, it's just another weak argument against libertarians that we've been dealing with.
We've dealt with a lot of these recently.
Do you think it's interesting, Rob, that so many of these very popular, like right-wing Republican types, we've now responded to Crowder and Ben Shapiro, and now we got Prager here.
It's interesting that they're all coming at the Libertarian Party because I think they actually do fear like what's going on over here now.
I think they actually are concerned with like, oh, yeah, it's not just like these kind of goofy, blue-haired libertines claiming that they're libertarians.
Now you actually have kind of a movement of serious people who are really, I think, in an effective way attacking the right from the right.
That were actually like saying like, oh, no, we are serious about all of the things that you claim to be serious about, but are terrible on.
And yeah, I understand kind of in a way where you go, yeah, is that a threat to Republicans?
Yes, it is.
But that's kind of like, that's what we want.
We want to threaten Republicans.
Republicans have fucked up by putting neocons and these kind of just awful, you know, politicians who have completely betrayed the American people in power for decades.
So you better get your act together or we're going to fuck your shit up.
That's right.
That's basically it.
Is you better run good, like limited government, kind of like non-interventionist, non-authoritarian candidates, or we're going to come fuck your shit up.
If you're talking about like America first and we should take care of our country and not get involved in conflicts around the world, okay.
You got nothing to worry about then.
If you're talking about how Joe Biden's too weak because he's not sending enough weapons into Ukraine, we are going to make sure you lose.
Final Thoughts on Momentum00:00:54
That's what we're here to do.
So, okay.
Take that for what it is.
If you want these votes, you want that margin.
If you're saying that we take all these votes away from you and that's the fucking margin of difference, let me break it down for you very easily, okay?
Be opposed to wars, be opposed to the Federal Reserve, be opposed to the national police state.
You'll get those votes.
That's it.
I promise you, you'll get those votes, but you got to be good on all the things that matter.
If you're not, you're not going to get the votes.
So that's the reality of the situation.
And am I doing this to feel good or to do good?
I think that it's doing good, but extorting the shit out of awful Republicans also does feel good.