Michael Heise outlines the Libertarian Party's strategic pivot under Project Decentralized Revolution, urging an abandonment of unrealistic global liberation goals for pragmatic local elections targeting low-turnout races. He critiques past leadership for adopting mainstream narratives like lockdown support, arguing libertarians must directly challenge state power through "farming systems" in state houses and issue coalitions on gun sanctuaries. The upcoming six-city "Take Human Action" tour aims to unify factions via training from leaders like Larry Sharp, emphasizing that building community trust and altering worldviews outweighs chasing presidential vote totals, as evidenced by the successful Arizona "Defend the Guard" bill passage. Ultimately, this shift prioritizes sustainable organizational growth over fleeting electoral victories to effectively counter government overreach. [Automatically generated summary]
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Rolling Back The State00:15:00
Fill her up.
You're listening to the Gash Digital Network.
We need to roll back the state.
We spy on all of our own citizens.
Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
You're listening to part of the problem on the Gash Digital Network.
Cheers, your host, James Smith.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I'm your host, Dave Smith, and very happy to have returning favorite guest of ours, the great Michael Heiss.
Of course, you guys know Michael Heiss is the founder and the head of the Mises Caucus and led the takeover of the Libertarian Party this last year in May.
It's March already of the next year, and we wanted to have Michael on to kind of talk about how things are going and what's next for the Mises Caucus and for the Libertarian Party.
So, Mike, how are you, brother?
I'm doing good, man.
I'm busier than I've ever been.
Well, that's good.
It doesn't end with the takeover, that's for sure.
Yeah, it turns out that was just the beginning, which of course was the plan all along.
I guess even before we kind of get into the, into the, you know, the next phase, how, how have you felt just kind of reflecting on what happened over the last few years?
I mean, I was kind of, I was following you from the very beginning of this of this journey and joined you fairly early into it.
But it was kind of a, I mean, you know, a somewhat daunting thing that you set out to do.
I remember I was looking back just recently at the initial Facebook post that you made that was like that like now, you know, now it's been shared a few times.
So it has like some interaction with it.
But this started with you just like posting on Facebook like, hey, you know what?
Wouldn't it be cool if there was like a Mises caucus that like actually really pushed Austrian economics and non-intervention?
And there were some of the Ron Paul people were in the Libertarian Party and it's, you know, it gets like 13 likes or something like that.
And then just a few years later, you're like, yeah, you did it.
You went and took this whole thing this over and kind of galvanized this whole movement.
What do you, I don't know.
What do you think when you reflect on that?
Honestly, I try not to.
Like the kind of the mindset that I take is we're storming Normandy and, you know, there's not really time for stopping.
So, I mean, obviously I'm happy about it.
I feel a lot more responsibility now.
Like, you know, I feel, you know, there's a lot of my, well, yeah, my sense of responsibility is really heightened.
And, you know, we have to deliver now.
We have to kind of take that next step.
So I'm really happy that the messaging has taken the turn that it has.
I'm really happy that we're representing our principles and doing all those things that we set out to do.
But there's a lot more to do.
And that's going to be the hard part stepping forward.
So, you know, happy and elated.
You know, there was a lot of personal things built up into that, a lot of beef, a lot of hatred that was aimed at us.
So I'm relieved that, you know, people of such low character don't have their hands on the levers anymore.
But I'm concerning myself with kind of just taking that pivot from taking the party to doing something with it.
And, you know, that's going to take some time.
But I think we got some good plans and I think we've rolled out some really great stuff.
Yeah, absolutely.
And we're going to get into that in just a second.
I will say, as people who listen to the show know, I'm a big believer in the importance of like inserting our ideas into the public consciousness.
I know you are too.
And so like there always was like that to me, like people downplay that sometimes, but I think there's, it's really important.
And I think it's kind of hard to even measure exactly how important it is to have this libertarian party, if we want our libertarian ideas out there in the wider conversation to actually be standing for them.
The Libertarian Party, you know, I remember before our people were running the show there, you know, back in the day where they're, you know, like everyone knows like the, you know, the anti-racism tweets from Joe Jorgensen and stuff like that.
But I remember tweets about how like, you know, they were like, well, while we're against mandates, you really should wear your mask and socially distance and probably shouldn't go into work anyway.
Like that was as far as it would go to.
They would, they would try to, how I describe it is they were trying to take a libertarian principle and insert that while upholding the narrative that was overriding our rights in the, in the first place.
Right.
And then that, and the narrative is what people bite down on first.
So there's not like, basically we just made ourselves safe to the mainstream narrative that's already like overriding all of our rights.
So we could be safely dismissed and embarrassing ourselves.
Right.
And it's kind of like, even if like, okay, you could theoretically, I'm not saying you couldn't, but you could theoretically hold libertarian principles and still kind of believe in the overarching like narrative.
Like you, you could believe like, well, the best thing to do really is for nobody to go to work and for us to be in lockdown, but I'm still against the government forcing it because technically I don't believe in that.
But of course, once you accept that, it makes it like impossible to sell your message because then to everyone else, they go, wait, so you're just saying like everyone's going to die if we go to work, but you also want to make it legal to go to work.
Like, no, then I'll just go with the government policy or like, you know, and so it's just, it's so much more compelling and accurate when you're like, oh, no, this is all a big scam.
None of this is real.
Like there's, there's no need to lock down.
And also we believe in liberty.
So anyway, the Libertarian Party tweeted out today about an hour ago, and I just retweeted it.
It's moments like this that really just make me happy that we got people of character and principle running this thing.
They said today, because by the way, if you don't know, today is the three-year anniversary of the first of the longest 15 days in human history.
Today's the three-year anniversary of 15 days to slow the spread.
And they said, today is the third anniversary of 15 days to slow the spread.
As we all know, politicians turned it into 15 months to flatten the world.
No lockdowns or vaccine mandates for any reason ever again.
Quote, national emergencies are always excuses to violate your rights.
And that's just like, look, if there's to be a libertarian party, that's what they should be saying.
That's exactly right.
Like, that's exactly right.
I don't know who wrote it.
Probably Dave, if I had to guess.
But that's just like that correct.
That's what you're supposed to be saying if you're the Libertarian Party.
If you're not, then why are we even doing this?
You know, it's just nice to hear.
Right.
And finally, crafting a narrative.
And that's what you were saying.
Like they were, they were adopting the narrative of the regime of the regime before and trying to put libertarian principles in there and then wondering why there was no response to it.
Where if you're brave and you get the narrative right at the beginning, or at least have the courage to question it, that's what people remember.
And then that's the thing that builds your credibility in the long term.
Not that, oh, he's believed in property rights for 40 years.
You know, it's, it's the willing to be, to be brave and to put your own reputation on the line and buck the system consistently.
And you were, this is the importance of what you're getting at about like putting the information out there and putting the principles out there is that we as libertarians, we talk about the power of the state a lot.
And that really is, you know, the core of the problem.
But I would say the primary means of control that are that are used against us are psychological.
And that's why it's the media.
That's why it's education.
And that's the first layer.
That's the velvet glove that sits over the iron fist that is the state.
And that's the primary method of control and therefore the primary thing that we have to disentangle in order to like compel people towards our side in the first place.
Yeah, 100%.
Couldn't agree more.
And that's why they are so invested in their propaganda campaigns.
And that's why, because they recognize how important that is.
Absolutely.
All right.
So we've, you, we've got a lot of cool stuff coming up.
I want to get into all of this.
I want to get into it.
You've got this the decentralized revolution plan of action.
There's this tour coming up.
I'm very excited to be a part of that.
I'll be in the April event on April 1st here in New York.
I say here.
I'm not in New York City, but.
close by in New York City.
So I want to get into this whole tour that you're doing.
But first, let's start with this.
What do I call it?
Kind of a, I want to say a memo.
It was kind of like this manifesto.
Manifesto.
We're calling it our strategic manifesto.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think that's kind of a good way to put it.
But don't worry.
It's not like no one shot up a school or anything like that.
The term manifesto has really been degraded over the years by but there's some good ones out there.
But so tell me a little bit about this, but you put this out a few months back and it kind of really like, it was like, look, this is the call to action.
This is the next step for the Mises caucus.
Yeah, man.
So we have launched what we're calling Project Decentralized Revolution.
And that's basically the call to action itself.
And that Project Decentralized Revolution comprises of a couple of programs.
And one of them we're calling our Run is Libertarian program, which is mostly what is outlined in that strategic manifesto.
But the idea is that the manifesto starts out with kind of like some vinegar for us as libertarians, particularly LP members.
And basically calling for us to get real with ourselves and to get honest with ourselves, get honest about where we are as a third party, where third parties are within the reality, like within political reality, and therefore setting the table on what's feasible in the short term, medium term, long term, and therefore picking the highest value propositions for us to move forward with so that we can be most effective.
Because if we don't have that honesty, we're not going to be able to calculate.
If we can't calculate, we're not going to be able to act right.
So it's taking praxeology to political activity, basically.
And ultimately what we came up with is kind of just really crystallizing and putting the details into what we've been saying the whole time when it comes to we need to focus locally.
So what Project Decentralized Revolution outlines is a year over year strategy for the libertarian party that is realistic, scalable, and gives us more political power than we ever have if we were to follow it.
Now, one of those pieces of shots of vinegar is there's no silver bullets.
There's no quick fixes.
This is going to be a long-term battle.
This is going to be a long-term solution.
I don't think there is any period, regardless of whether it's LP, agorism, GOP, whatever it is.
I don't think there's any quick fixes.
The progressives took 100 years to get it where it is now.
And, you know, so we're going to have to live our lives for this.
And that's just the reality of it if we're serious about it.
So essentially where the strategy is.
Let me just stop you there even before you get into the strategy because it's interesting to kind of like take each one of these pieces apart.
And I do think you're right.
This is true in general for dissidents of the current regime, like not even just libertarians.
You could be like some, you know, a left-winger who's like actually for left-wing policies, like is actually, you know, like a good anti-war kind of, you know, like anti-corruption left-winger, or you could be like a right-wing dissident who's completely against the regime.
It's everybody, even though they know how bad it is, they all, there's a natural tendency to try to live in this fantasy world where there will be some quick fix for this, where there will be, okay, this just psychologically pleasing.
Yes, it's the end of the movie.
The end of the movie is supposed to be you're right up against it and then the thing happens and then, you know, from the jaws of defeat, you pull victory and there you go.
Okay.
And even just trying to be realistic about this stuff often shatters people's kind of like illusions, but if you want to actually be successful, I think it's the way to do it.
I remember so i'm thinking back to I had a, a debate with um, a former chair, who shall not be named as he's been banished disgraced former chair yes, been he's been banished into the dustbin of history, uh.
But I had this debate with him at the Soho Forum, which i'm sure a lot of you guys have have watched, and the whole debate.
One of the things that like really like stuck with me is like this whole debate, i'm there, i'm just, you know, i'm me.
And he's trying to be suit and tie moderate.
So i'm like I hate all these people.
This is the state's evil.
Like we have this compelling message, my god, look at what's going on.
The country's on a suicide mission, you know.
And he's like, well, we have to listen to everybody.
We have to.
We can't go this crazier, then we'll turn people off.
And then at one point he says what has been the libertarian party tagline?
He goes, our goal is nothing less than to set the world free in our lifetimes and and you're just like okay, hyper revolutionary.
Yeah yes, you're.
You're talking about not like.
This is literally what you're stating.
After i'm the radical one and you're here being mr pragmatic.
Your goal is not only to have a revolution of freedom in America Canada Mexico, all of all of Latin America, all of South America.
We're going to spread it through Africa.
We're going to dip back up go, take over all of Europe and set everybody free.
And then we get to Asia, and by the time when we start getting Asia, i'm probably around 60 65 years old, because I still got another 20 years, because this is within my lifetime where i'm going to set the entire world free.
And that sounds really nice.
It sounds really nice to say, we're going to set the world free in our lifetime.
The the, you know the probability of this ever happening is 0.0.
Like, there's absolutely no chance it's.
It's also self-aggrandizing.
You're the hero of the world, right?
You know what I mean.
Like and that's, um yeah, we got to bring that down a little bit.
I mean, our principles are heroic, but yeah like, look if someone were to say to you, i'm not even listening if they go.
You know if they said, if someone goes, we will have constitutional carry in all 50 states within our lifetime.
You'd be like that's a daunting check goal, you know what I mean like that's a lot to try to get, just like one area of free, you know?
And so there's just, we do it's.
It's interesting there's something that's kind of like um, counterintuitive that even though we're the far more radical purist libertarians, we're also the ones who are going like okay no look, we have to have we, we can be in our rhetoric as pure and and hardcore as we should be, but then also in our goals we have to be really pragmatic and and target achievable victories and and we have to be deliberate and defined, because when you have something like that, like liberty in our lifetime, it kind of puts well,
what's the next step in out into the fog.
You know what I mean, and and and you again, it screws up your calculation.
Okay, so we're here right now we have this ideal of, of quote unquote liberty in our lifetime.
So then what's the next step?
It's so daunting that you can't calculate and again, if you can't calculate, you can't move.
So, like you can't, you and, and so you have to kind of bring things back down to reality in order to be able to take that next step and it's, it's just, it's the.
It's the kind of the classic cliche or saying, or whatever of like, you know, you eat an elephant one bite at a time.
Breaking Tribal Politics00:05:33
Yeah.
Yeah.
And there's, there's something to, and it's a challenge for members of the Libertarian Party.
And I, not even just like the, I mean, the ones in our camp, you know, who far outnumber the ones outside of our camp.
And I know, look, I got some people within the Mises caucus gave me pushback when I supported Blake Masters out in Arizona.
And like, look, fair enough.
There was, as I always said, there was an argument to it.
There is an argument to like why some people thought this was the wrong move.
I've given my argument on why I thought it was the right move before.
We don't have to go back over that.
But I remember this one thing that kind of stuck with me was there were several people who go, they go, well, if the Libertarian Party candidate is just going to get concessions from the, you know, a Republican candidate and then drop out of the race, I mean, that's, that's an insult to everybody who volunteered and donated his money because he just wasted all those resources.
And I was, now, forget how you feel about whether I should have supported Blake Masters or not.
All that is.
I'm just saying this mentality that your resources are wasted if you dropped out and got concessions.
But if you finish the race and get 5%, then what?
The resources like now, it's purely like emotional and in your head.
And there's just a certain psychology to this that we kind of have to break out of where you go like, no, look, what we're targeting are real victories, not pretending that money wasn't wasted because we ran.
Right.
And especially the caveat that I'll give to that is, is there wasn't ballot access considerations in that race.
And I think that calculus would flip if there were.
But yeah, there was not ballot access considerations in that race.
So I agree with you.
And I think what you're touching on there is that part of what fuels politics, especially today, is you have your in-group and your tribe and you have your out-group and your enemy and you are united against them.
Even if things are not necessarily totally internally cohesive or united, you know, you have to preserve the in-group no matter what.
And I think that is a tendency in all sectors of politics, even libertarians.
And, you know, so I think people still have that tendency.
And again, that's something that I'm calling to break out of that we can't be, we can't be partisans.
We don't have the luxury to be blind partisans because if our call to people outside of our own groups is going to be, okay, join the Libertarian Party, but only if you're going to 100% vote with only us every time, that's it.
You're a libertarian.
Everybody else has got to go.
Everything else has got to go when we don't really have much to offer in terms of helping these different in-groups destroy their enemy or threaten them to be destroyed themselves.
Then, you know, that's not really a good pitch.
We're going to have to be a little bit more accommodating to kind of earn their trust.
And the word trust is prevalent in that document.
That's another thing that we don't talk about a lot.
We talk about our ideas.
We talk about our principles.
And that is the end goal is to get people to buy into those things.
But we don't really talk about psychology and we don't talk about how to get people to bite down on those things.
And so for me, it's how do we generate trust, wider trust in society?
And, you know, I think our plan does that.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
So let's get into the plan.
So what is it?
So, okay, so we've been talking a long time now about we have to run local.
We have to run local.
And that is true.
But again, even that's kind of vague and out in the ether.
So we have to really drill down and say, what exactly are we doing?
Okay.
We have to run for city council, mayor, and school board, sheriff and judge.
Now, sheriff and judge is county level races.
Even that is a little out of our pay grade.
We should seek it.
But really that mayor, school board, and city council should be the primary thing that we are running for.
That's what the most amount of our effort should be going for.
And then even then, you might say, well, you know, Philadelphia, you need to raise about a million dollars or more to win.
And so even the big cities, this is rough.
We need to be running for these races in as many places as possible where it's as realistic as possible.
So then what exactly do I mean by as realistic as possible?
We can use data to generate that answer.
So like in my state of Pennsylvania, for example, we have an awesome guy here named BJ who has done the work to basically look at all the municipal level elections that happened in the last election.
Realistic Recruitment Strategy00:14:53
And he found that there was literally dozens, dozens of city council, mayor and school board seats that the entire race had 50 votes or less in them.
I don't mean the winner got 50 votes.
I mean the entire race had 50 votes or less in them and sometimes 10 or less.
And so you can create as a state now from a state party perspective, you can get that data and say, okay, we are now going to run a campaign to recruit people for these positions.
We want you to run for city council no matter what, but these ultimate low-hanging fruit positions that are of consequence with 50 votes or less are, you know, depending on what the bottom wrong, maybe your state, it's 100 votes or less, but you get my point.
And really target those races.
So now you have the beginning of an actual political strategy, because if you were to go into the state parties by and large right now, the culture in terms of politics is, well, just run for something, man.
We're just trying to get on the ballot, man.
And there's just no direction.
There's no aim.
And again, if there's no aim, you can't calculate.
If you can't calculate, you can't act.
So it's really about bringing praxeology into this.
And so the state parties, because again, people try to gloss this up in the state parties.
We're like, well, I wouldn't want to tell somebody what to do.
And it's like, well, then what the hell does leadership mean?
Right.
Right.
You know what I mean?
Like leadership is.
By the way, I hate this.
There's something.
This is the thing that drives me the craziest about libertarians.
It's just like, and I love libertarians and I love libertarianism as much as any person on this planet.
But that whole, like, there's a strand in libertarianism where they go, well, I'm not going to like tell someone what to do.
I'm like, are you putting a gun to their head and forcing them to do it?
Because if not, it's consistent with libertarianism.
Like someone said that to me the other day.
I was on Twitter arguing with some guy.
And I was like, he was like, libertarians believe this.
And I was like, no, libertarians believe this.
You don't speak for us.
And he's like, I'm as qualified to speak for libertarians as you are.
And I was like, no, actually, you're not.
No, you're not.
Cause I speak for way more of them than you do.
You know, a guy with a couple thousand followers.
I speak for way more libertarians than you.
So I'm much more qualified to speak for them.
And then someone goes, anyone who needs someone else to speak for them isn't a libertarian.
You're like, yeah.
What?
Perfect example.
What does that mean?
Can't have a lawyer in a, in a court, because I'm a libertarian like what, I can have someone else speak for me.
If I pay to go to, if I pay to be a member at a boxing gym, I am literally paying somebody who maybe they're a retired fighter or maybe they were an amateur fighter.
I am paying somebody to tell me what to do because I respect their leadership, I expect I respect their, their experience, and I want to learn and I want to better myself.
That's what leadership is.
They people, and people conflate sometimes libertarians because and this is another thing libertarians have every capacity to be, every bit of capacity to be ideologically possessed as anybody else.
And I think that's like what, what you're getting at here and and um well, and getting the ideology wrong, even it's not even ideologically possessed.
But yeah and um, you know there's a difference between leadership, which is a social phenomenon that is hardwired into us, to recognize hierarchy and tyranny.
Of course, nobody wants tyranny and wants to be told by a strong man what to do.
But part of part of like hierarchy, social hierarchy, part of life, is you look up and admire, look up to and admire people who have achieved things that are admirable to you and aim to be like them and then take measures to learn how to better yourself and and orient yourself in that direction.
And that is what a leader is in in the, in the organic social sense.
So if if, you are a leadership of the party, you should be providing avenues to maximize the activity of the people who are underneath you volunteering and, and that isn't there right now.
And if again, if you, if you don't, if you don't even have a political strategy, then you don't have a fundraising strategy.
If you don't have a political strategy or a fundraising strategy, you don't have a recruitment strategy.
The recruitment strategy is, well we, we really like property rights.
That's the recruitment strategy.
Um, that's not enough, that's not compelling enough.
Yeah no, certainly not on a level that's scalable to like really get a lot of people into this.
I also think that there's been you know there's been state parties before and actually you kind of like schooled me to this a little bit where I remember the um in the old guard in uh Pennsylvania, where they kind of had this strategy of like um, find uncontested races, throw candidates at those races and then say look, we want a race and a lot of them, I won?
Yeah right, it's.
A lot of these positions were like, you know, the dog catcher is the kind of like go-to choice on them, but it was um uh constable, which there are states where constable matters Pennsylvania is not one of them right?
Um, it was constable and uh, elections inspector, and I resigned because it's useless useless, and they spent tens of thousands of dollars to send physical mailers to get people into these positions so that they could pad their numbers and say, we have the highest number of elected libertarians.
So, and then if you yeah, you realize that it's just like oh wait no no no, okay.
There's some more detail to this.
If you're spending thirty thousand dollars to get people elected to, or sixty thousand dollars to get people elected to positions that don't matter, that don't have any impact, and then you can sit there and literally the result you have is that you have a talking point that you can brag about and say we have the most elected libertarians in this state, you're like okay, but if this isn't translating into any victory for liberty, what that contrast that you're racist, right?
Yeah uh, contrast that to having two sheriffs in a state.
You know you got two.
I mean, there were a few, not not uh, I don't believe, members of the Libertarian party, but there were a few sheriffs around this country who were real heroes in 2020.
I highlighted a few of them on this show who straight up said, we will not enforce lockdowns, we will not enforce mask mandates, we will not uh enforce, you know, the um, whatever people being deemed non-essential.
These were heroes who protected real people's real liberty in real life.
You get a couple of those in your state.
You've done more than having every single election inspector.
The same thing happened in Illinois, I want to say, a month or two ago.
Um, there there was, they were.
They were putting forward some hardcore gun control measures and, like the majority of the sheriffs across the state were like no, nope.
And and if you're one of those people who live in that state, and again with your Covet example, you're pretty freaking grateful that that you have a sheriff with some balls.
And now look, and now if that sheriff wants to run for something bigger, or even if the libertarian party just wants that like, I understand we want talking points to brag about, but instead of the talking point of the old Pennsylvania Guard being like haha, we have the highest number, with no result from that, now you're going to be mostly we.
Yeah, we protected you and we will protect you again, and that's always going to be, by the way, at least when it comes to politics.
The only way i've ever seen it successfully done is by convincing people you're going to protect them.
That's like what every single politician attempts to do is to convince people that there's this external threat to them.
And we're going to protect you.
And it is true.
We're just the ones who recognize that the external threat are the politicians.
Yeah yeah, absolutely so.
So yeah, you start off with this, with this bottom rung of of people uh, to these local level positions with teeth, and the teeth comes from the 10th amendment.
Like again, our whole thing is about nullification and decentralization.
So the 10th amendment, you can, you can do whatever you is is passable by the, the locality in, in there and um, so you start there and then again, so now you have a political strategy.
The state party can then start going to donors and members and saying hey, we actually have a political strategy, so if we raise x amount of dollars, we can get this software and that tool and this to maximize this political strategy.
So now you have a combined political strategy and fundraising strategy which then comes together to inform your, your um recruitment strategy.
Hey everybody, we've got tools to make your job available.
We want you in.
Hey you're, you're a member of the party or you're registered libertarian and you're in this area?
Well hey, one of those seats with 50 votes or less is in your town.
We need you involved.
We got tools, we can help you.
We can actually help you, which doesn't happen.
State parties don't really uh, haven't been uh too helpful for a lot of campaigns and um, you know, so that all of that comes together to to actually cover all of these bases.
So then, we're orienting, we're.
So then the question is, is for the libertarian party, what is the highest value propositions?
I would argue that it's one, these local level races of of high impact, and then b ballot access, or two ballot access.
So then you might ask the question, well, you don't have local level elections every year.
So what do you do?
And we've got a strategy for that that, again, maximizes the effect of and the aim at local level races while trying to also maximize for ballot access.
So in most states, in the years that you don't have local level races, you're going to have your Senate races and your state house races and every four years, your governor's races.
So what you can do is what we advocate in that document is that you run for state house.
Now, we have to level with people.
You're not going to win state house.
Like it's it's happened.
It's rare.
They don't win reelection.
You're not going to win.
Most likely, you're not going to win.
However, that does not mean that there's not a goal for it.
Because if you run for state house, the district that you're running in must necessarily comprise of the locality that you would otherwise be running in if you ran local.
So take your state house race, aim the entire thing in your locality.
Knock every door that you can in your locality.
Make friends with local level elites, church leaders, community leaders, get on a committee.
Do all of the work to make yourself a known quantity because generally speaking, you're not going to be getting elected to anything if you just come out of the ether.
You have to be a known quantity in your community.
So like that's a big component of it too.
But if we level with people and say, listen, your goal here, you're ostensibly running for state house, but really you're building up to your local level race that's realistic.
You know, that, so that makes it much easier for them to win.
But this also then gives your Senate candidate who's shooting for ballot access or your governor candidate a framework by which to campaign.
They can then say, oh, there's all these state house races that need support.
I will go and help them collect signatures around the state.
They get signatures for me.
And then this minimizes the amount of money that you have to spend because most of the times people, the parties have to spend money just to get on the ballot and then they're spent by the time they ever get to the general.
We did this in Pennsylvania.
We had an all-time high number of state house races.
They got signatures for themselves and the governor at the same time.
And we got on the ballot for free in the first time in our history.
And then they went on to maintain minor party status here in Pennsylvania for the first time ever in a midterm election.
So again, you focus locally, you maximize for trying to get ballot access.
And the state house races become farming systems for the local level races.
Okay.
And then so, yeah, I just completely agree with all of that.
I think to me, this is, and this was kind of like, this was always like the broad strokes ideas that we had talked about.
But I really like you guys kind of like how you kind of flushed it all out here.
Like this is the path forward for the Libertarian Party.
And then in terms of like statewide and national like races, what do you think like the, which you talk about in the paper?
I'm just setting you up to say this.
But so what do you think like, what's the goal of someone who's running for senate or someone who's running for president or anything like that?
It's still ballot access, but beyond that, because you're not guaranteed to get it, you know, and and but so beyond that, it should be a state level version of what the national messaging is.
It should be to change the, to shift the Overton window for the state, drive recruitment for the state and paint a narrative and a picture of who and what we as libertarians are so that people have a, you know, an accurate picture to to bite down on and then we can pull them in.
And then that funnel again funnels down into because people burn out, man.
This is all volunteer work.
You know, it's hard.
And so like, if you don't have something realistic, people are just going to eventually throw their hands up and say, what the fuck am I doing here?
I have kids, you know, like, or whatever.
And so you have to get out of that trap.
So if we, if we get them excited about the ideas, funnel them in, and then give them some realistic work that actually has some viability to it.
Now you start to win.
And if you can kind of create a culture of winning and an attitude of winning, it starts to become a, you know, a self-perpetuating cycle.
And then finally, you might ask, well, what about where you got counties and stuff like that that don't have enough people and they don't run candidates?
Like we're still the Libertarian Party.
We're still not filling up the ballot.
We're still small.
So this is where the role of issue coalitions comes in.
You know, if you don't have candidates, then maybe you should be lobbying your city council if you're a Blue Town for like a ban on the warrantless use of surveillance technology, or maybe your red town, you should be lobbying for gun sanctuaries to again, build that trust.
There are a lot of rank and file, honest to God, conservatives who are dead serious, a lot more serious about their Second Amendment rights than the politicians that they've elected.
So we can come in and exploit that gap and deliver that for them and start to gain that trust.
Because I don't even think we can have, when you think about this friend enemy distinction, in-group, out-group distinction, I don't think it's really, unless you're talking to somebody who is at like the very high end of trait openness distribution, I don't think it's possible to really even have the meaningful conversations until we start to build the trust because we're asking them to leave their in-group or risk leaving their in-group and risk the social ostratization that comes with that.
And that's a lot to ask of somebody.
That's why we can't be like, we have to be a partisan or nothing at all.
You know, we're asking a lot of people by leaving their in-groups.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, there's also, and then the other thing about that, and this was also often a criticism of the Ron Paul presidential campaigns, which I did, I think is somewhat fair, was that there was, and this is what's cool,
like really cool about what the Libertarian Party has to offer, especially now that the Mises caucus people are in there and actually trying to like, you know, present a vision for what it could be rather than this just kind of, which literally what it used to be was just run for something and vote chase, get as many votes as you can, and we set the world free in our lifetime.
That's that's the plan, you know, it's like, but now what you're talking about is like, yeah, what you want to have is like, you want to have these great candidates like, you know, you have people like Shane Hazel or something like that, who's running for Senate.
You want to have presidential candidates who can inspire people like A la Ron Paul.
But the criticism of the Ron Paul movements was that, okay, so now you got all these kids.
Spreading Liberty Movement00:06:36
Okay.
So now what?
And Ron Paul, to, you know, to his credit and in some ways to his detriment, was always, you know, you do whatever you think, you know, whatever you think you should do, you go do.
And like, okay, a lot of us, so like we're, we're here now, you know, like a lot of us are, this is what we're doing now.
But now this is much more of a thing of like, what are, what are you going to do?
Okay, where do you live?
What locality are you in?
Okay, here's what I need you to do.
And a lot of times it's not that big of an ask.
Here's what I need you to do.
Go vote for this guy for sheriff.
Go put this guy on your school board.
Not even saying run for something, saying, hey, get active in your local community and just show up once every couple of years and support our guys.
And then the ones who are a little bit more willing to get into it, hey, I want you to go run for this.
And now there's a plan of action where we can actually start putting real pressure toward this massive decentralist, this radical decentralized movement where people like a real difference can be made.
Because like we all know, even if Ron Paul, if Ron Paul today was appointed president of the United States, very little would change other than the consciousness.
You know what I mean?
Other than the fact that he could speak on such a huge platform and that could change a lot.
But politically, the levers of power are locked in and they're not even really in the executive branch.
You know what I mean?
Or they're not in the Oval Office, let's say.
And people, if there's one thing that I've been pleased to see with the COVID regime bullshit is that people are rediscovering en masse the primacy of local level politics.
Yes.
You know, you saw all these moms flooding school board meetings because of the mask mandates or the school shutdowns.
And now you're seeing it maintained through like the CRT stuff in the curriculums and the child sexual like propaganda and stuff like that.
I think it's a damn shame that it took, you know, child sexual stuff for people to realize that they're being propagandized by the government.
It had to go that far to the extreme before people said like, well, wait a minute, what about the history?
You know, and, you know, like, and, you know, all of that kind of stuff.
But, um, but hey, we have an opening now and it's massive and we can exploit that and we have to exploit that.
And again, what everything I've just described, this is one half.
This is the, this is the political part.
This is the run is libertarian.
And to comment on what Ron Paul always said to his credit, again, we're trying to, I'm trying to bring a realistic thing to the Libertarian Party.
I know we're not winning Congress.
I know we're not winning Senate.
And I'm not trying to fool you anymore.
Like I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to tell you that we are.
What we now have today with a liberty movement that did not exist, you know, prior to the Ron Paul explosion is we have a much more of a choose your own adventure type of thing.
And this is why leaders in the liberty movement shouldn't be at each other's throats.
You know, maybe you're more focused on Congress and maybe that's what you truly, honest to God, believe should be the focus.
You know what?
Go to the Republican Liberty cause.
You know, maybe you truly believe that state house is the best thing.
Okay.
Check out y'all.
We've got that network.
Maybe you want to learn homesteading and you want to become more self-sufficient and maybe you think that's what it is and fuck politics and blah, blah, blah.
Check out Freedom Sales.
You know, but we've got, we've got all the bases covered and we just need to coordinate with each other and support each other.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, there's a bunch of, you know, it's like moving to the free state project, you know, homeschooling your kids.
We've got the Ron Paul homeschool curriculum.
Like there's all these different like avenues, but this is a really important one too.
And so like, yeah, I really agree with you about that.
And that's why, and I think that some of the, I'd say some of the people, like the more mature ones and stuff are, are like kind of coming around to that idea that you're like, oh, this isn't like a competition between Thoe Bishop and Michael Heiss and like the Free State Project.
You know what I'm saying?
Like that's stupid.
Like there's not, this isn't a competition.
We're all aiming at the same thing from different angles.
And you know what I mean?
We're going to see whatever.
There's a lot of these goals can go hand in hand.
Okay, let's talk about this tour.
What's this all about?
So the tour is our big push for the other half of Project Decentralized Revolution, which is culture.
You know, we're not dumb to that.
We're not claiming that politics is the end all be all of what has to be done here.
And so, you know, a big part of what we're trying to do is get involved in the culture, whether that be, you know, expanding our relationships with people with platforms beyond just our regular libertarian circles.
You know, you've done a great job of that with Joe Rogan and Tim Poole.
You know, we're talking with Anomaly.
We've recruited Iraq veteran 8888 into the party.
You know, these are all part of that kind of cultural thing of like who is out there that's interested or at least skeptical that we can get interested and start talking to and building trust with so that they can start affecting their networks.
The other part of it, though, is that I am thoroughly convinced that regardless of what the strategy is, whether it's LP, whether it's GOP, whether it's agorism, whatever have you, all of them, all of them are destined to fail if we do not have a robust community that gives a shit about each other.
And we have to foster that while at the same time doing the work.
So the tour is really, you know, it's 2023.
It's the year before the presidential cycle.
This is the most boring and least engaging part of the presidential cycle.
So what we want to do is we want to keep our community engaged.
We want to keep our people engaged and bring them together to have a good time together and offer that opportunity to get training while also bringing out the biggest voices in the liberty movement to help keep them motivated and teaching us.
So the Take Human Action tour is starting.
It's a six city tour of speaking events with training opportunities attached to them that are running through April and May.
And we're hitting New York on April 1st.
We're hitting Chicago on April 15th.
We're hitting Nashville, Tennessee on the 27th of April.
We're hitting Austin, Texas on the 29th.
And then we're hitting Oakland, California.
I forget the date on that one on May 13th.
And then we're hitting Denver, Colorado on May 27th.
And, you know, we're bringing out, I mean, the entire, like almost anybody you can think about.
And no two events are the same.
You know, we've got you and Maj and Tom coming to New York.
You know, Jeff Deist is going to be at the Nashville event.
There's also going to be a debate between Clint Russell and Destiny at that one.
We've got Michael Rechtenwald coming out to Chicago and a couple of other ones.
You know, we got Ryan McMacken coming to the Denver one.
I've never seen McMacken at anything related, even closely related to the LP.
Tour Dates Announced00:02:46
I'm really excited about that.
You know, we've got Ian Crossland going out to the Oakland, California one.
So again, we're kind of spreading out.
And the idea here is that not only is this a tour, and obviously we're promoting it and I'm promoting it and trying to get people out, but I've used this as an opportunity to go out to say young Americans for Liberty and say, hey, man, come table this event for free.
Just promote it.
Hey, fee, come table this event and just promote it.
And let's get a cross section of the liberty movement at these things.
And you know what?
You've got just as much an opportunity to get somebody from my audience and vice versa.
And let's just all grow with each other and let's build this community because again, the community is going to be the thing that keeps us together as the times get increasingly dark, as the economy goes, it gets increasingly dark.
You know, it's going to be the thing that keeps us together and keeps us going is that community, that remnant that we're all trying to bring back together.
Yeah, 100%.
And I'm really looking forward to this tour.
I'm really looking forward to the New York event.
And yeah, I don't think me, you and Tom and Maj probably haven't all hung out together since.
Oh, and Gene.
And Gene's going to be there.
Gene will be there.
Yeah.
Can't wait.
I really can't wait for that.
Gene wasn't even at Reno.
This is even more than we had there.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
Okay.
And then by the way, because you just said a few times that there's this training attached to it.
So like, if you could just specify on that a little bit more, like what training?
Beyond Vote Chasing00:15:01
So it's candidate training.
So now everyone needs to go to takehumanactiontour.com.
And that's where the tickets for all the different events and all the details of all the different events are, takehumanaction tour.com.
But you've got the speaking events on Saturday with a hangout and meetup afterward.
And then we have candidate trainings that are completely free to attend the day after.
So like in New York, Larry Sharp is going to be running a campaign training.
The Grassroots Leadership Academy is going to be hosting trainings at a couple of these other ones.
But then like we've got Kelly Cardin, who is an elected libertarian to county commissioner out in California.
Aaron Lamb is going to be doing training in Denver.
He beat a long-term incumbent for mayor in Keensburg, Colorado.
So these are people who have already done the work, who have created their own training modules.
So again, we're bringing the community together.
We're trying to have a good time.
We're trying to run education and then also train and be serious about the work.
Yeah.
No, yeah, this is just absolutely great.
And it really is like, to me, this is it.
It's really a breath of fresh air compared to like the previous, you know, like LP regime.
And it's, it's interesting to see to see kind of like the change.
Like I said before, it's like, this is, this is kind of like what we always talked about when we would say what like there was kind of this before the Mises caucus came into the existence, before you manifested that, there were two major caucuses in the Libertarian Party.
I mean, there were always like several, but the two big ones were the prag, the pragmatists and the radicals.
And the pragmatists don't exist anymore, but they, you know, just got stomped into oblivion.
And the radicals are still there, I think, or whatever.
But there was something kind of funny.
And not saying that every member of these call of the caucus like fell into this trap, but there's something about like the distinction between like, it's like, well, do we want to be pragmatic or do we want to be radical?
And what we would always say is like, we need like radical pragmatism like that or pragmatic radicalism.
Like that's what the Libertarian Party really needs to be.
There is like, there's this one, because you can always see like the worst of both worlds where there's like one like form of pragmatism is like, well, I'm not going to say we need to repeal the whole war on drugs, but let's legalize pot.
That's like Gary Johnson.
It's more pragmatic if I just say this, because it'll be unpopular and it won't get us as far if I if I say the whole thing.
And then there'd be like these radicals who are like, we want to abolish driver's licenses.
And you're like, okay, that's radical, but it's stupid.
You know, spectacle.
Right.
Like this is, you're being radical on the dumbest thing to be radical on.
And now you're just dismissed and you didn't even talk about anything that really matters.
And so this is much more of a like, no, look, we're not, we're not giving up one inch of our principles, but we're also going to attack this thing in the most pragmatic way.
And I would just say to kind of like, you know, it almost would, I would think would have to be just by the empirical evidence undeniable that this whole vote chasing strategy is a complete failure just by the fact that we took over the party.
Correct.
Like, you know, you have Gary Johnson in 2016 gets what they all brag about, the highest vote totals, the highest vote.
It's like, and he did.
Now, you know, one of the things, you've mentioned this before too.
I think that I personally, I've always said this, votes mean nothing to me.
They mean less than nothing to me.
How many, I mean, look, I understand like maybe there's like ballot access or getting on a debate stage considerations or something like that, but just how many votes you got in a losing effort, I don't even understand why the number should mean anything.
So here's, here's how I'll expand on that.
I wouldn't say they mean nothing to me, but they're a lower order consideration.
And just the way that, yeah, just the way that value is ordinal, again, you have to calculate before you act and your actions have to be arranged.
So the highest value action is the thing that's going to get the most of your attention and your focus and all of that.
And that's for me local level elections and organizing this whole thing, well, towards maximizing that outcome.
So if, you know, it's a false dichotomy, but if I were to get, if you were to ask me, okay, well, do you want 6 million votes and, you know, 10, like a lower number of members to draw from to like recruit for these offices and supporting these offices?
Or would you want 1 million votes, but you get way, you inspire way.
way more people who happen to be from a more narrow demographic.
Yeah, give me the, we need people very badly.
You know what I mean?
Like, give me, give me the people who are motivated to do it.
Well, it's not, it's not like, I understand what you're saying.
Like, it's, it's, it's, it, you could argue that it's a false choice and say, oh, hey, I want both.
Like, okay, fair enough.
But you're saying if you had to choose, and that's not, that's not a made up.
Like, then, like, look, Harry Brown, when he ran for president in 96 and in 2000, generated more members than Gary Johnson.
He didn't get, he got a fraction of the votes.
He got Gary Johnson.
0.4% of the vote in 2000.
And the party had made, when adjusted for inflation, more money than it's ever made and had more members than it's ever had.
Right.
So like, it's like, no, there, there are these scenarios where you'll have one or the other.
And we're just saying what's actually more valuable.
I mean, look, like these, there would be people who are actually arguing that Gary Johnson was the was the most successful presidential campaign we ever had.
And then a few years later, the party was taken over by these awful, you know, right-wingers or whatever they call us.
And you're like, okay, well, isn't there just something like, just say that narrative five times in a row in your head and then find out what the like the conclusion from that is is like, oh yeah, getting a big vote total actually didn't do that much.
How, how can you brag about like, oh my God, we got this huge vote total.
And then a few years later, you have nothing, you have nothing to show for it.
Yeah.
And here's the thing, though, is that they're telling the truth according to how they view success.
Their metric of success is completely different from yours and mine.
So like, for example, there are people who are like the Joe Jorgensen campaign was a success.
And they're, one of the metrics that they might use for that is, well, you know, she had a really cheap price per vote.
And if you care about votes, that's a legitimate statistic.
That does matter.
But then what I, what I always pointed out was, okay, she made like three million like $3 million, a little bit more than that, spent that.
And now we got what, 3,500 members came in off that?
So what's the price per member?
Right.
And nobody wants to have that conversation.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
And then like, you know, you kind of look at this and you go, all right.
So if you're, if your big thing is, you know, chasing votes, then okay, yeah, you're going to look at it this way.
But if you look at the results of the higher votes, there's nothing to show for it.
So like to me, even when someone goes, you know, when they're comparing, you know, I'd see people like arguing about different candidates.
Well, this guy did better than this guy because he got more votes than him.
And I'd be like, yeah, but it's the same percentage of the votes.
And oh, look, this guy got more votes votes than Shane Hazel did.
So he was a better candidate than Shane Hazel was.
And I'm like, no, because if you, you know what I mean?
Like the question is like, who, which one of these candidates could have actually like changed some people's mind and like won some hearts over and actually created somebody who's like going to be down with this cause for years to come.
That's it, it's it's more difficult to measure in some ways, but that to me is really what we're what we're here chasing.
It's not just this silly idea of like, did more people vote?
And I know I've heard you make this point before, but it's kind of this egocentric, removed from reality tendency of a lot of members of the LP, or at least has been in the past, that they don't even recognize that like, and I don't know exactly what percentage of the time this is, but a huge percentage of the time, the amount of votes you get has nothing to do with the candidate, has nothing to do with them even knowing who they are.
That's a really tough pill for some people to swallow.
I'm not trying to minimize, but people work their asses off for this stuff, dude.
No, I know.
And it is hard and it is thankless.
And we really want to believe that our efforts and maybe, you know, and I don't want to like say there's zero of it, you know, like I'm sure they earn some votes out there and all of that.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah, for sure.
But I really think in these bigger races, because again, my metric, well, my, my theory is that we have to build trust, right?
So the question in my mind is that why would anybody vote for us with this in-group, out-group distinction?
Why would they vote for us for what they perceive to be the highest stake races when we have done nothing to earn their trust at the community level?
And from their perspective, we come out of nowhere every two or four years, fuck up quote unquote, their elections, you know, and talk about how great we are and then disappear back into the ether only to reemerge two years later.
I think that's kind of like what your average person who's not in our circles probably sees out of us.
And so like, why would they trust us?
Whereas if we come up from the community level where they perceive the political stakes to be the lowest, you know, maybe, maybe then you can get that trust.
And so my point is, is that we have no basis to earn the trust for the highest stake races.
So I think the disgust level that they have with the candidates is the highest thing, which is why, you know, I've remarked that I hope that Trump gets the nomination, not because I'm a Trump fan, but because the highest vote totals that we've ever had are running against Trump, you know, like, and yeah.
Well, it's, it's in, you know, it's, it's kind of impossible to know for certain.
Like it'd be really interesting if we had a time machine and you could go back to 2016 and instead of Gary Johnson, Bill Weld put on the ballot like Joe Schmo, you know what I mean?
Just like name L next to him and see what the difference is and how many votes they get.
And I got to tell you, I think when Donald Trump's running against Hillary Clinton and on your ballot right next to him is someone else L, they're going to get some votes.
Like, and I do think that that's like, that's a huge factor here.
And the same thing with so many of these Senate races and House races, where there's just so many people today who are disgusted by both parties that they click off the other guy's name.
And in many cases, it's really no comment at all on whether that person even introduced the idea of like what we're here talking about is freedom and that, hey, there's this party and hey, there's this group and hey, you can like, you know, like there's it like, it's just, it doesn't represent anything like in many cases.
Now, again, I don't know exactly what percentage of the time that is, but it's definitely a big factor.
And so I think, and this is like one of the things that I've, you know, been kind of talking about in the whole project of this podcast has been for a long time, is that we kind of have to have other metrics by which we measure success.
And it's not just something like, oh, who got the most votes?
And of course, if you did just have this pure, this is one of the things that I was challenging the disgraced former chair on when we were in that debate was like, okay, but if you're willing to sacrifice a little bit of principal for more votes, like maybe you could sacrifice a little bit more principal and get even more votes and a little bit more.
And like, at what point are you looking at this where why is this not worth it?
And that's where the whole run Dick Cheney and get 10 million votes, which is not that crazy.
Dick Cheney and George W. Bush got like 50 million votes when they were president.
Maybe Dick Cheney could come to a third party and get 10 million votes or could have at one time.
Certainly not anymore, but could have at one time.
And you go, so why not?
And even there, I was just kind of trying to goad him into admitting that there has to be somewhere that you draw a line and go like, okay, well, if you're over that line, then we can't, you know what I mean?
Like then the payoff is no longer worth it.
And so you can just kind of like abducto absurdum this thing down to a point where you're like, yeah, just vote chasing is nothing.
That's then you're Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton or whatever.
The problem is, is that what we would consider to be the proper metric is a little bit harder to gauge.
Yeah.
Cause it's, it's something like who is who is productively reach who is reaching the most people in a productive manner that alters their worldview.
It's something like that.
You know what I mean?
Like, and that's tough.
That, that is a tough calculate.
You know what I mean?
Like, yeah.
Although at the same time, and this is one of the things that was kind of gratifying about the whole, you know, Reno reset is that this is kind of what we were arguing the whole time, is that we're like, no, we're doing this.
While you guys are off bragging about your vote numbers and vote chasing, we are saying that we are reaching more people in a productive way that's actually altering, like that they care about something so much that they'll do this.
And it was interesting to almost see that they were immune to that.
Like it was almost, I remember having these, me and you talked about this, you know, in the past.
I don't want to like harp over the old battles of how we won the party over too much, but there'd be these things where like, you know, I'd be arguing on Twitter with like people in the old guard or people in the pragmatist caucus or stuff like that.
And they'd be like, you, you Mises caucus guys are going to lose.
You're going to lose every internal election.
And I'd be like, we're going to take over this whole damn party.
And their tweet would have like 16 likes and mine would have like 4,000 likes.
And then I'd be like, yeah, how does it look for you now?
And they'd be like, whatever, man, Twitter isn't real life.
It doesn't matter.
Oh, yeah, you got the trolls on Twitter, but blah, blah, blah.
And I always thought it was so, you know, like if anyone ever said to me, they were like, hey, we're all going to show up for this thing and we're going to vote this way.
And I go, no, we're going to show up and vote this way.
And my tweet had 16 likes and theirs had 4,000.
I'd be like, I'm concerned because this seems to be an indication to me that a lot more people agree with that guy.
And if the contest at the end of the day is who can get more people who agree with them out to this thing.
And it was almost like they had a blind spot to that, that you could go back and look at some of their predictions.
Oh, Mises Caucus is going to crash and burn.
You're never going to win.
And then it's like they take over.
We take over every inch of the party.
And then now they have some other excuse.
Now it's, oh, you guys are going to crash and burn next year.
And they never wanted to acknowledge what the unseen part of this is because there really is a machine here.
And the machine is something like people like yourself, people like Tom, people who have the audiences, who are engaged, are essentially bringing people into the idea.
And then people like me, who are more of the manager or administrator layer of this thing, you know, there's like 250 state level Mises caucus organizers that are being alerted as people come into our ecosystem, you know, and reaching out and onboarding them.
Defending Our Future00:05:03
And, you know, then we're training them on this strategy and then we're asking them to do calls to action.
Like, and it's, it really is a machine where we feed off of each other, you know, and they never, they just wanted to think it's, well, it's just podcast pros, man.
They're not really doing anything.
And, you know, and that's obviously not true.
Yeah.
So yeah, it's no, it's just, it's, it's interesting because it just, as you brought it up, I go, this was kind of, even though as you're right, as you correctly say, ours is a little bit more difficult to measure, but at the same time, we kind of ran a little bit of a mini like test in which one actually produces something.
You know what I mean?
Like, and so it's, it's, that is very interesting to me to, for me to see.
It's, I also think that like, you know, look, even without the organizational strategy, I always find it kind of interesting to be like, oh, they're just, they're just podcast bros or something.
And it's like, oh, okay.
Yeah, this is the new medium, man.
Like, what do you mean?
You're just right.
They're just like, it's like, say, Thomas Paine, you just write pamphlets, dude.
Like, oh, it's so lame.
Oh, a pamphlet writer is going to tell me what to do.
It's like, yeah, this is the medium of communication for today's age that's like the most unregulated where we actually have a chance to get our ideas out there.
It's like, okay, you can scoff at that if you want to.
Well, I'm going to take it.
Here's, here's a really good example of something that could happen when you have a good strategy and you have a good compelling call to action and you have an engaged community.
And this just happened this last week.
There was a major push by the guys that bring our troops home.
And they had Arizona.
So they got Arizona to pass committee for Defend the Guard.
And they did the calls and they found out that there was seven senators that were on the swing.
And this could really friggin pass in Arizona.
And, you know, the compelling thing there is once you get one state to do it, this is, this is basic social psychology is that it's the hard, the hardest thing to do is to do it first.
And then it becomes possible in the minds of everybody else.
They get fucking brave and it becomes safe to do it.
So this is, this is up for a vote in the Senate in Arizona.
And there's only seven senators on the swing.
So like they had this huge call to action of like, we need to do calls.
We need to call the shit out of them.
And, you know, we answered that call.
And I'm not certain, but I suspect that the Mises caucus people and people from our list made up a majority of people who were doing the calls.
And, you know, I got word from Diego and some of the guys over there that they think that there was about 1,400 calls between all of these senators made by lunch.
And, you know, I made calls and I had, you know, state house staffers or state senator staffers being like, this is very impressive.
Like we've gotten like 300 calls to this office today.
And this could pass.
And if this passes, this is historic.
This is this is a state exerting its control over foreign policy.
Yeah.
And that could legitimately happen, you know, and then all of a sudden this, oh, politics thing isn't a joke anymore.
You know, like this is very real and very meaningful and serious, you know, and we need to engage in that.
And that, again, is why I think we have to have this kind of circle of community engagement that then funnels into like the action.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Instead of just sitting here and saying, oh, we're going to set the world free in our lifetime.
It's like, oh, we might actually get Defend the Guard passed in a state.
And like, this could really change the whole paradigm here.
There's no, look, man, none of this stuff, none of the future is predetermined.
It's human beings acting who are, you know, like making a difference.
And we, we can have a real impact on this.
All right.
Look, we're, we're at the end of time here.
Is there anything else that you wanted to mention that we didn't get to?
No, just check out the tour, takehumanaction tour.com.
And if you're into the strategy, go to runaslibertarian.com.
So if you, if you go to runaslibertarian.com and you sign up, we are doing two online trainings a month.
We've got these six in-person trainings, you know, the specialized trainings for sheriff.
There's people who won.
There's a diversity of training from Grassroots Leadership Academy, Elected Libertarians, the Leadership Institute.
And we're taking this very seriously and we're bringing the community together.
So takehumanactiontour.com, get your tickets, run as libertarian.com and buy into the strategy.
Hell yeah, man.
And of course, once again, I'll be out giving a speech at the New York event and great people all around.
If you're anywhere near one of these cities, come on out, man.
This is going to be a great time.
Yep, April 1st.
That's like two weeks away.
So get your tickets while you still can and get your lunch because you got a week left to get them before it goes out.
All right.
April 1st.
All right.
Hell yeah.
Dude, always great talking to you, Michael.
I always enjoy our conversations and I'm real excited for everything that's coming up in the future.
The future is bright for the Libertarian Party and the Mises caucus.