Keith Knight and Dave Smith dissect libertarian intellectual heroes, from Murray Rothbard's definition of the state as a violent gang to Hans Hermann Hoppe's argumentation ethics. They explore how Walter Block reframed minimum wage laws and how Scott Horton taught rigorous historical analysis. The conversation shifts to Jay Okerson's comedy mentorship and Joe Rogan's influence during the vaccine controversy, emphasizing self-validation over public opinion. Ultimately, they expose the "war party's" deceptive narratives regarding conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, arguing that selective enforcement reveals the myth of the rule of law and that true liberty requires rejecting state violence regardless of written agreements. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Comedy Ideas Strike00:06:37
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You're listening to part of the problem on the gas digital network.
Here's your host, Dave Smith.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I am very excited for this episode.
We're going to do something a little bit different tonight.
But before we get into it, make sure to go check out my brand new comedy special, 30 Minutes with Dave Smith, if you haven't already.
It's up for free on YouTube.
And I'm coming all around the country and actually even around Europe over the next few months.
ComicdaveSmith.com.
Go come see me live when I come to an area near you.
All right.
Welcoming back to today's show.
We have the great Keith Knight.
Keith is the host of the Don't Tread on Anybody podcast, and he is also the managing director.
Sorry, is that the right title at thelibertarianinstitute.com?
Is it managing direct?
And then the Libertarian Institute, managing editor at the Libertarian Institute, which is an incredible organization.
So we're going to do something a little bit different for this episode.
This was an idea that Keith proposed to me that I thought would be cool.
Keith's going to take over and he's going to interview me on this show.
He did this with Tom Woods, and now we're going to do it again.
So why don't you explain, Keith, what we're going to do today?
I was curious as to who your intellectual heroes are and not necessarily what you like about them, but what the most important things are you learned from them specifically.
So just as someone who's followed your show for a while, I know you gave a brief overview on Rogan's show about who your intellectual influences are.
I wanted to dive deeper into that.
All right, let's do it.
This is nice.
I get to take a little, I get to take a break almost today.
I don't have to host the show.
I got a nice bourbon going here.
So let's do it.
So the first question is about comedy.
In Jerry Seinfeld's book, Is This Anything?
He says, I still don't know exactly for sure where jokes come from.
I think it's from some emotional cocktail of boredom, aggression, intense visual acuity, and a kind of silly putty of the mind that enables you to reform what you see into what you want it to be.
What is the most important thing you learned about comedy and what makes some jokes funny?
You know, there's something so interesting about that.
I forget who I heard say this, but there's, it's almost like the way, say, the way a materialist atheist looks at life compared to the way a religious person looks at life is you could think of the human brain as the motor.
And then that's kind of running the whole body.
And in that case, if you think about it, you know, then that's almost like the atheist worldview.
And then you die.
If the motor dies, you're dead.
There's nothing more.
But you could also think of the human brain as a radio.
Okay.
And a radio is capturing a signal from somewhere.
And so if your radio breaks, like the radio station isn't gone.
It's still out there.
It's just that like the mechanism by which you were catching it is gone.
And I will say there is something about joke writing that there is this weird feeling.
And I bet almost every comedian would agree with me on this, that there's this thing where it kind of like the ideas just come to you.
It's, it's not, you know, it's not like you go, like, I gotta write something funny now and go.
It's more like, oh, it came to me.
Something great just came to me.
Okay, let me write that down.
And it's almost like a radio, like you feel like, oh, if I moved a little this way or this way, I might lose it, but I just, I caught the perfect little wave right here.
And so there is like, there is a certain feeling to me.
And what Seinfeld there was referring to as an emotional cocktail or whatever, there is this weird feeling of like the stars aligning in some perfect way where you just go, got it.
Got a hilarious thought.
And then weirdly, that can lead to you sometimes feeling like, maybe I'll never come up with another funny thing.
Like, maybe that's it.
Maybe that last joke was the last joke I'll ever have because I don't know.
I mean, I've been coming up with them for a long time now, but you're like, could be it.
Maybe I'm just done.
I figured everything out, you know, because you just don't know.
But what I'm sorry.
So the question was, what is what have I learned about comedy?
What have you learned about what makes some jokes funny?
And what differentiates funny from unfunny material?
You know, there's a lot.
There's material that's very funny that won't do well.
There's a certain, like, there's a certain way things have to be put in and the certain way they have to be said in order to like evoke laughter from the room.
So I think probably the thing that I've learned the most is that like comedy is, I always love Dave Chappelle said this once, and I thought it was like the perfect way to put it.
And he was like, comedy is, or I think maybe he said, funny is a language that I speak fluently.
And I think that's the perfect way to put it.
That it's like, and I don't speak it as fluently as Dave Chappelle does, but like I speak, I like I speak it.
I can go have a com if I go to Planet Comedy, I can have full conversations with people, you know, like Dave Chappelle can give dissertations in this language.
But there's something about that, that it's like, there's, there's, there's someone else who's like not a stand-up comedian could have a really funny idea and they could go on stage and say it an absolutely bomb.
But I'd be like, hey, let me show you how you're supposed to say it.
And like, I could go up on stage and get a crowd to laugh at it.
That's, that's kind of like my biggest lesson in comedy.
That's all about like how you structure things and how you how you present them.
Learning From Lou Rockwell00:14:21
Excellent.
As far as our intellectual heroes go, what is the most important thing you learned from Lou Rockwell?
Don't, don't be based in Washington, D.C., maybe would be the most.
I mean, I think there's something about, you know, Lou Rockwell, from people who don't know, Lou Rockwell founded the Mises Institute, which is the greatest organization in the history of the world.
And was like the, they were the guys who kept the ideas of Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard and Hans Hermann Hoppe alive for so many years when no one cared.
So, but they built it in Auburn.
And I really think there is something to that, that it was like, and I, and I've learned that lesson too, that there's a reason why, like, say, Cato is so much more corrupted than the Mises Institute ever has been.
And part of it's because like they are mixing it up in DC.
Like Cato does host events where Fed chairmen speak.
And that's just crazy.
Like no libertarian institution should ever be doing that.
Because what the hell?
Like, I don't want to, I don't want to grab drinks with the Fed chair.
I don't want to like be in a thing where it's like, oh, that's kind of cool that I'm in there.
And I've seen this in my experience in like cable news.
I've done a lot of cable news shows over the, over the years.
I kind of, I see this power, this incredibly like eroding to the soul power where like people are like, hey, I just got off the phone with Dick Cheney's chief of staff.
And like, you know, that's pretty cool.
And you're like, ooh, I don't have.
So I've always, I think that's one of the best thing.
I've learned a lot from Lou Rockwell, but probably the best thing I've learned from him is like to avoid like ever being too close into that world.
I've had several opportunities in my career where I could have been like more in that world.
And I've always resisted that.
Like, don't get me wrong, I'll go on shows with these people or I'll do things, but I'm not, I'm not going to like hang out with them afterward.
I'm not going to like become friends with them.
I don't want to fall into that world because it's, it's, I know that I'm not supposed to be that.
I'm not supposed to like, you know, if I do a show and like someone from the CIA is on a panel with me, like that's okay, but I'm not supposed to grab beers with that guy afterward.
I don't want to do that.
I don't want to be friends with him.
I don't want to have a soft spot for him.
And then the other thing I would say that I really learned from Lou Rockwell was just to be, to be courageous in sticking up for your principles.
That, you know, I think about like how the dark years for Lou Rockwell.
I mean, just imagine what it was like, you know, in say like after the Paleo Alliance collapses and there's 9-11 and during the George Bush administration, like how, how dead in the water everything he's been pushing must must feel to be.
And he does, nope, we're not compromising a thing.
We're moving forward.
We're going to keep doing what we're doing.
And then just eight years later, there's this explosion in interest in everything he's been talking about.
And so no matter what time we might be living in, I always kind of try to keep that attitude that like, you never know, this libertarian moment might be coming right back.
And like stay, stay true to your principles and be unapologetic in them.
I'd say those are the biggest things I've learned from Lou Rockwell.
That is such a relief to know that you didn't go get drinks with Brian Stelter and you're seeing this.
I did not, I did not.
What is the most important you lesson, the most important lesson you learned either personally or intellectually from Thomas E. Woods Jr.
Oh man, I've learned so much from Tom Woods.
I mean, I've literally, I learned everything from Tom Woods.
So this is hard to, I've learned today from Tom Woods.
This is not an exaggeration.
I had a 45 minute phone call with Tom Woods today and I've learned a lot.
And what we were talking about was just like business stuff because I'm just like a schmuck when it comes to business.
Like I'm just, I'm, I really am.
I'm, I'm just an artist.
That, that's my, my whole thing has always been like, I love, I fell in love with stand-up comedy because I thought it was so beautiful.
There's something so romantic about it.
Like you just get up on stage and your only instrument is your mind.
And then you just like entertain a crowd with just the things you think of.
I just thought it was so beautiful.
And that's the same reason why I fell in love with libertarianism because I just, I thought the ideas were so beautiful and I got obsessed with both.
But Tom is like, sees every little thing about like how, and so there's something there definitely that I've learned about like how to be like, how to be a pro.
Like Tom's really a professional and I really admire that about him.
And I strive to be more like that, where it's like everything's done.
Like I got my newsletter going.
I got my, I got the new e-book coming out.
I got the podcast coming out.
It's all linked together.
Here's my homeschool curriculum.
Here's the promo code to save off of all of them.
It's like really put it together in this professional way.
So I love that about him.
But the biggest thing that I learned from Tom by far, which I think is really probably like the essence of why I'm a successful libertarian communicator.
So Tom.
Tom was like the first, Ron Paul sparked my interest in libertarianism.
And then after like Googling a lot, I found Tom Woods shortly after.
And then Tom's really the one who like converted me.
Like I just, and for people who know Tom Woods, if you don't, like go check out Tom Woods' show and look up all the stuff he's done and read his books and stuff.
He's incredible.
But what Tom really is, is he's not a specialist.
He's a jack of all trades, kind of like he knows a lot about everything, but he's not like the expert in any one thing.
But what he is, is just an excellent teacher.
Like that, that's really his strength.
He's got an unbelievable gift to teach people things and make it so they understand it.
And he talks about this where he was like, I guess in high school, he was the guy who they'd get to tutor like students who were falling behind.
So like there'd be like some like superstar jock who's like failing everything and about to get kicked off the basketball team.
And they'd be like, okay, we got to bring Tom Woods in to like teach this kid how to get through whatever, you know, algebra or history or whatever it was.
And what Tom, like the way he'll say it is kind of like, he's just, he just has a knack for, okay, so he understands the thing.
And then there's someone here who doesn't understand the thing.
And he just has a knack for explaining it in the way that he wishes someone had explained it to him because this is like the easiest way to explain it.
And there was something, and I picked up on that from Tom very early on because he was like my biggest libertarian influence when I first found all this stuff.
And it just, it made me kind of realize that I was like, yeah, no, that's what it's all about.
And that, that principle is what guides me through all of my appearances, no matter what I'm doing, whether it's Rogan or Tim Poole or Glenn Beck or, you know, whatever the show is, my show, whatever I'm doing, it's always like, no, I get it now.
It's like, let, you have to, let me say this in the way that if I didn't understand any of this and someone was explaining it to me, say it in the way that would hit home with me the most.
That would go, oh, yes, I get it.
And then, so that's always kind of what guides me.
And that's why I'm a good libertarian communicator.
It's all from what I learned from Tom Woods.
So he's, of all the people we're going to name, he probably is the one who I've learned the most from.
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When it comes to what you think this person's most important intellectual contribution is, what is one thing you'd like to introduce the audience to when it comes to the work of Walter Block, author of Defending the Undefendable?
Yeah, man, Walter Block.
I mean, I don't know what his, what his best intellectual contribution is.
Or most important thing you learned from him.
Most important thing I learned from him, I mean, man, he just helped me.
It's hard for me to pick one.
He probably helped.
He helped me understand the minimum wage argument the best when I was first like coming into libertarianism, where he would just break it down.
There's something if people don't know who Walter Block is, he's this like brilliant economist over at the Mises Institute.
And man, like you get that guy in front of a chalkboard or like with some, what do they call that thing where you put the paper down and it projects it onto the screen or something like that, where he's just got, he just breaks things down where you're like, oh, shoot, I get it now.
The minimum wage thing I remember, he was the first one I ever saw just like perfectly break it down to where I was like, oh, I understand it.
I understand it all now.
I had such trouble communicating that with Chank Uger the other day.
What is that?
Oh, did you?
I still sent it to me, but I still haven't watched it.
Well, walk us through what he said about the minimum wage.
Okay, so it was like, oh man, this was years ago that I saw this.
But I think he, the, the first thing he said was he goes, um, he goes, liberals have this idea that the minimum wage is, it's almost like it's the floor and you're, you're elevating the floor to get, to lift everybody out up.
But what minimum wage actually is, is a hurdle.
And you're just lifting up the hurdle that poor people have to jump over.
And I always thought that was like the best analogy for it.
And it's like, as soon as he said that, I was like, oh, yeah, I get it now.
If you make them, and you know, you just use the reducto absurdum that you go, okay, well, what would it be helping poor people to raise the minimum wage to $1,000 an hour?
Like, no, of course not.
It would make them all unemployable because no one would ever, you have to be worth more than $1,000 an hour in order to get hired now.
And so obviously it would.
And then if you make, if you lowered it down to zero, you go, oh, yeah, even someone with no skills and no value and none of this could probably get hired.
And so that was like, that kind of like shocked me into like really getting, and this is early on.
I mean, I probably found this video in like 2008 or something like that, where I was like, oh, like it really clicked for me.
And now I really got it.
But aside from that, like all of his work is just, is just phenomenal.
And also one of the things I really learned from Walter Block is like to just like always be kind and happy.
There's something about that.
There's something about it that's just like so powerful that he's always just like, no matter what happens, he always seems to be like the nicest.
I mean, except when he debated Nick Gillespie.
But aside from that, he always just seems to be this like very like pleasant, happy guy.
He's really, he'll respond to anyone's email, which is like, I always just really admire that.
I don't do that, but I, you know, I admire that about him.
So maybe he didn't actually teach me that lesson, but I wish he had.
But yeah, I guess that's what I'd say about Walter Block.
What do you think is the most important intellectual contribution or thing you learned from Scott Horton?
Oof.
Man, I mean, I've learned so much from Scott Horton.
I mean, I guess, I mean, I've learned probably every American military intervention in the last 30 years.
I've probably learned more from Scott Horton than I learned from anybody else.
And I, and I mean, geez, you know, I couldn't even get into like how much I've learned from that guy.
And I've also learned just a ton about, I don't know, about the history of the liberty movement, about libertarian philosophy.
I mean, me and Scott, like at one point, man, were like so close that we used to talk on the phone like every day for like long phone calls, you know?
And of course, we've done like a million podcasts together.
Understanding State Anatomy00:13:19
And I'll be completely honest.
I'm very sad that we're not like in that place right now.
But I think probably, you know, like I could talk about all of the details of every different military conflict that I've learned from Scott.
But probably like, if I had to say what the best lesson overall was that I learned was that like you got to do your homework, you know, like it's not like if you really want to like like be somebody who other people are going to listen to, when you really want to be something impressive in this world, then you got to know what you're talking about.
There's no shortcuts.
Like you got to do it.
That's the most impressive thing about Scott.
You know, when you, when you hear someone, when he talks to somebody, you're like, whoa, this guy took no shortcuts.
He knows everything that he's talking about.
And he's just an he's an incredible mind.
I mean, just incredible.
And like, I've, you know, I remember I was at a, I went to dinner with Scott.
I mean, I've been to dinner with him many times, but we went to dinner this one time and we were at a steakhouse and we were sitting there just like kind of bullshitting.
And I think I had a couple drinks and it was after like a night of some libertarian event or something like that.
And I just had a moment with him.
This is after we've been friends for years and years and years, you know, and I said to him at one point, I go, I go, dude, how the fuck does your mind work?
Like, I think you might be the smartest person I've ever met.
And he was like, I don't know, dude.
Like everyone says that, but like, I don't know if I'm really that smart.
It's just my mind works the way it works.
And he started explaining it to me.
And he goes, he goes, well, you know the way it is.
He's like, you know, like when you picture like in your head and you picture a year and then there's kind of like a line that goes to the next year and then a line that goes to the next year.
You know, like there's a line from 1980 to 1981, 92, 83, 84, 85, 89, 90.
And then you kind of have like a circle around that.
And then there's a line that goes to the next decade and there's a circle around that and then a line through every year.
And he's just explaining this.
And I'm just looking at him like, and then he talks about this for like five minutes.
And then, and he goes, you know, and I went, Scott, I have no idea what the fuck you're talking about, dude, because no one else's mind works that way.
Like, what world are you living?
Like, I don't know.
I know you think this is like, we're all geniuses, but we're not.
And you are.
And like that, you know, he's just an incredible, an incredible person.
And, you know, there's been, there's been some weirdness between us lately, but I love that guy to death.
And he, I've, I've learned so much from him, it'd be impossible to say in one answer here.
When it comes to Ron Paul's greatest contributions as far as what he's really brought to the table, it's been in politics since the 80s.
What do you think is Ron Paul's most important contribution to sort of the American conversation?
Oh, man.
I mean, it's just so much.
I mean, I think he's the most important.
I think he's the most important figure in the 21st century in American politics.
And I, you know, I know there's, I'm sure there could be some people who disagree with me on that, but I really credit him with everything.
You know, when you see this entire shift in the whole right half of America, where now it is totally acceptable to be opposed to all foreign interventions, to be opposed to the CIA and the FBI and all of this stuff.
I mean, I know there's other factors involved too, but let's get real.
If this is like a big tree, who planted that seed?
It was Ron Paul who planted that seed.
And I think that, look, probably still the most important thing he did was, you know, like the Giuliani moment and getting up in the Republican primary debates during the George W. Bush administration and saying, you all have permission from the most conservative point of view to oppose war.
There was just nothing, nothing could top that.
And he, he gave almost like, it was almost like this portal, like this, this, this gateway that he opened up for so many people to go, that like it's, it's okay to engage in how you might feel outside of this empire.
You know, like you don't have to have the empire mentality of like we're America and America got attacked and therefore America has a right to attack anyone America wants to attack.
And you went all of a sudden you went like oh okay, but like they could also feel that way.
They could also feel like hey, we've been attacked and you don't have a right to attack us and we have a right to attack back the people who attacked us, right?
Isn't that kind of the same thing, in a way, and it just kind of like it.
I mean, for me personally, it just blew my mind when I heard him saying that.
And change changed the course of my life.
Um, and I think he's, his biggest impact is that he, he changed the landscape for what?
What hardcore libertarianism is?
From being this like totally fringe thing that there were maybe, you know, I mean maybe like a few thousand people around the country, to being like a thing where there's like at least a million, you know, and and that's like I mean he he took that cross on his back and moved it.
If there's like a relay race of like someone bearing the cross, he moved it so much further than anyone else ever had.
So that's, and, you know, again, he was just like, just an such an incredible human being, man, and still is.
And we're still all blessed to still have him with us.
And hopefully, I mean, I know he won't be with us forever, but at least 60, 70 more years, I think he'll be around.
A lot has been written by Dr. Murray and Rothbard.
If you had to recommend one thing for people to read, what would it be?
And what is the lesson from this book or essay from Murray Rothbard that you'd like to communicate to as many people as we could?
So there's a lot.
Yeah, man.
I mean, there's a lot of, I've heard a lot of different people who recommend this book first or this book first or whatever.
Maybe I'm biased because this is how I did it.
But so I, I, so I found Ron Paul during the Giuliani moment, which was in 2007.
Then I got obsessed with like Googling him and looking him up.
And I found Tom Woods and Peter Schiff.
And so I started reading all of their books and watching all of their videos and just like obsessing over it.
And it was, it wasn't, it was probably like at least a year or two till I started reading Rothbard.
I just had heard Tom Woods mention Rothbard so many times as like he's the guy that eventually I was like, I got to read this Murray Rothbard guy.
And I heard Tom Woods, I think, I'm trying to remember back.
I think it was that Tom Woods said to read these two essays.
I can't remember if that's right.
But the first two essays that I ever read, pamphlets, essays, something, the first two ones I ever read were Anatomy of the State and War, Peace and the State.
And those are the two that I recommend to start with because it's just like, to me, when I read those two, it was like, it was game over.
Like there was, I was really interested in this thing and had been interested in this thing for a while.
But once I read those two essays, it was like, there's no going back.
Like I'm, I'm here now.
And Anatomy of the State is just like I truly understood the nature of the state after reading that.
And war, peace, and the state, I truly understood the nature of war after that.
And nothing can, it's almost like one of these things that once you learn it, you can't unlearn it.
And so that's what I would recommend to people.
But there are other, you know, there are other things that other people recommend more.
You know, Rothbard has like some economic, like technical writing that he's done that I've also enjoyed.
I mean, I read Man, Economy, and State, and I did get a lot out of that.
And I know that like economists will be like, that's the one you got to read.
But man, there's some, there's some Murray Rothbard writing that just punches you in the stomach.
Like you just, I remember reading his stuff.
Once I started getting obsessed with him, you start like reading this stuff.
And I'd be reading it alone in my studio apartment in Brooklyn, New York, where I was living at like three in the morning because I'm a weird person and I was just like doing stand-up comedy and then coming home to read Rothbard essays that I had printed out because I couldn't, because I couldn't like afford books and shit.
But I remember just like reading stuff and putting it down and almost like looking around this apartment with no one in it, like as if I was looking at someone else, but like, yo, dude, did you hear what he just said?
But like the do you hate the state piece, egalitarianism as a revolt against nature, left, right and the prospects for liberty, just like all of these pieces were just so powerful.
So just like, like, if you're really interested in these ideas, you read that stuff and you're just like, yo, I'm never going to look at anything the same after this.
So if you had to give the audience the bullet points for anatomy in the state and war, peace in the state, what would those bullet points be?
Okay, so bullet points for anatomy of the state would be basically it's like, what is the state is the question, right?
And so you'd say, what is the state?
What is the state for the example?
What is the federal government in Washington, D.C.?
And he would say like, okay, well, it's not the people.
It's not just like everybody is the government.
The government is us.
That's ridiculous.
If you believe that, then you'd have to believe that 6 million Jews committed suicide in Nazi Germany, right?
If they are the government, right?
So clearly some people are, or that, you know, black people enslaved themselves in the 18, early 18th, late 17, early 1800s, or I guess all 17 and early 1800s.
So that's obviously not the case.
The government isn't like the hills and the land.
The government isn't your uncle and everyone you love.
It's not America.
That's not what the government is.
And so what is the government?
And the government is a small group of people, a concentrated group of people who have the legal authority to initiate violence against the entire population.
And they're essentially a gang that completely won.
And he kind of goes through that, that it's like, if imagine a gang moved in and tried to take over a block.
Well, now imagine they were more successful and they took over a neighborhood.
Well, now imagine they were more successful and they took over a country.
What would it look like?
The government.
That's what it would look like.
They are the state.
And there's a lot more to that.
He gets into like the role of intellectuals and the idea of the state constraining itself and all of that.
But I think that's essentially the argument.
And then in war, peace in the state, basically the argument is like, okay, if someone aggressed against you, then you have a legitimate moral right to recoup that aggression or something like that.
So if person A violates the rights of person B, then they have a right to go see about person A or recoup what they did.
But if person C, who had nothing to do with anything, is just their rights are violated in that process, then obviously that's completely wrong because they had nothing to do with that.
And that war, by the very nature of war, it means innocent people being destroyed over something they had nothing to do with.
And he breaks it down so much more brilliantly than that.
But to me, that's like kind of the essence of it, that you go, there's no, there's kind of no case where it's ever justified to just destroy the lives of people who didn't do anything.
So no matter what, no matter what Saddam Hussein did, this isn't in the essay, but this is just me extrapolating from it.
No matter what Saddam Hussein did, you have no right to just incinerate Iraqi children over that because they didn't do anything to anybody.
And so that's essentially, I think, the crux of the argument.
The Non-Aggression Principle00:14:06
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What do you think is the greatest intellectual contribution of Rothbard's student, Hans Hermann Hoppe?
I think his greatest, you know, a lot of people will point to, you know, Democracy, the God That Failed, which is his most popular book, and a lot of the kind of moving libertarianism into a culturally right-ist direction.
And I think there's a lot of value in a lot of that stuff.
But to me, his biggest intellectual contribution, and by the way, a theory of capitalism and socialism is just a phenomenal book, phenomenal book.
No matter how much you've read about like socialism versus capitalism, if you haven't read that book, you're like, it's got some whole new angles and new insights that you have to check out.
But to me, argumentation ethics is the, that's the one.
That's the one.
And I, you know, okay, so if for people who don't know what argumentation ethics is, I've talked about it several times on the show, but basically it's, okay, so in this, in the same way that Mises kind of like would make his line of arg of argumentation, and Rothbard also did this in several of his works.
He does this thing where he basically starts with like an a priori truth and then logically deduces things step by step from that.
And anyway, I don't want to get like too like heady for anyone.
If you don't know what the terms mean, it's not like that complicated.
An a priori truth just means like something you can logically deduce, you know, like something, something that you don't get from empirical evidence, you just get from thinking about it and realizing that that's true.
So something like an a priori truth would be that two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time, right?
So that's an a priori truth.
You don't, we can all understand that and just know it's true.
We don't have to go start testing it out.
Like you don't have to go around and be like, let me see if I can just force two objects together in the same space.
And they're, well, it didn't work that time, didn't work that.
We can logically understand that this is never going to work.
Right.
And so Mises starts his great piece, Human Action, by the a priori truth that human beings act with intention for certain outcomes.
And what Hoppe does is he starts argumentation ethics out with people argue.
And basically where he goes from that is he has this beautiful like string of logical arguments that if you argue at all, you have if you argue and you're not a libertarian, you're contradicting yourself at some point.
And so basically what it is is that, and look, I'll say this.
There are people who have tried to poke holes in the logic of this, and maybe they have successfully.
I know Bob Murphy has had some things to say about this.
And so I'm not even arguing that this is a perfect proof.
If I'm being completely honest, it's some of when people get into the arguments about whether he was completely right or wrong about this, it stretches me to the limits of my intellectual capacity.
Like, you know, you know, sometimes when you feel that, you ever listen to like an astrophysicist talk about something really deep and you're like, I'm almost ready to tap out.
Like, I think this might just be too much.
You know, I was listening to not an astrophysicist, but just a physicist talking about like subatomic particles recently.
You want to really have your mind blown?
Listen to some of that.
Like, this is crazy, Keith.
I'll get back to Hoppe in a second, I promise.
But have you seen?
Okay, so this is a thing that's real, that's completely accepted amongst physicists, that subatomic particles move differently when they're being observed versus when they're not being observed.
Did you know that?
Have you heard that before?
I am not familiar with that thesis.
So this is how it can be falsified, but this is interesting.
No, no, no.
Okay, so this is what's crazy is that they have a whole way of falsifying it, is that they can watch how subatomic particles move and kind of track how they're moving.
And then they can measure that they move different when they're being observed versus when they're not being observed.
And now, that blows my fucking mind and is insane.
But when I'm listening to a physicist explain how they know that, I'm like, this has stretched me to, I'm at my limit.
I am not smart enough to understand this.
Okay.
So anyway, so I'm not claiming that argumentation ethics is a perfect proof, but there is something so beautiful about the idea that I'm like, no, there's really something to this.
And basically what it is, is he goes, okay, look, human beings argue.
And once you argue with someone, like any type of argument, a political argument, it could be any other type of argument.
But as soon as you're arguing with someone and you're trying to win the argument, there are things that you are implicitly accepting when you do that.
And number one, what you're accepting is that you prefer nonviolence to violence.
You prefer to persuade this person than to just like force them.
Because if you preferred violence, you would just, you wouldn't argue with them.
You would just try to beat them over the head and force them to accept your point of view.
And then, okay, there's other things you're accepting when you're arguing.
You're accepting that I own my argument and like I own my mind and you own your mind because I'm presenting an argument from my mind and you, I'm trying to persuade your mind.
And then from that, you know, and there's all these steps that he goes through and you realize and that it's like, look, what we're all accepting when we do this is that we prefer peace and norms that allow for conflict resolution rather than all out war.
And then if you realize that I own myself and you own yourself and you realize that we prefer to not have conflict versus having conflict, well, then who, hey, who should have control over you?
I mean, if you have control over you, there's no conflict.
But if someone else has control over you that you don't like, then there's a conflict there.
And so we prefer, we already agreed that we prefer not to have this conflict over having this conflict.
And okay, now also we're going to need property in order to live.
In order to live, we're going to have to have some, you know, if there's scarce means, excuse me, if there's scarce resources and there could be a conflict over who gets these resources, well, we've already agreed that we prefer a peaceful resolution to this over a violent resolution to this.
So then there'd have to be some type of property rights where things are assigned to one person and not to another person.
And that's the best way to resolve a conflict.
And okay, how do we do that?
What's the most just way to do that?
And he takes it all the way through to be like this perfect libertarian argument where like as long once you start arguing with someone, you're almost conceding so much of what libertarians believe in.
And I just think it's the most brilliant thing I've ever heard in my life.
And then I would say, so that's number one.
And then like a close number two is that I think Hoppe woke a lot of libertarians up to the idea that there's this natural tendency that a lot of libertarians have that is like, hey, we believe in the non-aggression principle.
And therefore, if someone's not, you know, initiating violence against a peaceful person, we shouldn't have anything to say about what they do.
And Hans Hermann Hoppe did a lot to really say, no, in fact, we can have lots of opinions about what that person's doing.
And in fact, in a private property-based society, in a true private law, free society, the property owner gets to dictate what the rules are.
And those rules, in many cases, might be much harsher than what we have under government control.
And you can see this, I mean, particularly today, I think this lesson is so valuable where you're like, oh, you know, if somebody almost has this kind of juvenile interpretation of what libertarianism is, which you see a lot of times when I talk, like, I was just talking to Dinesh D'Souza the other day, and I talked to like some of these kind of like more right-wing guys.
And you can see where they'll go, yeah, well, libertarians say this.
And you're like, no, that's not what we're saying at all.
Where it's like, look, let's just say a lot of libertarians have this idea that it's like, hey, if you're not doing anything, you know, that violates the non-aggression principle, you can do whatever you want to do, which is like, okay, kind of, that's kind of true.
But let me ask you this.
Where what's more loosey-goosey?
The streets of San Francisco or my house?
You know what I mean?
Like on the streets of San Francisco, some homeless guy can just be shooting up heroin.
But in my house, if you try to do that, I will shoot you.
Right?
So actually, libertarianism can be a thing where it's actually much stricter and much more like, no, you're not going to do that thing, even though you could technically say that's not violating the non-aggression principle or something like that.
It's like, yeah, well, on my property, it is.
And Hans Hermann Hoppe has done a better job than anyone of like smacking libertarians in the face with that reality.
When it comes to lessons that you've learned, I heard you on Rogan talk about sort of the myth of the rule of law.
This is loosely, if law is something objective and it's not just someone's opinion, well, you have to explain why nine Ivy League trained Supreme Court justices don't agree on the interpretation of the First Amendment, the Second Amendment, the 10th Amendment, basically anything, abortion.
Who was it that you learned about the myth of the rule of law from?
And if you had to summarize it for the audience, what is it?
Why is it important?
Oof, I mean, I probably, man, there's probably a lot of people who I kind of like deduced that from their work.
Maybe Jeff Deist would be the guy who put it in, you know, like the most succinct way where I went, that's exactly right.
But I remember Jeff Deist was the guy who first said, I think it might have been on this show.
I'm not sure.
Maybe I heard it on some other show, but where he just went, you know, look, if the speed limit is 60 miles an hour, but you don't get pulled over unless you're doing 75, then the speed limit is 75 miles per hour.
That's just the way it is, you know, and you just realize like, yeah, oh yeah, that is the way it is.
And if lying to Congress is, this is me, not him, but it's deduced from him putting it that way.
But if lying to Congress is a crime, but James Clapper doesn't get prosecuted for it, but Michael Cohen does, well, then the real law is that if you're a dissident of the regime, you get prosecuted.
Like that is the law, you know?
And so I don't know.
It's just like if you had anything, if you were in a relationship and you're like, hey, there's no cheating allowed, but you never get upset if your partner cheats, but your partner gets upset if you cheat, then the real rule is that you're not allowed to cheat, right?
Like that's just, it's kind of common sense.
Like that's, that's it.
It doesn't matter what you just say or what's written down on paper.
What matters is what you do.
So so Jeff, I think probably like articulated that the best I've ever seen.
What You Actually Do00:09:08
But that was something that I think I had been from from reading all of the guys we've been talking about so far.
That was something I had kind of like deduced for a while that it's like, yeah, this is all, it's all so goofy when you think about it.
And then I will say, and then Michael Malice would be the other guy that I said, I remember talking to him once about, this was a concept.
I had a joke about this on Libertas.
And it's one of, still to this day, one of my favorite jokes I've ever written, which was, if you go watch Libertas, which was my first comedy special, it's the cops work for us is the joke.
And they're, you know, so just this concept of people who go like, they work for us.
And I do a whole comedic thing about it that I think I'm pretty proud of still to this day.
And I was talking about this with Malice once on a podcast.
And I was like, isn't it so crazy?
Like where there are these people and the cops approach them and they'll be like, I know my rights and blah, blah, blah.
And, you know, and then the cops just totally violate their rights and completely get away with it.
And it, you know, you feel like you're morally right, but it's almost like you're this like is ought like problem.
Like, yeah, no, you ought to have these rights, sure, but you don't.
So what you're saying like, I know this is an is, but it's not.
It's an ought.
And the, there's this thing where like there's like a man with a gun and a taser standing outside your car and you're going, I have this thing that was written down on a piece of paper, you know, in the 1780s.
Someone wrote this down on a piece of paper and this is just a piece of paper with words written down on it.
And the actual reality is that there's a man with a gun with a walkie-talkie to a huge gang of other men with guns.
And Malice said at one point when we were doing this show, he goes, he goes, it's literally like you're holding it up and going, hocus pocus.
And like, that is so like, to me, I was like, yes, exactly.
That's what it is.
So I guess those guys are the ones who come to my mind, but I don't know.
I pieced that together little by little over the years.
When it comes to one of the things I think is your greatest contribution, it's usually walking through something in the media and exposing the propaganda line by line because sometimes it comes at you just like a fire hose and you just have trouble dissecting it.
What are the important lessons you've learned in researching propaganda and lessons people can use so they are less likely to fall prey to it in the future?
And who did you learn this from?
Hmm.
That's interesting.
I um you know, I'm I occupy like a weird space where I'm I think like the um I'm like the smartest uh idiot or the dumbest smart person.
I don't know exactly which which one I am, but I've been able to read these really smart people and understand.
I'm like, I'm smart enough to understand what they're saying, but then I'm also not that smart.
So like I can explain it to all like it's like, no, don't, don't get me wrong, I'm one of you dumb people.
So let me like tell you how this what this means.
And so I read a lot of the right people.
And then after doing that, you can kind of see through what they're doing.
And what I started to realize was that, oh, like they need this propaganda.
They rely on this.
And so it's easy.
Once you kind of are like red-pilled on the Liberty shit, it's very easy to see what they're doing.
So I don't actually know if there was anyone, it's not like any one person taught me that.
I think it's that I learned all this shit from all these brilliant people.
And then it was just obvious for me to see that.
It's like, oh, I see what they're doing here.
And then I realized that I like that this propaganda is they rely on it.
And so my job is to undermine it.
And because I get that and I kind of know how to put it in a way that regular people will understand it, I'm like, okay, that's what I can do.
I can take that and put it in.
But I think all probably all of the people that we've talked about so far have to some degree taught me that.
When it comes to more personal lessons about life, or this could even be professional, what's the most important thing you learned from being friends with Jay Okerson?
Oof.
I mean, I learned, you know, I don't know if I, how many like personal or professional even lessons I've learned from Jay.
What I, what I've learned from Jay more than anything else is how to be a comedian.
That's what I really learned from him.
And he taught me so much.
Like Jay really kind of took me under his wing when I was like a brand new comedian.
Like I had just started doing stand-up comedy and he took an interest in me.
And for like we, I wasn't even like that close of friends with Jay.
I was really close with Lewis and Lewis was really close with Jay when I first started standup.
And then we were just doing a lot of shows together and he really liked what I was doing.
Like he liked my jokes.
You know, I was like doing comedy for like a month or something like that.
But he, but he like saw that he was like, no, dude, I think there's something really funny about this kid.
And he taught me so much about stand-up comedy.
And then he would really like, he like took an interest in me in a time when, you know, I mean, he was like, he was nowhere either, but compared to where I was, he was like a god.
Like he was, this is a guy who's like the funniest guy.
And, you know, he wasn't like that successful at stand up, but he wasn't that successful in the business of stand-up, but he was really funny.
And And he just, he really took me under his wing and taught me everything about like, like, you know, like we'd watch other guys together and he would show me, he'd be like, you see what he is doing wrong here?
And this is what he's doing wrong.
And this is why he doesn't get it.
And you see what he's doing right here.
And this is why this guy's so funny.
And this is why he gets it.
And he goes, and here's what the like the smoke and mirrors of stand-up comedy.
And here's what you got to do.
And it like every little thing, like every point.
He really taught me, like, really coached me on how to do this shit.
And there's, you know, I can't express how grateful I am to this day for that.
At the time, I was like, yo, this is just so cool that this guy is like really like teaching me this game.
And then we just became like, we just became like great friends.
And, you know, he brought me on the road with him at very early on when it made the total difference for me.
Like it made the difference between like I may have like just given up on being a comedian or not.
And that was like what kept me in it.
So that was what I learned from Jay was always like, it was always like about comedy, about what it really meant to be a comedian and how to really do it the right way.
And yeah, there's nothing I've learned from him more than that.
And Lewis J. Gomez, most important thing you learned being his friend.
Man, I mean, Lewis, from I learned from Lewis that it, what matters the most is what you end up making.
That's what matters.
As a man, what matters is what you did, what your legacy is, what you produced.
And Lewis was always, like, since I've known him, was always just like, always striving to make something great.
And that was like an incredible thing to watch.
I mean, I remember literally when we were, we were nothing.
I met Lewis like substantially before I met Jay, or at least years before I met Jay.
And we had nothing, but he was always trying to build some type of empire, build some type of thing.
And I learned from him that that's like, that's what it's all about is trying to create things, trying to like will things that didn't exist into reality.
And still to this day, you know, like I talk to Lewis on the phone all the time.
We hang out a lot.
I mean, not as much as we used to, because, you know, I got two little kids and a wife and a family, and he's got a kid.
And we're both busy these days.
But still, Lewis is always the guy who I go to when, whenever there's something in my life that's like, hey, I'm about to make this move.
I always want to talk to Lewis about it.
I always want to go, hey, hey, dude, I'm about to make this move.
Lessons From Joe Rogan00:14:16
What do you think about this?
Because he's just got like, he's an incredible, he's a force of nature, Lewis.
And he's always like kind of building something and he's always got more ideas to like layer on to whatever the thing that you're doing is.
So I'd say, probably my biggest lesson from him was always that you always have to be building something bigger than yourself.
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It's been amazing to watch, you know, Joe Rogan go from the UFC commentator guy to having so many complex discussions to being vilified by CNN for trying to make himself better during what allegedly is this terrible virus.
It's really an amazing story.
What is the most important thing you learned being friends with Rogan?
I think you've been on, did you tell me eight times individually and 10 times in total?
Yeah, I think I believe that's right.
People can go back and count it up, but I believe it was two Legion of Skanks podcasts and eight times solo.
Well, so the biggest thing, there's a few.
So Joe Rogan had a comedy special called Talking Monkeys in Space, which was in I think 2008 or 2009.
So this is right around the time when I was having my libertarian transformation.
And I had been doing comedy.
So I started stand-up comedy in 2006.
I found Ron Paul in late 2007.
2008 and 2009, I was in this phase where I was like diving into libertarian literature.
But I don't know exactly.
I don't know exactly when the moment was that I was a libertarian.
You know, like I was, I was really interested in it and I was reading all about it, but I don't know when there was a point.
I remember one time telling my sister being like, you know, I'm a libertarian.
I think this is what I believe in.
And, you know, but I don't even remember what year that was, but it was after a while of reading all these guys where I was like, I was almost reading it with this like, like, man, this is really compelling, but maybe there's a flaw.
Let me find the hole in here.
And eventually I was like, I just got converted.
I, there's no hole in this.
And so while this was all going on, I was growing as a comedian.
I had been doing comedy for a few years now.
And a lot of the stuff that I was obsessed with started leaking into my stand-up.
Before that, I didn't have, I was just doing jokes.
Like, I wasn't doing anything political or deep or anything like that.
I was just doing jokes about smoking weed or riding the subway or having sex or whatever, you know, like just whatever would get a laugh in the room.
And then I started to kind of want to do these more kind of interesting, like, oh, let me do something a little more heady, a little more smart or something.
And I was insecure about doing that because I was like, who the hell am I?
I'm like some guy in his early 20s who doesn't really know anything about anything, you know, and like what this is going to come off pretentious and all of this.
And I saw this special that Rogan did, Talking Monkeys in Space, and he was going off on like the deepest ideas.
And, but it was still really funny.
You know, he's like doing these really funny bits about like how civilization we were way smarter before the pyramids, and then dumb people out the smart people, and like all this crazy shit.
Um, and I, it really, and I was already a uh, I think I was a big UFC fan at the time, so I already loved him from that.
And then I loved him from like random other things that he was doing.
Like Joe Rogan.net was like one of the coolest websites before anyone was doing any of this, like social media or internet stuff.
And that it gave me a lot of confidence to be like, Yeah, you know what?
You can really explore like deeper topics and still make it funny.
And there, there was just, I think that really changed everything for me.
So that had a huge, huge impact on me.
Um, and then, of course, later, I, you know, I ended up getting on his show many years later, and then just kind of like becoming friends with the guy and getting on his show a ton.
And so, so that was the first thing that I learned from him.
And then I think probably even more important was so, so I became really good friends with Joe.
And now we're, you know, pretty, I mean, you know, like we text all the time, we talk on the phone and stuff.
I do a show all the time.
And it's amazing, like, to he's just an amazing guy and really interesting guy and really incredible stand-up comic.
By the way, if people don't, you know, I actually think still, even though he's probably the biggest stand-up comedian in the country, it's so weird.
I think he's criminally underrated as a stand-up comedian.
Like, if you have never seen Joe Rogan live, go watch Joe Rogan live.
Go to one of the Joe Rogan and friends shows at the comedy mothership and like go sit down and watch him do an hour.
It is, he's an incredible stand-up.
Just like, like, destroys the room with some of the like funniest, smartest shit you'll see any comedian do.
And so, anyway, so we, we, we become friends.
I start doing his podcast a lot.
We start doing a lot of shows together when I go out there to do his podcast.
And I happen to be with him in this very weird thing.
I've been, I've, I've weirdly been with him through some of the hugest, most controversial moments.
So I was, I was on the show, and it has nothing to do with me being there, but it just happened to be that I, I guess, I bring out the topics that you know will get him in trouble or something.
Maybe, maybe he shouldn't have me on as much as he does.
But so I was on his show, uh, and there was this big one.
And I want to say this was in 2021 where we were talking about the COVID vax.
And he uh like I, it was something like I said something like, I was like, Yeah, I'd never give one of my kids this COVID vaccine.
Are you out of your mind?
Villain over my dead body will that they get it.
And then he goes, like, uh, he was like, Yeah, look, I'd say this.
He goes, if you're old and you're sick, like maybe you should get the COVID vax.
But if you're like a young, healthy person, my advice to you wouldn't be to get the COVID vaccine.
My advice would be be really healthy, you know, work out, exercise, eat good, get lots of sunlight, just be healthy, you know.
And he's like, I don't know, 80% of the people hospitalized for COVID were obese.
So like, just be healthy and don't do that.
And this was such an outrage at the time that Joe Biden responded to it.
Fauci responded to it.
And Fauci's response to it was, he was like, you know, Joe, What Rogan doesn't understand is that the reason you get vaccinated is to protect other people because if you get the vaccine, you're not going to spread the virus.
And it's so crazy that you're like, wow, look at how that aged.
They labeled him as spreading misinformation.
And he was just saying, Hey, if you're young, you don't really need the vaccine.
You should probably just be healthy, exercise, and get lots of sunlight, which is so true.
You can't even deny it now.
And then Fauci goes, Well, if you get the vaccine, you won't be able to spread the virus, which is so demonstrably false.
And so he was just like, So I've been through these moments with him where he was just so right, and the establishment was so wrong.
But the craziest thing, the craziest experience I've ever had with Rogan was: so I go, I uh, when Spotify, the cancellation attempt was first on him, and I think this is probably the biggest cancellation attempt in human history.
Well, okay, let me say there's assassinations and things like that.
Let's say in modern modern history, what we mean by cancel culture, this was like the biggest one.
And so I was when uh Neil Young threatened to leave Spotify and they were all gonna because of COVID misinformation.
So I go out, uh, I fly to uh to to Austin and I'm going there to do Rogan's podcast.
And I get there and a whole thing came up where uh it was a whole thing and we had to reschedule.
And so, you know, if you could imagine, I'm going to do the biggest show in the world, and I'm so psyched as I always am.
And Rogan comes.
So me and him meet up and he goes, listen, dude, a whole thing just came up.
I'm sorry.
We can't do the podcast.
He goes, listen, dude, go back home.
I'll fly you back out next week and we'll do the podcast next week.
And, you know, you're like, you're like, yeah, dude, absolutely.
The guy who's done more for you than anyone has ever done in my career is like my greatest hero, who also then like took me under his wing and has helped me more than anyone else.
You're like, what can I say?
Yes, of course, no problem.
He's like, you know, and he always takes care of everything.
So he's like, dude, I'm flying you back home.
I'm flying you back out next week.
And we're going to do the show next week.
I apologize for all of this.
And I'm like, yeah, dude, it's totally fine.
Inside, I'm like, but outside, you're like, yeah, it doesn't even matter.
We do the show now.
We do the show next week.
Whatever.
But so, so there was a whole thing that happened there.
And so I go back home.
I come back the next week.
By next week, that isn't even the story anymore because the N-word compilation has now dropped.
And now that's the story.
And now they're all trying to cancel him over that.
And so I come back a week later and I was there for a few days.
And we do a series of stand-up shows and then did the podcast.
And he is at this point a week ago, he was under the biggest cancellation campaign that I've ever seen anyone under.
But this week, it's that but vicious.
That, but like we're trying to smear you as this horrible person.
And it was so interesting.
Like I was doing these stand-up shows with him like for three nights in a row and watching this guy who's at the absolute top of the food chain be under the most pressure and scrutiny that probably any human being in America, probably any human being in the world was under at that time.
And he, I think he definitely was feeling it.
Like he was, you know, like he, you could tell he was like, well, this is crazy.
What's going on?
But he's a guy who I think is like, he has done enough martial arts and enough hallucinogens and been around enough people.
And like, like, he's someone who's really figured out who he is.
He's like a truly based individual, like a truly grounded person.
And to watch him kind of handle all of that and handle it with such like grace and, you know, like, dude, he went out on stage that night and just he opened up with like 15 minutes of just talking about the situation.
And it was the funniest thing I've ever heard in my life.
And I won't like say what he said on stage because he might put that out at some point, but it was so funny him addressing the situation.
And this is like, it was like only a few days old, you know, like it was like so raw and real.
And it was just so great.
And just to see him kind of like have that character that it was like, yeah, dude, like he really, I don't know, there was something about that that I was like, there was a lesson from that that I respected that it's like, look, man, you could be like on top of the world and then that could all flip and they try to put you on the bottom.
But it was like, you're watching this dude who knows who he is, you know, and he knows what he's about.
And he was going to be like, okay, that's, that's totally cool.
Disaster American Lessons00:06:32
At that point, it was totally in jeopardy.
What was going to happen to him, you know, you don't know.
That could have been like the end of all of it.
This is before his club was opened.
We were doing shows at like at the Vulcan out in Austin.
And it was just like, I remember watching him do stand up those few nights was like, there's never been anything I've watched that was cooler than that in my life.
The guy, you're watching the most famous comedian in the world under the most pressure in the world come out, address it head on and just destroy the room.
It was incredible.
And what I learned from that was probably just that it's like, you know, know who you are in this world.
Like, know who you are.
Don't, you know, it's not about what the outside validation is.
That's, that's, that's the thing I try to learn.
Like what really matters to me isn't, it's not what the world thinks of me.
It's not what my audience thinks of me.
What matters to me is what my family thinks of me.
What matters to me is what my wife thinks of me, what my kids think of me, what my close friends think of me.
And then everything after that, it's kind of like, we'll take on whatever's coming at us.
It was an incredible lesson, an incredible lesson to learn.
Awesome.
I know we've been going a while.
Do you have time for one more?
Let's do one more.
Sure.
The psychopath class, after losing a 20-year war against the Taliban, now is provoking a third world war against China over Taiwan and Russia over the Donbass region.
What is the most important thing we can learn about the war on terror that will help us see through future war lives when it comes to what's happening now?
Well, look, I mean, the most important thing I think we can learn is that they, the, the war party will lie through their teeth to us and to start a war.
And that there is no, there is no, we should have zero trust in anything they say.
I mean, like they, they were able to convince at least a majority of Americans that Saddam Hussein was in on 9-11 and is friends with these terrorists who he hated, but they, they could convince you that he's about to pass off this bomb he doesn't have to these terrorists he doesn't like.
So, they can detonate it in the middle of, you know, whatever, Michigan or something like that.
So, I guess the best lesson to take out of all of that is that you cannot trust anything these people say, that they get it wrong with every single foreign adventure.
And there's no reason why we should listen to them any more now than we should have then.
And even the crazy thing is that even those guys will, you know, they'll admit they were wrong about all of that stuff, but still insist they're right about this.
Even John McCain wrote in his memoir that Iraq was a mistake.
Even he admits it.
When Scott Horton was grilling Bill Crystal in their debate, when Scott Horton just smoked Bill Crystal, one of the greatest things that's ever happened.
There was one point when he asked him, like, or someone, maybe in the crowd asked him, I can't remember, but someone asked him, they go, what was the last U.S. intervention that you think had a good outcome?
And he said something, I think he said the Balkans or something like that.
It was like the last war that he like, even he couldn't, he couldn't justify any of them.
He couldn't even try to say Iraq was a success or Afghanistan was a success or, you know, or Libya or Syria or Somalia or Yemen.
He can't say any of those are successes.
So even they admit that all of these were failures.
And I think the lesson to learn and the most important lesson, right?
When you look at what is it?
I don't know.
I don't know what the exact numbers.
I don't have them off the top of my head, but it's something like five or six thousand U.S. troops died in all these Middle East wars.
And then something like 30,000 of them blew their brains out after coming home and were probably like, you know, at least three or four trillion dollars in the hole for all of these conflicts.
So the lesson to learn is that like they'll lie to you.
It will be a disaster for American people.
It will be a disaster for the American economy.
And that, but it'll work out really well for them.
They'll make a lot of money off of it.
Keep that.
So that's, I think, the lesson to learn to keep in mind as we move into these new conflicts that like these people don't fucking give a shit.
And they're, they've been wrong about everything.
And it's destroyed so much about this country.
And now they're flirting with destroying a whole lot more.
So I'd say that's the lesson.
Exactly.
Awesome, man.
So good to get the chance to talk with you and get into the intellectual origins of what got you to where you are.
Well, thank you.
This was very enjoyable for me.
I hope people listening enjoyed it as well.
And I promise next time you're on the show, I will be interviewing you and you interviewing me again.
Thank you very much.
The great Keith Knight.
Tell people where they can find any of your stuff.
They can check out the Don't Tread on Anyone podcast.
I just released one with Chank Uger.
Got to give it to the man.
He stayed for the full 90 minutes we agreed upon.
That's at libertarianinstitute.org.
You can check out the 50 essays that took me from being a progressive to being a libertarian with the voluntarist handbook, free PDF at libertarianinstitute.org.
Keith, you're the man, dude.
And I will say, you are one of the most criminally underrated guys in the liberty world.
I know people in the libertarian movement really know who you are.
But if people like a little bit outside of it don't, you got to go check out Keith Knight.
His podcast is phenomenal.
He's one of the sharpest minds in this game.
So please go give him a follow.
Go support his podcast because, like, this guy's really one of the guys who really gets it.
So, thank you so much for coming back on the show, dude.