Today's Liberty Report discusses the future of the liberty movement in the era of President Trump. Future of Freedom Foundation president Jacob Hornberger joins us to add his views on whether we should be cheering, jeering, or something in-between...
Today's Liberty Report discusses the future of the liberty movement in the era of President Trump. Future of Freedom Foundation president Jacob Hornberger joins us to add his views on whether we should be cheering, jeering, or something in-between...
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
Co-host today, Daniel McAdams, with me.
Daniel, good to see you.
Hello, Dr. Paul.
Good.
We have a very special guest today.
He's the president of the Future of Freedom Foundation, Bumper Hornberger.
He's been a good friend, attended our conference last month or so.
Great speaker.
So, Bumper, good to have you with us today.
Oh, my pleasure.
It's always an honor to be with you guys.
Good.
What we want to talk about today is because you're the expert.
You have an organization called the Future of Freedom.
And we want to know what's going to happen.
Now, we are getting a new president, and we want to know what your assessment is of the election.
What does this do to libertarianism?
Does it give us a boost, an opening, or does it give us a setback, or is it irrelevant?
So why don't you start off by giving us your general impression of what the election has done in our efforts that we all continue to work on and promoting the cause of liberty.
Where do you think we stand today as compared to before the election?
As a libertarian, you know, obviously I, like most other libertarians and most Americans, were not really excited over the prospect of having either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump president.
But given that choice, I think on balance, we're much better off with Trump than with Clinton.
I mean, with Clinton, there was no doubt what we were going to get.
We were going to get four more years of Bush Obama, especially on foreign policy.
There was going to be more wars in the Middle East, more regime change operations.
There was going to be confrontation with Russia, which always bears the risk of a nuclear war.
I mean, effectively, she was going to be controlled by the national security establishment.
The economic policies she would have endorsed were the same socialist policies that Democrats and liberals always endorse.
With Trump, in principle, it's no different.
I mean, we all know that Democrats, Republicans are basically on the same page ideologically.
But with Trump, at least there is the possibility of improvement, and specifically in foreign policy.
Now, on economic issues, he's going to be a disaster.
I mean, his playbook is straight out of Benito Mussolini's economic fascism.
He believes in a centrally controlled, managed economy.
He's going to make Amtrak run on time.
He's going to run government like a business.
And so it's going to be a disaster.
He's going to start trade wars.
He's got the immigration war going on.
But in foreign policy, there at least is the possibility of improvement.
And that possibility did not exist under Clinton.
And what I'm specifically referring to is that he's made some interesting statements, like during that debate where he challenged the official version of why George W. Bush went into Iraq and pointed out that the WMDs were bogus.
He's questioned in a sort of an indirect way NATO.
He has expressed some kind of reticence about regime change operations.
So clearly he's not a non-interventionist like we libertarians are, but I think he might prove to be more reluctant to embroil the country in new foreign wars.
The bad side of all this is that he wants to go in there and continue bombing ISIS.
And I think that's quicksand.
He may well find himself four years doing the same thing that Bush and Obama did, and that's miring the United States and these foreign wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East.
Yeah, you know, Jacob, you make a good point.
And, you know, right after the election, very couple of days later, I think it was, and it's a good sign, I think, that Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin had a telephone call, which in itself is something that hasn't happened really in a while.
There's been such a Cold War 2.0.
And so apparently they've discussed ways of improving the relations.
They discussed Syria pretty extensively, and that's probably the flashpoint of where a World War III might break out.
So to your point, I think that probably is a good early indication, too soon to jump up and down.
But, you know, when we were talking about kind of doing a couple shows about this, Dr. Paul and I both remarked on how the libertarian movement has been so divided over the Trump phenomenon.
Some have been explicitly in his camp.
Some have been explicitly opposed to him.
Some have sort of trod along in the middle path.
And don't you think it's kind of remarkable how the movement has been split?
Oh, absolutely.
But it's really been split along the lines of foreign policy.
I mean, I think most everyone agrees that his economic policies are going to probably be bad trade wars and the like, where the split has really, I think, taken place is in the area of foreign policy.
And there's those libertarians that are holding out hope that he moves in a non-interventionist direction.
Time will tell whether that's the case or not.
I mean, we're hoping that that's the case.
But your point about Russia is absolutely critically important.
With Clinton, there was going to be an increasing confrontation with Russia, this new Cold War or Cold War II.
The national security establishment thrives on these types of crises.
They gin them up, and then they blame it all on Russian aggressiveness.
And of course, this is supported by the mainstream press, which, of course, people rejected in this election.
And so there was going to be bad news with respect to relations with Russia.
Trump's going to change all that.
Clearly, the crisis environment is going to diminish.
One would like to think that the U.S. military encirclement of Russia and the so-called pivot to China are going to be diminished under a Trump administration.
But I think that this notion that America has to have this Cold War attitude against Russia stretches all the way back to the advent of the National Security State in the 40s.
And as you know, I've written a lot about how John Kennedy was trying to change this, where he was trying to say, look, we can peacefully coexist with countries that have ideological differences with us, including the Soviet Union and Cuba and so forth.
Well, this is what the National Security State opposes.
So it's going to be interesting to see whether Trump is able to withstand the pushback that I think is going to come from the Pentagon and the CIA that love these Cold Wars and these crises.
You know, I think a lot of what you say is right on target, and we're always very hopeful.
And you've, of course, qualified and hoped that this would happen.
But you know where I think the real hooker is on this wonderful scenario probably has to do with Iran.
He has not been soft on that.
I mean, he wants to tear up the agreement and they're the enemy of the world.
He wants to be very, very aggressive with ISIS.
And yet Iran is an ally of Russia.
And therefore, when push comes to shove, which way does he go?
And I don't feel comfortable that we know Trump well enough, you know, what he's doing, because the other day we did a program on NATO, and what we talked about was encouraging Trump to stick to his gun on NATO.
He's already left his anti-NATO stance already.
So I just think that whole hopeful message that you're giving there has to be reconciled with what's going to happen with our arrangement with Iran.
You know, will Trump remain aggressive with Iran?
Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more.
I mean, I don't mean to suggest that this is like any kind of libertarian, non-interventionist revolution here.
What I'm talking about is really just marginal improvement over what we've had under Bush and Obama and what we would have had under Clinton.
That, yeah, he's buying into that standard line, Iran's the enemy.
Open Question On Foreign Policy00:10:41
We need to take an aggressive, assertive stance against them.
I mean, this is ridiculous.
As you know, Ron, this relationship with Iran goes back to 1953 when the CIA destroyed their democratically elected system.
They ousted Mohamed Mossadegh from the prime ministership there, and they installed this brutal dictator, the Shah of Iran.
They trained his secret intelligence force to torture people.
I mean, it was no wonder that the people of Iran revolted in 1979.
And if we can just come to grips with that and understand that it was the U.S. that was at the root of this, and if somebody can communicate that to Trump, there's absolutely no reason why we can't have just normal, friendly relations, diplomatic relations.
That doesn't mean you have to endorse their tyranny or whatever they're doing.
Just open up the American people, the private sector, to interact with the people of the world.
Is Trump going to do that?
I don't think so.
I think, as you point out, he is a hodgepodge of different views.
There's no consistent vein running through his beliefs.
But we can only hope that in this hodgepodge of views, things improve sufficiently where people start listening to us libertarians and saying, hey, let's push even further where public opinion forces a Donald Trump administration to move in our direction.
Hey, you know, Jacob, even take the best instincts, the best of the quotes from Donald Trump, and we'll handpick those and put them in our basket.
And even if he were to abide by those 100%, there's still an institutional problem.
And you've written about this, I think, better than anyone I've read.
The institutional problem within Washington, D.C., there is a pool of people that are called the experts.
And you call them the national security state.
And I think that's a good term for them.
But even if Trump wants to implement the best parts of what we heard from him, where does he reach out to find people?
They're sitting around in think tanks for eight years, waiting for the next turn.
We see so many neocon retreads.
Some of them, they were even too radical for George W. Bush.
And so there's, I think, a structural and an institutional problem.
What does he do if he wants to do something different?
These people are hogging the chairs and hogging the microphones, and they're convincing everyone that they're the experts.
But as you know better than anyone, everything they touch turns to dirt.
I couldn't agree with you more.
That is an absolutely excellent point.
You've got this enormous apparatus, the warfare state, the national security state, what President Eisenhower called a military-industrial complex that is the most powerful component of the federal government.
And the question is that even if President Trump decided to stand up against this, as President Kennedy did, what chance does he have to succeed?
And that's an open question at this point.
There's a great book called Double Government by a law professor, I think, at Tufts University called Michael Glennon, who was also legal counsel to a House Committee on Intelligence, I think.
And he points out that we really do have double government.
We have the deep state, the government where the Pentagon and the CIA and the NSA are really in charge.
They're the ones that are running the federal government.
And all the other three branches are just made to have the appearance that everything is the same as it's always been since the founding of the republic.
And Glennon points out that this is not what America is supposed to be all about.
And now what's interesting is at the end of the book, he doesn't really call for a dismantling of this thing.
It's almost as if people think that they could not survive.
America could not survive without the Pentagon, big standing military establishment, the CIA and the NSA.
My question is, can America survive with this apparatus in there?
And what is Trump going to do?
That's an open question.
He may become part of them still.
You know, the change in policy is what we hope for.
But I keep thinking what I heard during the campaign is that invisible government, the shadow government, had to influence both candidates because both of them agreed that they had to rebuild the military.
You know, if we're going to reduce it, I don't see this.
And they love it.
I mean, have you looked at the military stocks?
They love Trump.
So they're making this preparation.
And once again, how much influence do they have?
Are they that powerful?
Is it something that they can't accomplish?
The other thing that worries me a bit about how smoothly this might not work out to be is that let's say that it looks like Obama changed his policy already in Syria, 180-degree turn, you know, that they're going to fight ISIS now, and they're not going to worry too much about fighting Assad.
So if Assad and Russia wins, you know, there's going to be a couple other countries unhappy.
Iran's unhappy.
Israel's unhappy.
Saudi Arabia is unhappy.
And Trump is right in the middle of that from his statements.
You don't know where he'll come down on that.
And what we're hoping is that he will maintain this position where he has an openness to Russia.
But I'll tell you what, there are some real challenges there that could change his mind.
And for some reason, they're spending a lot of money on military.
Absolutely.
I mean, he's made it clear that he's going to spend more money building up the military again.
And so, and then, you know, Dan makes a good point that he's bringing in a lot of people here from the interventionist crowd.
I mean, here's a guy that has run on the anti-establishment philosophy, if there ever was one, the populist message.
And look at the people he's bringing in on his transition team.
A lot of them are ardent interventionists.
I mean, it's bizarre.
You know, he has a chance, Ron and Dan, to do what President Obama had a chance to do.
You know, Obama, when he came into office, could have said, look, George W. Bush had eight years to run his wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan.
They killed as many people as they wanted.
I'm going to move America in a new direction in my presidency.
I'm bringing all the troops home right now.
And he didn't do that, and he ended up with four years of Bush.
Trump has this excellent opportunity to stand against the establishment, stand against the military, the CIA, and say, or really with them by saying, I'm bringing the troops home, because he'd be doing everybody, including the families of the troops and the soldiers themselves, a big favor.
But you just get the sense that he's going to get mired down in this ISIS quicksand and probably the Taliban quicksand as well.
Why can't he just say, I'm going to move this country in a new direction under my presidency?
I'm bringing those troops home now.
You know, we have to finish up here in a few minutes, but I did want to ask another question about where the movement is going, because as you pointed out and we've talked about the good things that we've heard and that we hope for.
But is there any chance that that might hurt us temporarily, that the individuals that are so-called libertarian, I say, well, we better back off.
We have to wait.
And we do a little bit of that.
I don't think it's my position right now to jump all over Trump.
I don't even know who he's going to have as Secretary of State and this sort of thing.
But I'm fearful that maybe the libertarians will be overly tolerant and say, well, you know, it's only populism and populism is a positive step toward libertarianism.
Is there any danger of that type of thinking?
I know there's no danger of worrying about you, where you're going to go because you're about as solid as the come.
But there are others in the libertarian movement that are willing to, you know, compromise and not fight for the principles of a libertarian foreign policy.
Yeah, that's an interesting question.
I mean, my perspective is, look, we've got to redouble our efforts now.
I mean, we have some real chances with the Trump administration to make big breakthroughs on liberty.
I mean, I don't know where the guy stands on the drug war, for example.
The press never asked him about it in those debates and so forth.
But, I mean, I get the feeling that if it gets close to where people are saying, end this thing, and I think we're almost there.
My hunch is it's very possible that Trump won't put much political capital in preserving the drug war.
So we have to redouble our efforts now to keep pushing because that thing's on the precipice.
Same thing with foreign policy is that we need to push at this point, fight harder to say to Trump, whatever you do here, it's not enough.
It's pulling out a serious fine.
But uniting with Russia to attack ISIS is just quicksand.
So we have to keep building that non-interventionist case.
And there's reason for optimism here.
The Pew Research Center came up with a poll this year that said that 57% of Americans now want the U.S. government to mind its own business and let foreign countries work out their own problems.
That's an incredible statistic.
We need to make that 70%.
And then it won't matter what Trump thinks because I don't think he will be able to withstand a public opinion of 70% that's saying, bring the troops home.
We want America to mind its own business or the federal government to mind its own business.
I think your points are well taken and it justifies your existence and what your work is all about and what we try to do because we're trying to change the perceptions of the American people.
You point out about the drug war, and I think this is an example where maybe Trump will be irrelevant because, you know, the move has been away from the federal government.
Obama at the beginning was a big enforcer of the laws, and all of a sudden hands off.
Well, whatever the states want to do.
So there's nullifications de facto.
And that had to do with, I think, the libertarians getting that message out so we do win these victories.
And your suggestion is we got to keep pounding away because when enough people join us, you know, we can change foreign policy.
And that, of course, is what we're hopeful for.
And Bumper, once again, we've got to go, but thank you very much for being with us today.
Great program.
Thank you, guys.
Appreciate it.
And I want to thank our viewership today for joining us.