Tonight on Adam vs. the Man with Adam Kokesh: It's the first ever episode of Adam vs. The Man in front of a live studio audience as Adam takes the show on the road to Porcfest in Lancaster, New Hampshire.
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| Ladies and gentlemen, I'm very honored to be joined by our next guest, two of my most important philosophical mentors in developing my own ideas about liberty, who have been most influential on me. | |
| First, ladies and gentlemen, give it up for Ernie Hancock of freedomsphoenix.com. | |
| When I was actually running for office as a Republican, Ernie was the -- Uh-oh. | |
| Tough crowd! Ernie was a big supporter of mine and a big supporter of that campaign. | |
| And I always tell people, if Ernie's still in my corner, you know I haven't compromised on the philosophy an inch. | |
| And I'm grateful to still have him supporting me and supporting the show. | |
| But... We're also joined by someone of an extreme, strident, philosophical grounding. | |
| You might know him from freedomainradio.com, the most popular philosophy conversation on the internet, Stefan Molyneux. | |
| Now, these gentlemen have a slightly different perspective Maybe that's putting it mildly. | |
| I hope that's putting it mildly so we can have an interesting discussion about this here in terms of political engagement. | |
| Now, let's start with Stefan. | |
| You've been critical of Ron Paul as not just a candidate for the presidency, but of the idea of engaging in the political process in electoral politics. | |
| Why would you say that? | |
| Well, first, it's not against Ron Paul as an individual, nice guy, great writer, and a good educator. | |
| But, no, look, philosophically, the state is an immoral and criminal enterprise. | |
| And you do not get into an immoral and criminal enterprise in order to turn it into something better. | |
| I mean, if we believe that this is possible, let's join a local street gang and try to turn them into charity workers. | |
| Let's join the mafia and try and turn them into the United Way. | |
| And let's start with something small, not the biggest, most monstrous, tentacle, Government that the world has ever seen. | |
| So no, I think it's not possible. | |
| If we look at him as someone who can educate people, yeah, education is good. | |
| I think there's better ways to do it. But if we think that you can go into the belly of the beast and come out a knight in shining armor, I think that is a fantasy. | |
| Liberty activists for 150 years have been trying to get into the government and turn it to virtue. | |
| I think we've got to be a little bit more self-critical about our approach and start looking for other alternatives to political action. | |
| Did you vote in the last election? | |
| Oh, I haven't voted since I had hair. | |
| It's been a while. | |
| I know. Now, Ernie, before we get into your Ron Paul activism, do you still vote? | |
| No. Why not? | |
| Because I know better. I haven't voted since 2002, and usually you go to vote and it's like a check-off box. | |
| You picked up eggs, you know, you dropped off the kids at school, I voted, and you feel a little bit better. | |
| When you check off the box and you felt dirty, I trust my instincts, you know, I go, this is bad. | |
| So the Ron Paul revolution, the love-olution, was not an endorsement of the system. | |
| And quite frankly, not even Ron Paul. | |
| It was Ron Paul's message. | |
| We knew how many minds were going to get infected with this message. | |
| So that was the passion behind it. | |
| Any of you around the country that I traveled all over the place, you never heard me saying anything about voting. | |
| Now, that came from them. | |
| You know, my thing was for you to be able to express yourself. | |
| And I'm much more with Stefan than people think. | |
| You know, I just understand that there's a pathway to Stefan. | |
| That it's such a big, giant wall they have to climb, I'm just helping with some ladders, man. | |
| You know, they're getting it. | |
| So is that really the purpose of this? | |
| Because you don't put up signs that say, vote Ron Paul, and I've noticed this, but for those of you that don't know this about Ernie Hancock, all of the Ron Paul Levolution stencil spray paint Tyvek signs that you saw during the Ron Paul campaign in 2008, if not made by Him and his crew out of Phoenix, Arizona, at least it was a technique developed by him and exported by him throughout the movement and popularized. | |
| And he supplied activists throughout the country with Ron Paul Loveolution signs. | |
| Can we get a round of applause for that? | |
| There were home school kids from 9 to 19 that I saw one over two day period make 300 signs. | |
| You know, they do it themselves. | |
| It's just I remember because I'm one of the old guys. | |
| And I remember when I was your age, you know, a lot of the younger people here, and I knew what inspired me. | |
| And it wasn't somebody telling me where to go pass out something and how to vote and call somebody and robo-dial. | |
| That was not it. | |
| It was how many minds you could free to the idea that you own yourself. | |
| And if you don't own yourself, then, I don't know, somebody else does. | |
| And I vote nobody else does. | |
| And that's why I'm so supportive of, you know, I got a Roe Stefan and I can't say anything bad. | |
| No, look, political power is like that ring in Lord of the Rings, right? | |
| Ron Paul's got a little piece of that. | |
| Yeah, but you don't say, you know, we're going to join Soren's army and take him down from the inside. | |
| No, you take that ring, you put it in the mountain. | |
| That's what you do. You put it in the fire. | |
| You get rid of it. You don't try and work it. | |
| The libertarian movement, we're the hobbits. | |
| We don't want to wear the ring. | |
| We want to chuck it in the fires of Mordor. | |
| So I understand the concept of not wanting to be a slave, but you also have to understand the concept that you can't be a master. | |
| And these guys, oh, they don't want to give that one up. | |
| Well, hold on, Stefan. You know, the Ron Paul Levolution signs we saw going up actually internationally. | |
| I know you're in Canada. How come you weren't putting up Ron Paul Levolution signs in Canada to help spread the message? | |
| I think I gave my answer to that. | |
| Well, yeah, because I just don't think that, look, there's lots of alternatives. | |
| I come from an annoying entrepreneurial background where if you do stuff that doesn't work for long enough at some point, unlike the government, you have to say, let's look at what we're doing and see if we can change it. | |
| There's lots of other ways of changing the world of getting rid of the state. | |
| Other than political action. | |
| We're trying to put someone at the top to strip it down. | |
| Not going to happen. Too many people invested. | |
| Too many people sucking off that government teat. | |
| Right? It's not going to work. But what we can do is recognize that political power is something that is kept aloft by the belief of the masses. | |
| And we can attack that belief and we can criticize that belief. | |
| We can undermine that belief horizontally. | |
| We don't have to worry about political power. | |
| Or engage in a way as Ernie does in the political process to reach them. | |
| Oh, if you can, yeah, and certainly, look, Ron Paul, I get emails every day saying, well, if it wasn't for Ron Paul, I'd never heard of you. | |
| But, absolutely, I understand that. | |
| But, like, the challenge with critical thinking is to look at the unseen, right? | |
| So, yeah, Ron Paul has brought a lot of people into libertarianism, no question. | |
| Has he driven other people out? | |
| Yeah, no question. | |
| He's got some religious fundamentalism that is less appealing to other people. | |
| And does he get people stuck in that last exit before voluntarism called political action? | |
| Like, there's one last exit. | |
| The people who walk that exit, it's like they didn't come back. | |
| All right, all right. All right, no, I'm sorry. | |
| That's all the time we got for the Valentine's Day. | |
| Oh! The after part. | |
| Stay in for the roast. | |
| Stay in for the roast. Now you got it. | |
| We'll host Stephon Molyneux later tonight. |