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Sept. 12, 2023 - Viva & Barnes

01:45:35

Sidebar with Dave Smith - from Comedy to Politics, and Everything in Between - Viva Frei Live!

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Time	Text
	Because we have to start with a good laugh for a show that is going to have a number of good laughs, let's start with Dr. Theresa Tam.
	This is out of Canada and it's recent.
	Okay.
	This is out of Canada.
	Yes, that is Canada's chief medical officer wearing a mask because it's 2023 and the studies have not yet been definitive enough.
	With today's authorization, NACI is reaffirming its guidance on the use of COVID-19 vaccines this fall.
	NACI recommends authorized age groups get an updated COVID-19 vaccine dose this fall.
	You're not having an audible hallucination.
	She's not saying Nazi.
	She's saying Nazi.
	Because in Canada, they had the great idea of when they're going to experiment on human beings to do it through the National Auto...
	Oh, jeez.
	What was it, NACI?
	The national...
	Oh, jeez.
	It's N-A-C-I.
	National...
	I'll get it in a second.
	She's not saying NACI.
	She's saying NACI, but it might come to the same.
	Six months after the last vaccine dose or infection, we will have enough supply of the updated COVID-19 vaccines to support immunization programs across Canada.
	Updated.
	Just like 2.0.
	Vaccines 2.0.
	It's the National Advisory Committee on Immunization.
	NACI.
	Sorry, it's NACI.
	The Omicron variant continues to evolve, with XBB sub-variants such as EG.5 continuing to circulate in Canada and globally.
	Can't do it.
	That's all.
	That's all we're getting.
	And whenever I hear them talk about a variant that ends in a.5, I see Jimmy Fallon.
	All right.
	Speaking of unfunny comedians, we have a funny comedian on today.
	Not just funny.
	Insightful, intelligent.
	Wildly more informed than I would dare say 98% of politicians out there.
	Dave Smith comedy.
	If you don't, everybody knows who he is.
	I'm sort of excited.
	Geeking out a little bit that Dave Smith, I see him right now in backstage.
	Barnes is there with a shirt that says hush hush and he's got a cigar in his mouth.
	It's going to be an amazing show.
	I am drinking whiskey out of the wanted for president mugs that we have sent.
	It's amazing and I'm drinking freedom whiskey because We're gonna talk freedom tonight, or the lack thereof.
	All right, Dave Smith is in the crowd.
	I think I might, I must be forgetting something.
	Let me just make sure that we're live everywhere.
	We are live on Rumble.
	We're live on Locals.
	Bringing in the guest.
	I'm gonna bring in, no, I'm gonna bring in the guest.
	Okay, Dave, bringing you in.
	Three, two, one.
	Robert, sir, bringing you in.
	I don't wanna put myself on the bottom so that when I put a comment over my face, it will only block me.
	Gentlemen, how goes your respective battles?
	It's going good, man.
	What's up, everybody?
	Thanks for having me here.
	This is long overdue.
	I know a lot of people are excited for us to all do this.
	Well, I mean, we're going to tackle the madness of the world.
	I mean, I think everybody watching knows very well who you are.
	But Dave, just in case they are new to the Internet, who are you before we get into childhood?
	Because we're getting into childhood.
	Oh, no.
	All right.
	I'm Dave.
	I'm a stand-up comedian and a podcaster.
	And yeah, that's me.
	I'm going to get into this.
	You're born and raised in New York, right?
	Yes.
	Yes, sir.
	I know from some podcasts.
	Did you have an interesting childhood growing up?
	Yeah, I think so.
	I mean, I don't know.
	I don't know if I had an interesting childhood.
	I think I had a somewhat typical childhood for someone who was born in the 80s in Brooklyn.
	That was kind of what we all did.
	By today's standards, I think, yes, it's pretty interesting.
	What did your parents do?
	My mother is a psychologist.
	And my father, we were never quite sure.
	What he did.
	He was a strange fellow.
	Your dad was around growing up?
	Or were your parents divorced?
	Yeah, they got divorced when I was like three years old.
	And my dad was...
	I wouldn't describe him as around.
	That's not the term I would use.
	Which part of Brooklyn did you grow up in?
	I grew up in Park Slope.
	And then Prospect Heights.
	So, like, that area.
	What was that like in the 80s?
	Well, okay, I lived in a lot of different places.
	Like, we moved a lot.
	So, I lived in...
	I mean, so, I lived with...
	My parents, when I was first born, we lived in, like, Brooklyn Heights.
	And then we lived on 8th Avenue in Brooklyn.
	And then I moved to 5th Street.
	And then to 12th Street.
	And then to 11th Street.
	And then to 5th Street.
	And then to Sterling Place.
	And I think I'm missing one in there.
	Besides, I moved like eight or nine different times.
	But it was always very close within that neighborhood.
	So we kind of moved around that area.
	So I don't, you know.
	I grew up all around.
	So anyway, what was it like?
	It kind of depended on what block you were on, like how it was.
	Brooklyn was a more like, it's not what you think of Brooklyn today, if you think of like hipster Brooklyn or something like that.
	It wasn't like that at all.
	It was more like, it was like, you know, block parties.
	And opening fire hydrants on hot days and, like, all the kids, like, running around.
	There was a lot of just, like, being outside with kids where the adults would just, like, kind of kick you out of the house and you just went out and dealt with, you know, like the other kids.
	So it was a very...
	I think it was cool.
	I liked how I...
	My childhood in Brooklyn.
	But I think it was a very different world than what my kids are growing up in.
	Let me ask you this.
	When you moved around that much, I gotta ask you, why?
	Is that a New York thing to get a good apartment or to move to another apartment?
	Or is it for jobs?
	Why would anyone move that many times in their life?
	I mean, I think it was things like...
	Well, we moved when my parents got divorced.
	And then...
	We moved to, like, so we moved into another place, and then we moved to, like, okay, there's a slightly better apartment, you know, and then my mother was, like, dating a guy who lived on that block, and then they broke up, so we moved again, and then they got back together, so then we moved again into a place with them together, and then they got married, and so then we moved into a, we actually had, like, a house where they were together, and, you know, it was, like, things like that, like, you know.
	It wasn't like jobs changing.
	It was just like who my mom was dating changed.
	Let me ask you this, and this might be my own biases or life experience.
	Your mom's a psychologist.
	Mm-hmm.
	Is she crazy or is she a sane psychologist?
	No, she's sane.
	I mean, you know, she was a little crazy back then.
	She got a lot.
	She got a lot saner as she grew older.
	My mom was young when she had us.
	This was like her in her 20s, you know?
	So it was, you know, I didn't have kids until I was like in my 30s.
	And there's a big difference, I think.
	So she was a little bit crazy in those days.
	But she's, my mother's like totally brilliant, like incredibly smart.
	And a really great mom.
	Was always a really great mother to me.
	Part of it was being young and being in some wild situations.
	She's a great psychologist, I think.
	Genuinely great.
	Things were a little wild back in the day.
	My experience with psychiatrists, and especially psychiatrists, they tend to be the craziest of people on Earth.
	There's something to that, for sure.
	You said us, so siblings?
	Yeah, I have an older sister, and then I have a younger brother who was, he's my, I mean, technically my half-brother, but he's a brother to me, but he's my baby brother.
	He was 13 years younger than me.
	So all those days I'm talking about was me and my sister.
	Now, it sounds like the way you're describing New York was also, was Brooklyn a little bit more working middle class than it is to that part of Brooklyn is today?
	Gentrified.
	Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	No, it was like, it was all, I mean, I don't even know, like, working class might have been too kind of a term.
	Like, there was a lot of people there who I think weren't working at all.
	It was, no, Brooklyn back then was much more like, it was much more rough, for sure.
	And it was not, it wasn't even upper middle class.
	I don't think I knew anyone upper middle class until I was like a little bit older.
	No, back then it was very much like a very working class environment.
	Fist fights were just happening on the streets.
	And if you went back to your parents and were like, hey, this guy just punched me in the mouth, their attitude would be like, well, what'd you do?
	So it was that type of environment.
	Let me ask a question that's been driving me crazy and I couldn't find an answer online.
	Smith is your last name.
	Your real last name?
	Yes.
	That's your dad's last name?
	That is my father's last name, yes.
	And I'm Canadian, so the wife doesn't take the husband's last name.
	Did your mom take your dad's last name?
	She...
	No.
	Maybe when they were married, maybe she did for a little bit.
	But then she went back to her maiden name after they got divorced.
	To what degree?
	You talked about how different it is culturally for kids.
	Back then, you grew up on the streets as much as you grew up in the homes.
	Now, the whole safe space culture arguably started with the whole kidnapping scares in the mid-late 90s.
	Now, kids have to go out on play dates.
	It's got to be organized.
	In West Virginia, there was a case where they went after a mother because she let her kid play out in the streets.
	How much do you think that I'm always curious why some people have independence of thought and some people just don't.
	Some people question authority, some people always assume authority is true.
	What do you attribute your upbringing in part to that?
	Yeah, that's an interesting question.
	And I don't know, I mean, like, I've read about, like, what you're talking about, like, those kidnapping scares and how it changed kind of, like, the culture into, like, the helicopter parent culture.
	And if I'm being completely honest, I mean, I got two little kids and I'm kind of a helicopter parent.
	Like, I'm not just, like, letting them out on the streets.
	And I think a lot of the way I grew up, there's no, I couldn't imagine.
	Raising my kids that way.
	Like, that's just not happening.
	I'm not just, like, sending my kids out to just go rumble on the streets.
	That's never going to happen.
	I don't know, man.
	I don't know what to attribute it to.
	I know all of this happened with me, and I am where I am now.
	So I don't know if it's, like, genetics or it was my experiences.
	I do know that it definitely shaped me a lot that, you know, dealing with...
	That environment.
	Dealing with, like, just being told, like, oh, no, you're, like, you gotta leave the house.
	And then there being scary elements outside of the house.
	And then just having to figure that out in this kind of Lord of the Flies situation with other kids.
	I don't know, though.
	There was always something.
	I feel like there was always something in me as far back as I can remember.
	Where I always kind of had an attitude of questioning authority.
	Like if teachers or whoever had a rule, always being like, no, I think that rule's bullshit.
	I don't believe that.
	I remember that from a very young age.
	And so I don't know.
	I don't know whether it was nurture or nature.
	I don't know exactly what instilled that in me.
	But definitely all of that happened.
	Dave, what I'm going to do, I'm going to end this on YouTube.
	It's not going to change anything on our end.
	We're just going to go exclusive to Rumble.
	Everyone has a link.
	Head on over there because we're leaving YouTube in 3, 2, 1. So growing up, questioning authority and also talking about your respective, like our respective childhoods.
	My parents, I'm the youngest of five, so they let me take the bus alone when I was in grade three to go to school.
	Now, it was either a different world or our perspective of it was different.
	And as you get to be a parent, you get a little more neurotic with your first kids.
	And then with your third kids, you're like, You know, survive or don't.
	When you're questioning adults as a kid, are you getting into trouble at school?
	Are you deemed the rebellious, troublemaking kid?
	Or does the family, does the environment welcome that type of, what's the word, challenging authority attitude?
	I was always getting in trouble.
	Everywhere I was, I was always getting in trouble.
	And I don't know.
	No, that wasn't exactly welcomed at home.
	But I also think my mother was, you know, she was like a single mother who was working crazy hours.
	So there just wasn't that much of a, you know, she was tired and dealing with a lot of shit.
	So it was kind of just like, whatever, like, like, try to make this as much of not a headache for me as possible.
	You know, she didn't like that part.
	She would, my mother, which I'll always be really grateful to her for, she always kind of had this ethic where she had my back, whatever it was, to the outside world.
	No matter what it was, she had my back.
	And then when we got home...
	She'd be furious at me.
	There were a lot of things like that.
	She'd go into meetings because there was always meetings.
	My entire life in school, the whole thing was meetings.
	I'm called in with the principal and a teacher and my mom and me.
	My entire school experience was that.
	Dave did this and he cursed out a teacher or he did this or some other thing and she'd always be right there and she'd have my back in those meetings.
	So hardcore.
	And I'd be like, yeah!
	My mom's got this.
	Hell yeah.
	And then we'd go home and I'd be like, that was so awesome how you had my back in that meeting.
	And she'd be like, what are you doing?
	You're fucking up at everything.
	And then she'd be pissed off at me at home.
	So I was never good in any of the confined situations that kids are in.
	I just never did good in school.
	I never liked it.
	I never liked the whole thing of like...
	You're forced to be here.
	You're forced to read this book.
	You're forced to listen to this teacher who's the authority figure.
	I was always rebelling against that shit.
	None of that was for me.
	With those public schools, how far did you go through the educational system?
	I did both public and private school.
	I was at PS107 in Brooklyn, and then I went to Berkeley Carroll.
	Which was like a private school.
	Like a nice private school.
	Which my mom was able to get...
	My father, who wasn't super present, but he ended up...
	He coughed up the money, ultimately, to go to that school.
	Because I was just doing real bad in the public school.
	So I was in both of them.
	And yeah, in both of them, it was a similar situation.
	I didn't do good.
	PS107 is not PlayStation.
	What does that stand for?
	I think Public School 107.
	It's New York.
	They number their schools.
	Yeah, they number them.
	And it was crazy, like, you know, not that it was even, like, I think it was probably ranked, like, middle-of-the-road public school.
	It wasn't, like, the worst public school, but it was, like, it was an environment where, like, you know, there were fistfights that would happen.
	I remember going, I was real soft when I first went to PS107, and that school kind of made me tougher.
	But I remember the first day I was there, this kid, this kind of fat Mexican kid, told me he was going to beat the shit out of me in the bathroom.
	And I was like, well, joke's on you, because I'm going to tell a teacher.
	And it was like, so we'll see how this goes.
	And I remember going to the teacher, and like very confidently.
	Going to the teacher and being like, excuse me, Hector says he's going to beat me up in the bathroom, so you're going to want to go deal with that.
	And the teacher, this nasty fucking woman, she goes, go to the bathroom now!
	I was like, whoa, wait, what?
	And they would force you to go to the bathroom.
	It was like this line where they forced you all to go in there, whether you had to go to the bathroom or not.
	And I was like, I'm about to get the shit beaten out of me in this bathroom.
	And then it just didn't happen.
	Like, he just wasn't there when I was there or whatever.
	But I remember that being like a wake-up call.
	It was the first day I was in the school.
	And I was like, oh, some kid could tell you he's going to beat you up.
	And you could tell the teacher.
	And the teacher's like, yeah, go get beat up, bitch.
	Like, what are you going to, you know?
	And so I was like, oh, okay.
	That's really what.
	And it was just like that.
	Like, the whole time there.
	Kids fought.
	Kids, you know, like, the teachers didn't care.
	They were just awful, awful teachers at this public school.
	I thought the punchline was going to be, jokes on you, Hector.
	I'm not going to the bathroom at school anymore, and I'll hold it until I get home.
	No, they wouldn't let you.
	You had to go.
	Even if you didn't go to the bathroom, you had to go into the bathroom.
	But that might be my first ever truly libertarian experience, was realizing how awful these public school teachers were.
	Just horrible, Horrible people.
	I mean genuinely awful people.
	These teachers were abusive to kids, both verbally and physically.
	I remember my third grade teacher at PS107, Joyce, was her first name.
	I can't remember her last name.
	But if you're out there listening, I'm talking about you.
	Someone go do the research and find this woman.
	So we had the...
	What was it?
	Shit.
	It was like they had like citywide I think they called them.
	Like citywide tests.
	Like the standardized tests or whatever that you took.
	And she gave us all the answers.
	She would literally, because they were judged on how good the scores were.
	So it was third grade, so they would still, like, it was multiple choice, but the teacher would read the answers, and then you were supposed to fill out one of those circles.
	You remember on the, like, long, like, sheets with all the, you know, ABCD, like, answers?
	And she would just go, she would go, you know, is it A5?
	B, 7, C, 10. And that was her thing, that she would accentuate what the correct answer was.
	And I remember there was this one kid in the class who didn't get it.
	He didn't get that she was accentuating the right answer.
	And at a certain point, she's right in his face and she goes, you're not understanding.
	Is it A, I?
	B-7-C-10!
	And she's yelling at him.
	And I remember just being aware at the time.
	We were like, yo, this chick is cheating for us.
	Like, she's intentionally...
	Like, the message that you were sending to little kids was just so horrible.
	Like, it's just like, she's cheating.
	And I already understood at that age in third grade.
	Whatever age you are in third grade.
	Where I was like, oh, she's cheating because it's better for her job if we do good on this.
	Like, she doesn't really care if we learn any of this shit.
	She cares if she's not in trouble for what the results of this are.
	Because she was just a shit teacher, you know?
	And there's tons of teachers like that.
	Tons of them.
	Well, that's what struck.
	Like, you see this sort of talking point from politicians that has at least faded a little bit.
	But you saw it from, like, Asa Hutchinson during the Republican debate.
	Where it's like, we have to give more to our teachers, and God bless our teachers, and our teachers are so wonderful.
	I always wanted to write an alternative to Fulgham's book about everything I needed to learn.
	I learned in kindergarten, all that sappy stuff.
	It's like, yeah, I did.
	I get randomly dropped off with a random stranger I've never met before, who if I don't do whatever they tell me, play when I'm told to play, stay when I'm told to stay, go to the bathroom until the bathroom, first they deprive you of pleasure.
	No fruit punch for you.
	No cookies for you.
	No socialization for you.
	And in my day, then they inflict the pain.
	These days, there'd be social isolation.
	My day, they beat you.
	I had a first grade teacher who spanked me for hiding the vegetables because I hated the vegetables and this little rat ratted me out in the school.
	And then I didn't know how to tie my shoes in first grade.
	So she beat me for that.
	It's like the truth of everything I did about authority.
	I did learn in kindergarten.
	I did learn early in school about how random it can be, how abusive it can be, how it will deprive you of pleasure and inflict pain upon you if you don't do whatever they tell you whenever they tell you, regardless of the reason or the logic of it.
	And this is so crazy.
	You know, it's funny because people will be, if I talk about homeschooling my kids or something like that, people will be like, well, that's kind of crazy.
	And I'm like, but isn't this kind of crazy?
	Isn't that, like, pretty wild to throw your kid in that environment?
	And that's, like, what I think a lot of, like, what my views are, and I think a lot what a lot of people are waking up to today is that it's kind of like they'll be like, whatever it is, like, even like, you know, I'm an anarchist or whatever, and people will be like, well, isn't that crazy?
	Isn't that crazy to think, like, we could have no government?
	And I'm like, yeah, but aren't, like, fighting world wars crazy?
	Isn't that pretty crazy?
	Like, what are we judging this off?
	There's so much that we just take as like, well, that's what we do.
	That's the norm.
	You know, we're just, yeah, you know, human beings go on mass murder campaigns every now and then, and we just, like, slaughter innocent people because that's just kind of what it's always been like.
	And I'm like, well, I don't think we should do any of that.
	And they're like, that's a little radical, dude.
	You're kind of out there.
	It's very bizarre.
	And so there's a lot of things in my childhood.
	I don't begrudge my parents at all.
	Even my father, who is not a good dad to me, I don't begrudge him at all.
	I think he was a product of his childhood.
	But I do look at it and go, yeah, for my kids, I'm going to reimagine this and think about what I actually think is the best.
	Situation for them to grow up in and not just be like, well, this is the way it is, so we throw them into that.
	Because I do think it's, there were some things in my childhood that were pretty wild that, like, I don't know if that's what I'd want for them.
	Now that you mention it, I wasn't going to ask, but you opened the door.
	Do you have a relationship with your father now?
	No.
	We haven't talked in 20 years?
	Something like that?
	As in, like, not talked, talk, not a word, not a call, not an email, not nothing.
	He reached out to me in 2008, maybe.
	Something like that.
	And that was the last contact we had.
	I think he wrote me a letter.
	My dad, weirdly, had all of his money with Bernie Madoff.
	And lost it all.
	Oh, I was going to say, did he get out at the right time or not?
	No, no, no, no.
	He did not.
	And he didn't have a lot of money like that.
	It was like a couple hundred thousand dollars.
	Maybe he had like two, three hundred thousand dollars or something like that.
	But it was like with Bernie Madoff.
	And he...
	Like a friend of the family knew this guy.
	And my dad used to always brag about him.
	He always called him Madoff.
	He didn't call him Madoff.
	He'd always say, he goes, look, I got all my money with this guy Madoff.
	And Madoff is the best because he gives you 30% on your money.
	So whatever, you know, you were invested, you got 30% interest on your money.
	And my mom always went, this is a scheme.
	This doesn't make sense.
	Something shady is going on.
	Like she was always like, she knew.
	Even way back in the day, she knew.
	She goes, this is bullshit, and it's going to all disappear.
	Like, this doesn't make any sense.
	No one gets you 30% on your money or whatever it was, something like that.
	And then it just blew up that Bernie Madoff, like the guy my dad had been talking about all these years, was the biggest Ponzi scheme in history, you know, short of the U.S. government.
	But the biggest Ponzi scheme in history, and he lost everything.
	This is already years after we hadn't been talking.
	And then he reached out to me because I think he knew I had been doing comedy a little bit.
	And so he reached out to me and he was like, hey, what's going on with you?
	So anything happened in your way?
	And I just didn't respond.
	But my dad was a real crazy, toxic person.
	And it was already clear to me at that point we just couldn't really have a relationship.
	And also, there's no judgment in this where I think, unfortunately, even with blood relatives sometimes, cutting the connection is the least damaging of the alternatives.
	And when you say you forgive him, that's, I perceive, to be an adult digestion of childhood trauma.
	What was it like growing up at the time with a father who's either not around?
	What resentment did you have at the time and how did that materialize in childhood?
	Oh, I mean, I was very angry at him for a long time.
	Very angry.
	But I think that as, you know, that is, like you said, it's like as becoming an adult, part of becoming an adult is like understanding that the idea of mom and dad don't really exist.
	And that they're just, they're people.
	You know what I mean?
	They're people just like you're a person.
	And especially today, it would just...
	It would seem ridiculous to me to be, like, angry at my dad.
	Like, dad is me.
	I'm the dad.
	You know what I mean?
	I'm not, like, I'm not the kid who's thinking about what dad did wrong.
	My job is, like, I'm the dad.
	And it's my job to be, like, taking care of my kids and taking care of my wife.
	So I just, I think as you get older, you kind of realize that, like, look, he was a product of what he went through.
	I'm to some degree a product of what I went through.
	And I choose to try to, you know, do things in a different way than he did.
	So I have nothing against him.
	I feel bad for him.
	And, like, I genuinely feel sorry.
	From my father.
	He's sentenced to the worst fate I could imagine.
	You know?
	He doesn't know his grandkids.
	Like, my kids are so amazing.
	Like, amazing little four-year-old and one-year-old.
	And he doesn't know them.
	And that's horrible, man.
	That, to me, that's worse than, like, a life sentence.
	If my kids had kids and I was not in their life, like...
	To me, that's worse than a life sentence of torture, an eternity sentence of torture.
	So I think it's sad and it's horrible, and I wish that wasn't the situation, but I'm not angry at him at all.
	And it just sometimes, like you kind of said, sometimes people are poisonous people.
	And you're like, I have to remove myself from this because it's only going to, you know, it's like someone drowning in quicksand and you're trying to pull them out of it and they're grabbing onto you and at a certain point you realize you're like, I'm not strong enough to pull you out of this quicksand and all that can happen here is you can pull me into this quicksand.
	So I kind of just, I just got to let go and that's, you know, it's sad and unfortunate but, you know, this is also, I've had time to deal with this and, you know.
	Come around, so that's what it is.
	Now, I've always wondered this in terms of raising your own kids.
	Like, when I study a lot of populist and rebellious figures across time, what's fascinating is their children tend not to share their same belief structures.
	Now, there's exceptions.
	Robert Kennedy Jr. is very much like his father in many respects.
	But in general, a lot of them are like...
	Huey Long's son, Russell Long, was more of an establishment figure.
	There's other examples like this.
	And what's interesting is when I dug in, a lot of what made them great rebels or populist or anti-authority figures or anti-conventional or anti-establishment was certain traumas they experienced in difficult childhoods in many respects.
	Disproportionately, a lot of populists had fathers that died young and things like this.
	And the reason why their kids are not is because they want to protect their child.
	From all the difficulties they experienced.
	But in the process of doing so, their kid ends up not having that same unique instinct that they had in part.
	Like, I used to joke with a buddy of mine.
	I was like, if we're really honest, we should probably, you know, throw the kids to the wolves and see which ones live.
	In the sense that that's going to, you know, the old Sparta method and see what that produces.
	And that probably produces a stronger person.
	But instinctually, as a protective parent, that's kind of insane.
	How do you balance that out?
	Well, I think with a lot of those kids, especially if their parents became very successful within that populist movement, the kids then grow up in this kind of lap of luxury, which is fine.
	Believe me, I want to provide as much luxury as I can for my kids.
	But I don't know.
	I would think that I'm...
	I'm very interested in, like, helping to develop my kids' minds.
	And, I mean, again, I have very little kids, you know?
	Like, my oldest is four.
	But already with her, like, we talk all the time.
	And I like to, like, kind of, like, take her through ideas.
	And then not just, like, me.
	It's not me, like...
	Like, imparting my ideas on her.
	It's more like me asking questions from her and trying to, like, help her, like, work through these problems and think about these things yourself.
	And then when she asks me questions, a lot of times what I try to do is say, well, here's what I think.
	What do you think about that?
	And kind of like, and I don't know.
	I mean, I don't know, but I like to think that you don't necessarily have to go through these, like, struggles.
	In order to come, you know, in order to develop critical thinking skills and things like that.
	So when I see, look, and maybe this is just like what I want to believe and this isn't actually correct, but a lot of times when I see stuff like that, when I see like a parent who was really like, you know, let's say was...
	Really questioning the regime of their time and really pointing out what was messed up and then the kid ends up just being kind of like a proponent of the regime.
	I go like, I don't know.
	Did you really do your job?
	I don't know if this is just that they didn't have a tough childhood.
	I think maybe the problem here is that you didn't actually get them to think about the things that you thought about.
	Maybe this is just idealistic of me, or it's just I don't want to believe that because I'm giving my kids a much better life than me, they're not going to be as, like, aware of this stuff.
	But I don't buy into that.
	I think that it's more that when things get easier, maybe it's easy to not have those conversations with your kids.
	And it's easy to not, you know what I mean, like, kind of push them to really think about all of these things.
	But I'm very committed to doing that with my kids.
	They're going to be different.
	That's the point.
	When is the right age to have them start reading the anarchist cookbook?
	The handbook?
	Cookbook?
	I'm not cooking anything for the handbook.
	How dare you?
	Michael Malice is spinning in his coffin that he sleeps in.
	I think it's the anarchist cookbook.
	That's what I had it as as a kid.
	Oh, cookbook.
	Oh, I'm sorry.
	I thought you were talking about Michael Malice.
	Either one works.
	We introduce him to the Michael Malice library.
	Well, maybe as a teenager or something like that.
	I don't know.
	I think it probably depends on the kid.
	You have to know your kid and how interested they are or not interested they are in these ideas.
	I've always said, like I mentioned earlier, I had a baby brother.
	He's 13 years younger than me, and he's 26 or 27 now.
	And I always kind of have the attitude with him, and I think this will be the attitude I have with my kids, where it's like, I'm not interested in indoctrinating him into what I believe.
	I'm not trying to, like, propagandize him into this.
	But I do insist that he knows what I believe, and he knows why I believe it.
	And I think that's reasonable.
	That it's like, I'm not saying, you don't have to agree with me.
	That's fine.
	But I do insist that you know what I believe and you know why I believe it.
	And what's happened with him, because I've had this attitude, is that he pretty much agrees with what I'm saying.
	And he's pretty, not everything, but he's pretty much like, oh yeah, okay, I get exactly what you're saying.
	And he's, you know, he's in, he's been going to a lot of these like kind of a, you know, he was in like an Ivy League fucking school and he's, you know, he's exposed to the crazy world that we live in and he's exposed to all of those ideas and that's fine with me, but I just insist that you're also going to be exposed to my ideas.
	And he recognizes that my ideas make a lot more sense than these ones do.
	And so that's kind of like my attitude that I have with my kids.
	I might be a little bit more protective of my kids than I am of my brother.
	But that it's like, you're going to know what I believe and why I believe it.
	Those are the rules, you know?
	And you're going to think.
	Those are the rules.
	That's it.
	It doesn't mean you have to agree with me.
	You can settle wherever you settle, but you are going to think, you're going to know what I believe, and you're going to read.
	Period.
	Those are the rules.
	It's not a bad rule.
	It's the open market of ideas.
	And just so long as you attempt to understand the why, you might even agree with it afterwards.
	My kid's public oratory competition speech that she gave in Arizona involved Andrew Tate.
	And I said, look...
	I think you might want to look more into Andrew Tate in terms of messaging as opposed to the oversimplified version that everyone sees on social media.
	But again, not imposing the ideas, but encouraging the free thought.
	But Dave, growing up, my father always said, look, your kids are going to remember only the things you never gave them and not the things you did give them.
	And now I see that with my own kids.
	And then the question is, how do you reconcile that reality with the responsibility of being a good parent, which means not giving them everything, when you know damn well the only thing they're going to remember is that which you didn't give them and hold it against you for the rest of your life?
	Huh.
	Well, that's an interesting way to put it.
	Okay.
	But that's all right.
	I mean, it's not...
	The goal isn't for them to remember you as the best, you know?
	The goal is for them to be in as good a place as they can be.
	So if you do that...
	And they're still resentful about the thing you didn't give them.
	That's okay.
	Maybe that's kind of natural.
	And hopefully they get to a point where they appreciate the things you gave them and don't just resent you for the things that you didn't.
	But that's okay.
	None of us are going to be perfect when we're raising kids.
	We're all going to make mistakes.
	And if they want to remember the mistakes you made...
	That's not necessarily the worst thing.
	Maybe that's good.
	The goal for me isn't that they remember me as the best.
	If they remember the things that I could have done better at, and then they can do a better job at that, then great.
	I think maybe the goal is really that I'm going to do a better job with my kids than my parents did with me, and I hope they do a better job with their kids than I did with them.
	So whatever gets to that, I'm okay with.
	In the current environment, what are you going to make in terms of educational decisions?
	This is a practical problem I think a lot of people face.
	Public schools are, in my view, no longer an option.
	Private schools, it's kind of hit or miss.
	That's affordable for some people, not for others.
	William F. Buckley was always homeschooled by a private tutor.
	Turned out okay for him.
	Not for the country, but I guess for him.
	Yeah, yeah.
	There's plenty of arguments.
	William F. Buckley's ideology, separate from his intellectual acumen.
	Yes, yes.
	Fair enough.
	So what do you think?
	When you're thinking, okay, they're going to be entering school age, not long, what are you going to do?
	Well, you know, my daughter is in a very nice little private preschool.
	Right now.
	And they're really good.
	You know, I'm such a critic of education or schooling in America.
	But preschool is like the one area that I actually think we get kind of right.
	And especially these very nice little preschools.
	They're like very...
	It's like super friendly and super play-based learning and all of that.
	And it's just very cute.
	And there's like seven kids in the class and two teachers.
	And they're great.
	This is a thing that I'm coming up against.
	It's...
	I think...
	Look, if you can do the homeschooling thing, I really think that is the answer.
	And nowadays, I think there's so many more options with how you homeschool.
	There's so many homeschool communities.
	The Ron Paul homeschool curriculum is something I highly recommend.
	I think that's the type of direction that my kids are going to go in.
	Like you said, I think public school is not an option.
	And in many cases, the private schools are worse than the public schools.
	But the idea that I would just never...
	And I'm fortunate.
	I'm in a situation where I make good money.
	And I'm kind of in a situation where I'm not where a lot of parents are today, but the idea that I'm going to let my kid in first, second, third grade allow them to be propagandized in this way, I genuinely feel like I don't have a right to do that.
	Like, I just, I can't do that.
	And there's, it'd be one thing, look, if you wanted to teach my kids about transgenderism when they're 17, I could get past that.
	Fine.
	I'll already have talked to them about this stuff and we can, fine.
	You expose them to that point of view and see if that makes more sense to them than the point of view that I expose them to.
	But the idea that you're going to get this in their head in the second grade is like, I just, I can't allow that.
	That's, I don't ever, I genuinely feel like there's no better way I can say this than I don't have a right to allow that.
	It's an interesting thing.
	My kids went to private school in Montreal, and they went to public school in Montreal as well, and public school here.
	And you can see the indoctrination.
	It happens ever so slowly.
	The kids come back from grade two at talking about Ukraine.
	And I say, why are you guys even talking about Ukraine?
	Like, why is that a subject of conversation in grade two?
	The other one who's in the oldest grade, I happen to have seen some of her classes during COVID.
	I'm like, why in a moral and religious education class are you talking about multiple genders of individuals?
	That's antithetical to religion.
	I don't mind those conversations Because we get into them at home because we have, you know, we get into thorough analytical conversations about this, even with the eight-year-old who says, why is Russia bad and Ukraine, you know, doing what they're doing to Ukraine?
	I don't mind that.
	I don't know if the alternative would be better homeschooling where they go crazy with their parents and end up hating their parents because they spend too much time together.
	So that's the balance.
	But Dave, okay, your kid's four years old now.
	In four or grade four?
	Four years old.
	Four years old, yeah.
	So you'll see.
	Are you in New York now as well?
	No, I got out of New York.
	I moved out in 2020.
	March of 2020.
	The very beginning of all this shit.
	I got the hell out of New York City.
	So I'm out in the country in New Jersey.
	Now, how much different is that, though?
	I don't imagine the country of New Jersey is much different than the city of New York.
	No, it is.
	It's drastically different.
	I mean, even though, like, I'm still, I'm in a blue state still, but I'm out, like, in the sticks now.
	So I'm, like, in, like, you know, it's a very conservative area where I am.
	So I'm in a conservative area of a blue state, whereas before I was in the bluest of blue areas in a blue state.
	So it is drastically different.
	Was it the pandemic politics that drove you out of New York City?
	Yeah, well, so basically, my wife is from the suburbs, and I was from New York City.
	And she was, like, around the time, I guess since we had our first kid, when my daughter was like six months old, we started having talks where she was like, look, I don't really want to raise her in the city.
	I want to have a house and a yard and all this stuff.
	And I want to kind of raise her more like the way I grew up.
	And I was kind of resistant to it.
	And I was kind of like, well, I mean, I'm from New York City.
	This is all I've ever known.
	And this is kind of where I want to live.
	And the more we would kind of talk about this, and I would acknowledge she was making a lot of points.
	You know, I was like, hmm, it might be nice to have a backyard.
	It might be nice to have, you know, a big house, and it might be nice to have some land, all this stuff.
	And so finally, we kind of concluded that, I think we made an agreement that we would do, I go, okay, fine.
	I'm not ready to leave yet.
	Let's do two more years in New York City, and then maybe we'll start looking.
	And then we just happened, we were renting this apartment on the Upper West Side of, a very nice apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
	And our lease happened to be ending in April of 2020.
	And then March of 2020 happened.
	And it was like right away, I got real spooked.
	And I very early on, like when it first, even before the lockdowns officially happened.
	I was, and you can find, there's tweets of mine and shit, and there's podcasts of mine where I was talking about this.
	But I was very much like, I saw the shelves start emptying.
	And I, at this point, had my, my daughter was like, excuse me, my daughter was like, she had turned one in December.
	So this is in March.
	So she was, you know, I don't know, whatever, 15 months or something like that old.
	And the shelves started emptying.
	And I was like, I'm not comfortable with this.
	And I said that I was like, I think there might be food shortages and riots.
	Like, I think all of this might happen.
	And so we left.
	And we left and we went to her parents' house out in New Jersey for a little bit.
	And while we were there, a few things happened.
	Her grandfather was also sick, so she wanted to go out there.
	But we went out there, and it was like the week we went out there, the world changed.
	Literally, it was like we went out there because her grandfather was sick, and I was a little bit worried about the food situation.
	And we went out there, and like two days later, the NBA got canceled for the year.
	And then, like, the next day after that, like, whatever, other things got canceled.
	Then Italy shut down completely.
	And then, like, it was like, and then we were out there for, like, five days.
	And by the time we were there, it was like, oh, New York City shut down.
	And we only had, like, a few weeks left on our lease, which I was planning on re-signing our lease.
	And then it was just like, well, what am I fighting for?
	To go re-sign this lease to stay here and then we're going to move anyway in a little bit?
	And I was like, you know what?
	Let's fuck it.
	Let's get out of the city for a little bit.
	And I rented this house out in a suburb of New Jersey.
	It was a very difficult challenge to find a moving company who would move us because it was like a crazy time.
	But we found one.
	They moved all of our stuff out there.
	And then we lived in this house.
	We were renting for a little bit.
	And then just last year, we bought a house out in the country of New Jersey.
	Where it's like, you know, like I own like a few acres out here and it's like a great community.
	Very, like, very, I'd say right-leaning and much more of an environment where, and as I experienced over the pandemic, it was much more of an environment where people just wanted to live normal life.
	And it's been kind of very eye-opening in a way over the last few years where I see that You know, look, I'm an anarchist libertarian.
	I don't agree with Republicans or Democrats.
	But over the last few years, if you're in an area that's mostly Republican, typically they were like, let's live a normal life and raise our kids in a normal way.
	And if you were like in a liberal Democrat area, they're like, hey, why is your two-year-old not in a mask?
	That's pretty, you know, like they're mad at you for that.
	And I'm like, wow, I'm not with you guys.
	I'm much more with these guys.
	It's amazing.
	Like, between the three of us, we have variations of the same, like, zeitgeist of life of hating school, hating authority.
	And you describe this, like, in the early days of the pandemic, I remember telling my wife, we need to get water, pasta, and canned tomato sauce, because we could live off that for a little while.
	And then she thought I was crazy, but she eventually, when she went to school, Dave, and they were doing the class play.
	In face masks after they grilled my 12-year-old daughter on whether or not she had her QR code for the vaccine passport so she could sit.
	I think it was either unmasked or attend because you had to have a...
	And then I was like, yeah, we got to get the hell out of here.
	And I'd been planting the seed.
	But Dave, we skipped a little bit.
	So the childhood that you have, how does one get into stand-up comedy?
	What do you study?
	How do you make that decision?
	How does it happen?
	And then...
	We'll get from the comedy to the libertarianism.
	When do you know that you're a libertarian?
	When do you get into your political side of things?
	How do you get from child to where you are now?
	Well, I don't know.
	Like, you know, Jerry Seinfeld said once, I remember this is like one of my favorite quotes he ever said, but someone asked him and they said, when you were a kid, like, were you the funny one?
	And he was like, we were all funny.
	And then everybody else got jobs.
	And I always thought that was the perfect, which is so true, right?
	We were all funny when we were kids.
	Who was the funny one?
	I don't know.
	We were all funny.
	And also, I mean, I knew kids who were funny ones who were just way funnier than me, but they never could have done stand-up comedy.
	You know what I mean?
	It's like a different kind of skill.
	There were kids I knew who were the funniest fucking kid, but I don't think he could stand up on a stage and explain to you.
	How funny he is.
	Like, I could do a better job of telling you how funny that kid was than he could have told you how funny he was.
	But so there was just that.
	And I, like, we were all funny.
	And then I, you know, I graduated high school, barely.
	I dropped out of college.
	And I just started, I got a job as this promotional company that was promoting comedy clubs.
	And I just started going to the comedy clubs.
	And with Luis J. Gomez, who's still to this day my best friend in the world, and me and him both started just going there, and then he started doing it, and then he kind of convinced me to start doing it, and he was just like, dude, you're like the funniest guy I know.
	You should start doing this too.
	So we started doing stand-up comedy, and I started in, I would say 2005, 2006, something like that.
	So I started doing stand-up comedy.
	And I started, like, I caught on to it pretty quickly.
	And I was kind of a natural at it.
	And so, like, I started doing that.
	And then it was in late 2007.
	I just happened to be watching.
	I wasn't really, like, a very political person.
	But I happened to be watching the Republican primary debates.
	And I saw it was the Ron Paul Giuliani moment.
	And I just happened to be watching live when that happened, very randomly.
	And Ron Paul in that moment just grabbed me.
	And I was like, whoa!
	Who the fuck is that guy?
	And I just thought it was so awesome what he did at that debate.
	If people aren't familiar with it, if you Google Ron Paul Giuliani moment, you'll see it.
	And so that just really grabbed me.
	And then I was just like, I want to know more about this guy.
	And I just started like, you know, it was like this was like right at the beginning of like the Internet and YouTube and all this stuff.
	And so I just started like, you know, Googling him and YouTubing and listening to all of his speeches and then, you know, getting his books and reading all his books.
	And then I'd start hearing all the people who he kept mentioning.
	And then, you know, if you like.
	If you YouTube him or Google him at the time, you'd get these other people who pop up.
	So it was like Tom Woods and Peter Schiff.
	And then I keep hearing Tom Woods, who's like, I was like, whoa, this Tom Woods guy is incredible.
	And he'd keep talking about Murray Rothbard.
	So then I was like, oh, I got to go read Murray Rothbard.
	And then I just kind of like went down the rabbit hole from there and there and there and just started reading all of these guys.
	But so that was kind of like my path into all of this.
	So you were what New York Times would call a victim of the dangerous radicalization.
	Yes, I got radicalized.
	I got radicalized into the dangerous reactionary right-winger Nazis whose message is don't initiate violence against anybody.
	Those dastard Nazis.
	Now, how did you and Michael Malice meet up?
	Oh, I met Michael like years later.
	I met Michael Malice through Tom Woods.
	So Tom Woods became one of my guys who I just loved.
	And I just consumed everything he had ever written or said.
	I just thought he was so brilliant.
	And I learned so much from him.
	And then me and him became friends.
	Like reached out.
	Online and stuff.
	I did a show a couple times and then he was doing a debate with Michael Malice.
	They were doing a debate that I think was like a Thomas Jefferson versus Hamilton debate.
	Who was the better founding father type thing?
	And Tom invited me out to it.
	And I went there.
	Or they asked me to do, I did like a stand-up set to open up further debate.
	So I did that and Michael Malice liked my stand-up.
	And Malice is like the most like, dude, he's a fucking cold human being, man.
	But he's like this incredible genius.
	But he decides within like three seconds of meeting you.
	Whether, like, you're in or you're out.
	That's, like, him.
	And I really think, I think it was the first joke I did, and he liked it.
	I mean, he went, he's in.
	And that was just, like, and then he just liked me.
	And then me and him, like, ever since then, this is, man, 2015 or something like that.
	But ever since then, it was like we were friends.
	Like, it was like one thing he heard.
	And I know Malice, and he'll admit this.
	If I, like, you know, like...
	Twisted his arm into admitting this.
	If that first joke had been bad, he'd have been like, screw this guy.
	And we never would have been friends.
	But the first joke was good.
	I don't know what it was, but it was good.
	And he went, all right, he's in.
	And then we've been great friends ever since.
	I have a feeling Michael Malice didn't like me, or I had a feeling he didn't like me based on a tweet exchange we had.
	And I was very self-conscious about it.
	And we met in person.
	I think maybe he might not dislike me now.
	But funny you should mention that.
	But also, Dave.
	Talking about Malice being a cold bastard.
	Am I wrong in thinking that to be a good stand-up comedian, part of you has to be very insensitive to the responses or the natural human reflexes to your jokes.
	If you're going to go up and make jokes that are at somebody's expense, do you not have to turn off that part of your conscience that feels a little bit bad for the person that you are making jokes at the expense of?
	You don't necessarily have to turn it off, but you have to be okay with With it not going the way you want it to.
	You have to make your peace with the fact that people may not like this.
	So it's a little bit of a middle ground there.
	But you have to at least go, okay, I'm going to do this and this guy may not like this at all and I'm okay with that.
	That's kind of where you have to be.
	How did the podcast start up?
	I mean, I have two podcasts.
	I do Legion of Skanks and I do Part of the Problem.
	Say that again.
	Legion of Skanks.
	The Legion of Skanks.
	It's not what you think.
	If you're not aware, it's not what you think it is.
	A lot of people think it's sexist.
	If you listen to it, it's mostly racist.
	But it's...
	It's...
	Legion of Skanks is me, Luis J. Gomez, and Big Jay Oakerson, and we're just doing the most offensive comedy podcast imaginable.
	We started doing that just because we were like, you know, we were just doing stand-up, and we were all great friends, and podcasts started kind of happening, and we were like, we should do a podcast, and that's just what came out of that.
	And then I started doing part of the problem just because I was, like, obsessively reading.
	I was in this very weird space where I was doing stand-up comedy.
	I was making just enough money at stand-up comedy to, like, get by.
	So, like, I didn't have a day job.
	And I was obsessed with, like, with politics and libertarianism.
	And so every day I was just, I was obsessively reading.
	Everything I could get my hands on that was, like, everything.
	Everything from Ron Paul and Murray Rothbard and Ludwig von Mises and Lou Rockwell and Hans-Hermann Hoppe and Tom Woods and all these guys.
	I was just reading everything I could get my hands on.
	And, I mean, to the point that, and I was broke.
	You know, like, I was just getting by.
	Like, I used to go, I used to print out, because at Mises, at the Mises Institute website, the Mises.org, they have, like, free books on PDF files.
	I used to print them, because I couldn't fucking go buy books, because, you know, I would print them and just be reading them out at night.
	Like, it was crazy.
	I was just, like, wildly obsessed with this shit.
	And so I was doing that, and just, you know, and I just...
	I almost like I had to like vent this.
	Like I was reading all the stuff and I was so obsessed with it.
	I was like, it was almost like therapy for me.
	Like I need to like do something.
	I need to talk about this.
	And then a bunch of people convinced me to start the podcast.
	I will say the two people who really convinced me were Louis J. Gomez and Nate Bargatze, who is, Nate now is like a famous comedian.
	If you don't know him, he's incredible.
	Like one of the best comedians in the world and one of the best, Human beings I've ever met in my life.
	Just an unbelievable person.
	But he was like the guy, because me and him used to talk a lot, and he was like, dude, you need to do this, dude.
	You got to start a podcast and go do it and just talk all this stuff you're talking about.
	And he was, yeah, that's Nate.
	He was younger and fatter in the time I'm talking about.
	I did notice a couple of pictures as I was looking that up.
	He's gotten it together.
	Money has done well for Nate.
	But back then, he was broke and fat.
	But he's a great person.
	And so I just started doing the podcast.
	Just to kind of like...
	It was almost just like, it was therapy.
	It was like, I have to tell this to someone and I can't just be telling this to all my friends and family because this is just going to piss them off.
	So let me talk about this.
	And I just started doing it and it just kind of started growing and growing and growing and then it just became what it was.
	And then I just, you know, through doing comedy and doing the podcast, like I met people and I became good friends with Ari Shafir.
	And then I started doing his podcast.
	And then Rogan heard me on his podcast.
	And then Rogan was like, dude, this guy, Dave, is fucking crazy.
	Like, he's got a lot of shit to say.
	And then he wanted me on his podcast.
	And then it was like, it was just kind of like that.
	Like, it was word of mouth and then got from one thing to another to another.
	And then it just kind of, over the years, became what it became.
	Again, go back to the free exchange of ideas.
	Incontestably smart and well-educated and well-informed in what you say, but it goes back, I guess, to the black pill moment because it takes a black pill moment or a red pill moment for people to realize everything is not what you thought it was.
	Do you remember your red pill, black pill moment where you said, holy shit, I mean, now my life is taking a different trajectory psychologically, perspective-wise, of the world?
	Well, there's probably been a lot of those, but I will say that the Ron Paul Giuliani moment, I think, was, like, really the first one.
	That's the first one I really remember, because it was like, there was something about, you guys know what I'm talking about, right?
	Well, I have the video on the back, but explain it for those who don't know, including myself.
	So it was and it's hard.
	I mean, you guys know what I'm talking about here.
	But if there's people listening who are younger, it might be even hard for them to understand.
	But this is in late 2007 in the Republican primary debate.
	And if you you can remember, this is the George W. Bush Republican Party.
	And the idea of, you know, talk like the whole message back then was like the response to 9-11 was like they're evildoers.
	And they hate us for our freedom.
	And you're either with us or you're with the terrorists.
	And that was kind of like the ethos of the Republican Party.
	And Ron Paul just got on stage and he was like, the terrorists don't hate us because we're rich or we're free.
	They hate us because we're over there.
	Here, yeah, play it if you want to, and then I can kind of explain.
	It's four minutes.
	We'll start, and then you'll tell me when to cut it off.
	Sure, sure, sure.
	Why are you seeking its nomination?
	Well, I think the party has lost its way because the conservative wing of the Republican Party always advocated a non-interventionist foreign policy.
	Senator Robert Taft didn't want to be in NATO.
	George Bush won the election in the year 2000 campaigning on a humble foreign policy.
	No nation-building, no policing of the world.
	Republicans were elected to end the Korean War.
	The Republicans were elected to end the Vietnam War.
	There's a strong tradition of being anti-war in the Republican Party.
	It is the constitutional position.
	It is the advice of the founders to follow a non-interventionist foreign policy.
	Stay out of entangling alliances.
	Be friends with countries.
	Negotiate and talk with them and trade with them.
	Just think of the tremendous improvement relationship with Vietnam.
	60,000 then.
	We came home in defeat.
	Now we go over there and invest in Vietnam.
	So there's a lot of merit to the advice of the founders and following the Constitution.
	And my argument is that we shouldn't go to war so carelessly.
	When we do, the wars don't end.
	Well, sweet Jesus, is this more applicable now than it has ever been?
	Well, listen, dude.
	I mean, I'm sorry to even do this to you because that part was amazing.
	And I remember hearing that and being like, wow, I never really knew that the Republicans had a tradition of being elected to end wars.
	But you've got to keep playing, man.
	Because that's just the beginning.
	You have to just, for anyone, if there's one person listening who hasn't actually heard this, because this is where it gets good.
	Okay, please.
	You don't think that changed with the 9-11 attack, sir?
	What changed?
	The non-interventionist policies.
	No, non-intervention was a major contributing factor.
	Have you ever read about the reasons they attacked us?
	They attack us because we've been over there.
	We've been bombing Iraq for 10 years.
	We've been in the Middle East.
	I think Reagan was right.
	We don't understand the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics.
	So right now we're building an embassy in Iraq that's bigger than the Vatican.
	We're building 14 permanent bases.
	We say here if China was doing this in our country or in the Gulf of Mexico, we would be objecting.
	We need to look at what we do from the perspective of what would happen if somebody else did it to us.
	Are you suggesting we invited the 9 /11 attacks, sir?
	I'm suggesting that we listen to the people who attacked us and the reason they did it.
	And they are delighted that we're over there because Osama bin Laden has said, I am glad you're over on our sand because we can target you so much easier.
	They have already now, since that time, have killed 3,400 of our men, and I don't think it was necessary.
	Wendell, may I make a comment on that?
	That's really an extraordinary statement.
	It is.
	That's an extraordinary statement of someone who lived through the attack of September 11. That we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq.
	I don't think I've ever heard that before, and I've heard some pretty absurd explanations for September 11th.
	If I may pause it, now that I've attended, and now that I've attended myself an RNC debate, I understand what a seal and clown show it can be.
	Everyone had their camps in the stadium, so whenever one person says it, they just clap like barking seals.
	That's amazing.
	Hold on.
	So let's just see where this goes.
	Can I just say, by the way, at the time, Rudy Giuliani was polling number one.
	He was the frontrunner right now.
	And they're all clapping for him.
	And Rudy Giuliani ended up collapsing.
	And Ron Paul ended up, like, surging.
	And this is what's so amazing about it.
	And it's like, yeah, first off, he repeats what the moderator said.
	The moderator goes, are you suggesting we invited the attacks?
	And Ron Paul's like, what?
	I'm saying that our foreign policy has this reaction and that this is what they hate about us and this is what motivates them.
	And then Rudy Giuliani goes, that's quite an insane thing to say.
	We invited the attacks.
	But he didn't say that.
	The moderator said that.
	But anyway, this was the moment that changed everything.
	So let's watch this.
	Can I?
	I'm sorry to keep breaking this down.
	I thought that was part of the video.
	Here's what happens here.
	And I know this from someone who performs in front of crowds.
	When Rudy Giuliani said this, it got a huge ovation, right?
	And then he gets a little drunk on that.
	He's a little bit like, ooh, I'm killing with this crowd.
	So then instead of just leaving it there, which he could have, he says what he says right here.
	If you just bring it back like five seconds, because he's like, oh, I got this crowd on my side.
	He goes, you know what, Ron Paul?
	I'm going to ask that you apologize.
	And this is where the great moment comes in.
	I don't think I've ever heard that before.
	And I've heard some pretty absurd explanations for September 11. And I would ask the congressman to withdraw that comment and tell us that he didn't really mean that.
	Congressman?
	I believe very sincerely that the CIA is correct when they teach and talk about blowback.
	When we went into Iran in 1953 and installed the Shah, yes, there was blowback.
	The reaction to that was the taking of our hostages.
	And that persists.
	And if we ignore that, we ignore our own risk.
	If we think that we can do what we want around the world and not incite hatred, then we have a problem.
	They don't come here to attack us because we're rich and we're free.
	They come and they attack us because we're over there.
	I mean, what would we think if other foreign countries were doing that to us?
	Can I have 30 seconds, please?
	That's amazing.
	Let's get that.
	What's that for?
	That's amazing.
	I think it's the thought experiment of what do we think when China has police stations that they're developing in Canada and America?
	We're training Chinese soldiers in Canada.
	What do we think?
	That's an infiltration.
	It's an invasion.
	That's what we say.
	And if we're sitting in the Middle East and they're building...
	Who did I just...
	Oh, Robert, we had an interview with a local supporter who was in the military in Iraq.
	And like, yeah, they build bases.
	Where do they build those bases?
	They have these massive foreign bases in a country that is not theirs.
	What do they expect people to think about that?
	Yeah, well, that's why when you asked what, like, my red pill moment was, if there's one I could think of, it was that.
	It was that moment right there.
	Because it's not just that.
	First off, It was very obvious to me watching it that Rudy Giuliani is talking in platitudes and Ron Paul is actually saying...
	Like, he's actually speaking to you.
	Like, no, listen to me.
	Like, this is what I have to say.
	To me, it's just obvious.
	Like, anyone who's like searching for truth, if they're looking at those two guys, you go, one of them is going, are you saying we invited 9-11 and you're saying you're not on Team America?
	And then the other guy's going, look.
	In 1953, the CIA overthrew the government of Iran.
	And once in 1979, when that government was overthrown, they've hated us ever since.
	But it's kind of because we overthrew their government.
	Look, how would we feel if someone else came over here and overthrew our government?
	It's obvious that one person is actually talking about...
	What's happening in the world?
	And the other one's going, I'm Mr. Good American and you're Mr. You know?
	But also, it just kind of gave me like a window into, it was like a portal into, here, now you can actually interact with something bigger than what you're interacting with right now.
	Because at the time, what I was interacting with was the post-9-11 American experience.
	But now they're like, well, hey, how about you interact with what's outside of the American empire?
	Like, here's how it feels on the other side of that.
	But they're not a big fan of that, by the way.
	You know?
	They don't really like that.
	They're actually a little bit pissed off at you about all of this stuff.
	And so there's that element to it.
	And there's also just the element to it where he was like, look, I know that...
	It was just so easy for anyone, after Rudy Giuliani gets this thunderous applause, and then he goes, and I'd ask you to apologize for that.
	It's almost like the normal thing after that would be for someone to go, no, no, no, I didn't mean it that way.
	No, I'm sorry.
	Let me be clear.
	Just the crowd.
	Don't hate me.
	What I meant wasn't that.
	What I meant was this.
	And Ron Paul just kind of like leans over and the first words he says are, he goes, I very sincerely believe.
	And then he goes on with his whole tirade.
	And it was just like, no.
	I'm right.
	And he's like, I don't really care.
	If you guys boo me out of the arena, that's fine.
	Okay.
	You know?
	But I'm right about what I'm saying.
	And I'm telling you that I know that I'm right about this.
	And here's what I'm saying.
	And that just makes like a perfect logical argument.
	There was something about that that was just like so amazing to me.
	And just after seeing that, I was just like, whoa, I want to know everything about that guy.
	And I was kind of like a left-leaning kid at the time.
	And so I was just so blown away by that.
	And then I found out that he was arguing for like the free market in every like aspect.
	And I kind of thought that was crazy.
	I was like, what?
	That's really his answer?
	Is that governments just get out of the way completely?
	That didn't make sense to me.
	And then I just started reading more and more, almost like he almost had made enough of a point where I was like, well, let me read more and more so I understand why he's wrong about this.
	Because there's got to be a flaw in what he's saying.
	And then I just read enough that I was convinced.
	And then he kept talking about the Federal Reserve.
	And I had never even, like, I mean, I had heard the term before, but I didn't even really know what it meant.
	And I was just like, this can't be right.
	What he's saying can't be right.
	I would have heard of this.
	What?
	There's a shadowy cabal that prints the money out of thin air?
	That can't be right.
	And then, like, the more I read, I was like, holy shit, that's right.
	And so that, to me, was just like, that was the biggest, if there's one red pill moment, that was it.
	And then I've had lots since then, but that was the biggest.
	Well, let me play this one.
	This is my retrospective red pill moment.
	I mean, unfortunately, it only happened a couple of years ago.
	We have heard that half a million children have done it.
	You know, by the way, I fucking had Rogan play this the last time I was on his podcast, but yes.
	Play this.
	Let people hear it.
	Hold on.
	Now I just lost the page.
	It's right here.
	I mean, that's more...
	Sorry, we missed it.
	500,000 dead Iraqi children.
	I think this is a very hard choice, but we think the price is worth it.
	I want to say this.
	There might have been a sinister 60 minutes edit to make her look bad.
	Hell.
	Not jail.
	Hell is where I say a soul like that belongs.
	No, I only saw that in retrospect where I realized I was one of the useful idiots.
	I wasn't promoting anything in 2001.
	I was an idiot.
	I was 21 years old and social media didn't exist.
	But I remember what I believed.
	And I had been duped into believing things.
	Similar in that regard, I'm struck, like, what you describe is very common of what I've described to people of the millennial experience politically.
	That coming of age, the Bush regime, both Hoppy and W, defined the Republican brand.
	And that was a pro-war, pro-corporate, you know, to some degree, in many respects, a pro-statist brand.
	But it actually deviated from the historical populist conservative roots going back to the anti-war movement, the only republic.
	You know, you could go back further and further to Taft, to the anti-war movement, to not be involved in NATO that Paul talked about.
	Paul was the first one to resurrect the opportunity for that movement to express itself.
	Then Trump, in his own way, did much of the same.
	And the media didn't know how to handle it in 2015 debates in South Carolina when he went down there and said, yeah, we should impeach Bush.
	He lied.
	Yeah, he didn't defend the country.
	The towers came down.
	And at the time, they couldn't understand it because they don't understand that voter group.
	But what it's like to progress to today, the biggest group that is shifting that the Democrats are losing, but that right now will only vote...
	Trump, not any generic Republican, are working class millennials because they're getting hammered economically in ways that like Paul Krugman's on TV saying everything's fine.
	He was saying it today.
	He goes, I don't understand why people don't understand how great the economy is.
	Maybe it's because their savings are gone.
	Maybe it's because their credit card rates are off the charts.
	Maybe because they can't afford a car, can't afford a home, can't get basic jobs.
	All those problems, the costs that matter to them.
	Housing costs, healthcare costs, transportation costs, education costs through the roof.
	The inflation has ate it.
	The purchase, the real median income has fallen as bad as the last three years as it has at any time in the last 30 years.
	And yet the ordinary Democrat media analysts, political analysts, and all the Republican establishment types are oblivious to it.
	They're still debating like a lot of the DeSantis and other camp.
	There's this part of the Republican Party that still doesn't understand Bushite Republicanism has been rejected by the country, that people don't want it.
	And the moment they smell any piece of it, they're going to run away from it.
	Can you describe how much you've seen, like what you described was a lot of working class militia.
	You got there earlier before others, but we're seeing the same thing progress in more and more of that population.
	Yeah, well, one of the interesting things is that, so it's...
	Like, there's a lot that you said there.
	I think that actually, before Ron Paul, you kind of got to give credit to Pat Buchanan.
	Pat Buchanan was, in 92 and 96, the Republican who was trying to push us in that direction.
	And what happened was, there were 10 years, about, between the collapse of the Soviet Union and 9-11.
	And right after the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was Pat Buchanan who was going, hey, look, the entire justification for the military-industrial complex and for the global American empire had been the Soviet Union's existence.
	You can actually go back and read Bill Buckley, who wrote this explicitly.
	His position was that basically, yes, in theory, libertarians are right.
	However, there's this threat of global communism, and therefore, his words were, we need a totalitarianism, a totalitarian bureaucracy within our shores to fight a totalitarian bureaucracy abroad.
	And so, yes, we agree with you that we're supposed to be a free market, city on a hill, but...
	Because of the Soviet Union who's trying to take over the world, we have to go fight them.
	And that was the justification for the conservative movement from the 1950s through the 1990s.
	And then the Soviet Union collapses and doesn't exist anymore.
	And then there were conservatives like Pat Buchanan who were cold warriors, you know, who were on board with all of that, who went, great, now we can go back to being a normal country.
	And then all of the neocons were like, well, no, no, no, no.
	We got to go see about Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
	And they were like, what?
	What?
	We got to go fight these third world countries in wars now?
	And so there was this kind of stretch over those years where there was a bit of a debate.
	Like, a real hardcore debate, even amongst, like, really powerful people.
	Like, I've talked about this a lot, but, like, even the rounds of NATO expansion in the 90s, there was serious pushback from conservatives who had been anti-Russia cold warriors who were like, wait a minute, we shouldn't be expanding NATO into, like, Eastern Europe because this is going to provoke Russia.
	Why would we do this?
	We won.
	We won the Cold War.
	This was never the goal.
	The goal was to not let the Soviet Union expand.
	The goal wasn't to, like, we're conquering Eastern Europe.
	This is crazy.
	That's what the Soviet Union was trying to do, was trying to conquer Europe.
	And when I say, like, serious people, I mean George Kennan, who was the founder of the containment strategy, and, you know, like, people who were...
	Robert Gates.
	George W. Bush's defense secretary, he was against NATO expansion.
	And Bill Clinton's defense secretary was against NATO expansion.
	And all of these people, tons of them, were really adamantly opposed to it.
	And so there was a debate.
	And they lost.
	And the neocons kind of won.
	But then after 9-11, it was like, okay.
	That's, they're all, we're just all in on this kind of like, we're in a war on terrorism now.
	So it's another emergency.
	The emergency of the Cold War ended in 1991, but by 2001, we're in a new emergency, which was the war on terrorism.
	And so that's where we're going with all of this.
	And so it just became like this thing.
	That until Ron Paul came along in that moment that we just watched, it was almost like no one had reasserted the old conservative position, which was that, like, no, we're not supposed to.
	Look, if conservatives believe in free market capitalism and limited government, then they're not supposed to believe in being a global empire.
	Like, those two things are incompatible.
	Like, those two things don't work together.
	And so he inserted those ideas.
	And then I think by the time Donald Trump came around, all of the neoconservative plans had been so clearly a disaster that it started really catching on with people.
	And so, you know, at least that's where we are now that I don't think the right-wingers are buying any of this shit anymore.
	Dave, you didn't...
	You know this at the time you lived through it as a kid and now you're learning about it in retrospect.
	The first question is, where do you go to get your knowledge from?
	And then the second question is, how do you reassess everything you thought you understood of American history in light of what you now know is the reality of what it has been or was at the time?
	When I fell down the Ron Paul rabbit hole, I just started finding a lot of the people in his orbit.
	And that's where I got a lot of my American history from.
	So I'd say, like I said, Ron Paul, Tom Woods, Peter Schiff, everybody at the Mises Institute, like Lou Rockwell, the whole crew there.
	Everybody at the Mises Institute are incredible.
	Antiwar.com, the Libertarian Institute, all those guys.
	I just kind of went down the rabbit hole through all of them and learned a ton about history from them.
	And then I would say when it comes to more modern stuff, like, look, with the conflict with Ukraine, I'd say John Mearsheimer, he's incredible and is, I think, the best guy to study on that.
	And then just...
	Pat Buchanan, I think, is a guy that everybody should read.
	You should read every book he's written because it's just incredible and will give you an insight into America that you wouldn't have if you hadn't read his stuff.
	And so, you know, you find all of these guys and you start to realize that there's been this tradition of people who are speaking out against this whole thing for a long time.
	Now, how much is the Libertarian Party a viable option for people that are anti-war?
	And maybe you could discuss some of the latest craziness that's taken place with the party.
	I mean, I've represented various parts of the party in petition challenges, election ballot challenges, etc.
	But I've always found there's a split between what I would call the more populist aspects of the Libertarian movement, people that are consistent, to be honest with you, in my view.
	And then what I call the professional managerial class types.
	It didn't surprise me, unfortunately, that so many in the hierarchy took the side of the pandemic policies.
	I was like, if anybody should be opposed to lockdowns and mandates, by golly, it should be the Libertarian Party.
	And yet you had some of the hierarchy cheering it on.
	What's your thoughts on all that?
	And any update about some of the craziness that's...
	I mean, you've tried to make reform within it.
	How successful have you been?
	Well, I mean, look, there's...
	Okay, so my crew of people took over the Libertarian Party last year, right?
	And it's been a restructuring of the party, and that happened in 2022.
	I'll say, in terms of how the Libertarian Party responded to the lockdowns and things like that, Everybody in America, including every political party, failed miserably on COVID.
	The Democrats, you know, were just atrocious.
	The Republicans failed the COVID test and the Libertarian Party failed the COVID test.
	But it's so much more inexcusable for the Libertarian Party.
	You know what I mean?
	It's so much more inexcusable for them to fail that test because you should have been ready.
	Like, this is everything you've been trained for, like, is to be against this.
	It's like your whole life, everything you've been set up for was to be against the government telling you you couldn't leave your house over a germ.
	Like, you should.
	And they just totally failed.
	And so, like, that whole old regime of...
	The Libertarian Party got overthrown and a new regime came in.
	And, you know, I mean, look, when you say, like, when you ask, I forget exactly how you worded it, but if you say, well, is the Libertarian Party, how serious are they as a threat against all of this, you know, like, tyranny?
	It's like, well, it's compared to what?
	You know?
	Like, how much is the Republican Party really standing up to this tyranny?
	Right now, the Republican Party's top senator, Mitch McConnell, wears a Ukraine flag pin to work every single day.
	So he's basically right where Joe Biden is.
	And also, he can't speak.
	So that's not great.
	He's just thinking about his next sentence.
	But Dave, this is my point in all of this.
	I was trying to Google some of the mean exchanges I've had with the Libertarian Party, because their Twitter feed, I've been accused of being nasty on Twitter, their Twitter feed, depending on the state, is atrocious.
	And you say you're a Libertarian, and some people say they're conservative or whatever, and I do think it's red pill versus blue pill, maybe versus black pill, where you espouse beliefs which are not representative of the Libertarian Party as it currently stands.
	I don't think anybody should have any beliefs that are Democratic parties or GOP, but it is the necessity to affiliate with a political party that forces people to accept beliefs that are not their own because the, you know, the unanimity within parties.
	The Libertarian Party, I think, has espoused some beliefs that people would say, I don't want to have anything to do with.
	But then you say you're a Libertarian and you get lumped together with them.
	So what is the future in terms of where you go with politics if you have to accept the good and the bad of a party where you don't want to accept the bad because it's not about party.
	It's about ideology in general.
	Well, I don't know.
	I mean, I don't know.
	There's certainly libertarians or people who claim to be libertarians who believe things that I don't believe.
	But I think that when you're talking about these things, if you're trying to talk about what you believe in, Then we need words to convey meaning.
	You know what I mean?
	And if you say that, like, well, this word means something else to someone else, like, that's always true, no matter what you label yourself as.
	There's no way you could possibly ever describe a view that you have where you could say, well, there isn't somebody else who uses that word to mean something that you don't mean by that.
	And so...
	I think that what we've been a part of in my wing of the libertarian movement is to try to kind of recapture...
	What the word libertarian actually means.
	And at the end of the day, I don't really care about semantics.
	I don't really care if, like, you call what I view libertarian or Americanism or just freedom or just laissez-faire or whatever.
	I mean, like, I don't care.
	I just feel like there's got to be some word that means that.
	And what I'm standing up for is, like, is non-interventionism, individual rights.
	Natural rights, the non-aggression principle, laissez-faire, free market capitalism.
	That's what I'm trying to promote.
	And yes, will there be some people who wrap themselves in the word libertarian and say, what I mean by that is that a five-year-old should be able to be trans?
	Yes, there are some people like that.
	And that is not at all what I mean by it.
	But I don't know that any term or any word is not going to have some of these problems.
	I don't know.
	I feel like the message, the same message that Ron Paul was talking about back then, and there's a lot more to it.
	And by the way, Ron Paul is still alive and still kicking ass and still...
	Talking all this shit, but the idea that we shouldn't be intervening in foreign countries 5,000 miles away from America, trying to reshape them into our image by military force.
	The idea that we shouldn't be having all of the power of our economy centralized in Washington, D.C., so they can make all of the decisions for 300 million Americans.
	The idea that we shouldn't have a central bank.
	That's artificially setting interest rates, and we shouldn't be $30 trillion in debt, and we shouldn't have a giant, like, federal police state, and we shouldn't have a national spying apparatus, and we shouldn't have a giant regulatory state.
	Like, all of these ideas, I think, are still so important.
	And call that whatever you want to, but I feel like some group of people have to stand up against that.
	And that's not what either the Democrats or the Republicans stand for.
	And so I think it's good that there's a third party that stands up for that.
	And I think that the Libertarian Party is in a much better place now than it has been to stand up against that.
	Yeah, and before we wrap up, I was just curious about what motivated you and what your experience was to try to do that, take over a party.
	I've represented all kinds of people in that context before, and usually the hurdle is resignation.
	People think the political system is broken.
	I'm just going to go home and screw it.
	But I always say the greatest trick the devil ever pulled is convincing people he didn't exist.
	I stole that from a film.
	The greatest trick the system ever pulled is convincing you that you cannot resist.
	And you chose to take action.
	Now you have publications like Reason that did a semi-hit piece, in my interpretation, which is sad because I think they're part of the problem.
	Too often corporate co-opted by some of their donor class.
	They did a hit piece on Bobby Kennedy.
	That was a disgraceful hit piece.
	But what motivated you to do it?
	And going through it, what was that like?
	You're battling just to make a party represent the ideas and ideals that attracted people to it in the first place.
	And you've got to deal with all this corruption from so-called allies of the party.
	Yeah, I mean, I don't know.
	So what happened was, as I said, I got...
	You know, I was a kid.
	When that Ron Paul...
	So, I'm 40 now.
	And that Ron Paul piece was in 2007.
	So, whatever the age difference from 2023 to 2007, what was I?
	Give or take 16 years, so you'd be 24?
	Right.
	So, I was like 24 when I saw that.
	And so I was a kid, you know?
	I was young, and I just fell in love with it.
	I became so into the Ron Paul movement.
	And that, if you remember, that was 2007, that piece we were playing.
	And then Ron Paul had been predicting the financial crash.
	Literally, he had been predicting that the subprime mortgage sector was going to take down the entire economy.
	And then that happened.
	And then it was like, whoa, this guy's incredible.
	He predicted 9-11 and he explained 9-11.
	And then he, by the way, you can go back to the 90s and find videos where he predicted 9-11.
	And then he predicted the subprime mortgage crash, and he was just right about everything.
	And then he ran again in 2012.
	And in 2012, it was like an even bigger movement.
	And I was kind of convinced, I was so into it, and I was convinced that, like, yo, this is going to take over the future of the country.
	The libertarians are going to win, and we're going to save this country.
	And then that didn't end up happening.
	And then in 2016, I was like, yo.
	Rand Paul, his son, Ron Paul's son is a senator, and now he's going to be the next guy.
	And it didn't work out that way, and Donald Trump ended up coming in and all of that.
	And then in, I think it was in 2017, I heard, maybe 2018, I heard this guy, Michael Heiss, who was just like me.
	He was one of the Ron Paul-like people.
	And he goes, look, here's what I think we should do.
	And he was saying this on Tom Woods' show, the great Tom Woods, by the way, guys.
	Go check out his show if you haven't seen it.
	And he goes, this is what I'm trying to lead.
	I'm trying to lead this charge for all of the Ron Paul Libertarians to go into the Libertarian Party.
	Since we failed in the Republican Party, let's go into the Libertarian Party and take that over and make it like our thing.
	And I kind of liked what he had to say.
	And he kind of resonated with me.
	And then I met him, and we ended up becoming friends.
	And I kind of got on board, but it was really after, like, after 2016, seeing what a failure Gary Johnson was.
	And then I kind of got on board.
	And then after 2020, seeing, like, the huge opportunity that the Libertarian Party had to, like, rail against all of the COVID insanity, and they didn't.
	And then I really got on board.
	And then I just felt like it was like, no, we need to at least take over this party.
	There needs to at least be one political party in this country that's saying the right things, that's standing up against this insanity, because this insanity is destroying the republic, you know?
	And so...
	That's kind of how I got into really being on board with that.
	And I don't know exactly to what end this is going toward, but I did think that it was at least worth it to try, to try something.
	Well, Dave, we had Tom Woods on Once Upon a Time.
	How long ago?
	June 3rd, 2022.
	Tom Woods on a sidebar, Robert.
	Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	I've been on Tom's show several times.
	And he and Malice do a fun little How Bill is Really Made and stuff like that.
	Sort of introductory stuff.
	So that he's great.
	Dave, I was trying to give you the heads up in the private chat.
	I'm going to ask you this because it's a tough question.
	No, I didn't send it yet because I gave up.
	Everyone needs a white pill.
	A lot of us are feeling despaired because...
	Shit's going in the wrong direction, to put it mildly.
	And you try to no avail to, you know, have political movements.
	What is the white pill, if you see any?
	Or is the world going to go down an increasingly dark path until it finally wakes up?
	Okay, listen.
	So I'll say this, okay?
	So here's the white pill, okay?
	Let me zoom out a little bit, okay?
	Ludwig von Mises.
	Who I think is the greatest economist to ever live.
	He was a Jew in Austria who saw the rise of socialism.
	And he's this brilliant free market economist.
	He is literally the greatest economist to ever live.
	And if you want to go read his work, it's like incredible.
	And he sees the rise of socialism happening.
	And he goes, this is going to be the end of civilization.
	This is going to be such a disaster.
	The idea of centralized economic controls will lead to mass starvation and just awful outcomes.
	So he's railing against that.
	And then the rise of fascism kind of comes up in response to the rise of socialism communism.
	And he's kind of like, man, if fascism at least can stop communism, that'll be okay.
	And then the rise of Nazism comes up.
	And then because he's a fucking Jew preaching free markets, the Nazis run him out and his library is burned and he has to escape for his life out of like when Austria is taken over by the Nazis and he comes as a refugee to America and then he has to come to America and...
	In a language that he doesn't even speak, like, writes three more books in English.
	You know what I mean?
	Whatever the fuck any of us have been through.
	No one's been through anything like that.
	Okay?
	And he did that.
	He didn't give up and go, I'm blackpilled.
	You know?
	I'm blackpilled because the Nazis just rose up and burned my library and kicked me out of my home country.
	He just came over here and kept working and kept producing more and more stuff.
	And so, like, the idea of being blackpilled when we went through two world wars and our, you know, like, there's just so many things that people 50 years ago, 40 years ago struggled through that we don't have to struggle through today.
	So that's one thing.
	And the other thing I would say is that as bad as things are today, and I would say that I think our nation is in more jeopardy than probably at any point in my life.
	So I'm not saying there's not something going on right now.
	But also, I'll say this, that in...
	September 2001, the 9-11 attacks happened.
	It was all of 2002, there was a huge, like, there was the drum beats of war.
	There was this huge war propaganda campaign for the war in Iraq.
	We didn't go into Iraq until 2003, but for all of 2002, there was this, like, daily drip of how...
	You know, Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and he was in on 9-11, and he's friends with these terrorists, and he's about to hand off these weapons that he doesn't have to these terrorists who he's not actually friends with, and then they're going to drop the bomb on Kansas, and then, oh my god, and there was just this huge propaganda campaign.
	And I'll tell you, back then, there was no social media.
	There was no alternative media.
	That just didn't exist.
	It was just newspapers and corporate media.
	That was it.
	And today, it would be so much harder for them to pull that off.
	Today, the biggest people in media are Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson.
	They could never sell that war propaganda.
	The way they did.
	Because the biggest guys would be calling it out.
	The biggest guys back then were like Bill O 'Reilly and Ted Koppel.
	It's a totally different landscape.
	Shows like this, shows like my show, none of these things existed back then.
	And so the propaganda that the regime relies on is not...
	They do not have the same stronghold over it that they used to.
	And that, to me, is a reason to be encouraged.
	Like, a real reason to be like, yo, we have a real fighting shot right now.
	And, like, you guys say, like, you guys got kids, I got kids, we don't have an option to just be blackpilled.
	Blackpilled is bitch shit.
	Fuck that.
	Like, I don't have an option to just sit here and be like, I feel bad.
	I'm not, I don't think it's gonna work out.
	Fuck that.
	Like, you know what I mean?
	Dude, like, that's not an option for us.
	I use this example a lot, but I go like, so imagine, like, Imagine, okay, you're in your house with your wife and your kids, okay?
	And 12 guys with guns surround your house.
	And you're in your house with one gun, okay?
	And they're coming in to murder you and your family.
	And will you sit there and be like, well, I mean, they have 12 guns and I only have one gun.
	So I'm just feeling kind of blackpilled.
	I'm just feeling kind of like this probably won't work out.
	What?
	Like, no.
	You don't have an option to feel that way.
	You're going, okay, listen, you guys get up in the attic.
	I'm going to pick them off one by one on the stairs.
	It doesn't matter.
	It doesn't matter what the odds are that they win versus you win.
	What matters is that you're going to go out shooting because there's no option to accept that maybe we're defeated.
	Fuck that.
	You know what I mean?
	There's a story where someone takes out those 12 guys.
	And it's your house, you know?
	Like, you know the landscape better than they know it.
	So, like, whatever.
	We're going to fight.
	We're going to fight to the death on this.
	And I mean that, let me be very clear.
	I mean that intelligently.
	Don't go out there and do anything stupid.
	But I'm just saying, like, you've got to kind of have that attitude of, like, no.
	How about this?
	How about we will win?
	We will win.
	Take that attitude.
	Because if we don't have that attitude, then we probably won't.
	But you know what?
	If we do, then maybe we will.
	So I'll say this.
	We will win.
	Fuck the black pill.
	We're going to be white-pilled.
	And we're going to win.
	That's my attitude.
	And I'll say this, hopefully the news tomorrow is not Viva and Barnes get arrested for promoting insurrection with Dave Smith.
	We've had a bunch of tips in our locals community and Rumble Rants.
	I'm going to screen grab them as I've done and answer them tomorrow.
	Dave, I know you have a heart out.
	Amazing.
	So what do you have next on your agenda and where can people find you?
	Oh, well, I got a brand new comedy special if people want to go check that out.
	It's on my YouTube page, 30 Minutes with Dave Smith.
	And then I'm on the road a whole bunch.
	I'm going to Europe for a little bit.
	We have Skankfest coming up, ComicDaveSmith.com.
	And then the Libertarian Party is going to have a lot of exciting stuff coming up in the next...
	In the next short little while here, I think pay attention because we're going to do some stuff that's really going to shake up this whole political system right now.
	So I'm very excited about that.
	Fantastic.
	Thanks, Dave.
	Dave, stick around.
	We will all say our proper goodbyes.
	Everyone in Locals, I screen grabbed all of the tips.
	I'm going to get to them tomorrow.
	Rumble Rants as well.
	Dave, thank you very much.
	We will all say our proper goodbyes.
	Everyone out there, see you tomorrow.

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