Conner Boyack has been featured regularly on mainstream shows. He is the founder of the Libertas Institute, a free market think tank in Utah, and the author of several books, including Fearedom, on how politicians use fear-mongering to acquire more power.
00:03:22.140I ended up becoming kind of a constitutionalist after kind of studying American history and thinking that, you know, the Constitution was the bee's knees, but quickly realized that constitutionalists don't have an answer for local government.
00:03:35.560They're all about the federal government, and many of the constitutionalists I met supported all sorts of local tyranny.
00:03:41.080And so I realized that that was not a good philosophical framework.
00:03:44.620Ended up, of course, after that in libertarianism.
00:03:47.420But people always ask, what's the difference between a libertarian and an anarchist?
00:03:51.640And the running joke is, you know, four months, just a little bit of time, and you end up that way.
00:03:56.540And I don't call myself that just because of the stigma and everything.
00:04:16.640Well, you clearly understand the war on family, probably the war on whites, cultural Marxism, and then there's this insane, this puritanical left, which is pushing for all sorts of government policies and hate speech, favoring some groups over others.
00:04:30.800But from your view, what's the best tactic to crush this leftist tyranny?
00:04:40.560Because that's what the so-called left always fails to provide.
00:04:44.000They always have this very mangled view, outlook of the world whenever it's, you know, media on MSNPC.
00:04:51.680Not that the right is immune to this by any means, but since we're talking about this very concerted effort that the left has waged.
00:04:59.480You know, I think it's often without context.
00:05:01.560They aren't looking at that, okay, all of these things are happening, some of them are bad.
00:05:04.980But what does that look like in the context of history?
00:05:07.940What does it look like in the context of what liberals themselves are supporting on other issues?
00:05:12.820And I think it's a problem more generally with the public.
00:05:14.920And a lot of the work that I do with public interest policy, there's a lot of seemingly lack of awareness about things other than what is being presented in the very initial conversation.
00:05:24.820So no one asks questions, they don't really study the broader issues, and so the entire conversation becomes this very narrow spectrum of the information that's provided to the individual.
00:05:34.680And unless we kind of take a step back, look at the 10,000-foot view, and try and understand, you know, the big picture, the context, we're really just kind of going down this path that's being almost manufactured for us.
00:05:45.700Where, you know, if I give you choice A and choice B, but I don't tell you about choice C, clearly I've controlled you to a certain extent, and I can shape the outcome of what we're going to do.
00:05:55.460And I think that, especially with the help of the media, that's what we see so often unraveling with this plan that you mentioned.
00:06:00.700Yeah, I just wonder how far this is going to go if we don't push back at some point.
00:06:08.860Yeah, I'd like to see a lot of, I know a lot of anarchists, they say they're beyond the left and right, but unfortunately everything kind of gets polarized into left and right.
00:06:17.000So I'd like to see many groups maybe aligning to smash some of this leftist tyranny, because is anarchism strong enough to push back?
00:06:23.760Well, I think how anarchism can best succeed, or rather how this voluntary society can be achieved, is by making friends.
00:06:32.680My biggest concern with the liberty movement generally is that you get the Puritans who basically try and alienate anyone who's not as pure as they are, right?
00:06:41.560And, oh, you're only 80% anarchist, or you're only a 75% libertarian, or whatever.
00:06:48.320Therefore, I'm just going to not associate with you at all.
00:06:50.700And in the course of my work, we've had the opportunity to work with people.
00:06:53.520I disagree with strongly on some issues, and I think are just doing some things that I can't stand, I think are totally wrongheaded.
00:07:00.640And yet on policies where we agree, we can join forces.
00:07:03.500And not only does it help facilitate common goals, and we can work towards common objectives, but also it builds a relationship that can be used to persuade and educate and nurture that relationship down the road.
00:07:51.020And whether anarchism or libertarianism more generally, it seems that people are just bitter or totally disinterested towards those with whom they disagree to any degree.
00:08:18.480I would agree that from an outside view, you can see some of the things that you just mentioned.
00:08:22.760In fact, that was a very good list and good characterization from an outside view as to how Mormons or Latter-day Saints could be perceived and how some of these outcomes that are a byproduct of our theology could be perceived as philosophically aligned or aligned based on outcome with anarchism.
00:08:41.940But if you talk to the average Mormon, not only would they not understand what anarchism is or voluntarism, but they would have this visceral reaction to it if you explain it to them.
00:08:52.740Most Latter-day Saints are very supportive of the Constitution, believe it was divinely inspired of God.
00:09:00.460And so they become statists but probably more minarchists, right?
00:09:04.480They're willing to tolerate a government.
00:09:06.080Of course, we have Harry Reid and we have Mitt Romney and we have everyone in between, myself being a voluntarist as well.
00:09:14.920But by and large, I would say Mormons are supportive of the state, especially increasingly so in recent decades where there's been a lot more willingness to vote for social democratic policies and just go along with the status quo.
00:09:27.900But if you look at kind of the fundamentals, the theology, and even still some of the outcomes, I think it is fair to say that there is a lot of alignment.
00:09:35.220I've written a book basically on that exact thing, arguing for the points that you actually mentioned.
00:09:41.620I think we need to shift the needle back to where it used to be.
00:09:44.800I think in recent decades we've actually, as a church membership, gone in the wrong direction.
00:09:49.300Well, another thing, there's a lot of anti-statists and they don't seem to be bothered with this forced mass immigration and multiculturalism, even though this is really government created.
00:10:12.620Yeah, you know, I actually favor open immigration from a property rights standpoint.
00:10:16.240I think one of the biggest problems we have today is with this notion of collectivism, of public property, where people have the right to regulate one another.
00:10:25.840We're dealing with a lot of policies in Utah right now where voters are trying to use zoning ordinances as basically a weapon against their neighbors to say, no, I don't think you should be able to build a shed or have weeds taller than three inches.
00:10:39.380Or I don't think that this landowner should be able to develop it into a commercial building.
00:10:44.700I think we've gotten to the point where people are comfortable using the law to dictate to other people how they can use their property.
00:10:52.080I've lived in Honduras for a couple of years about a decade ago.
00:10:58.680And I would love the opportunity to provide – I would love to provide an opportunity for some of my friends to come live in our basement maybe for a period of time and work for me or for another business owner friend of mine to expand their network, expand their cultural awareness and horizons.
00:11:18.740And yet they can't even though it would be strictly private property.
00:11:22.360Of course, the roads is always the ultimate argument that we talk about.
00:11:26.800But I don't agree with this conception that the existence of borders justifies the collective, justifies the majority in being able to say, you know what, you have to go through this procedure.
00:11:37.480You have to get the government's permission.
00:11:41.420They denote the boundaries around which a certain government operates.
00:11:44.680But they don't necessarily confer any authority that the residents within those borders themselves do or don't have.
00:11:51.600You have to first have that authority.
00:11:52.940And just like I can't tell my neighbor that, hey, you can't let this, you know, Colombian live with you guys or go work for your business, I don't think we can delegate that right to the government.
00:12:01.560I think our immigration policies are totally upside down.
00:12:05.240And even those who will concede, oh, yeah, you know, we need to streamline immigration.
00:12:09.200Everyone recognizes that's the problem.
00:12:10.760But deep down inside, there are very few who are willing to go towards the laissez-faire policy that we had for the first century in America, which was basically open borders to a large extent.
00:12:20.160And I think freedom and property rights and markets and everything else dictate that we need to get back to that point if we're going to have any sanity anytime soon on this issue.
00:12:28.680Well, my issue here, too, is that then what happens is let's say there's a group of Europeans who are separatists and they say, no, we want to go do something different here.
00:12:43.680And it's, of course, a problem with a welfare state, right, where that's the biggest argument is many people will even concede, oh, yeah, we want free immigration, but we simply can't have it with a welfare state right now.
00:12:54.560And so, therefore, because we have a welfare state, we're going to justify this micromanagerial immigration regime.
00:13:02.920And, you know, I think the skeptics among us might say that, well, maybe increasing immigration and saturating things in America might finally be the straw that breaks the camel's back and we can start to, you know, scale down the welfare policy.
00:13:16.220But certainly if we're just handing away government goodies to anyone who shows up, it is going to be a problem.
00:13:20.480Then they all want to come because of the money.
00:13:22.780So if the government wasn't involved, I think most of these people wouldn't because most people want to be around their own folk, their own culture, their own blood and soil.
00:13:30.940And if it was anarchist, I think there would be – people would actually be fighting like the good old days.
00:13:36.360You fight and create those boundaries and you make that happen.
00:13:39.340You don't just sit down and just surrender, you know.
00:13:41.900I mean, I think at the end of the day, we need to get to a point where people are encouraged, if not required, to have personal responsibility.
00:13:49.200I mean, if we didn't have a welfare state, if you had to look out for yourself and your family, you'd naturally be inclined to find, you know, locations, markets, job opportunities where you could do that.
00:14:00.240Your first prerogative wouldn't be to find where you can get, you know, food stamps or free education or health care.
00:14:07.060And it's these policies that really blur the lines and prevent people from making those moral choices because suddenly they're incentivized to do the opposite.
00:14:15.080And I think the large part is these incentives that exist that prevent people from even giving consideration to personal responsibility as important as it is.
00:14:23.980Well, speaking of private property, is Utah also going to be feeling the brunt of this hood or fair housing?
00:14:28.820Because, you know, Utah's zip codes, it's a bit too white, Connor.
00:14:34.380Yeah, I don't know how many, you know, other people would want to move into, you know, this type of environment.
00:14:45.400We haven't really seen that issue playing out that much.
00:14:47.440But especially with the big social justice agenda of the left, you really do see this push for equalization, you know, in education, in employment, certainly in housing.
00:14:56.960And we haven't really seen that happen too much in Utah, but I wouldn't expect not to see it in the future.
00:15:04.640So what are your thoughts on, like, egalitarianism and hate speech that's coming in full force?
00:15:10.520You know, it's interesting as a libertarian, when I'm asked my opinion on any given policy, it becomes pretty easy, right?
00:15:19.680Because you take it down to the fundamental question of would I have the right to, you know, use violence or coercion against my neighbor to implement or enforce policy X.
00:15:29.560And, you know, I'm often asked in the course of my work, you know, with Libertas Institute, what's your position on this, that, and the other?
00:15:35.780And I think it's interesting to see the reactions that I get where people are surprised at how quickly I can respond to that.
00:15:42.360Because ultimately, it just has to pass the gut check test.
00:15:45.460In my mind, the only exercise I'm doing is would I feel comfortable and morally justified if I did this to my neighbor or if my neighbor did this to me?
00:15:53.920And it's amazing how many of these issues just dissolve when you put them up against that test.
00:15:59.840You know, with egalitarianism and equality and all this kind of stuff, this notion of social justice, it's basically simply using the government as a vehicle to pursue ends that a subset of the population desires.
00:16:12.400And whether it's Republican or Democrat, whether it's, you know, the pro-crony business or egalitarian or whatever, I kind of cynically call elections a political popularity contest, right?
00:16:24.680This is just people trying to wrest control of the power of government to enforce their views on the dissenting minority.
00:16:31.080And at the end of the day, I don't understand how any sane person sees that as something viable, as something praiseworthy or beneficial, unless clearly they've enjoyed the majority a while.
00:16:42.220An example I'll throw at you really quick is same-sex marriage, right?
00:16:45.300For decades, eons, conservatives have been able to use the power of marriage licensure to ensure that they could prohibit interracial marriages for a while and then, of course, same-sex marriages as well.
00:16:57.760And they were comfortable with this government power.
00:16:59.740They praised it, they supported it, they defended it.
00:17:03.600And only when the cultural tides began to shift, only when different groups began to compete and wrest control of that power that conservatives long had, are conservatives now freaking out and even some considering, oh, maybe it's time to get government out of marriage altogether.
00:17:19.900But it's this very notion that the power is there and it becomes just the popularity contest whereby a majority imposes their views on the minority.
00:17:27.560And it's easier to convince the minority that this is unjust until too often the minority becomes the majority on one or more issues and suddenly they love it because, hey, we're in control and it's intoxicating and we can finally get our way.
00:17:41.560But we try and appeal to the people who recognize that this is a fundamentally unjust and immoral way of governing society and really the approach is decentralizing and tearing away from government all of these purported authorities that allow for this type of gamesmanship to happen.
00:17:58.680And I just think it's really messed up.
00:18:00.660And so back to your question about what do I think, you know, at the end of the day, I think we have to ask ourselves, are we comfortable with people going to jail or even dying as we see all of the use of force across the United States with police officers?
00:18:12.360Do we want people dying because of this policy?
00:18:14.340Would I be OK if my neighbor died because he disagreed with it?
00:18:17.500And that becomes a tough pill to swallow.
00:18:52.760And you can't really learn from the past unless you can remember the past.
00:18:56.300And I think that's where we get into the problem where today we have everyone has, you know, ADD and all these short attention spans and everything.
00:19:02.940And people can't going back to the context.
00:19:48.400It was the federal government coming against the Mormon church trying to impose a new definition of marriage with which everybody disagreed.
00:19:56.540And church leadership was sent to prison.
00:19:59.640People were going underground and evading law enforcement officers.
00:20:05.320The underground was this very real thing that people were protecting one another, especially church leaders, to shield them from prosecution.
00:20:11.780Wives weren't testifying against husbands.
00:20:16.700And we, you know, so many of us here in Utah have ancestors who lived through that to either small or large degrees.
00:20:24.560And now so many are supportive of the government doing the exact same thing to other people.
00:20:28.800It's again, it's one more example of not having the context and recognizing that, hey, if you disagreed with it when the government wasn't on your side, you shouldn't agree with it.
00:20:37.220Just because the government is on your side, you should disagree with it all the time to be consistent.
00:20:42.320Do you think that Mormons are unfairly demonized?
00:20:44.360Because I hear all kinds of things about them, and I think, no, I don't think that's true.
00:20:48.700Like any group, it's easy to mischaracterize what is said about us.
00:20:54.080It's funny, you know, I've written several books.
00:20:55.980I do a lot of speaking on these issues.
00:20:57.360And I, as such, I encounter a lot of people who aren't Mormon.
00:21:01.100And the extent to which they know about Mormonism is, you know, from, you know, the South Park or the Book of Mormon musical or, you know, some Comedy Central clip or whatever.
00:21:12.180And so that, you know, I was a missionary for my church.
00:21:15.940That's why I was in Honduras for two years that I mentioned.
00:21:19.420And so, you know, spend a lot of time working with people, teaching people who were told that we believed a certain thing when that clearly isn't true.
00:21:27.520It's the same thing, though, politically, right?
00:21:29.320People say, oh, you libertarians believe this, or I heard that, you know, anarchists think this or whatever.
00:21:34.280And whether it's politics, religion, or business, or anything else, people have their biases.
00:21:40.240They have the limited information that some purportedly authoritative source shared with them.
00:22:30.280When you look at specific examples of what Somalia has been through, the prevailing arguments that are used actually are incorrect.
00:22:37.560And some of the arguments that Art mentioned work very much in favor of voluntarism when you look at some of the indices and the metrics by which you can judge societal progress and health and everything.
00:22:47.880So, yes, I think it's for everybody simply because I think it's the only moral view.
00:22:52.520I think ultimately government has to be through voluntary contractual agreement.
00:23:01.280Government is merely an organization of people and that a group of people cannot delegate to an institution powers that they do not themselves have, right?
00:23:12.120I can't empower an agent, a third party agent on my behalf to, you know, steal from my neighbor because I do not have that power myself.
00:23:19.600And yet governments have asserted that they have general police powers and that they're parents patriae, which is the Latin term for being father of the nation, that they are ultimately in control of all children and all people in the state.
00:23:33.600These legal doctrines have percolated and yet it's in total opposition to what government itself properly is.
00:23:40.680Even many of the founders, Thomas Jefferson especially, right?
00:23:43.380He advocated for repeatedly ratifying the Constitution in each new generation so that you could actually have consent of the governed.
00:23:50.740We simply do not have consent of the governed and therefore everything ultimately the government is doing is illegitimate.
00:23:57.680There is no way that those being governed today can actually consent.
00:24:02.440And even if you consider elections, the method by which the governed can consent, you look at extremely low voter turnouts.
00:24:10.160And then even those who show up to vote, it's only a majority of people imposing it on everybody else.
00:24:15.880That's not consent of everybody who's governed.
00:24:18.340So even logistically, theoretically, conceptually, voluntarism is the only model that makes sense for moral governance in any sort of civil society.
00:24:28.940Otherwise, you're talking about empowering thugs to empower the will of the few upon the many.
00:24:59.440Decentralization fosters experimentation and innovation.
00:25:02.760When you have top-down control, you don't have that.
00:25:05.220So look at a hot topic right now like Common Core in education.
00:25:09.060And you have all of these schools around the country being forced to change their education standards to this Common Core that's produced by an elite, small group of insiders.
00:25:22.400It's never been psychologically evaluated.
00:25:25.140There's all sorts of problems with it.
00:25:26.760And yet it's being imposed on, excuse me, on everybody.
00:25:30.080What if instead you had innovation and freedom or, as you point out, decentralization and even secession between schools such that they could go different routes?
00:25:40.340And things like Common Core or any of these novel concepts would not be enforced upon everybody but would rather be subject to the market, right?
00:25:48.460So if you had secession, if the United States of America was broken up into 13, 15, 20, 40 countries, whatever, you could have different countries taking different routes and finding different ways of doing things.
00:25:59.900And suddenly those in the United States who see that their neighbor made these three tweaks in the Constitution and look how much freer they are now, that becomes an incentive for the United States to shape up.
00:26:11.540Otherwise, the citizens might move to another state.
00:26:14.080This whole theory back in the day of the 50 states being laboratories of democracy, even though democracy is an awful term.
00:26:20.900But in fact, a friend of mine often changes that one letter in that quote and instead of calling them laboratories of democracy, he calls them lavatories of democracy where you get the crappy end of things.
00:26:36.000But the whole idea was that you would have mobility between them, that if I live in Utah and things are just going awful, I can vote with my feet.
00:26:42.740And if enough people do that, like is happening right now in California where I'm from, right?
00:26:46.600There's a mass exodus of people and companies from California because taxes are high, the drought's messed up, the government's messed up, education's messed up.
00:26:55.180That has an impact, at least in theory, and the bad actors can be punished, finally.
00:27:00.640So what are your thoughts on leadership?
00:27:02.960I mean, Europeans have always had kings and leaders, role models, heroes, gods and goddesses.
00:27:07.620Are you opposed to a natural hierarchy?
00:27:09.840You know, I think as a Christian, I believe Christ is king.
00:27:13.260In terms of human relations, I don't have any problem with that, whether in the animal order or the human order or whatever, provided that it's voluntary, right?
00:27:22.660Like, so I am the leader of my organization, but nobody is compelled to be my employee.
00:27:28.620But if they decide to enter into this contractual relationship and be my employee, there is a natural order because it is the way that this organization is laid out.
00:27:39.760And it's through contract that they are recognizing that maybe some of their free speech rights are going to be suppressed on company time or whatever, if it's contradictory to what our organization stands for.
00:27:51.380So through contract, you can, you know, suppress or abdicate some of your rights.
00:27:55.780And through voluntary association, certainly I think we can build these, as you say, these natural order systems where we can delegate authority or recognize authority, much like the consent of the governed.
00:28:06.200The government could do awful things, provided that it had the unanimous opt-in of everybody who was being governed, right?
00:28:13.820When I talk about that a government can only have powers that we ourselves have, that's in this system where you have majority control.
00:28:21.120But if, you know, you're on an island with 10 people and all 10 of you want to vote to, you know, empower this new government to do something that you would not morally be able to do yourself,
00:28:32.280that's okay because everybody involved has agreed that consent has been given and therefore you can provide that power to that system.
00:28:40.720And so provided that it's voluntary, consensual, contractual, I have no problem with leadership, with hierarchy, with, you know, any sort of non-flat system simply because people have opted in and they've agreed to whatever terms and conditions are involved.
00:28:56.600Well, let's switch gears and talk about your book, Feardom.
00:28:59.340I know you discuss how politicians use fear, but this can also apply to, well, I say, lamestream news, right?
00:29:05.820Oh, not only can apply, certainly does apply.
00:29:09.400Yeah, and it's what, six corporations own 90% of the news?
00:29:23.120Yeah, you know, and here's a guy who, through his government experience being Woodrow Wilson's confidant, was able to hone a practice and paradigm that launched many careers, that launched, basically changed government, changed industry.
00:29:38.820And now, you know, in political terms it's called propaganda, but then when he went into private practice shortly after seeing what it had done in World War I and how public opinion could be shaped to such a large degree so affordably, went into the private sector and called it public relations.
00:29:54.960And, you know, all the marketing and PR we have today as a result of this concerted effort to and calculated and very statistically significant way by which people can change behaviors.
00:30:06.860And so, yeah, I think the media definitely can and does use fear.
00:30:10.820As I note in the book, you can have it in business, you can have it in religion and politics and family.
00:30:16.060Any attempt of one or more people to gain power over others, they can use fear to do so and in fact is a very effective means for doing so and that's why it's so prevalent, certainly in politics, but also elsewhere.
00:30:28.620Well, explain to us, how does fear work as a weapon?
00:30:31.140So, in the book I explain in a bit more detail than I'll provide now, but there's actually a very scientific way by which this happens in our brains.
00:30:39.980There's kind of two pathways in our brains where information is routed and one is more for processing, the other is more an emotional response.
00:30:47.660And when we have these emotional triggers, they fire faster, basically, than the processing circuitry does.
00:30:55.280And so, what that means is you think of, you know, seeing a scared woman seeing a spider and she has that emotional outburst where had she stopped to think about it, she would have recognized that the spider is far away, it's not going to jump, it's small, it's not a threat, and she would have been able to rationally process the information and act in a different manner.
00:31:15.060But instead, the irrationality takes power.
00:31:17.460This is actually a function of our brains in doing this.
00:31:20.560So, the fact that it is natural and normal and scientific means that it can be controlled and exploited for people's benefit.
00:31:29.680That if politicians, media, whoever, can find ways to get us to react emotionally, to get us to react in this kind of carnal, visceral sense without thinking, if they can get us to feel scared and feel that we need a protector.
00:31:45.920These type of things prevent us from thinking logically through whatever situation we're being presented.
00:31:52.900And so, it's those circumstances in which what happens is they offer the problem, right, and they scare us into here's the issue.
00:31:59.700And then, of course, they're there conveniently to provide the solution.
00:32:02.180That's why we also have to always double, triple check history.
00:32:07.240I like to read a lot of revisionist material because a lot of times the narrative that you're given is it's the bullshit one, you know.
00:32:13.240You need to do your own investigating.
00:32:15.000I mean, there's people being imprisoned for being revisionists right now.
00:32:19.900It isn't history written by the victors.
00:32:21.500And so, certainly, those who differ, I think, are not very popular with the prevailing regime, certainly.
00:32:28.180Well, when it comes to Dylann Roof, what did you think when you heard the news and politicians speaking about him and the entire event that happened in Charleston?
00:32:35.940You know, to be honest, this event didn't stand out to me too much than it did any of the other shootings that have similarly been capitalized upon by politicians.
00:32:44.760You know, what was her name, Amy, whatever the movie actress was, was in the news the other day and talking about how horrible it was that this recent shooting had happened.
00:32:55.620I think it's something that becomes so consistent that none of the shootings are really standing out from the others because you always get the typical response that this is a horrendous shooting.
00:33:05.800This is someone who shouldn't have had guns.
00:33:07.800Therefore, we need to better control who has access.
00:33:12.800This is somebody who clearly there were warning signs, and so we need a greater, you know, big brother, minority report-esque type of program to catch this stuff before it happens.
00:33:23.720I mean, it's over and over and over again.
00:33:25.740What's interesting to me with cases like this, and I've written a little bit about this before in one of my other books, and that is what you don't see in the media is all of the cases in which a weapon has been used successfully for self-defense.
00:33:38.080John Lott has written a lot about this, and he actually went through and did some studies looking through all these different newspapers and compiling word counts for figuring out how much ink was given to the anti versus the pro gun stories.
00:33:51.060And, of course, you see right now everyone freaking out about the Charleston and the other shootings, and yet you don't see in the media all of the other, again, the events that would give context to the issue of guns that would restore some balance so people could say, oh, yeah, people do horrible things.
00:34:04.960But, you know, that woman defending her children against that aggressor the other day was so moving to me, and so we need to make sure that she still has the right to do it.
00:34:14.560Those are entirely absent from the conversation, whether with Charleston or the other issues, and that's where my concern comes in is that, yeah, there are concerns here that we need to address and that we can reasonably talk about, but I am unwilling to do so unless people are willing to admit and at least include in the discussion the context of how these guns are saving lives, not just taking them.
00:34:34.360Yeah, it's funny, too, because of how we got a gun.
00:34:37.880Their computers don't update fast enough, so it's just really a matter of updating their computer system.
00:34:43.320They couldn't see that there was a pending charge there, so it's like, okay, that's actually a simple problem that if you guys can go to the moon, I think you can solve that problem.
00:34:52.920Of course, it's probably a funding issue, and they'll ask for more money.
00:34:56.460Well, I noticed just the barrage, because I really looked into this, of anti-white articles that came out after that.
00:35:03.140It was just like blatant racism towards white people, and now it's, okay, is there going to be some other government policy?
00:35:09.680So what do you think about government involved in race relations and affirmative action and all those other programs?
00:35:15.260You know, the issue that I've had more familiarity with is all of the shootings that have been happening most recently, right, with us.
00:35:22.140In many of the cases, white police officers shooting black people.
00:35:27.640And I'm, from a criminal justice perspective where we do a lot of policy work, it is concerning to see a lot of these policies really destroying black families.
00:35:37.120I mean, there's really no way around it.
00:35:38.460And, in fact, there have been many prominent black people, Walter Williams especially, and many others who recognize that this exact trend is happening,
00:35:45.660whether with welfare or guns or drugs or whatever, these types of issues ultimately have a disproportionate impact upon minority populations.
00:35:55.860And so, yeah, there's kind of this reverse white privilege thing where we're all supposed to feel horrible for the crimes of our ancestors and make reparations and everything,
00:37:05.600And these guys are patrolling the city, especially in parts where, you know, police can't or won't go.
00:37:10.140And so it's been really interesting to see free market, private actors coming in to compete against government in these places where government policies have really destroyed stuff.
00:37:19.580But I think ultimately it's the war on drugs.
00:37:21.840I think so many of our, you know, I'm very concerned also about how our prisons are filled with nonviolent offenders,
00:37:28.060how we have the largest prison population, both in terms of total numbers, but also per capita than any other country in the world.
00:37:36.500And especially when you look at the racial lines, so many of these are drug crimes.
00:37:40.880They're low-level, petty type of stuff.
00:37:46.400And, you know, no dictator in a day, myself or anyone else, can say, here's what's going to fix it.
00:37:51.340But a lot of times it is these types of drug crimes, these nonviolent issues that over the years, again, incrementally have led us to where we are.
00:37:59.400I do think it's going to take a while to get out of it.
00:38:01.080But I think the greatest way to stop, or at least to reverse the trend, is to stop the war on drugs.
00:38:07.160So is it the fault of white people that non-whites are on drugs or a higher percentage in jail?
00:38:11.000Should we be egalitarian when it comes to jail sentencing?
00:38:13.960No, I don't think it's white people's fault per se.
00:38:16.480I don't think it's the fact that they're white.
00:38:18.540You know, no one voted for these initial policies because, you know, we're going to punish blacks or we're white or whatever.
00:38:24.520It's just the ultimate result, from my vantage point, of what the policies have done.
00:38:29.960It's the consequence, whether it's a seen or unseen consequence.
00:38:34.480So I don't ascribe racial motive to these policies.
00:38:38.240But certainly there is racial disparity in their enforcement and execution.
00:38:42.760Well, I wanted to ask you, should we allow drugs to flow freely?
00:38:45.660I mean, what do you think about the war on drugs?
00:39:11.960And I think those who defend any measure, any aspect of the current policy regarding drug use and possession, distribution, and everything else, need to be put on the defense.
00:39:25.180The onus is on them to justify why we should be sending these people to prison, why taxpayers should have to subsidize sending these people to prison.
00:39:34.020In many cases, to become more aggressive and, once released from prison, commit even more audacious crimes.
00:39:40.880So I don't think of it in terms of should we allow.
00:39:43.100I think we first need to ask, do we have the authority to prohibit?
00:39:47.480Certainly, as a parent of two children, I don't want DUIs.
00:39:53.600I don't want any of this kind of stuff.
00:39:54.880But I think that if you look at other countries, especially like Portugal and elsewhere, who are recognizing that this is a mental health issue, this is an addiction issue, this is not – sorry, not mental health, a public health issue.
00:40:15.920If anything, it's exacerbating the issue when you're sending a low-level, nonviolent drug offender into a prison population with many violent people.
00:40:27.220In many cases, these people are becoming even worse offenders once released.
00:40:31.380And so I don't think it's a question of should we allow.
00:40:33.600I think it's a question of we don't have the authority to deny.
00:40:36.380Certainly, there are other steps that can be taken, whether through government or, more importantly,
00:40:40.040through the private market to discourage and disincentivize the use and sale and distribution of drugs.
00:40:46.320But our current approach simply has utterly failed.
00:41:44.020Of course, he's famous for writing the book Walden about his transcendentalist experience of living in nature and everything else at the pond that was owned by his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson.
00:41:53.840But while they were living at the pond, he was walking around one day, and he was confronted by a tax collector.
00:41:58.220And the tax collector demanded that he pay the tax for the Mexican-American War.
00:42:16.480And yet that experience is what led him to think about, you know, when your conscience conflicts with the law, when is it okay to break the law?
00:42:33.920Yeah, well, and I think his ideas have merit.
00:42:36.780But to your point about objecting to tax, back in those days, there were specific taxes for specific things.
00:42:43.940Everything now today is just a slush fund.
00:42:46.660And if you object to any one given policy, you have no way to reasonably dispute it because there's no precise tax for that precise action to which you object.
00:44:33.720We do government transparency, education reform.
00:44:37.240Civil liberties has really become our bread and butter.
00:44:39.380We do a lot of stuff dealing with government surveillance, right to privacy, body cameras, forcible entry, surveillance, and all sorts of stuff.
00:44:47.860And, in fact, with our work, Utah has become a leader among the several states in many of these issues that, with the legislation we've passed protecting people's Fourth Amendment rights, Utah now has some of the best laws on the books.
00:45:00.600And so we're actively working on trying to get other states to adopt those as well.
00:45:31.280One teaches about kind of the proper role of government from a classical liberal perspective based on The Law by Frederick Bastiat.
00:45:39.560The second book teaches about the free markets based on a great essay by Leonard Reed called iPencil, talking about how, you know, nobody knows how to make a pencil.
00:45:49.300Even a simple object requires the collaboration of unseen, you know, millions of people working together to, you know, the logger needs a chainsaw, but the chainsaw manufacturer needs the metal, and the metal needs the trucks, and the trucks need the roads.
00:46:03.760And everyone's working together through spontaneous order to allow many of this innovation to happen.
00:46:10.500So that's another book that we've done.
00:46:11.840We're doing one right now based on G. Edward Griffin's book, The Creature from Jekyll Island, teaching about the thing.
00:46:16.780So the kids will be learning about central banking and money and inflation and everything else.
00:46:24.280And the interesting thing, I'll note really quick, is that when we first started these books, we figured the kind of general libertarian crowd would glom onto this the most because, you know, they've read the books maybe, so they want their kids to learn this stuff too.
00:46:37.220In fact, our greatest audience has been homeschoolers.
00:46:41.300And in many cases, these parents themselves, they've never read, you know, Frederick Bastiat or G. Edward Griffin or anything else.
00:47:03.240So that's one of the projects that we're doing, tuttletwins.com, to try and educate the rising generation, recognizing that in schools especially, these kids are not learning anything remotely connected to liberty.
00:47:13.880And so we want to provide that countervailing force and hope that, you know, that can pay dividends down the road.
00:47:19.120So trying to find fun projects like that to educate people more generally and build momentum for the cause of liberty.
00:47:48.200An allegiance, a love, and a loyalty for one's own people, a respect for what our ancestors have created to carry on the traditions and culture of our people.
00:47:59.700In fact, they'll scoff and be confused when you say your people, because they're so removed from their own blood and ancestral soil that they don't even know where they come from.
00:48:10.300They see no value or sacredness in it.
00:48:13.240Just as many are in favor of private property, for good reason, so should a nation have borders.
00:48:19.600Space is what allows a people to flourish.
00:48:22.440Without it, the flower will get trampled.