Ep 558 ｜ Based Debate： Libertarian vs. Social Conservative ｜ Guest： Brad Polumbo
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Summary
Brad Palumbo is a conservative journalist and content creator and the co-founder of Based Politics, a new conservative multimedia hub. In this episode, Brad and I discuss his views on what it means to be a conservative, the role of government in society, and the future of the Republican Party.
Transcript
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Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers,
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better than organic chicken and Kraft beef, shipped right to your front door,
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goodranchers.com slash Allie for a great deal. All right, today we are talking to Brad Palumbo.
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He is a libertarian and he has a very different perspective on things as a conservative than I do
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and a lot of social conservatives do. He would call himself socially moderate or maybe even
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socially liberal. So we disagree on quite a few things and we might even disagree really on the
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future of the GOP. Like what should the Republican Party look like? What role does the government play,
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if any, in the future of conservatism? What does it even mean to be a conservative? And so we're
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going to debate and discuss some of those things. It's going to be a very respectful conversation.
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I really hope that you appreciate it and learn from it. And so without further ado, here is Brad Palumbo.
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Brad, thank you so much for joining us. Can you tell everyone who you are and what you do?
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Absolutely. My name is Brad Palumbo. I'm a libertarian, conservative journalist and content creator
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and the co-founder of Based Politics, a new multimedia hub that we think we're actually
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off to a great start. But we're publishing articles, TikToks, YouTube videos, that kind of thing.
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So it's kind of similar to what you do at The Blaze, but a little different.
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Yeah. And you got a little bit of pushback and I think you were probably expecting this
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when you first came out with this name Based Politics, because what you mean by based is not
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what a lot of conservatives mean by based. So can you talk about that distinction a little bit?
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Yeah. So based has become a very online conservative term for things that people think
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are the opposite of cringe that are like very rooted in values or on point. And it has become
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popular in what I would call like the nationalist faction of the GOP or of the right. People who are
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OK with some forms of big government are more skeptical of capitalism and free markets, are more
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concerned with what they would call the common good than individual liberty. But it didn't start
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there. The term actually started in the black community. And it also is used by a lot of people
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outside of that faction now, including in more liberty or freedom oriented sections of the right.
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And so part of what we want to do is my co-founder, Hannah Cox, and I are people who believe in
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somewhat more traditionally classically conservative values like free markets, like
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constitutionalism, like limited and restrained government. And so we're hoping to kind of
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rebrand. And we did know that would come with pushback because what we think is based is those
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values, right? The kind of things that Ronald Reagan cared about, not the things that some of these
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more fringe kind of nationalist next generation leaders would have you believe our base.
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I think one of the biggest disagreements that we probably have is what is the foundation of
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conservatism? What is the moral foundation of conservatism? Which I don't I think the people
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that you're talking about are typically Catholic and I'm not Catholic. And so there are probably a lot
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of theological and maybe even political disagreements that I would have with some of the people that you
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are talking about. Although I do think I agree with them when it comes to like what is conservatism
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fundamentally and what is needed to be preserved if we want all of these other things like a free
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market, like capitalism, like more restrained government, smaller government. And I would argue
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that that the theological foundation provided by Christianity, the definition of family and marriage
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provided by Christianity is actually necessary for conservatism as a philosophy to take hold and
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to influence our policies. That is what I would consider. And I'm not saying at all that I'm the
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arbiter of what is based. But when I think of based, I think of those nuclear family centric,
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even just in a general sense, Christian theological foundation of conservatism. That's what I think
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of when I think of based. But I don't think that you and I are coming from the same position on that
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at all. No, but I will make a distinguishment here that I don't claim to speak for social
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conservatism. I don't claim to be a social conservative. I would say I'm socially moderate.
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I'm not religious. I'm gay. But I'm also not like woke or with the far left on any of these issues.
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So I would describe myself as socially center right. But I don't claim to speak for social
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conservatism. But political conservatism in American history, especially in recent decades,
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has in many ways been about more than social conservatism, right? Fusionism was also about
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the Constitution and free markets and individual liberty was Ronald Reagan, who said the heart and
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soul of conservatism is libertarianism. Now, obviously, conservatism is not the same thing
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as all out libertarianism. But I think the things that we need to conserve are the classically liberal
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institutions that keep us free. I mean, nothing has been better for religious conservatives and social
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conservatives and people like me than the First Amendment that protects our right to free speech,
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our freedom of religion, our freedom of conscience, all of those things that are a
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bulwark against whether it's woke oppression or oppression from the other side. That's the things that
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we need to preserve. And what I my concern with the kind of like you talked about, they tend to be
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Catholic, but the nationalist types, the post liberals, some of them would call themselves is that they would
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undercut things like the First Amendment in the pursuit of like short term victories against
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wokeness or whatever. But in doing so, they actually got the system that has kept us free.
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And that system is what I think we need to conserve.
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I think that the argument would probably be that there have always been limits on the First Amendment,
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there have always been limits on free speech. The question is, who gets to decide what those
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limits are? And thus far, it has been, or at least recently, I won't say thus far, but recently,
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it has been leftist ideologues, whereas people on the right would say, okay, well, if someone's going
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to limit free speech, then the right should be in charge. Conservatives should be in charge of what
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those limitations are, if there are going to be limitations. And you can argue that the limitations
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should be very, very small. But who gets to say what those limitations are? It seems like at least
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in the public sphere, if not legally, the left seems to be the ones to say, well, this is what you
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can and cannot say. And so I think the people on the right, perhaps that you're talking about would
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say, well, okay, fine. If we're going to have restrictions, if we're going to have, you know,
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changing definitions, then the right needs to be on the front lines of pushing back against that
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using whatever tools possible. But that last sentence that you just said is where that becomes
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an issue for me using whatever tools possible. I'll just give you an example who I think we both
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know and who's a nice guy, Josh Hammer, the opinion editor at Newsweek.
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Yeah, love Josh Hammer, just had him on the podcast.
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Right. And I'm not saying anything against him personally, but he tweeted something that I think
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gives us a good example of what you're talking about. He was very upset by Apple unveiling a pregnant
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man emoji. And he, in his response, criticizing it said, the government needs to use state action
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to crush wokeness. Now, look, a pregnant man emoji is very stupid. It's very silly. I'm not here to
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defend that. But the idea that that requires us to then go and use state action to crush ideas,
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wokeness is an idea, it's an ideology, is very disturbing to me. And it seems like we are,
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because guess what? Social conservatives are not a majority in this country, necessarily. Religious
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people are decreasingly less of a majority. And so if you want to start using the state,
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which is different from private sector censorship, which I object to, but it's fundamentally different
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to have the government throw you in jail or lock you up than it is to have Spotify ban you.
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It's fundamentally different. They're both can be problematic, right? But when you are willing to
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concede that the government can squash bad ideas, I think that's very dangerous. I mean,
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conservatives know that the fallacy behind this logic of, well, when we are in charge,
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it will be different. When our team has the power, it'll be different. Socialism will work this time
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because it'll be our version with our people in charge. We know that that doesn't work. And so I'm
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worried to see this logic developing on some corners of the right that the way to fight wokeness
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is to basically start using leftist tactics and empowering the government. I mean, the average
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federal bureaucrat has the politics of Elizabeth Warren. So the idea that by growing the government
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and giving it more expansions and invasions of our liberty, we're going to be able to push,
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you know, conservative or just moderate values. To me, it doesn't make any sense at all. And part of
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what we want to do at base politics is to amplify a different vision.
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I think that the argument is that classical liberalism doesn't seem to have the same power
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to push back against wokeism, which really is so much more than just like a counterpart to
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classical liberalism. It truly is a religion in itself. And it, of course, is willing to use
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whatever tool possible, including the power of the government, no matter how totalitarian,
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in order to achieve its goals. And I think the argument from the conservative side would be,
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okay, rather than just saying, okay, well, we're not going to, we're not going to be like you,
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which I totally, I totally hear what you're saying. I 100% hear what you're saying. And I would say that
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typically and naturally my sympathies lie with what you're saying. Although, although it does seem
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like classical liberalism, trying to compete against the power of wokeness, that is so
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institutionalized, it's just not a fair match. And so I just wondered, like, okay, if it's not the
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power of the government, if we're not harnessing the powers that already exist in the advancement of
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what you see to be good and right and true, which I think is contradictory to wokeness, then how do you
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push back against this institutionalized woke, wokeness, which, like I said, is harnessing all
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of the powers that exist to absolutely crush dissent and everything that we hold dear?
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Yeah, look, I like I said, I'm no friend of wokeness, I'm not going to spend a second trying
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to defend that or anything. But I will say this, this argument from certain corners of the right that
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you're doing, I think, an excellent job of articulating. To me, it also sounds like something I
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hear from people on the left when it comes to guns. They say, well, people are being killed with
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guns. I'm like, okay, yes, that's true. That's bad. And then they say, here are our policy solutions.
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And I say, well, those are all bad. They don't make sense. They won't work. And they'll disarm
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law abiding people. And they say, well, we have to do something. And I say, well, no, we don't.
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Because if the options are only bad, you're actually better off doing nothing. But we don't have to do
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nothing. I will say that. One of the most effective ways that we have to combat like wokeness,
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which is really like left wing illiberalism, the desire to like crush the Christian baker and
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everything that I know you're very familiar with, right, is actually what something President Trump
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did that was very traditionalist and not a new kind of conservatism, which was put originalist
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judges on the bench. I mean, this Supreme Court just struck down Biden's vax mandate. It's going to
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strike down affirmative action, I believe it may. And I know this is very important to you chip away at
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or get rid of Roe entirely. So I think that that traditional legal conservative movement was
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committed to the Constitution, to all of these things we're talking about that they're saying
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aren't good enough. And the victory of that movement is now defending us and giving us our
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most legitimate way to fight back. And people on the right are winning on a lot of these things
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in the courts and in the legal system. I mean, the First Amendment has done more to protect
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religious freedom and Christian groups on campuses and so many other things over the last 30, 40 years
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than we could possibly know. But if we undermined it in the short of short term pursuit of, say,
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like prohibiting Apple from having stupid emojis. And the emoji is actually funny to me, by the way,
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because it's mostly going to be used, I think, to make jokes about how full people are or how fat
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they are once they've eaten a huge meal. But I agree, right? It's a stupid idea. But if we undermine
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something like that to go and shut down Apple's ability to have emojis, we don't like, I think
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it's just really short sighted. Well, I'd be interested to know what Josh would say to that,
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because as you know, he's a brilliant person who I guarantee really thought about his position. And so
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I would it would be fascinating actually to hear you guys debate and discuss this issue because you
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are both very smart. I think you're both very grounded in what you believe. And I think everyone
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would benefit from that conversation. Because of course, I am coming from this from a moral
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perspective in that I don't just disagree politically with I'm talking about the hard
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left. I'm not just talking about, OK, do you think that we should have different border policy? Or do
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you think that maybe we should have more government welfare programs? That kind of stuff, I think,
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can all be debated. But I truly do see the kind of left wing ideology that seems to be parasitical
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in nature and seems to want to suck the life out of everything that is good and right and true.
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I do see it as a huge threat. And so I will say, even as someone who I would say,
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mostly agrees with a lot of what you're saying, I do also find myself very sympathetic to the other
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side of this argument saying, look, it's not enough just to say, oh, we're not like them,
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we're not going to use the power of the government when we have the chance to or we're
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not going to push back institutionally on these things. I don't know. There's just something about
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drag queen story hour that I guess that I guess makes me want to use the power of the government
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to do something about it more than I more than I originally maybe would have thought I had in me a
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few years ago. The moral just kind of. I'm also I'm certainly not an anarchist. Right. So if you
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can convince me that something is like literally harmful to children or child abuse or something,
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I'm not here saying, well, we should just let that be legal. And it's the fruits of liberty.
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But it's a different question when it comes to kinds of speech. And also, I would just go back to
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what is the solution? Well, I do have one solution sort of that I could offer. And I would just say,
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like over the last two years, I think, if anything, we've seen why the liberty element
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of conservatism is so important. I mean, people's livelihoods were made illegal by the government.
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They were confined to their homes. People have had their lives crushed by the state over the last
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two years in a million different ways. Their fundamental individual rights, like the I'm pro
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vax anti mandate. Right. Your right to bodily autonomy has been crushed or attempted to be
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by the government. So I think we've seen really up close and personal the perils of big government
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and what has made someone like Ron DeSantis such a good governor. It's actually liberty based
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governance. Right. We're not locking you down. We're keeping our schools open. You can you can
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wear a mask if you want to. You can take the vaccine if you want to. It's all about like
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letting he is also using his power to try to restrict the power of corporations from doing
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things that we on the right see as oppressive. Like he's trying to harness big tech. He's trying
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to harness or at least at one point was trying to harness companies ability to require the vaccine
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and masks and things like that. I'm not sure if that actually was instituted. But I think that's
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what a lot of a lot of people on the right see is that, yes, OK, as you said, it's fundamentally
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different if a business discriminates against someone. Well, it is fundamentally different,
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but it can still be almost as consequential. For example, if someone is totally de-platformed
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and they have no way to, you know, make money, it's not the same thing as going to jail, but it is still
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extremely consequential. And so I think that there are people on the right who are saying, OK, look at
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Ron DeSantis, he is using his power to try to hold back the oppressiveness of corporations because he
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sees that the unfettered growth of any bureaucratic system, whether it's the government or a private
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entity, a company, can still trample upon people's liberty. And so I would actually argue that people
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are pointing to Ron DeSantis to make a different point than the one that you're making. Yes, it's rooted
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in liberty, but it's also rooted in the realization that companies can trample upon someone's liberty,
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not in the same way that a government can, but in a similar fashion.
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So he is, Pat, he's kind of appeasing both crowds right now. He's doing a lot of stuff,
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like what I pointed to, that is liberty-oriented conservatism. And then you're absolutely right
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on big tech and a few other things. He's doing some stuff that the common good conservatives and
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nationalists love. But what I would point out to you, and that's where I do disagree with DeSantis.
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I'm not a total DeSantis simp. But on big tech, for example, he's introduced these bills that were
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his attempt to use the state government to fight against wokeness and these big tech censorship.
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They all have been struck down by the courts. They're not implemented. They're not achieving
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anything. He tried to fine tech companies if they didn't platform politicians they disagreed with.
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That's just like a First Amendment non-starter. So it ended up mostly being a cultural signaling
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effort, I guess. But the actual legislation, it didn't accomplish anything. So I think if anything,
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you're totally right, nationalists and people on the right who want common good conservatism
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do point to DeSantis. But the core things that he's done that have been so important
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are liberty-oriented. And then the areas where he has kind of tried this other tact haven't really
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One thing I want to talk to you about is that you say nationalist. And I'm just assuming I'm
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picking up that you don't agree with nationalism, which I won't I don't know if that's necessarily
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what these people mean when they say based. It seems more like they're talking about social
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conservatism. Although I will say I do think that there is a strain of nationalism. And this is
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something, honestly, that I've just started to learn about in the past couple of years.
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You seem to be saying nationalism in a derogatory way. And so I'm curious your thoughts on it.
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Well, I think we have to define nationalism. I'm using I would I would kind of combine the
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right into two factions. On one hand, you have people like Rand Paul and Mike Lee. That's my kind
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of GOP, free market capitalists, limited government people. But they're not like total libertarians and
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socially liberal or anything. Yeah. But then you also have Josh Hawley and Tom Cotton and J.D.
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Vance and Tucker Carlson and those types of people. And that's who I'm talking about when
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I'm talking about nationalists. It's just hard to find a great word to put on them.
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So I'm not trying to use that as a pejorative, though I am using it to distinguish what I
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don't agree with, because nationalism like I'm a patriot. I love America. I think our country's great.
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That's not what I mean by nationalism. What I mean is kind of a right wing, big government
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friendly ideology that's rooted in a different form of the collective, right, the common good
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using the state to fight for our interests rather than decentralizing. I mean, one of the best things
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we could do to solve a lot of these problems would be to go to federalism and honestly, like, take a lot
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of these debates out of the national level and let Florida be Florida and California be California.
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Now, California isn't content with that. And that's a part of the problem. But right now,
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neither are many Republicans and many conservatives. They also want to dictate how California can live.
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And I think that in that way, we've gotten away from that principle that could be a salvation for
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this, because right now I'm really concerned about the direction of our country. It's ripping it up.
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We're ripping apart at the seams. We're fighting each other more than ever.
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And I think that what we need is a different vision. Also, young people on the right do tend
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to be more liberty oriented, more socially moderate, yet we still need to kind of convince them that
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they should favor the Constitution, limited government, capitalism, not socialism. And I don't
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think that either Donald Trump's brand of conservatism or a super hardcore socially conservative nationalism
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can really take that fight into the next generation, which is part of what we want to do with
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politics. Going back to nationalism, I wouldn't say necessarily that how you defined it is the
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real definition of nationalism, which is the belief in nation states. Like I believe that America and
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her traditions and her customs and her foundation is good. I don't want it to be France. I don't want
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France to be America. And I would say the opposite of a nationalist is, is not, you know, a small
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government libertarian necessarily, but is really an imperialist. You know, you talked about the
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importance of federalism, that we shouldn't want California to be Florida, while a nationalist also
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says, well, I don't want France to be America, or I don't want, you know, Mexico to be America. I'm not
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going to impose American values on all of these countries around the world in the name of liberty. But
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really, it doesn't tend to accomplish that it tends to accomplish just a lot of chaos and havoc,
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I think. And we're seeing it right now. So I think a nationalist would say that I am for our nation
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first, I want to prioritize the interests of our people. First, that doesn't mean that we hate
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immigrants, doesn't mean that we hate other countries, but we want to maintain the sovereignty
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of our country, the strength of our borders. We want our country to be a place where the American
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family can thrive. And so yes, we do believe maybe in enacting policies that, you know, encourage the
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formation of the family or whatever it is, that help, you know, the working class family be able to
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survive and thrive. I don't even know if that, though, that latter part is a part of nationalism,
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but it is about national interest and putting the interests of your country first. It's not about
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denigrating other countries, but it is about your own nation's sovereignty. It's about the importance
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of nation states and actually believing in a form of anti-imperialism. And I would say that's very
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conservative. So I guess I just don't understand really using nationalists as like this derogatory term.
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Well, so the way you just described it, I agree with most of that, right? I believe in America
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first foreign policy, like Donald Trump said. I'm all about that. So maybe we don't want to use the
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word nationalist. I guess we can use the word populist. I mean, all I'm trying to do is put a
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label on the type of people that are on the right that want to-
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Big government conservatives. So I'm not super dedicated to the word nationalist. Some of them
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use that to describe themselves. So I'm not trying to fight over one label or anything. And I'm also
00:23:49.520
not trying to use it as a pejorative. I'm just trying to differentiate the groups and factions
00:23:54.780
to show what I am and what I'm not and what I think is right and what I think isn't. But I am
00:24:00.840
actually, and this is a point of agreement between some of these people and folks like myself and
00:24:05.840
Hannah-based politics is I am about the American interests on the international stage. And I'm not
00:24:10.980
about neoconservatism or spreading democracy or invading the globe or any of those things.
00:24:15.920
So maybe that's one area where we can agree on what is base.
00:24:18.960
I do. I do think that that is an area of agreement for the most part when it comes to foreign policy
00:24:23.660
between libertarians and maybe what you would call nationalist populists, the populism that it
00:24:29.620
sounds like you really don't, that you really don't agree with. I do think that that is actually
00:24:36.060
a very important commonality between the two because then you can say, okay, we agree on this
00:24:41.420
outside stuff. Now let's come together and talk about what policies we think are good. Because I also
00:24:48.720
think we have the same goal. Like I'm guessing that you want the American family to thrive. I'm guessing
00:24:57.180
that you want a thriving working class. You want there to be lots of jobs. You want people to be
00:25:02.420
able to provide for their family on maybe one income. And a lot of the problems that we see in
00:25:08.260
wokeness, like we agree on. So really the question is how? How do we combat those things? And I think
00:25:14.300
your answer to that is basically you fight bad ideas with good ideas. You don't use the power of the
00:25:23.160
Yeah. And so let's talk a little bit about some of those ideas and maybe where we disagree,
00:25:28.780
because I am a social conservative and I hold the view that social conservatism is actually necessary.
00:25:36.420
And actually that just not that everyone believes in Christian theology, but having the Judeo-Christian
00:25:42.020
foundation as the foundation of conservatism and our lawmaking in the United States is actually
00:25:47.320
necessary for all of the other conservative policies that you and I agree on when it comes to the
00:25:52.820
free market and things like that. But you disagree. So can you talk about your perspective
00:25:58.180
on the why? Like, why do you believe in the First Amendment? Not just from the pragmatic point of
00:26:03.800
view, but like, why do you believe that human beings have rights that governments should respect?
00:26:08.860
Well, for me, free speech is a human right. And so is freedom of religion.
00:26:17.600
And that's what I want to know. That's what I really want to know from
00:26:20.060
my friends. I'm not an atheist. I'm an agnostic. And my answer would be like, I don't know,
00:26:27.080
I don't claim to have the deep philosophical answers to everything. And what I would say about
00:26:32.240
whether it really depends what you mean by Judeo-Christian values. Obviously, that's a big
00:26:36.580
answer. I believe that a lot of the things, you know, into America's foundation that includes a lot
00:26:42.240
of Christian ideals are good and should be preserved. But my fundamental value, one of them
00:26:47.440
is tolerance, not in the woke sense, but in the sense of living side by side, getting along,
00:26:53.420
even though we don't agree. So for like, I'll give you an example. On my podcast, I had Jack
00:26:57.540
Phillips on, right? I'm an agnostic gay person. He is obviously a Christian, a social conservative
00:27:03.840
who doesn't support gay marriage, wouldn't bake a gay wedding cake. We had a long conversation,
00:27:08.220
very friendly. He is all about, you know, just doing his own thing. I don't want to force him to
00:27:13.820
bend to my will. And all I ask is that he doesn't do things like, you know, anti-sodomy laws,
00:27:20.380
right? Or outlawing gay marriage. These kinds of things that then are using the state to infringe
00:27:25.940
on other people and promote your own values. I think we all need to live side by side.
00:27:31.600
He needs to have his religious freedom and his free speech, and I won't infringe it. And we can all
00:27:36.720
share a society, even though we have deeply held disagreements. That's what's always been
00:27:41.020
beautiful about America. Yeah, I wonder, there are a couple questions that I have,
00:27:46.120
like, what is the limitation? Because obviously, as you said, you're not an anarchist. And so there
00:27:50.420
are some things that should actually be illegal. And so like, when it comes to, for example,
00:27:58.380
hormone treatment for children, I think that that should be illegal. But what would be your take on
00:28:04.040
that? If your idea is that we should just kind of, you know, live and let live?
00:28:07.500
Well, the difference is live and let live applies to consensual adults, not children. So I actually
00:28:15.860
agree with you. I have a lot of compassion for kids that experience gender dysphoria, but I think
00:28:21.900
they can't consent to medical life altering medical treatments. So I think maybe starting at the age of
00:28:28.120
16 or 18, they should be able to do that. But I agree with you that they can't consent to something
00:28:33.960
like that. I mean, even as a gay person, right? Like I remember having feelings or confusion as
00:28:40.900
early as five, but I couldn't have defined my sexuality or made any life altering choices or
00:28:47.860
a child doesn't even understand what the concept of sex in terms of gender and sex even means. So how
00:28:54.580
they could make irreparable, irreversible medical decisions on it. I agree with you. But that's
00:29:01.160
something where I view the same way I'm pro-life, perhaps not quite all as far as maybe someone
00:29:07.580
like you, but I'm generally pro-life because I view it as a violation of interpersonal rights.
00:29:13.280
And that's the difference is I'm all about individual liberty, but individual liberty does
00:29:17.620
not include the ability to infringe on someone else's rights.
00:29:21.760
And I think that one of the reasons though why classical liberalism is seen as maybe
00:29:31.440
just not a formidable foe against the leftist ideology that we see today is because it very
00:29:40.100
often stops at kind of where you stopped, the why. Why do we have human rights? Like why do we respect
00:29:47.480
free speech? Why do we respect freedom of religion? For me, it's rooted in who made us. It's rooted
00:29:54.020
in this idea that there is a transcendent moral lawgiver. Because there's a transcendent moral
00:29:58.240
lawgiver, there is no earthly authority that can then supersede it. The government doesn't give or
00:30:04.040
take away my rights. God did that. And therefore, I have innate rights that cannot be arbitrarily
00:30:09.720
taken away. And I think that wokeism in its own way, leftism is also a religion. It's ideas about
00:30:19.380
human nature and where we come from and where human beings are going and what are rights versus
00:30:25.220
privilege. It is rooted in a long philosophical ideological history that is very religious in
00:30:31.480
nature. And it's almost really a theological discussion that we are having. Like what are
00:30:37.540
humans? Why are we valuable? Where does that value come from? Is it possible to change from a man to
00:30:43.780
woman? What are children? Why do parents have rights? Like what is the family? All of these are
00:30:48.580
theological questions. And I would say that that is one issue that I typically have with like with
00:30:55.040
libertarians and agnostic and atheist libertarians when you're talking about these issues is that you
00:31:00.080
talk about them from a pragmatic point of view, which of course is important. But the why you kind of
00:31:06.160
just, you can't answer. And that is one reason why I think ultimately the form of classical liberalism
00:31:11.560
that we are seeing espoused by you, even though I think that you're a wonderful person, it just,
00:31:17.040
it doesn't hold up. It doesn't hold up to the theological battle that we are seeing waged on the
00:31:23.140
left, in my opinion. Yeah, look, I understand what you're saying. I think I don't have the answer for,
00:31:30.240
you know, what are human beings? Where do our rights come from? But I think what's great about
00:31:33.920
America is that everybody can decide these deep moral questions for themselves. A Muslim person
00:31:38.780
and you. But we can't really, because you can't have a society where we are all our own gods. Like
00:31:44.220
we all have to agree, right? Okay. But you believe in religious freedom, right? You believe a Jewish
00:31:48.440
person and a Muslim person. We believe in religious freedom, but don't we all have to agree? Like,
00:31:52.780
okay, this is just the bare minimum. I'm not saying, okay, you have to agree with all of my different
00:31:57.360
theology in order for us to function in society. You and I definitely agree on that. And thankfully,
00:32:01.820
or else, you know, the Catholic nationalists that you were talking about, they don't agree with me
00:32:05.960
on a lot of the theological stuff either. So that would be a problem. But when it comes to, like,
00:32:10.440
the foundation of, like, what laws should we pass and why? People say a lot, you can't legislate
00:32:15.920
morality, but of course you can. Of course you do. The law against murder is legislating morality,
00:32:21.840
and it speaks to what we think about human beings. Why is it bad to kill someone? So,
00:32:27.480
like, my thing is, why? Don't we all need to kind of agree on the why behind why we're here
00:32:35.780
and what morality is for us to function? To me, that is why we are so polarized.
00:32:40.960
But I think, well, we do have to legislate morality. It's interpersonal morality that we have to
00:32:47.540
legislate. And I agree that we need a shared understanding there. It's individuals who I
00:32:53.260
think should be able to make their own choices about their lives, consensual adults, and live
00:32:57.240
side by side very differently. But when it comes, we need to agree on basic human dignity, human rights,
00:33:04.500
the sovereignty of a human being as an individual, American principles like free speech. These are the
00:33:10.820
things we have to agree on. And I agree, it's very concerning. People on the left don't agree on.
00:33:15.300
So there is some borderline consensus, but I don't think it has to be religious,
00:33:20.780
although maybe that's where it stems from for a lot of people. I think we just have to agree
00:33:25.760
on this. For example, I'm very pro-immigration, right? Very pro-immigration. But I don't think
00:33:30.840
we should have immigration for people that reject all of our values, right? And so I think people who
00:33:39.600
want to come and live in a pluralistic, tolerant, free society with religious freedom and free speech
00:33:45.300
and a constrained federal government, that's what we should all need to have to agree on
00:33:50.320
in order to live side by side. But I don't think we have to all share even the same religious
00:33:56.060
orientation, let alone the details, which you're not saying. Because America, we've always lived with
00:34:02.720
atheists and agnostics and Christians and Jews. And that's part of what makes us great.
00:34:07.700
I think it's just, I think, I want us to at least be able to acknowledge the foundation of like where
00:34:17.240
liberty comes from, where rights come from. And my argument would be, at least on the conservative
00:34:21.780
side, that understanding that foundation of where rights come from, like why we don't believe in the
00:34:27.180
unfettered power of the government, that that, in my opinion, is also going to lead us to have
00:34:33.480
certain social views that I think are integral to conservatism. Like you talk about, okay, yes,
00:34:41.340
we are legislating interpersonal morality, but not individual morality. And, you know, to an extent,
00:34:47.540
I think that that is probably true, except then I think about, okay, but the individual turns into the
00:34:53.720
interpersonal so quickly. Like if you're talking about someone like Leah Thomas, who, okay, you could
00:35:00.280
just say that that is a person, you know, doing what they want to do, living their truth, whatever.
00:35:07.080
Well, that individual decision to try to present as a woman is now affecting other people. So is there
00:35:14.720
a place for the state to come in and say, no, you can't do that? I would say, I would say yes,
00:35:20.700
but I'm afraid you would say, no, there's no power. There's no place for the states to come in
00:35:27.740
because that's just an individual moral decision that they're making.
00:35:32.580
So I'm only vaguely familiar. What, what is Leah Thomas's sports competition in? Is that
00:35:38.820
This is swimming. So UPenn, he's at UPenn. He swam as a collegiate swimmer and now swims on the women's
00:35:50.600
No, I'm sorry. No, just UPenn, just University of Pennsylvania.
00:35:54.440
Um, is that a private school or a public school?
00:35:58.300
Um, I guess it's a public school. I'm not sure. I don't know if y'all know if it's public or private,
00:36:04.040
but regardless, I just don't think men should be able to compete against women.
00:36:09.380
What I would say is that if a private university wants to have what I consider to be unscientific or
00:36:16.000
foolish rules about sports, um, like you're saying, like a biological male could compete with women
00:36:21.320
swimming, I think they should be able to do that. I think at a public school, you have things like
00:36:25.540
Title IX and equal access and anti-discrimination laws that would, would I think if interpreted
00:36:30.380
correctly, prohibit that kind of thing because it's a form of discrimination against women.
00:36:35.240
Um, but I mean, for this person to want to just live their life, how they see fit in general,
00:36:41.240
as an adult, I have no problem with. Yeah. I guess my question is when it becomes,
00:36:46.780
because that's, that's the whole thing that we have really had that we've really seen, um,
00:36:52.480
since, uh, since a Berger fell is that the individual, what we were told, okay, this is
00:36:56.760
just individual. This is two people. They want to get married and that's that. And all the conservative
00:37:02.320
Christians were like, this is a slippery slope. There's going to be a baker one day who was forced
00:37:06.660
to bow down to the sexual revolution. And we were all told, no, no, no, no, no, that's not going to
00:37:10.740
happen. These are just people who want to live and let live the personal becomes interpersonal
00:37:14.400
really quickly. And so like, my question is like, when does the government step in? Because as you
00:37:20.640
just mentioned, like Jack Phillips's rights were trampled upon, um, in the name of tolerance in the
00:37:28.320
name of what I call, you know, the sexual and moral revolution, which has gone really quickly over
00:37:32.920
the past five to 10 years. And I think we're seeing it even more so when it comes to the
00:37:36.760
transgender issue. Like, do I have a right to be in a bathroom with only women or do I not?
00:37:42.340
To me, the state has a role to play there. I think it depends, um, what that bathroom is,
00:37:49.560
where it's located, what law it's bound by. And I think we also, the, the, the, you're absolutely
00:37:55.600
right. It's tricky to draw a line between personal and interpersonal, but you could flip this and
00:38:01.460
make left, left wing arguments. Like your free speech isn't personal. It affects other people.
00:38:06.480
It affects other people's safety. And I think this, it just becomes a very, your religion
00:38:10.780
affects my mental health because it stigmatizes me in society. I don't, I don't believe that to be
00:38:16.620
clear. But what I'm saying is it is a slippery slope, but what I'm saying is we have to draw it
00:38:21.620
firmly at interpersonal, right? Abortion is interpersonal. It's one human ending the life of
00:38:26.920
another. Me slapping someone is interpersonal. But you actually believe that abortion is okay
00:38:31.840
sometimes, right? No, but I'm, I'm generally pro-life. What does that mean? I don't, uh,
00:38:40.300
it means that I would favor certain exceptions. Okay. So you do believe that it's okay to take
00:38:45.240
an innocent person's life sometimes. So where do you, why, like, does that apply to other things?
00:38:50.540
Like, is that your principle? I mean, I'm like, I, I agree with pro-life positions in like 98% of
00:38:56.900
cases and I think almost all abortions should be outlawed. So I don't, I mean, and it's also,
00:39:01.300
I will say this, it's not really like one of my issues that I'm, I don't talk about. I don't
00:39:05.960
advocate about it. I mean, I'm, I'll happily discuss my views on it, but it's not something
00:39:10.400
where I'm trying to shape the conversation one way or another, or in particularly involved or
00:39:14.940
researched or passionate. Well, I'm just trying to figure out with libertarians,
00:39:18.980
like, what is the line? What is the line between personal and interpersonal? Like I'm against
00:39:24.360
abortion in all circumstances because I believe that taking an innocent life is wrong in all
00:39:31.040
circumstances. And so like, I kind of draw that line kind of clearly. And I don't know actually
00:39:37.080
the answer though, in all circumstances to be totally fair, like what is the line between personal
00:39:41.020
and interpersonal? Where does the state step in? And I guess I'm just trying to understand from the
00:39:44.800
more libertarian or classical liberal standpoint, like where, where the line is drawn.
00:39:51.940
But I want to go back to something you said a minute ago. And I think you're right that after
00:39:55.520
Obergefell, the kind of LGBT left and social left, they went in a very illiberal direction and started
00:40:02.780
targeting people. But I would also say that in many ways that has vindicated our classically liberal
00:40:08.860
structures, Jack Phillips won at the Supreme Court. Um, and also bestiality isn't legalized. Um,
00:40:16.820
polygamy isn't legalized. A lot of the slippery slope arguments that were made against gay marriage
00:40:22.260
haven't come true. I would say that Obergefell was almost seven years ago. So barely now I'm not saying
00:40:29.980
that gay marriage and bestiality are the same thing. I'm not making that argument. I'm just saying that
00:40:33.780
it's, you know, I don't think when Obergefell happened that we would have thought that we
00:40:38.220
would be having a conversation about whether a man can truly become a woman. I do think that it's
00:40:43.800
fair to say that, wow, that was a huge change. It should have been decided. I think on the legislative
00:40:51.420
level, you probably agree with that, uh, when it comes to, uh, when it comes to the States. Um,
00:40:58.320
and, and wow, that has changed so much. And I would say it's gone beyond even the wildest slippery slope
00:41:04.780
dreams of, um, of conservative Christians when you're talking about, you know, men being in women's
00:41:11.300
locker rooms and, and that has nothing to do with gay marriage. Gay and trans are fundamentally
00:41:15.560
distinct concepts. Well, I would say, I would say, yes, that is true. But wouldn't you say that the
00:41:22.220
LGBTQ leftist activist wing has worked very hard to conflate those two things and has really
00:41:27.900
tried to make it this homogenous group that says, you know, if you are opposed to so-called trans
00:41:34.520
rights, then you're, you know, opposed to the LGBTQ movement in general. And so it's almost hard to
00:41:41.900
distinguish between the two now because, you know, organizations like the ACLU have made them
00:41:46.840
completely conflated. Yeah. But I, I've spent a lot of time criticizing and pushing back on that
00:41:53.260
attempt to do so because you're right. They've done that. I don't think conservatives should buy
00:41:58.240
into that though, or, or accept that as a premise because sexual orientation and gender identity or
00:42:04.420
biological sex are completely distinct things. Um, and I think that we have different,
00:42:09.920
uh, I'll just say this and I'm not, I'm not someone who I don't believe in being anti-trans in
00:42:16.300
terms of any like hatred or animus. I have compassion for these people, but I definitely hold a lot of views
00:42:22.200
that the left-wing LGBT activists would consider anti-trans. And so does almost every young
00:42:26.980
conservative I know, but most of them are totally cool with gay people, fine with gay marriage,
00:42:32.300
whatever. That is a very real thing in society. A lot of people make a distinction between LGB and
00:42:40.380
the rest of the alphabet where it starts to get off the reservation. Yeah. And we've had a lot of
00:42:45.140
people, I think almost all women actually that we've had on who hold that same position, especially in
00:42:51.060
the UK and have really organized to kind of push back against that because they see it as a
00:42:55.760
diminishment of what they have fought for as well. And even a diminishment of the definition of what,
00:43:01.140
you know, is meant by being a homosexual. And so we've talked to a lot of people, um, that are on the
00:43:07.800
same page there. Of course, I do believe in the encouragement of, um, of the natural family.
00:43:16.680
There are different ethical issues that, again, this is like where the personal and interpersonal,
00:43:21.600
they just become so intricately interwoven that it's difficult to distinguish. Like,
00:43:27.600
I think that, um, the fertility industry, when it comes to the redefinition of marriage and
00:43:34.320
reproduction is like a huge ethical issue that we don't want to talk about. And we don't want to
00:43:40.500
get involved in because it feels politically incorrect. You're going to be called homophobic.
00:43:45.220
If you talk about some of, you know, the issues with sperm donation and egg donation and surrogacy
00:43:49.880
and things like that, I would say that that is something that has also taken off since
00:43:54.620
Obergefell that, um, you know, it does require conservatives to make a position on because again,
00:44:02.260
it asks that question, like, where is the line? What is a right? What is a privilege? And do the
00:44:08.420
definitions of marriage and procreation and all of those things really matter? As a conservative,
00:44:13.000
I think we still have to conserve the most fundamental tenets of those things.
00:44:17.320
And I just see the effort to try to like detach social conservatism from the rest of conservatism.
00:44:23.460
Very, very difficult when it comes to things like, you know, the definition of the family and things
00:44:29.160
Well, I don't know about detach as much as I think make room for it to coexist with other visions,
00:44:35.740
because like, I'm all about very pro adoption for gay parents. I think gay parents can can and have
00:44:41.360
raised tons of happy and healthy, successful children. There's lots of studies on that.
00:44:46.440
I agree with you. There are some ethical issues about surrogacy, about creating, you know, a lab,
00:44:52.520
write a new life. But I those also apply to straight.
00:44:55.320
Yes, I was about to say that I also have the same position when it comes to
00:45:02.520
So I don't know if we necessarily I don't really view that as a gay or anti gay issue. It's like
00:45:08.620
kind of surrogacy is its own thing that I will say I'm not super knowledgeable about or into.
00:45:16.000
It was just an example of how the personal becomes interpersonal really quickly. And also,
00:45:21.480
like, if you have the position, a lot of conservatives do and think this is integral
00:45:25.320
to conservatism, that all children have a right to a mother and a father. That's also a debate to be
00:45:31.420
had that I really think that we need to have between people like you who are more socially
00:45:35.360
moderate and people like me who are socially conservative, maybe not today. But I think,
00:45:39.680
honestly, it goes back to kind of what we were talking about in the beginning,
00:45:42.280
just fundamentally, our two sides within conservatism, I think, need to decide if we
00:45:48.580
agree, like on basic principles of conservatism, or if we're totally just missing each other.
00:45:54.260
Well, and I think that historically, you know, 10 years ago in the Tea Party, right,
00:45:58.960
social conservatives like yourself, or like Glenn Beck, right? We had overlap because with
00:46:06.720
libertarians like Rand Paul, because we all agreed on these basic first premises.
00:46:10.980
The problem is that these new people in the right, we can call them populists, we can call
00:46:16.620
them nationalists, or whatever, when they say actually, big government is good, when they say,
00:46:21.060
actually, we need to tear up the First Amendment and go after woke people, they're breaking with
00:46:26.620
those principles that allowed us to be part of a coalition and to have our shared principles.
00:46:31.640
So I still share those principles. I haven't moved. I don't think people like Rand Paul have moved.
00:46:36.900
Some people, the Josh Hollies of the world, they do see things differently.
00:46:43.400
Yeah, it's super interesting discussion to have, because like, I do, I agree with you on so much.
00:46:48.980
I think that if we were to line up our views on things, even if the why underneath them weren't the
00:46:53.580
same, I think that we do agree on a lot of principles. I do think that there should be more
00:46:59.080
debate, though, because to me, really, the debate between the people that you're calling kind of
00:47:04.040
like populists and, and you and I'm somewhere within there is really about the role of the
00:47:12.780
government, but also these social issues, and the why underneath the social issues. And I just think
00:47:18.640
it's, I just think it's a worthy debate. And I think the younger generation come coming up, I don't
00:47:24.520
think that we can just say, well, they're going to be socially liberal or socially moderate. I think that
00:47:29.140
we need to present them with both sides of the coin. And I think that they need to see those kind
00:47:33.800
of healthy discussions and debates, because there's a lot to think about. There's a lot to
00:47:37.700
think about within the different factions of conservatism. Do you agree?
00:47:43.500
Yeah. Okay, well, where can people follow you and read more about, you know, what you're doing?
00:47:50.240
Yeah, so head to base to dash politics.com or just search based politics, wherever you listen
00:47:56.420
to your podcast to check out the new project with me and Hannah Cox. We're also on social media
00:48:01.300
everywhere. And and with that, I hope people will check it out. If you're interested in the future
00:48:07.040
of the right, whether you're a libertarian, whether you're a conservative, I mean, that is we're going
00:48:11.600
to be pushing back on the left, advocating for our vision of what the right should look like.
00:48:16.620
And so we're going to be having this debate. And these are really important conversations. So
00:48:21.000
thanks for having me. And let's keep doing it. Yeah, they really are. And I will definitely be
00:48:25.580
following because I do like I just find myself more sympathetic to like Tucker Carlson conservatism
00:48:31.500
nowadays. And honestly, and not to just keep extending this conversation, but I've seen a shift,
00:48:36.960
not just in me and the people I know, but a lot of conservatives online, maybe it was after George
00:48:42.060
Floyd. I'm not really sure. But there's been a tipping point for a lot of people over the past
00:48:46.460
couple of years. And I think the reason why you're important and your voice is important and what
00:48:50.880
you're doing is important is because at the very least, it causes me to think about, well,
00:48:55.080
why have I moved kind of in that direction? And am I still staying true to the principles that I
00:49:00.580
actually believe in as a conservative? So I do appreciate your voice and your perspective. And
00:49:05.340
I think these discussions are really important. So thank you. Thank you.