The Auron MacIntyre Show - An Atheist Libertarian and Christian Reactionary Agree on Localism｜ Guest： Jeremy Kauffman ｜ 7⧸10⧸24

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00:00:30.440 Hey everybody, how's it going?

00:00:32.180 Thanks for joining me this afternoon.

00:00:33.780 I've got a great stream with a great guest that I think you're really going to enjoy.

00:00:37.680 So I've been doing a little bit of jabbing and having some fun on Twitter

00:00:41.680 talking about right-leaning atheists and libertarians.

00:00:44.920 Many people who have seen my show or my Twitter know that this is one of my pastimes.

00:00:49.680 But like I said, on Twitter I do this not because I think that these people are bad

00:00:54.220 or that they're wrong.

00:00:55.560 Well, I think they're wrong in some ways.

00:00:56.840 But ultimately I think they're very close to the truth and they're people that I like

00:01:00.040 talking to, interacting with, because ultimately I think that we have enough common ground to

00:01:04.340 get to something that is very productive.

00:01:06.820 And my guest today is somebody who said, hey, I'm one of those guys and I would love to talk

00:01:10.320 about it.

00:01:10.840 So joining me today is Jeremy Kaufman.

00:01:13.680 He is the former CEO of Library and the former executive director over at the Free State Project.

00:01:21.140 Thanks for coming on, man.

00:01:22.700 It's great to be here with you.

00:01:24.600 And this is what groomers do.

00:01:26.580 First they talk to you online and then they say, join my podcast.

00:01:30.940 So this is it.

00:01:32.420 This is what's happening.

00:01:34.060 Slowly pulled into the web.

00:01:35.540 So, Jeremy, for people who might not be familiar with some of your background, can you explain

00:01:42.660 a little bit like maybe what Library was, what the Free State Project is, and kind of

00:01:46.460 where you sit in the political sphere?

00:01:49.800 Sure.

00:01:50.160 Yeah.

00:01:50.340 I'm like a character of a right-wing libertarian.

00:01:53.740 I'm like the guy in the very bottom right of the graph that calls everyone else a communist,

00:01:57.480 you know, including the conservatives.

00:02:00.200 And I ran a tech company that got basically sued out of, it's technically not out of existence

00:02:06.860 yet, but basically got sued out of existence by the federal government.

00:02:10.720 We lost a five-year court case in which the judge strongly deferred to the SEC's interpretation

00:02:17.420 of statutes.

00:02:18.440 So it would have been nice to have the Chevron case a couple of years earlier.

00:02:21.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:02:22.080 But yeah, I spent, that company was used by tens of millions of people.

00:02:26.940 So we were keeping a lot of content online during COVID and other eras that was unpopular.

00:02:33.000 So I'm a free speech absolutist.

00:02:34.700 A lot of people know that company via its product, Odyssey, which I think is still used by tens

00:02:39.820 of millions of people, but I'm not involved anymore.

00:02:42.340 And then I was also the executive director of the Free State Project, which is this movement

00:02:45.520 to concentrate libertarians in New Hampshire and to create a libertarian society or a libertarian

00:02:53.900 order.

00:02:54.180 And so, you know, we're actually dealing with a lot of these questions, you know, I think

00:02:57.960 for real, because we're trying to do it.

00:03:00.440 You know, we kind of have recognized, I think a lot of things that you and your audience have

00:03:03.940 recognized about how, you know, America has failed as well as why America has failed or

00:03:10.980 is failing.

00:03:11.460 It's still the greatest country in the world, right?

00:03:12.840 But there's some real problems.

00:03:14.220 And if we take people with a certain worldview and who recognize this and get them together,

00:03:23.360 we can actually take over.

00:03:25.040 And so we've actually been sort of marching through the institutions here where we have

00:03:29.920 free staters.

00:03:31.060 There's around 100 state legislators who are graded as an A on their libertarian ratings.

00:03:36.600 We have the House majority leader, but we also have police officers and librarians and

00:03:41.920 attorneys and civic institutions and so on.

00:03:45.320 And so we've been trying to build up something new here.

00:03:48.700 And so we're also dealing with these, you know, we've stopped being critics and we're

00:03:52.080 now in the arena and trying to do it for real.

00:03:55.160 And so that's also, you know, these are very interesting questions as we're trying to build

00:03:59.020 something a little bit different.

00:04:00.460 Yeah, that's really fantastic, because like you said, so many people, both libertarian

00:04:05.260 and conservative, will talk about small government, talk about the importance of the political

00:04:10.780 process, but have no interest in actually getting involved.

00:04:14.360 So the fact that you've been kind of boots on the ground in multiple areas is really,

00:04:17.960 really critical.

00:04:18.780 I think Odyssey is a great product, and I hope that there's some way to keep that alive, because

00:04:23.080 that's something I still, you know, upload to.

00:04:25.880 And I think a lot of people use that, especially because of the censorious nature of YouTube

00:04:30.440 and other platforms, it's really indispensable.

00:04:33.100 So it's valuable work being done, and I appreciate the practical application there.

00:04:37.580 It's not just talking the talk, it's walking the walk.

00:04:39.940 So guys, we're going to dive deeper into libertarianism, small government, maybe some

00:04:44.960 of the places that we overlap and some of the places we diverge.

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00:06:12.860 All right, Jeremy.

00:06:13.880 So let's talk a little bit at the beginning, maybe some places where we agree and that we

00:06:19.020 can get to where we diverge here.

00:06:21.180 But before we began this stream, we were talking off stage about how you were familiar with

00:06:29.000 a lot of the neo-reactionary criticisms, mold bug and land and these people.

00:06:34.580 And, you know, this is the joke so often it's the libertarian to reactionary pipeline.

00:06:39.400 And with good reason, you know, Curtis Yarvin is essentially just a disillusioned

00:06:43.020 and, you know, land is also very, very heavily drawing from people like Hoppe when he's writing

00:06:50.660 the Dark Enlightenment.

00:06:51.560 So there's a very strong libertarian strain running through NRX.

00:06:55.920 It just kind of takes it to a different conclusion.

00:06:58.860 But maybe you could talk a little bit about the parts of this that you find compelling,

00:07:03.720 the places where you might agree, and some of the things that you think maybe it goes too

00:07:07.340 far in some direction or you think it misses something.

00:07:11.580 Well, you know, I'll say some of it ultimately gets too theoretical for me in the sense that

00:07:18.000 I and I disagree with a lot of libertarians here as well in terms of, you know, they think

00:07:22.360 that they can figure out all these answers, you know, well before experience.

00:07:28.940 You know, I've been an entrepreneur basically my whole adult life.

00:07:32.020 And one of the things you learn as an entrepreneur repeatedly is you're wrong, you know, constantly.

00:07:38.200 And so to me, it's like, well, we know the problem.

00:07:41.500 So I agree very much.

00:07:42.380 So I guess we're like, I'm wholly agreed is like these problems, these problems of liberal

00:07:46.020 democracy, that you're sort of egalitarianism as the sort of American civic religion and

00:07:52.100 that it's all and that this is a false religion, you know, and so these these sort of ideas which

00:07:56.180 come from that school, I think they're entirely correct.

00:07:58.500 But I don't see and I guess I see it as broadly compatible.

00:08:04.360 You know, if you're trying to if you're from the school of libertarianism that I am from,

00:08:08.200 which is basically your private property absolutism, you know, you're trying to ultimately use private

00:08:13.520 property absolutism to have your sort of competition between qualities, between governments.

00:08:20.500 I mean, that's that to me is is is sort of the ideal system and you can have your your

00:08:26.060 your Christian nationalism and it can be competing with, you know, progressive multiculturalism

00:08:31.580 and we can see which will perform better.

00:08:34.360 Or maybe there's third or fourth or all kinds of other alternatives.

00:08:38.060 You know, but for me, I would want the society that I would want and that I think most free

00:08:42.380 staters want is one that's very, very, very strong property rights and using those property

00:08:47.920 rights to come together to create private property order.

00:08:54.100 And if you read Hoppe's work, I mean, he's he is you're basically completely agreed with,

00:08:58.900 you know, someone people in these schools in terms of the types of government I think that

00:09:04.340 that he would like to see.

00:09:06.820 Yeah.

00:09:07.740 Neocameralism seems pretty compatible with a large amount of of what many libertarians

00:09:12.680 would believe.

00:09:13.680 This is a perhaps a different strain of it, but it has a lot of overlap with the ability

00:09:19.240 to compete and have the different governments go ahead.

00:09:22.340 And, you know, there would be probably too absolute of a government hand, I guess, in any given

00:09:27.720 patch when it comes to certain certain strains of neocameralism.

00:09:32.220 But you would have the option to go to a different one, right?

00:09:34.340 Yeah, I mean, I actually feel like I'm often the guy who's being the opposite of those who's 0.71

00:09:38.780 going around to conservatives and being like, look, libertarianism is actually a solution

00:09:42.560 to your problems.

00:09:43.780 You know, if you if you as a conservative had stronger local private property rights and

00:09:48.380 didn't have the federal government enforcing civil rights law on you and enforcing all these

00:09:52.600 laws on you, you could have a society that you want locally.

00:09:56.160 You might not get an America that you want, but you would have a local society that you want.

00:10:01.020 And I'll give you an example.

00:10:01.820 I live in Manchester, New Hampshire, and for the last 10 years, the city has not been able

00:10:07.360 to clear homeless people camping off the sidewalks.

00:10:10.260 That Supreme Court decision came in on Friday.

00:10:12.440 On Tuesday, the aldermen voted 12 to 2 to clear him out.

00:10:16.860 And on Wednesday, they sent they they sent the cops through the streets and kicked every

00:10:20.940 homeless person out of the city.

00:10:22.420 And that, you know, they were they would have done that years ago.

00:10:24.680 There's the federal government who didn't let them do it, you know.

00:10:27.840 And so, you know, having like localism allows everyone to satisfy their preferences more,

00:10:34.900 you know.

00:10:35.220 And so so for for conservatives, you know, I think in libertarianism could be a pathway to

00:10:43.420 getting what they want.

00:10:44.320 You know, if you so.

00:10:47.040 Yeah, no, I mean, in many ways, I've suggested the same things you are suggesting just from

00:10:51.660 a from a different frame with perhaps a different orientation for the to the good.

00:10:56.120 But either way, the the the line of pursuit is the same to to get to those goals.

00:11:01.800 You have to have that level of local control.

00:11:04.460 That's only available if you go ahead and strip away the ability of the national government

00:11:08.900 to dictate all of these things down.

00:11:10.700 And only if you take a level of interest in your area that allows you to go ahead and

00:11:15.240 see this vision forward.

00:11:16.640 I guess the problem for in this is, you know, I hate to spend all of the time of any discussion

00:11:22.300 defining terms, but I think it does matter in this case because it's a huge, huge issue.

00:11:27.440 So when you say libertarian, right, most people who aren't libertarians think of a guy

00:11:33.220 dancing on stage in his underwear, demanding a lower age of consent and, you know, complete

00:11:39.520 access to pot at any given time.

00:11:41.320 I understand that's not what libertarian, you know, what you are.

00:11:45.460 That's where I'm not where many Mises type libertarians are.

00:11:49.320 But this is the thing.

00:11:50.400 I think, for instance, I've been preaching this to Dave Smith forever.

00:11:52.740 It's like, guys, just pick a different name.

00:11:54.660 Like half your party doesn't believe in what you believe in.

00:11:57.780 It's so clear because you just put an open borders, you know, pro pro transfer.

00:12:03.220 Kid guy in, you know, in the presidential slot when you have two of the least popular,

00:12:08.840 least, you know, viable presidential candidates of all time.

00:12:12.040 If there was ever a moment for the libertarian party to provide this amazing third option,

00:12:16.780 when one guy is so senile, he can barely get on stage and the other guy is probably going

00:12:21.440 to prison at some point.

00:12:23.020 You think this would be the moment for the libertarian party, but we can't seem to get

00:12:27.660 a right-leaning libertarian candidate, which makes me wonder if maybe you guys aren't

00:12:31.480 libertarians.

00:12:32.340 You're something else.

00:12:33.140 And just holding on to a phrase that's damaging more than anything else.

00:12:37.940 Well, first, I mean, I think we should all just take this moment to pause and blame

00:12:42.400 Dave Smith for not being our next president.

00:12:46.240 I will next time I see him for sure.

00:12:47.800 I think he could have some great things to say right now.

00:12:50.660 I'm sure he's saying some good things.

00:12:52.180 I love Dave Smith.

00:12:53.440 He's great.

00:12:54.640 Well, look, you know, it's fine.

00:12:57.680 Well, I could just dig, I could just counter dig and say, well, Republicans are, you know, 0.85

00:13:02.280 just Democrats who hate weed or something. 0.60

00:13:04.320 Oh, they are, though.

00:13:05.360 But the thing is, I would agree with you.

00:13:07.360 Yeah, yeah, you agree with that.

00:13:08.160 I hate the GOP.

00:13:09.820 So I will say there's a funny, I mean, I don't really disagree with your criticism.

00:13:14.220 I mean, I think I would argue that, you know, this is what the right, the left enters and

00:13:19.580 the right exits.

00:13:20.620 And so you're giving the right wing solution here, which is abandon the word libertarian

00:13:25.800 now that the left has tried to take it over.

00:13:29.780 It is funny, the dynamic, the way it plays out in the Libertarian Party is exactly the

00:13:33.860 same way it plays out with like the press or almost every other institution where

00:13:38.440 the left is the center, you know, so the left can't admit that they're the left.

00:13:42.060 So you have all these libertarians with leftist moral institutions, right, moral intuitions

00:13:47.940 rather, they have universalist intuitions, they have egalitarian intuitions, and so they

00:13:55.020 have left wing positions on borders and these other things, but they can't acknowledge that

00:14:00.780 they are.

00:14:02.220 And the right wing can't, right, because the right wing is like, oh, yeah, we're right

00:14:06.100 wing.

00:14:07.100 And so you have this funny thing where like the left wants to claim the center as the

00:14:14.500 end, but then the right has to be explicitly labeled.

00:14:19.700 And so this idea that libertarians are neither left nor right is completely false.

00:14:24.560 It's left, right isn't a binary.

00:14:26.080 It's a distribution like everything else is.

00:14:28.320 So it's not, you know, there may be some libertarians who are in the center of that

00:14:31.660 distribution, but it's a clearly an aspect of our personalities.

00:14:35.300 It's not this, it's not this arbitrary thing.

00:14:39.020 And so the libertarians who deny that tend to be utopians.

00:14:42.540 They're wrong, of course.

00:14:44.300 And, and they embarrass me regularly, but of course they feel that I would embarrass them,

00:14:48.340 you know, so it's a kind of mutual thing.

00:14:50.200 But I, but I don't think you give up the word, I guess, to, to try to bring the, to make

00:14:53.860 this answer coherent rather than rambling.

00:14:55.060 I just don't think if you, if you give up the word, you have to, um, it's what, it's

00:15:00.760 what we believe in.

00:15:01.580 I mean, there's, there's a whole, there's 50 years of books, uh, you know, uh, you know,

00:15:06.300 written about this and you could pull up the Wikipedia of any of my intellectual heroes

00:15:10.780 and it would say the word libertarian.

00:15:12.400 So, you know, the fact that it's an unfortunate fact that the libertarian party concentrates the

00:15:19.060 group of people that it concentrates, but we shouldn't let the party define the word.

00:15:23.720 I think, yeah, I think that the trichotomies are much more useful when you're thinking 1.00

00:15:29.580 about politics.

00:15:30.300 And that's one of the issues that we have right now is we try to think about this left

00:15:34.500 right distinction by itself.

00:15:37.000 But the other thing that I wonder for the libertarians is ultimately, I think the problem

00:15:42.020 that you run into is that small government or liberty is not actually a politically

00:15:48.520 organizable access, right?

00:15:50.900 This is the same problem with Marxists in class is, you know, the, the, they want to

00:15:55.500 create this, uh, universal organization along class lines.

00:16:00.340 But the problem is it ignores realities about human identity that means that it's constantly

00:16:06.060 trying to organize people across an axis that simply does not universalize.

00:16:10.700 And the same is true libertarianism.

00:16:13.040 They call themselves libertarian or they say maybe we're for small government, but ultimately

00:16:17.240 that really just hides more preferences that are more true to a specific identity.

00:16:22.040 And therefore you have this breakdown across that access because the people who are for

00:16:27.180 small government in one area are actually not for small government in most other areas.

00:16:32.260 They, they simply assume those things are, are automatic, that those axioms are fundamental.

00:16:37.760 And then they only want small government in the areas that aren't, you know, that aren't that.

00:16:42.620 And so I think that that's why you keep running into this issue.

00:16:45.940 You know, the, the left libertarians are small government, as long as it produces a leftist, uh, society.

00:16:52.520 And the right libertarians are small government, as long as it produces a right leaning society.

00:16:56.560 But that's not their actual organizing principle.

00:16:59.220 I think that that's part of the problem as well.

00:17:01.220 I, I think that's completely correct.

00:17:04.860 A lot of libertarians like to believe that they're not consequentialists, but almost everyone's

00:17:09.140 a consequentialist at the end of the day.

00:17:10.660 You believe these things because of, of what you think will be on the other side of these

00:17:14.240 things, right?

00:17:14.660 If it turned out that, uh, you know, strong private property rights, you know, somehow

00:17:18.760 resulted in some sort of like, you know, every human dying.

00:17:22.140 I don't know why, but like somehow, like, of course you wouldn't believe in that anymore

00:17:25.920 because humans are good, right?

00:17:27.320 Like I want there to be more humans.

00:17:28.740 I want humans to achieve that.

00:17:29.980 You know, so, so yeah, I think, I think, you know, basically, um, these sort of, it's

00:17:36.460 good to have strong moral principles.

00:17:37.860 I'm not arguing against that.

00:17:39.300 It's good to have things that you will or won't do on principle, but part of the point

00:17:44.120 of those principles is what they ultimately end up creating, I think at the end of the

00:17:47.460 day.

00:17:47.640 And it's, and, and so I think almost everyone in their politics actually is ultimately working

00:17:52.000 backwards in this way, right?

00:17:53.120 Like I would, I would thrive under free markets.

00:17:56.100 Uh, I'm a, I'm a creative person.

00:17:58.520 I'm an inventive person.

00:17:59.520 Uh, and, uh, and so I've adopted a political philosophy in which, you know, the government

00:18:04.460 who holds back people from creating and inventing things is the bad guy.

00:18:07.860 You know, uh, how convenient, of course, it's also better for everyone else.

00:18:11.740 Uh, you know, but like everyone, it's, it's just remarkable how everyone, um, simultaneously

00:18:16.240 the philosophy that they believe that's better for everyone else does seem to also be one

00:18:21.020 that's generally better for that.

00:18:22.240 Right.

00:18:22.760 Right.

00:18:22.920 And even the liberal, right.

00:18:24.100 They will say, well, I'm helping the poor.

00:18:25.760 Well, you're helping the poor in a way that gives you status, right?

00:18:28.180 You're helping the poor in a way that you get to be the bureaucrat and the manager and

00:18:31.780 the, you know, and all of these, you know, and all of these things.

00:18:34.700 And so, you know, I think, um, I think most people's politics tend to be self-serving

00:18:42.220 in, in, in one way or another.

00:18:45.360 And so this also explains why you get the kinds of, you know, there is a portion of

00:18:50.240 libertarian party member who, uh, I think once government, uh, a way for reasons that

00:18:56.720 I would consider not great, you know, the sort of more libertine, uh, side of, of, of

00:19:02.460 thing, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:19:06.400 Uh, now I'm libertarian enough that I will also criticize the conservatives, you know,

00:19:10.500 to me, it's like, if you want to go and bomb Mexico, like that should be privately funded,

00:19:14.360 you know, you shouldn't be making me pay, you know, like, you know, when, when, so, um,

00:19:19.480 uh, but yeah, I think that, I think that this is absolutely what's driving it.

00:19:23.760 And so there are, there are some, I don't want to go around attacking libertarians.

00:19:27.340 I think this is a minority.

00:19:28.360 I think the majority of libertarian party members like are decent people.

00:19:32.380 Um, and I think honestly, the majority of libertarian party members also aren't, probably

00:19:38.020 aren't ultimately happy with the choice that they, they got, uh, and, and feel like they,

00:19:41.980 they kind of got stuck.

00:19:43.380 Uh, but look, I'm voting for Trump.

00:19:44.920 I'm not, I'm not, I'm not here to get people to vote for Chase Alderman.

00:19:47.900 And, and, and as a, and as a democracy disrespector, I'm not here to try to compel anyone to vote

00:19:54.020 for anything that's, you know, it's, but then it's just, it's, like I said, it's a constant

00:20:00.220 problem that I think the libertarian party runs into, which is no different to be fair, again,

00:20:04.620 to any political party.

00:20:06.040 The, the conservatives have a similar issue that that that's not really, uh, you know,

00:20:10.180 I'm not pointing out a specific weakness in libertarians themselves so much as political

00:20:14.240 organization as a whole, not understanding, especially in the American context, kind of

00:20:18.360 what actually binds these parties together, what binds these coalitions together.

00:20:22.260 Okay.

00:20:22.720 So democracy is the problem or democracy is our problem.

00:20:25.720 Maybe it's the problem, but so what do you, where do you get, what do you put your energy

00:20:30.780 into?

00:20:31.300 And this is always, you know, uh, where I think, uh, you know, mold bug ultimately, or

00:20:36.800 Yarvin ultimately failed, you know?

00:20:39.100 Okay.

00:20:39.700 Like you want a King.

00:20:41.380 I don't even necessarily endorse that.

00:20:42.360 Well, actually he doesn't even want it.

00:20:43.300 And he would, he would prefer a joint stock corporation.

00:20:45.160 I'm like, all right, I can, I can kind of go along with this.

00:20:48.240 Uh, you know, there's not his plan though, was something like everyone should wear a certain

00:20:54.580 color.

00:20:55.060 And then when there's enough of us, well, it was like, that's not a real plan, you know?

00:20:58.460 And so similarly, even when he had his debate with Rufo, you know, to me, it's like, well,

00:21:03.800 look, Rufo's getting stuff done.

00:21:05.580 You know, Rufo is improving things.

00:21:07.580 Uh, this is how things kind of work.

00:21:10.420 You get momentum behind you.

00:21:11.500 So it's like, where, where is the, where is the momentum?

00:21:15.520 Where is the power center?

00:21:16.680 Where's the thing that's going to be built where eventually something is going to actually

00:21:19.780 happen?

00:21:20.200 Cause I don't really see that happening at all.

00:21:22.460 Yeah, no, I'm, I'm with you.

00:21:23.800 And actually let's dive a little deeper into the practical application here.

00:21:27.600 But before we do guys, let me tell you about ISI.

00:21:31.000 Universities today aren't just neglecting real education.

00:21:33.680 They're actively undermining it and we can't let them get away with it.

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00:21:40.420 The Intercollegiate Studies Institute is here to help.

00:21:43.220 ISI offers programs and opportunities for conservative students across the country.

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00:22:27.280 Thinkers like Chris Ruffo, who currently has an ISI researcher helping him with his book.

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00:22:54.000 That's ISI.org.

00:22:57.280 So I'm with you to be clear that I think Ruffo's the most effective right-wing activists we've

00:23:04.420 seen in a very long time and that practical wins do matter.

00:23:09.100 So I think that Yarvin's approach to this whole thing of, well, you just kind of sit around and

00:23:16.560 wait for the elites to switch sides and then kind of the whole thing just kind of cascades

00:23:22.240 is not in itself a great idea because Yarvin is himself a kind of liberal elite.

00:23:30.940 You know, he's an urbanite.

00:23:32.100 His kids are always going to get to go to private schools and live in safe areas.

00:23:36.680 And so all of these problems are really beneath him.

00:23:39.920 Ultimately, while he might have sympathies with the Chuds, he's not of the Chuds. 0.99

00:23:44.660 And so he always kind of has this hands-off approach because it's not really his problem

00:23:50.180 at the end of the day.

00:23:51.040 He's going to be living in areas where that's never going to really touch him ultimately.

00:23:55.960 And also being a materialist in a very strict sense, you know, that these things do not

00:24:01.500 the continuity of these things do not bother him the same way they might bother someone

00:24:06.960 like me.

00:24:07.660 But I do think that there is a, I do think that there's a version of this that ultimately

00:24:14.640 recognizes that we are going to be moving towards an apocalypse shift.

00:24:20.140 I, I think that the idea that we're going to have a practical bootstrapping of, uh, kind

00:24:28.000 of the, the, you know, Mr. Smith goes to Washington solution to our problem simply doesn't exist.

00:24:33.480 And I think that's more what Yarvin is opposing in Rufo is that he brings back the faith of, 0.97

00:24:41.380 well, but there is a, there is a, there is a Mr. Smith goes to Washington solution.

00:24:45.000 There is a point at which you get enough political capital together and you just switch

00:24:49.460 things back to, you know, 1980s, Reagan, America, and that kind of solves your problem.

00:24:54.700 This is not my criticism of Rufo to be clear, but I think that that's more of the reason 0.99

00:24:59.280 he's bringing the criticisms he does forward.

00:25:03.080 Totally.

00:25:03.740 And I, and I, I think there's something to that criticism, but to me, it's like, well,

00:25:08.700 where's the thing?

00:25:09.420 Like what either, either if it's, um, and if it's not a formal thing, because it can't

00:25:14.040 be formal, at least who's it being built around, you know, where, because if you're

00:25:19.400 going to, if you're going to do this, the elites have to switch like two aside, you know,

00:25:24.560 around someone or around some institution around something, you know, if Yarvin's, uh,

00:25:32.260 if Yarvin is critical of, of Rufo, uh, you know, uh, becoming, uh, you know, reenabling

00:25:38.640 this, this, this, this faith in something fake, he should be building up Rufo as like becoming

00:25:42.720 the next dictator of America or whoever.

00:25:45.700 Or, well, I have this, I've been trying to meme Thomas Massey into becoming king.

00:25:50.180 I went up to him at the libertarian convention and I asked him if he would consider seizing

00:25:54.300 America by force.

00:25:55.620 And I just like, I keep posting it on, on Twitter.

00:25:58.100 Cause it's like, that's the only thing I can think.

00:25:59.680 Like, I don't want to be king.

00:26:00.580 I'm not, I don't, I'm not that, uh, I've got better off being like a, a gesture, a

00:26:05.040 jester or like a tinkerer or something.

00:26:06.680 Um, but you know, like, uh, you know, we need one, uh, we need someone who's going

00:26:10.840 to be, oh, not, maybe not literally a king, but we need someone who's going to like bring

00:26:14.060 that kind of, or maybe literally, maybe, maybe, maybe I'm not ruling it out if it was

00:26:18.180 Massey, but yes, well, that's the point.

00:26:20.060 And this is one that drives me nuts with the libertarians, but I think I've actually been

00:26:23.060 moving them an incredible amount on this.

00:26:24.860 Um, you know, which is that it's the people who interpret the words are much more interpret

00:26:29.000 than the, are much, much more important than the words.

00:26:32.580 Um, you know, that Massey as King is better than the constitution and all of American status 0.56

00:26:37.740 quo.

00:26:38.040 Like you could throw it all away and say Massey King and you would get, you would get more

00:26:41.740 libertarian.

00:26:42.200 He would embody, he would embody more of the constitution's actual intent than the current

00:26:48.100 reading of the actual constitution.

00:26:50.340 Right.

00:26:51.060 Right.

00:26:51.340 It's shockingly hard for me to get people to understand that a word is a referent to

00:26:58.560 concepts in people's heads.

00:26:59.920 And when two people read words, they don't experience the same thing.

00:27:04.160 So like, yes, they read and say they both agree with the words, but they're not, that's

00:27:08.880 not the same thing in each of their heads.

00:27:10.560 It's like, you're a postmodernist.

00:27:13.600 You're part of the woke, right?

00:27:14.700 I can.

00:27:14.980 Yeah, I am.

00:27:15.700 I am.

00:27:16.060 I, well, I am.

00:27:16.740 And this is also, and we can do this debate as well.

00:27:18.780 Like I'm, I'm, I'm ultimately end up being, you know, not, um, an objectivist and somewhat

00:27:24.940 of a relativist because of this, because like our values do seem to be somewhat inherent

00:27:32.640 in us.

00:27:33.340 And if, if our values are inherent, even if I think there's an objective moral truth,

00:27:38.440 which I kind of do, there's a part of me that does believe that there's an objective

00:27:42.040 moral good, but if I also recognize that you have that same intuition and your intuition

00:27:49.300 suggests something different, it feels like a sort of mutual, a sort of not tolerance in

00:27:56.440 our, in our own spaces for each other's, but like there has to be, otherwise it's a

00:27:59.900 war against all forever.

00:28:01.340 So there has to be some kind of tolerance for different things in different spaces.

00:28:05.940 You know, even if I feel that it's wrong in my own head, you know, I don't know, that's

00:28:09.680 the answer I end up coming to.

00:28:12.240 Ooh, French lavender soy blend candle.

00:28:15.200 I told you HomeSense has good gift options.

00:28:17.760 Hmm.

00:28:18.500 Well, I don't know.

00:28:20.600 Mom's going to love it.

00:28:21.840 She'll take one sniff and be transported to that anniversary trip you took to Saint-Tropez

00:28:25.900 a few years ago.

00:28:26.800 Forget it.

00:28:27.340 She complained about her sunburn the whole trip.

00:28:30.060 It's only $14.

00:28:32.220 $14?

00:28:32.660 Now that's a vacation I can get behind.

00:28:36.500 Deal so good, everyone approves.

00:28:39.160 Only at HomeSense.

00:28:42.220 So speaking of these shared communities, we both kind of recognize the importance of the

00:28:50.940 local option.

00:28:52.540 And that's really my answer to your question is, okay, how do we do this?

00:28:55.920 What's the steps forward?

00:28:56.960 Well, ultimately, at the national level, we want to work towards a preference cascade,

00:29:02.620 right?

00:29:02.820 That's really what Moldbug's talking about, ultimately, when he's not super clear about

00:29:08.100 it.

00:29:08.400 He's talking about the elite preference cascade that honestly seems to be underway in a lot

00:29:14.280 of areas.

00:29:15.280 You can see a lot of Silicon Valley guys, a lot of guys who probably have a more libertarian

00:29:20.220 understanding of the world, even if they're a little bit more on the left.

00:29:23.640 They understand that what the regime is doing now is ultimately destructive to their ends.

00:29:28.960 It won't allow them to achieve certain things.

00:29:31.380 If you're, you know, Sachs or Musk or something, you recognize that however much you might not

00:29:37.800 agree with certain parts of the conservative right, they're going to put you in a position

00:29:42.700 to achieve more than the current progressive regime is going to achieve.

00:29:46.620 And so in some ways, I think you're hoping for that preference cascade at the national level.

00:29:50.620 But that is not something that everyone can work towards.

00:29:53.380 It's not a practical public political goal.

00:29:56.680 You can't just go to everybody and be like, sit tight, watch your Netflix, eat your Burger

00:30:01.260 King and wait until the elites flip the switch to make life good again.

00:30:05.300 You can't come to people with that option.

00:30:07.220 That's not even a good thing to tell people, even if that was the real situation, which

00:30:11.140 it's not.

00:30:11.580 And so ultimately, the broader project is reducing things to that local level, like you said,

00:30:19.120 on for many reasons.

00:30:20.620 One is that a large amount of the problem that we are in is due to the massification of society

00:30:26.560 through bureaucratic managerial structures.

00:30:29.360 The reason we're in the position we're in is not an accident.

00:30:32.520 It's a problem.

00:30:33.320 There's a systemic issue built into the way we've structured society that drives us towards

00:30:39.000 the current outcome that we have.

00:30:41.140 And the solution to that is largely localism.

00:30:43.340 But also because this reinvests people into meaningful community interactions, which actually

00:30:50.460 is what gives people purpose in life.

00:30:52.440 So if we want to reground people and I guess is re-racinate anyway, root them back into 1.00

00:30:59.180 communities.

00:31:00.220 Once again, that's a critical part of it.

00:31:02.360 And finally, these communities being created is the thing that actually creates small government.

00:31:07.500 You know, this is always my problem with with many libertarians.

00:31:12.040 I'm not saying you because I don't know where your position is on this, but many libertarians

00:31:15.480 confuse the order of operations.

00:31:17.360 They think that small government creates desirable communities or is a goal in and of itself as

00:31:24.000 where I believe that small government is a fruit of a virtuous community that has been

00:31:31.020 ordered in a way that allows the government to do less and less.

00:31:34.800 So small government is a good, but it's a good that comes from an already virtuous, robust

00:31:40.800 community.

00:31:42.640 And so that's why I would agree with a lot of your solutions, even if maybe we we might

00:31:47.860 order our priorities that come out of those things differently.

00:31:50.660 But I don't know.

00:31:51.340 I'll let you kind of expand on that.

00:31:53.940 Well, I'll tell you in the in the New Hampshire movement, I would say this is this is actually

00:31:57.800 probably one of the areas of biggest internal division.

00:32:01.180 We have plenty of our own on the sort of more, you know, utopian side here.

00:32:05.600 We're like, well, once everyone see everyone will want to be a libertarian once they see

00:32:09.760 how great it is, you know, and I'm not so convinced that that's true.

00:32:14.080 I think that the central problem is, you know, your selection mechanism for people.

00:32:22.580 How do you make sure the right people are coming to New Hampshire and the wrong kinds of

00:32:28.240 people aren't and ideally the wrong kinds of people are actively leaving the state because

00:32:32.120 they feel uncomfortable living here.

00:32:34.140 And so that's, you know, that's what I want.

00:32:37.400 But it's not.

00:32:38.240 And right now we try to do it like mostly through memes, you know, essentially or vibes, you

00:32:44.540 know, like, which is real, like it is real.

00:32:47.080 No, no, it's absolutely it's far better than other other ways.

00:32:51.240 Well, yeah, but there is a real question of, you know, you know, how do you how do you

00:32:55.240 sustain these things?

00:32:55.940 And this also I'm I'm someone who believes that things are are mostly the way that they

00:33:02.420 are for relatively rational reasons.

00:33:07.160 Like, I think humans tend towards sort of crabs in a bucket, egalitarian sort of style

00:33:15.840 thinking.

00:33:16.440 I think that is the sort of natural state of man only when we feel and this is actually

00:33:24.080 I would say it was probably Peter Thiel.

00:33:26.100 I would give as much credit for getting me down this way of thinking as anyone else because

00:33:29.100 he turned me on to, you know, Rene Girard and these other interesting thinkers.

00:33:33.120 But this idea that, you know, the envy as this fundamental motivator for for humans and

00:33:39.200 what that we get the Thiel believes that we get a better America when America has an

00:33:45.280 enemy like that's part of where I actually think he is is sort of more quote.

00:33:51.020 I don't believe he's actually like xenophobic in any real way, but I think part of it is 1.00

00:33:54.900 he wants America to have an enemy because that makes America better.

00:34:00.260 We stop looking at our having these jealous competitions with our neighbor when we feel

00:34:06.120 that we need to be working together to defeat the foreign. 0.99

00:34:09.660 And so this idea that in order to if you want humans to be working together in these

00:34:17.000 pro-social groups, you know, growing together and achieving things when we're at our best,

00:34:22.580 we're actually at our best when we're worried about losing, you know, when we feel that we're

00:34:26.200 faced by some either an existential it could be a natural threat, you know, but when there's

00:34:30.620 something existential, there's something that we're facing.

00:34:32.820 Whereas when we have all the resources in the world, we turn to court bickering, you

00:34:38.140 know, we turn to playing these kinds of of games or these kinds of status games or whatever.

00:34:43.200 And and I don't know, that's kind of an uncomfortable thing to be true, but I think it's like possibly

00:34:47.820 true.

00:34:48.780 So if you want if you want your group to be working together and not infighting, you know,

00:34:55.220 you need to be pointing it towards something as as the the foreign that needs to be defeated 1.00

00:35:00.460 or this other existential threat that needs to be surmounted.

00:35:03.840 It turns out friend enemy politics is politics.

00:35:06.760 It's all politics all the time.

00:35:09.400 Yeah.

00:35:09.940 Yeah.

00:35:10.520 Yeah.

00:35:11.460 Right.

00:35:11.900 So, I mean, that's what I'm so interested in, though, is like, because I'm very here's

00:35:15.520 here's another I've been I had this question on my mind for like several years and I still

00:35:18.960 don't know the answer.

00:35:19.640 Just like if you were literally starting out like you get you get to write the Constitution

00:35:24.340 and you get to pick the first 100 people, so you get to see the entire thing.

00:35:28.640 So you get to see the words and the word interpreter.

00:35:31.700 And now you want to propagate it.

00:35:33.400 Right.

00:35:33.620 Because you do want to have it grow to millions of people like the idea of a nation that can

00:35:37.700 contain millions of people, I think, is at least theoretically possible.

00:35:42.780 What you know, what would you even do?

00:35:45.000 How would you do it?

00:35:45.900 How do you end up with good people in charge and not bad people?

00:35:49.180 How do you prevent bad ideas, you know, from, you know, from from taking hold of this kind

00:35:55.400 of thing?

00:35:56.140 And and there's so much more criticism than there is positive answers out there.

00:36:02.200 So I see all these criticisms like, I agree.

00:36:04.140 Cool.

00:36:04.420 And then I'm like, what are you doing?

00:36:05.440 Where's like, you know, where's the answer?

00:36:06.960 Where do I go?

00:36:07.640 Where do I sign up?

00:36:08.360 What do I join?

00:36:10.160 So I actually think that by the experience and I'm I'm not trying to evade the the question

00:36:17.680 here, but I'm just giving the what I think is the honest answer here, which is I think

00:36:21.280 thought experience like this missed the point of civilization for several reasons.

00:36:27.520 One, I don't think that you actually can have a nation that scales up that widely.

00:36:33.360 I think that's actually what destroys nations because that misses what a nation is.

00:36:38.580 A nation is a, you know, the pre the nation state.

00:36:43.260 Right.

00:36:43.660 Because the nation, the state are not the same thing.

00:36:46.480 Pre a nation state.

00:36:48.060 A nation is a people who share a history, tradition, faith, language.

00:36:52.840 Like this is what binds them together.

00:36:55.520 And so the best states take the aspects of the emergent aspects of the nation into account,

00:37:03.040 which is why Joseph DeMaister said that no man has ever written a political constitution,

00:37:08.520 that all political constitutions are divinely inspired.

00:37:11.920 If you don't like that language, then fine.

00:37:14.040 But you get my my drift here, that that the innate aspects, the organic aspects of the

00:37:20.020 nation are what forge the traditions, the folk ways, the understandings that then become

00:37:26.100 the formal political constitution.

00:37:28.960 And so when we look at a nation and we say, if I was designing a nation, we've already failed

00:37:34.740 the test because nations can't be designed.

00:37:38.100 What binds people together are not rational, contractual selection mechanisms or binding

00:37:44.920 mechanisms.

00:37:45.840 They are organic instantiations of ways of being that elude us when we attempt to hyper

00:37:53.380 rationalize them.

00:37:54.280 And the failure of liberalism is largely the attempt to post hoc construct a volunteerist

00:38:02.380 or blank slate idea of what a nation can be, and then try to apply that to tens or hundreds

00:38:10.560 of millions of people when that's impossible.

00:38:13.640 Okay, I would probably, I could respond to that in a lot of ways.

00:38:19.540 I would agree with most of it.

00:38:20.840 But I think that the most important question, though, is still like, like nations happen,

00:38:26.200 right?

00:38:26.480 Like America was founded.

00:38:28.560 It did happen.

00:38:29.400 And at the end, you know, mistakes were made.

00:38:34.680 It is like you can look at history and say, hey, you know, these people had good intentions,

00:38:40.820 but they didn't do everything perfectly.

00:38:42.460 And now we're in a moment where there are no more, there are no more, there are no more

00:38:49.420 frontiers.

00:38:50.100 So it used to be new things were started because you could go to a frontier.

00:38:53.840 There's no more frontiers.

00:38:55.540 But I don't believe history is over.

00:38:57.420 I actually think we're entering an unprecedented era where people are now forming proto-nations

00:39:05.000 online, the sort of Balaji-Sernivasan network state hypothesis.

00:39:11.320 This is happening both formally and informally, where you'll see like, you can find, you can

00:39:16.080 find Russians who are into like Appalachian, you know, pickup truck rolling coal culture 1.00

00:39:22.740 who like look like they are from Appalachia and they live in Russia, you know, and this

00:39:29.080 is now there.

00:39:29.760 So we're seeing this happen horizontally and they're joining, they're joining a proto-nation,

00:39:35.360 you know, and now people are also physically relocating themselves.

00:39:39.440 People move to Florida, people move to New Hampshire, people leave California.

00:39:43.920 Some people go to those places, hopefully as well.

00:39:46.280 So hopefully the liberals are leaving New Hampshire and Florida and going to other places.

00:39:53.000 And so this will be, these are the early stages.

00:39:56.580 If there is to be a political realignment, it's going to happen through this force.

00:40:01.560 And it is an organic force.

00:40:02.880 You're right.

00:40:03.160 It's not being planned.

00:40:04.760 No one sat down and planned this.

00:40:07.660 Even though the Free State Project was planned, it was as much of a nudge as anything else.

00:40:11.260 A lot of it's happening organically.

00:40:14.380 But I still think it's good to say, okay, like, you know, or the, something happening

00:40:20.100 organically often involves lots of local people thinking rationally.

00:40:24.840 Oh, sure, sure.

00:40:25.440 You know, so I'm sure you, I'm sure you agree with that.

00:40:27.900 And so like, okay, what can we, you know, I still think it's healthy to think about what

00:40:33.840 positive things can we, can we do?

00:40:36.300 And I'm not trying to make it about the written word.

00:40:38.260 If we think it's more about people, great.

00:40:39.620 Let's focus less on the words.

00:40:40.920 We still need to focus on, on how we get good people and not, you know, there's still stuff

00:40:45.960 that needs to be built and stuff that needs to be thought about and, you know, direction

00:40:49.680 and actions that need to get taken.

00:40:51.780 If you want to, you know, if you, if you want to speed it along and if you want it to work.

00:40:56.660 No, a hundred percent.

00:40:57.580 Yeah.

00:40:57.760 To be clear, I'm not saying like, well, we're just going to abandon rationality and any kind

00:41:02.220 of, you know, thoughtful organization.

00:41:04.420 That's, that's not the point that I'm, I'm trying to make.

00:41:06.680 It's simply that we can't engineer these things wholly of ourselves.

00:41:11.860 There's more to political organization than simply what we put on a, on a piece of paper,

00:41:17.380 which doesn't mean we never put anything on a piece of paper.

00:41:19.800 And like you said, this is something that is forming now.

00:41:23.940 I agree with you a hundred percent.

00:41:25.380 We are, again, that's why I said there is an epochal shift happening.

00:41:28.120 History is not over.

00:41:29.460 We are going to see, I think, a revolution in the way that people do organize themselves.

00:41:33.040 Though I think ultimately some people, again, this, this is one of my criticisms of Molebug. 0.99

00:41:39.000 Like he tends to think that we're just going to see like blue and red America sort themselves

00:41:43.300 out digitally.

00:41:43.960 And then like a king can just kind of solve all of these problems because he's neither

00:41:48.060 left or right.

00:41:48.740 He's the true purple Caesar that just kind of resolves these issues by allowing these people 1.00

00:41:53.380 to separate.

00:41:54.120 But I don't think that's the case.

00:41:55.340 I don't think that the American empire is long for this world ultimately.

00:41:59.700 And I do think that, you know, that there is a physical relocation aspect that is critical.

00:42:06.200 You can't just separate people digitally.

00:42:08.520 It's cute that people are like LARPing in Russia about, you know, Appalachian music or

00:42:12.940 whatever, but they, that's not the same as actually living in a community of these things.

00:42:17.080 Maybe it starts that way.

00:42:18.100 I'm not against LARPing.

00:42:19.280 I think actually LARPing is a critical step towards the realization of in-person and in

00:42:24.340 real life events, but that it's not enough to stay there.

00:42:28.060 It has to actually organize.

00:42:29.160 It has to take real, you know, substantive steps like you guys are doing.

00:42:33.780 And so I think that it's important for online movements to cross that threshold.

00:42:39.660 As somebody who spent a lot of time, you know, in online politics and things, I'm certainly

00:42:44.620 not saying, ah, all of this is useless and there's no value to it.

00:42:47.800 And, you know, none of this can be real.

00:42:49.540 I'm not doing that at all.

00:42:50.980 But I'm just saying the people who think that this can be perpetually online or this

00:42:54.520 can be perpetually spread across things and just organized digitally.

00:42:57.660 I think that's a failure to understand a critical part of human nature.

00:43:01.060 At some point, you do actually have to become physical communities.

00:43:04.380 You do have to organize in the manner that you're talking about.

00:43:06.860 I completely agree.

00:43:08.880 And I guess I just want to see more of this, more of the positive institution building.

00:43:15.820 And even if you believe it's more about elites flipping, like, even elites can be populist.

00:43:25.940 Like, if they see that there's this, you know, club or group or whatever, this pool of millions

00:43:31.900 of people that are hungry for, you know, a certain thing, a certain vibe, whatever,

00:43:37.240 like, this is, this is, these are things that they respond to.

00:43:41.440 And, you know, so, so for there to be, you know, like the, the people that are, are on

00:43:47.420 the side of things, I do think there needs to be more, more of an explicit kind of thing

00:43:53.660 that they can, that they can be a, you know, that they can be a part of.

00:43:58.360 I mean, like Yarvin could have his, you know, his, his club of thinkers and they could, they

00:44:05.400 could have their own CEO, you know, right now they could have their own King right now

00:44:10.400 and he could be trying to get, you know, bigger.

00:44:12.580 And maybe I don't understand how it works, right?

00:44:14.400 It's just like, there has to be some steps that happen before, like, even if you think

00:44:19.240 that one day this thing happens, like, okay, what are the proto steps, like work backwards

00:44:22.580 from that.

00:44:23.340 And are those, are those proto steps being taken, you know, right now?

00:44:30.140 Cause it seems like maybe there are some steps that could be, could be getting taken right

00:44:34.140 now, but aren't.

00:44:35.440 Yeah.

00:44:35.540 One thing I will remind people about, and I, I'm not, I don't have any deep insider knowledge

00:44:39.700 on Curtis here for my statement, but I'm, I just think it's worth reminding people when

00:44:45.680 you're talking about regime change, there is a wisdom in a Straussian reading.

00:44:50.940 Uh, I'm not a Straussian, but there, there is a, uh, you know, there are only certain

00:44:55.100 things that get said, said out loud and not everything gets said out loud and assuming

00:44:59.760 that something isn't understood or isn't being said somewhere else because it's not being

00:45:04.040 said publicly in the New York times.

00:45:06.840 Um, sometimes as a failure of people when they're asking these questions, like, well, why don't

00:45:11.680 you just lead me on this 15 step plan of things?

00:45:13.920 The last five steps you have to say without going to jail is, is a weird thing that people

00:45:18.700 assume.

00:45:20.660 Yeah.

00:45:21.240 And I'm, I'm not trying to, uh, encourage anything, uh, you know, legal or whatever.

00:45:27.040 I, and I even, I don't know, I get, maybe there, maybe I'm being too autistic about this.

00:45:31.980 Maybe there are things that are happening that I'm not appreciating, but it does.

00:45:35.060 I don't know.

00:45:35.340 It feels to me that the, the, the, the proper, uh, that, like I found a lot of these ideas

00:45:41.260 sympathetic and then, but then it's like, well, you're not doing anything.

00:45:43.680 There's nothing.

00:45:44.580 What's the, you know, what's the road?

00:45:46.120 What's the thing I, you know, what's the thing, how can I even nudge this along?

00:45:49.300 It's just, it's just, uh, you know, 10 years of, of posting on forums, uh, you know, and,

00:45:55.480 and, uh, and podcasts or whatever.

00:45:57.760 Um, so, uh, but I think it's possible.

00:46:00.880 Like, that's what I'm saying.

00:46:01.660 Like, it's not, I'm not saying that it's wrong.

00:46:03.220 I just think, I just think the people who, who think this way, like they need to be

00:46:07.320 building their own proto nation.

00:46:11.320 And it's not about just the constitution.

00:46:13.260 So it's not as reductive as the constitution.

00:46:15.240 You need to be building up all of the other things that go along with it, the positive

00:46:19.760 vision, the culture, the whatever, but this stuff can happen and it can happen with intentionality.

00:46:25.400 Like, I know that, I know that we got here organically, but organic, organic means are just like

00:46:31.200 the intent, the cumulative intentionality of a lot of people on it.

00:46:34.140 And so, you know, this idea that like things are always going to be this way, you know,

00:46:40.780 no, we can change them and people can, and, and, and change starts with, you know, someone

00:46:45.280 creating a small seed and that seed growing over time.

00:46:48.460 And I think obviously a lot of that has happened.

00:46:50.140 We're not that those seeds have grown, but, but I think like the, the stage where a lot of

00:46:54.440 these ideas are at, they need, they do need a little bit more of, of the sort of,

00:46:59.060 of the positive vision of the positive institution of the, you know, we joined this, we put our

00:47:04.600 energy into this.

00:47:05.660 Once this gets big enough, you know, then we win, or we had, you know, we had this, you

00:47:11.300 know, we had this achievement.

00:47:12.820 So, and that, that seems a little missing.

00:47:15.600 So one more thing before we go that I wanted to ask you about, you know, you had mentioned

00:47:19.620 in your response to one of my posts that, you know, you're an atheist and this is something

00:47:24.880 that you, you know, you recognize the utility of religion, you're not against it, you know,

00:47:29.220 you, you respect a lot of the aspects of it, but, you know, ultimately it's, it's just

00:47:33.980 not something that you believe in or that you've invested in.

00:47:36.760 I wonder what you think about the necessity of it as a social binding agent.

00:47:41.760 However, I, I look at someone like, um, uh, uh, I don't, I don't know why I always

00:47:47.620 forget, uh, Clash of Civil, Samuel Huntington, uh, Clash of Civilizations.

00:47:51.560 And he talks about how, you know, religion is really the civilizational block thing, right?

00:47:56.340 It's the thing that, that allows, uh, binding beyond nations.

00:48:00.100 It's a critical part.

00:48:01.220 I don't think that you can ever have, uh, you know, morally neutral institutions inside

00:48:07.020 a nation.

00:48:07.500 And so there's always going to be some worldview.

00:48:10.280 There's going to be some shared moral vision.

00:48:12.420 People might call it explicitly religious or not, but if you don't have one, then you become

00:48:17.680 particularly vulnerable to something like progressivism that kind of smuggles itself in.

00:48:22.540 Even if yourself, uh, you, you yourself are not a believer, do you, what do you think about

00:48:28.000 the, the ultimate necessity of something like that for if, if not, uh, the metaphysical truth,

00:48:33.900 at least the social utility?

00:48:36.140 Yeah.

00:48:36.400 So I think it's clear that we, uh, as humans have this sort of, well, at least most of us

00:48:44.220 have this sort of inclination to, uh, religiosity.

00:48:47.680 And this includes, um, you know, there'd be these, the idea of there being, um, sort of

00:48:53.400 things larger than us, the sense of transcendence.

00:48:55.860 It includes, um, considering certain things, uh, you know, um, uh, blasphemous or a type of

00:49:02.540 religious taboo.

00:49:03.500 And so it turns out if you strip people of their religion, um, a lot of people will just

00:49:10.620 latch on to, you know, other things.

00:49:13.740 And so, yeah, this is why you see so much, you know, the fact that, um, you know, if

00:49:18.600 someone, if someone says transgender people are sacred, you know, the odds that this person 1.00

00:49:23.520 is an atheist is like pretty hot, you know?

00:49:27.340 And so, uh, the, so I think it is unhealthy for, uh, a lot of people to, to not have it.

00:49:35.260 And I don't mean to say that I'm somehow like different or, uh, I'm certainly not making

00:49:40.600 the claim that I'm better, but like, I don't know.

00:49:42.780 It's just, it's always been really hard for me to ultimately believe it.

00:49:48.120 But then I also, I, when my lack of belief, I don't feel had the same spillover effects.

00:49:54.460 Although maybe I attached it, my desire for transcendence to something like, uh, you know,

00:49:59.460 to something like libertarianism, because I do think it's healthy to have, to be striving

00:50:03.880 towards something that's larger than you.

00:50:06.880 I think that's very healthy and to have a set of morals and principles that you're trying

00:50:11.440 to adhere to that's larger than you, uh, and this kind of thing.

00:50:14.540 So perhaps that is where I took my faculties and I, uh, applied it.

00:50:18.460 And I fortunately didn't, they didn't latch onto transgenderism or something else. 0.92

00:50:22.240 Uh, but I think it's clear that we have these structures.

00:50:24.500 And so this idea that you're going to be, um, you know, purely, uh, logical or that you

00:50:31.680 can take these things away from people without consequences.

00:50:35.120 Uh, you know, I think that that's clearly wrong.

00:50:37.240 I think the other thing, the other way, another way I think about it as well, and this is something

00:50:41.740 that I think is, will be very interesting because we're entering sort of new eras.

00:50:46.020 Part of what I think religion provides in addition to a positive set of beliefs is it also provides

00:50:53.380 a defense.

00:50:54.400 It, it shields you from some of these things.

00:50:59.200 And so it's actually almost like a mimetic antibody to, to, to dangerous meats to dangerous

00:51:06.260 idea.

00:51:07.760 And we're now seeing part of what's hurting humanity more than anything else is these

00:51:14.920 new things is exposure to new things, whether that's junk food, pornography, social media,

00:51:19.840 certain types of drugs.

00:51:21.300 And so we have this vulnerability almost, it's like a vulnerability.

00:51:27.700 And so how do we, how do we stop, uh, how do we stop humans from falling prey, you know,

00:51:35.400 to these things?

00:51:37.400 Um, and obviously one attempt is just to, to regulate them out of existence.

00:51:40.820 Uh, but I actually think mimetic, you know, sort of mimetic antibody type solutions are, are

00:51:47.140 the best possible answer.

00:51:48.520 Uh, cause it's a stronger answer as well, you know?

00:51:51.300 So how do we make, how do we create a culture and a set of, you know, views and values where

00:51:56.060 these things are, are tabooed, you know, um, essentially in a, in a religious way.

00:52:02.380 Um, you know, I think having religious type structures and so maybe that's Christianity.

00:52:07.160 I don't know.

00:52:07.580 And this is, I don't, and I, I, I don't mean to offend people when I talk about religion

00:52:10.980 in this sort of like clinical way.

00:52:13.420 Cause I understand that it's a profound, you know, belief for people.

00:52:17.300 And so they say, oh, your religion, you know, I don't mean to be overly reductive and be

00:52:20.920 like, oh, your religion is just a meme complex that she, you know, like, I, but I do think

00:52:27.060 there's something, something to this way of, of, of looking at it.

00:52:31.440 And so, especially for the sort of scientific types who are like, oh, religion is just fault.

00:52:37.320 Like I'm, I'm always very disappointed in Dawkins who I like mostly he'll like, oh, well, it's

00:52:42.980 just, it's just, um, it's just condescending to say that people need God.

00:52:47.680 It's just condescending.

00:52:48.840 And it's like, dude, you would not dismiss other potentially true explanations as being

00:52:53.020 condescending.

00:52:53.760 You would factually engage with them.

00:52:55.520 And when you hear Dawkins talk about God, he's like, oh, it's just condescending to

00:52:58.920 say that people need it.

00:52:59.820 He doesn't even engage with it factually.

00:53:02.300 While, while lamenting the loss of, you know, churches and choirs and Christmas and his own,

00:53:07.600 I wonder what happened here.

00:53:08.860 You know, that Dawkins got pwned, perhaps the best essay that has ever been.

00:53:13.360 Well, right.

00:53:13.780 Cause he, you know, he right, rightfully cause he right, like, cause I, I'm this way too.

00:53:17.860 Cause I, I love Dawkins in my twenties and still think the, um, his views on evolution and

00:53:23.720 gene centered evolution are like really good and important ideas. 0.94

00:53:26.940 And, um, uh, but yeah, he, he like hates Muslims. 0.94

00:53:31.320 He doesn't like Islamic or Muslim culture at all.

00:53:34.680 And, but at the same time, can't recognize that, that, you know, you create, like when

00:53:40.440 you, when you say, you know, that the atheism is sort of this inherently multiple, you're

00:53:44.320 inviting all of this stuff in like, yes, you created, you created this vacuum.

00:53:48.420 You, you weakened the, the thing that was the strongest against this.

00:53:52.680 Um, and it's, yeah, I, I, you know, I kind of actually get the sense that he is seeing

00:53:56.860 this a little bit.

00:53:57.580 It's gotta be a tough thing, uh, to, to even see, but I, I kind of get the sense that he

00:54:02.140 is at least a little bit noticing this.

00:54:05.440 Yeah.

00:54:05.860 I agree with you that for a very long time we were selecting for production and now we're,

00:54:11.900 the selection pressure seems to be for avoiding mimetic contagion that, that seems to be the

00:54:17.160 next bottleneck here is really, um, the people who can, who can go ahead and deny themselves,

00:54:23.900 uh, kind of these things, these end products of the society of modernity, uh, are really

00:54:29.560 going to be the ones that make it through, uh, to the other side of this.

00:54:33.040 And, you know, while I, I do think it is too reductive to simply see, uh, religion as a

00:54:38.880 memeplex, I do think it's valuable in some ways because I do know, at least from my own

00:54:43.100 work, people watching my own channel go through the NRX window, you know, that every, the,

00:54:48.000 the, the inside of NRX is, you know, a lot of people miss this about it, but it's, it's

00:54:52.100 the most, the thing that really, and it's funny because I was a religious person, but

00:54:56.200 it never really, because I had been brought up in this kind of normie conservative tradition,

00:55:00.180 I didn't really understand it.

00:55:01.420 The key insight for me is ultimately that every, in NRX is that everything is religion,

00:55:06.920 that actually, uh, that everything is religion, even, even the evolutionary, uh, selective aspects

00:55:13.080 of it are religious in nature.

00:55:14.940 Uh, and so for a lot of people, actually, this has moved them closer to religion, looking

00:55:19.880 it in this way, really like, oh no, actually there is a scientifically quantifiable understanding

00:55:25.120 of why this is necessary to my life and to culture and to society has ironically moved

00:55:31.140 them then closer to the more mystical and metaphysical aspects.

00:55:34.620 Then once, once you recognize, oh, this is something I should participate in if only for

00:55:38.580 its utility, then they realize, oh, there's more than the utility.

00:55:42.000 There's, there's more here, you know, once they, they start getting into it.

00:55:44.560 So while I, I understand, you know, I understand people's aversion to discussing in that manner,

00:55:49.100 I think for some people, it's actually has been as helpful moving them towards the real

00:55:53.400 thing, uh, as, as anything else.

00:55:56.800 Yeah.

00:55:57.440 Yeah.

00:55:57.740 I've, I've, I've seen that as well.

00:55:59.660 And it's, it's, it's, it's certainly made me, uh, you know, uh, more, more curious, uh,

00:56:05.360 about it because these aspects of our nature are, are clearly, um, are clearly there and denying,

00:56:11.320 I think it's always, uh, at least my belief is always, you have, you have to start by

00:56:16.380 acknowledging these truths about ourselves, uh, because I think that, that we're actually

00:56:21.640 at our most dangerous when we don't, you know, when we deny our own nature, uh, that's

00:56:25.720 when we get these, these kinds of utopian and terrible ideas.

00:56:28.860 And so we, if we start by being honest about ourselves, um, you know, hopefully we can, you

00:56:34.680 know, that leads to better outcomes.

00:56:36.240 Yeah.

00:56:36.640 There to, to, to horribly, uh, paraphrase a CS Lewis quote, it's something like, uh,

00:56:41.860 you know, if you find yourself constantly, uh, alien in this world, perhaps it means there

00:56:46.180 is another, uh, but, uh, we're going to go ahead and wrap this up guys.

00:56:50.420 It's been great talking to Jeremy.

00:56:52.280 Of course, this is a pre-recorded episode.

00:56:54.300 I'm up in Washington DC right now, speaking at NatCon four.

00:56:58.260 Uh, so there won't be any questions from the audience, uh, but I'll be back on Friday.

00:57:02.340 So we'll be back to kind of normal shows by then Jeremy, uh, is there anywhere that you'd

00:57:06.880 like people to go look?

00:57:07.940 Are you working on a project?

00:57:09.040 Something you want people to know about?

00:57:11.320 You can just follow me on Twitter at my full name, Jeremy Kaufman.

00:57:15.000 I just hit 50,000 followers this morning.

00:57:18.040 So if you enjoyed what I had to say here, I, I post a long takes on that quite a bit.

00:57:23.560 Fantastic.

00:57:24.060 All right, guys.

00:57:24.480 And of course, if it's your first time on this channel, go ahead and subscribe on YouTube,

00:57:28.900 turn on the notifications, click the bell.

00:57:30.700 Well, just because you're subscribed doesn't mean YouTube knows you actually want to see

00:57:34.040 the channel.

00:57:34.920 It's a great system.

00:57:36.000 Fantastic.

00:57:36.560 Somebody should really make something that replaces it.

00:57:38.540 That's I'm joking for Jeremy here.

00:57:40.100 Uh, but, uh, uh, if you of course would like to get these broadcasts as podcasts, make sure

00:57:44.620 that you go ahead and subscribe to the Oren McIntyre show on your favorite podcast platform.

00:57:48.400 And if you'd like to pick up my book, the total state, you can do that on Amazon Barnes and

00:57:52.300 Noble books, a million or order it at your local bookstore.

00:57:54.760 Thank you everybody for watching.

00:57:56.080 And as always, I will talk to you next time.

The Auron MacIntyre Show - July 10, 2024

An Atheist Libertarian and Christian Reactionary Agree on Localism｜ Guest： Jeremy Kauffman ｜ 7⧸10⧸24

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