The Auron MacIntyre Show - September 13, 2024


Can States Defy the Federal Government？ ｜ Guest： Tom Woods ｜ 9⧸13⧸24


Episode Stats


Length

1 hour

Words per minute

182.87018

Word count

10,983

Sentence count

684

Harmful content

Misogyny

7

sentences flagged

Hate speech

10

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

What can the states do to fight back against the madness of the federal government? In this episode, I'm joined by author and podcaster Tom Woods to discuss how the states can do their part to protect their citizens.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
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00:00:30.300 Hey everybody, how's it going?
00:00:31.600 Thanks for joining me this afternoon.
00:00:33.220 I've got a great stream with a great guest that I think you're really going to enjoy.
00:00:37.460 Hard not to notice that the federal government is really evil and trying to destroy us all,
00:00:42.820 whether it's immigration, whether it's COVID and restrictions connected to it,
00:00:48.520 whether it's radical gender ideology in your schools.
00:00:51.660 It's very clear that the institutions of the United States have sadly fallen into a place
00:00:56.240 where they are more hostile to the people of this nation than they are doing any kind of good.
00:01:01.960 And more and more people are asking the question, how can states fight back?
00:01:06.160 Is there any way that my state government, my local government, can push back and say no to this madness?
00:01:12.640 Joining me today to talk about this topic is a prolific podcast host and author, the great Tom Woods.
00:01:18.980 Thanks for coming on, man.
00:01:20.380 I'm so glad to be here. Thanks.
00:01:21.860 Absolutely. We're going to dive into this. Tom is a great author.
00:01:25.480 He's even written a book on this very subject.
00:01:27.560 We're going to be talking about what actions state and local governments can take in this moment to try to safeguard their citizens.
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00:02:59.340 All right, Tom.
00:03:00.280 So a lot of people are probably thinking to themselves because of current events.
00:03:04.080 What if the federal government decides to drop, I don't know,
00:03:06.380 the third of the population of my town on top of it, you know, from a foreign nation?
00:03:10.600 And the new people there just start snacking on geese and wildlife at the local pond.
00:03:15.960 What do I do?
00:03:17.120 Can my governor do anything?
00:03:19.300 Are we just stuck?
00:03:20.240 Is it the presidential election or bust?
00:03:22.840 Is there any action that a state can take to actually push back against, say,
00:03:27.660 massive COVID regulations or the fact that they're trying to teach my children to chop off their genitals?
00:03:32.920 What can a state do in this scenario?
00:03:35.420 Well, first of all, I think remembering that the states exist in the first place as something other than units to carry out the will of the central government
00:03:46.440 is an important step one, because up until very recently, maybe even up until COVID,
00:03:53.440 I think people have been brainwashed into thinking you can't talk about the states having a role,
00:03:58.100 because otherwise you favor slavery, you know, you're a segregationist or something.
00:04:04.400 But the states were conceived of as having an essential role in keeping the federal government limited.
00:04:12.560 Now, obviously, they haven't succeeded in doing that, but they were supposed to have that role.
00:04:16.880 And, you know, and so if we go back, I'll get to the 2024 in a second, but you can go back to the time of the Constitution,
00:04:25.300 the first decade or two of the early republic.
00:04:28.960 And James Madison has a report of 1800 where in which he says the executive branch, the legislative branch,
00:04:38.460 but also the judicial branch can violate your liberties.
00:04:42.740 It's not that the president and the Congress can be terrible, but the judges are infallible.
00:04:48.280 What if the judges screw you too?
00:04:50.360 And his answer was, then we have to rely on the constituent parts of the union.
00:04:55.540 What are those constituent parts?
00:04:57.520 The states, the peoples of the states.
00:05:00.340 They are the original creators of the union.
00:05:03.420 And the idea that I believe in and that Thomas Jefferson believes in is that the marriage doesn't come before the bride and groom.
00:05:13.900 First, you have a bride and groom, and that gives rise to a marriage.
00:05:17.820 And likewise, first, you have the peoples of the American states, and then you have the union.
00:05:23.640 So the creation of these states does not get to tell the creators what its own powers are.
00:05:31.400 The creators of the thing have a voice, are supposed to have a voice, in verifying that it has the powers that it's exercising.
00:05:41.040 And that was Jefferson's point.
00:05:42.220 If you give the federal government a monopoly on interpreting the Constitution or a monopoly on deciding what its powers are,
00:05:50.980 well, we can predict how that's going to turn out, and we can now see how that's turned out.
00:05:55.520 And I'll say in parentheses, by the way, my wife and I, sometimes we do question cards at dinner.
00:06:01.280 And one of the questions was, if you could have a conversation with three people, living or dead, like on a road trip, who would your three be?
00:06:09.840 And one of mine was Thomas Jefferson, because I wanted to explain to him the blind spots he had about some of his opinion.
00:06:19.060 He's great on some things. He's actually rock solid on some things, and particularly on this question we're talking about today.
00:06:26.000 But I said, Jefferson's going to have to sit in the front, because we really have to go over a lot of things that went wrong,
00:06:33.680 and he needs to understand what went wrong.
00:06:35.760 But he has less to learn than, let's say, an Alexander Hamilton has to learn.
00:06:40.400 I think some people on the political right, they like Hamilton because he hates the masses, and we think, yeah, we don't like the masses either.
00:06:48.200 But you know what? The average guy, the average American trying to make a living is not really my enemy.
00:06:53.700 And I tend to be inclined in his favor.
00:06:57.480 And, you know, it's the Hamiltonians who feel like we need to have one powerful, irresistible central government.
00:07:04.920 And then in the early 20th century, the left liberals of the New Republic magazine added to that, and that strong central government needs to be run by experts.
00:07:14.900 And we're now seeing the kind of result that that yields us.
00:07:19.060 So I think something like a Florida during COVID is an interesting model.
00:07:25.820 Now, Ron DeSantis did not actually, he didn't break any laws, like he didn't violate any federal legislation,
00:07:31.900 but he took every bit of authority he had as a state governor.
00:07:36.400 He actually used it.
00:07:38.240 And I thought American federalism was pretty much moribund going into COVID.
00:07:43.300 But then I watched what Ron DeSantis was able to do, and I watched him appoint Joseph Latipo as his state surgeon general.
00:07:54.940 And Latipo is absolutely fantastic.
00:07:57.840 And the way you can know that is you go to his Wikipedia entry, and it's absolutely defamatory from beginning to end.
00:08:05.400 And, you know, and it's supposed to scare you away.
00:08:06.940 But when I had Latipo on my show, I said, actually, it made me think, he seems like a pretty great guy.
00:08:11.880 It's like having an ADL warning.
00:08:13.460 It's actually an endorsement, if you understand it correctly.
00:08:15.840 I mean, to those of us who are awake, we say, oh, well, this guy must be fantastic.
00:08:20.120 But I watched, I've watched what, no, DeSantis is not perfect.
00:08:23.000 And as a presidential candidate, there were issues that he's just not good on.
00:08:27.080 But as a governor, he's really darn good.
00:08:29.860 And he really does stick to things.
00:08:31.600 And he's been great on woke stuff.
00:08:33.340 And he's been great on the university.
00:08:34.900 I mean, he's really been good.
00:08:36.980 So sometimes, so I'm giving you a very long answer just because I love this subject.
00:08:42.300 And it's hard for me to stop talking.
00:08:43.620 I will stop talking in a minute.
00:08:44.940 But I will say that the courses of action we can take can range in, let's say, severity.
00:08:51.080 So we can go from, I'll give you an example.
00:08:56.100 In Utah, you find, I don't know if it's the entirety, but it's a big chunk of the NSA is located there.
00:09:05.280 And their machinery that they use basically to listen to you and me requires an absolutely ungodly amount of water to keep cool.
00:09:14.980 And so my friends at the Tenth Amendment Center, who really are the people with the clever ideas, wondered, what if Utah just shut off the water?
00:09:23.580 I mean, there's no constitutional obligation that Utah has to supply water.
00:09:29.060 You know, so sometimes the states can simply refuse to participate, just refuse to collaborate with their oppressors.
00:09:36.480 You can do that.
00:09:37.600 But the thing is, we never think of that because who would?
00:09:40.340 Because instead we're giving, you know, I don't know how much.
00:09:43.400 Now, the Heritage Foundation is much better today than it was 10 years ago.
00:09:46.800 So I don't mean to pick on them.
00:09:48.400 But the Heritage Foundation has an enormous budget.
00:09:50.880 And this kind of idea would never occur to them.
00:09:52.820 And in fact, they would go on TV to criticize us for this because we have to, I don't know, always be losers and sit back and take it all the time the way the New York Times expects us to.
00:10:03.360 But they actually came up with that idea.
00:10:05.000 Now, they weren't able to get it through the legislature, but you can keep trying.
00:10:08.260 And the idea is we never thought of that, right?
00:10:10.960 I mean, the state could just simply refuse to go along.
00:10:13.380 But if we are willing to go back a little farther in American history, go back to the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions of 1798, Thomas Jefferson's view, stated multiple times, was that in an extreme case where the Constitution is obviously being violated, then the state governments can restrict the enforcement of it, actively interfere with the enforcement of it.
00:10:41.900 Now, you may say, well, I don't know if we could get away with that today.
00:10:46.080 You know, what would the federal government do?
00:10:48.260 My answer to that is I don't know.
00:10:50.580 You're right.
00:10:51.160 I don't know what it would do.
00:10:52.280 But I do know that for the longest time, the left comes up with ideas that are out of the mainstream.
00:10:59.320 And within 30 years, they are not only are they everywhere, but you can't even object to them or your career is ruined.
00:11:06.660 And I feel like, you know, I think there's been enough times that the left has gotten away with that.
00:11:10.600 What if for once, for once, we do something that's not allowed and the experts say you can't do it?
00:11:17.800 You know, why does the left get to do this all the time?
00:11:20.320 And I was just in an online symposium on this very subject, and a lawyer said to me, the ideas that you have about the states resisting the federal government, why, they're very unpopular.
00:11:29.940 And I said to him, I can think of a whole bunch of left wing ideas that started out with no supporters at all.
00:11:36.640 And yet here we are living in the world they made.
00:11:39.660 Absolutely.
00:11:41.860 I mean, just think about sanctuary cities, right?
00:11:44.500 It's the most obvious, you know, for both immigration and for drugs. 0.79
00:11:48.500 There are several states and or, you know, certainly several municipalities that just said, we're just not enforcing federal law here.
00:11:56.120 That's just not going to happen.
00:11:58.020 And nothing ever happens to them right now.
00:12:00.040 The regime is on their side.
00:12:01.580 So that's an important thing to remember.
00:12:03.480 If a Republican governor does something, as you pointed out with Ron DeSantis, not violating any laws, not directly actually attacking any anything that's been passed by Congress, but just using his own executive power rigorously to oppose, especially a lot of edicts.
00:12:21.540 Right.
00:12:21.860 So much of this is actually just inside the administrative state.
00:12:25.860 It's not even laws being passed because so few laws actually matter in the United States at this point.
00:12:30.800 It's just regulations getting pushed through civil rights divisions or that kind of thing.
00:12:35.760 You know, that's actually most of what he has resisted is just mandates that come down through the bureaucracy, not not direct laws passed.
00:12:44.580 And so there's this moment where just acting as an actual executive is seen as authoritarian.
00:12:51.320 We see these scary articles from, you know, these liberal outlets all the time.
00:12:55.620 Ron DeSantis is an authoritarian in Florida.
00:12:58.440 He's just ignoring all of these things.
00:13:00.120 And what they mean is he's actually acting with the powers of his office, just like if Trump actually drained the swamp, which hopefully he might do this time.
00:13:08.880 Let's let's hope for once.
00:13:10.260 But, you know, if he was to do that, he would just be decried as an authoritarian for acting the way that article two says that the executive branch should actually act.
00:13:19.580 So there's a lot that can be done in the modern day.
00:13:22.260 But let's go back historically because you are a historian and you make a good case in this sense.
00:13:27.720 So I want to lay the groundwork there before we talk about the practical things that can be done today.
00:13:33.180 But if you look at the historical examples, as you point out, most people who, oh, you're starting about state rights, the state right to do what?
00:13:40.560 Right. They're going to immediately go to the Civil War and slavery and these kind of things. 0.91
00:13:45.740 But a lot of people and you wrote a book called Nullification on this topic.
00:13:51.320 A lot of people are going to say, well, not a lot of people, but the couple of people who had a decent history teacher are going to wait.
00:13:56.980 Wait, I remember sitting through high school and there's something called the Nullification Crisis.
00:14:00.720 Did we already kind of address this issue?
00:14:02.440 All right. Well, when they talk about the Nullification Crisis, they're talking about a specific episode in U.S. history involving South Carolina, 1832 to 1833.
00:14:13.040 The long and the short of that was there was a belief among many southern states that the protective tariff was having a disproportionately negative effect on them
00:14:24.380 and that it was having a disproportionately favorable effect on the northern states.
00:14:29.040 And they believed that the protective tariff, that tariffs are obviously constitutional, but a protective tariff, they weren't so sure because they thought it was an assumption of the Constitution that the tariff is there to raise revenue.
00:14:43.400 But a protective tariff doesn't really raise a lot of revenue. It has other purposes.
00:14:47.240 And they felt like this was at the very least a violation of the idea of the general welfare clause, that legislation should be for the general welfare, not the particular welfare of one section or another.
00:14:57.640 So they argued. Now, we can we can we can nitpick South Carolina about whether it was right about protective tariffs being unconstitutional.
00:15:05.640 But the issue is Andrew Jackson was going to was threatening to use force to make sure that his tariff got enforced.
00:15:14.520 And what wound up happening was they reached a compromise where the the so-called tariff of abominations would be gradually lowered over time.
00:15:23.400 So gradual so that it wouldn't hit northern industry all at once, but reduced so that it wouldn't harm the south as much.
00:15:31.380 And so it was a it was a result that basically most both sides could live with.
00:15:35.240 Now, that's not the way it gets taught in your history class, that last little interpretation that I put on it.
00:15:41.200 But in my opinion, that's exactly how it was supposed to work, that a state would say, halt for a minute.
00:15:47.120 We think that the federal government has done something unconstitutional. Let's stop and look at it.
00:15:51.940 And at the end, they reached a solution that they they could live with.
00:15:55.360 But long before that, and this is stuff that it doesn't matter how good your history teacher is, you will almost never hear about it in high school or probably college either, is that in 1798.
00:16:10.400 Now, this part you might hear. You might hear.
00:16:13.320 Virginia and Kentucky passed resolutions saying that the Alien and Sedition Acts were unconstitutional and therefore should not be enforced.
00:16:22.000 Because they they really did say you could not criticize the president.
00:16:26.960 And and that was a that was a weird situation because Thomas Jefferson was a Republican and he was in a administration run by a federalist.
00:16:37.760 And this was really pro-federalist legislation.
00:16:41.860 And it said you can't criticize the Congress. You can't criticize the president.
00:16:45.740 But it skipped over Thomas Jefferson. Criticize him all you want.
00:16:49.320 There is no protection for Thomas Jefferson, but you cannot criticize John Adams.
00:16:54.560 And like this, you can't do that. You know, I mean, you just can't do that.
00:16:58.140 So Virginia and Kentucky weren't going to go along with that.
00:17:01.380 South Carolina would have joined them if they hadn't received the resolutions on the very last day of their legislative session.
00:17:07.840 And there was at least one or one or two other states that were inclined.
00:17:11.040 The New England states at that time were dead set against Virginia and Kentucky on this.
00:17:15.780 But if you look at so your textbook, if it even covers this, will say most states didn't agree with Virginia and Kentucky.
00:17:22.780 OK, let's look at those states, those states that actually bothered to say anything at all about Virginia and Kentucky.
00:17:30.140 What were they arguing?
00:17:31.840 Almost none of them were saying this is a terrible constitutional theory that Virginia and Kentucky have.
00:17:37.840 Almost all of them, because I actually bothered to look, were saying the Sedition Act is a wonderful thing that we should enforce because John Adams shouldn't be put upon by all these petty critics.
00:17:49.320 That was why they were against Virginia and Kentucky, because they did want to put you in jail for criticizing John Adams.
00:17:54.900 So, you know, if today that's your argument, then you're siding with the censors.
00:17:59.580 And as we know, the censors are very rarely the good guys.
00:18:04.400 Not even 10 years later, not even 10 years later, the very New England states who needed a fainting couch because of Virginia and Kentucky in 1798, those very states were issuing documents exactly the same to oppose the Jefferson embargo, which was very damaging to their maritime economies.
00:18:25.440 And in my book, Nullification, from many years ago, I knew nobody would believe me.
00:18:31.420 They'd think I'm just making this up because they never heard any of this in their classes.
00:18:34.720 Half the book is documents, just to prove my point, because these are documents you just don't come across.
00:18:40.040 I have some great documents from the governor of Connecticut.
00:18:43.260 Can you believe I'm saying these words?
00:18:45.100 Great documents from the governor of Connecticut.
00:18:47.060 This is another world here, Oren.
00:18:48.840 It's another world where the governor, Jonathan Trumbull, was saying it is the responsibility of the state governments to protect their peoples from overreach by the federal government.
00:18:58.980 And we will do what that takes.
00:19:00.820 Daniel Webster, one of the most illustrious Americans of all, who was a representative both from Massachusetts and New Hampshire,
00:19:08.200 at one point during the War of 1812, said if the federal government even contemplates military conscription,
00:19:15.220 the government of Massachusetts will interfere and interpose to prevent that from happening.
00:19:20.220 So we have these principles, they were called the principles of 98 after those documents,
00:19:26.240 used to defend Americans against infractions against their freedom of speech,
00:19:33.460 against unconstitutional searches and seizures in the case of the embargo,
00:19:37.740 against the prospect of military conscription.
00:19:40.240 They were later used in the 1850s.
00:19:43.200 Even though there is a fugitive slave clause in the Constitution,
00:19:46.260 it doesn't say you can take any measure whatsoever that you can possibly contemplate to go after a fugitive slave.
00:19:54.760 The Supreme Court of Wisconsin quoted Thomas Jefferson from 1798 saying,
00:20:00.600 we don't have to do this because we're not obligated to take all these positive measures on behalf of that particular provision.
00:20:07.120 So there's a huge history that's just overlooked, forgotten.
00:20:11.000 And in fact, Jefferson Davis, in his farewell speech from the Senate, was actually criticizing nullification.
00:20:18.020 He was saying the northern states have been misusing this principle,
00:20:21.100 so the only time it even came up was to criticize it.
00:20:23.980 So the real history is less cartoonish, as usual, and much more interesting.
00:20:29.580 And when you learn the real history, you say,
00:20:31.940 I think I understand now why I didn't learn this in third grade.
00:20:35.440 Yeah, very important that you only have McNuggets when it comes to history, never the actual context.
00:20:42.460 So kind of fast forwarding to today, as you pointed out, Ron DeSantis, in a lot of ways,
00:20:49.000 reinvigorated the understanding of the ability of an executive to go ahead and push back
00:20:54.480 against certain aspects of the federal government's dictates.
00:20:57.860 Now, Greg Abbott, also, in a way, and Abbott's far from perfect here,
00:21:03.240 but in this one instance, when it came to what was happening with the Border and Eagle Pass,
00:21:08.320 you know, the federal government is just cutting razor wire so that illegal immigrants can pour into the country 1.00
00:21:13.440 that's actively and maliciously facilitating the invasion of the United States, 0.57
00:21:18.000 because that's what our government does today.
00:21:21.080 And Abbott said, no, you can't do that.
00:21:23.600 And they said, yes, we can.
00:21:25.020 You can't stop us.
00:21:26.160 And he said, actually, I really can.
00:21:28.040 And so he denied them access to this section of the border.
00:21:32.360 Now, obviously, this did not stop illegal immigration.
00:21:35.220 We still have a large amount of people pouring in.
00:21:37.520 This is not itself a fix of the problem.
00:21:39.560 But the point is that he took this action, and the federal government threatened him.
00:21:44.220 They said, oh, there's going to be huge consequences for this.
00:21:46.920 You're going to be in very serious trouble.
00:21:49.200 We're going to do all these terrible things to you.
00:21:51.500 And then just nothing happened, right?
00:21:54.360 Nothing happened.
00:21:55.060 There was nothing done.
00:21:56.160 Now, I guess I was going to say I'm not an expert in politics, but I guess I have a show, so I can't exactly say it.
00:22:03.520 But the point is, you know, I'm not a constitutional scholar.
00:22:08.040 No one's hired me on, you know, to do any, you know, tactics for a wider political movement.
00:22:14.440 But just from the cheap seats out here, when I see a moment like that, I say, wow, well, here's two governors who have made it clear that they can kind of take actions and push back against the government.
00:22:26.240 And the federal government actually just can't do anything about it, they can't take any action, there's no consequence, there's really no pushback.
00:22:34.460 And yet, it seems that no GOP governors have learned anything from this.
00:22:40.620 You have Mike DeWine saying, oh, actually, it's fine if the government goes ahead and, you know, replaces the population of cities and towns in my state.
00:22:49.940 I just wish they would send us more money.
00:22:52.020 You know, you have Kay Ivey saying, well, you know, I don't like that they're doing this.
00:22:55.860 I'm going to write a strongly worded letter to Congress, but no action taken whatsoever.
00:23:02.440 Why is there this break?
00:23:04.140 Why are so many people who should be defending, you know, and are supposed to be the opposition party inside the United States and supposed to should be defending their state, their constituents, their citizens.
00:23:16.840 Why are they so willing to just go along with anything that the federal government is doing and provide no pushback?
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00:23:53.220 I think I'm going to have a really dull and uninteresting answer for you in this, which is that the Republican Party sucks mostly.
00:24:02.100 You know, I mean, there are signs of life in the old girl yet, I will admit.
00:24:06.200 And I want to encourage those good signs.
00:24:08.260 But my gosh, the old guard is hard to get rid of.
00:24:12.140 And these are people who they don't in the old days, they would give a pretty speech and then they'd get in power and do the opposite.
00:24:19.300 Now we don't even get the pretty speech anymore.
00:24:21.960 Now they're repeating left-wing talking points when they're running for office. 1.00
00:24:26.060 So here, yeah, if there's no will on the part of a governor, then, you know, I think there's an interesting lesson here, though.
00:24:33.960 But when you mentioned Abbott and DeSantis, it occurred to me during COVID, you know, Abbott was a little bit all over the place.
00:24:42.460 You know, like there were businesses being shut down and ruined.
00:24:45.100 And I mean, there was a lockdown, you know, brief lockdown in Florida, too, where we live.
00:24:49.980 But I think Abbott became much bolder right after he saw the reception that DeSantis got at CPAC.
00:25:00.900 I mean, he got an absolutely roaring standing ovation.
00:25:06.420 And his poll numbers were tremendous.
00:25:09.480 Like, conservatives really, really liked what he was doing.
00:25:12.020 And I think that gave Abbott the backbone to start doing some of the things that he did that were better.
00:25:18.640 And I think he, because I think he thought to himself, the pathway to stardom in at least part of the current Republican Party is defiance.
00:25:29.220 And so, of course, you notice that I'm not appealing to these governors on the grounds of this is the right thing to do.
00:25:35.640 I'm appealing to them on the grounds of this will help your advancement, because I know that's all you care about is your advancement.
00:25:42.340 And there is a chunk of America that would that would absolutely go to the barricades for a governor that stood up and said, look, we're living in unbelievably insane clown world.
00:25:54.720 And we get up every day and just feel defeated, like and demoralized, like it just has to go on forever.
00:26:00.360 Well, I'm governor of only one state, and I can't dictate the destiny of the rest of the country.
00:26:07.660 But I'll tell you something right now.
00:26:09.100 In my state, this stuff stops.
00:26:11.180 And if it means I wind up in prison, here we go.
00:26:14.820 Cuff me, because it stops right here.
00:26:16.940 That would bring about, we would all be cheering for something like that.
00:26:21.880 So the question becomes, like, if we had 10 governors or 15 or an amazing thing, 20, who were all willing to say, we're not going to do the following things.
00:26:32.520 If they can't stop Abbott, what are they going to do about 20 governors, you know, who once again, who finally are realizing or maybe even for the first time, the power they hold in their states.
00:26:44.100 It's been cast aside so long because of this narrative that if you even talk about the states, you're some kind of a racist.
00:26:52.000 Nobody cares about that anymore.
00:26:53.800 Racist is used to, if you wake up early in the morning, that's a racist trait.
00:26:58.380 You know, if you have three meals a day, that's racism.
00:27:00.920 No, I mean, you know, no normal person cares about that anymore.
00:27:04.820 Yeah, it really is.
00:27:06.420 If you care about the word racist in the year of our Lord, 2024, you're just not going to make it.
00:27:11.280 Like, there's just no hope for you.
00:27:12.560 Yeah, it's done.
00:27:15.640 You know, you're exactly right that people are desperate for leadership.
00:27:19.760 I mean, desperate for leadership.
00:27:21.000 I've said this so many times, but I'll say it again because I believe it's deeply true.
00:27:25.960 Trump is entirely unworthy of the movement that he has, but he has the movement because people are so desperate for any kind of leadership.
00:27:34.740 And even the small head fake towards, you know, towards, you know, just pushing back, saying no, fighting back against the media, taking it to the establishment that Trump does is enough to basically get the, like, you know, ride or die loyalty of a large chunk of the nation.
00:27:53.100 And as you say, you know, DeSantis is in a similar situation.
00:27:56.300 Look, I lived through this last, you know, stage four hurricane.
00:28:00.460 We had bridges out to the islands.
00:28:03.260 Causeway was destroyed.
00:28:05.160 It, you know, the, the, the, the, the departments were saying it's going to take years to get permits done, get these bridges done.
00:28:10.760 DeSantis said, find me somebody who can do it in weeks.
00:28:14.020 Cleared everything.
00:28:14.740 Just threw all the, you know, threw the regulations aside, made it happen.
00:28:18.240 That's the kind of stuff that will win.
00:28:20.600 You know, this is, you know, he, he could be the king if he wanted to a Florida, right?
00:28:25.300 Like that's, that's all there is to when you, when you do that kind of stuff, it shows people that you care.
00:28:30.020 It shows that you're willing to take action.
00:28:31.740 It shows that you're willing to put the wellbeing of the people who put you in office above anything else.
00:28:38.040 And that's really what matters to people.
00:28:40.000 They don't care that you, you know, you got every I and every T that got handed down from you some, for some kind of federal mandate.
00:28:46.700 That doesn't matter to them at all.
00:28:48.440 They care that you're taking care of them in their day-to-day lives.
00:28:51.980 And so the, the, the willingness of governors to take action like this, like you said, success is contagious.
00:28:57.740 It spreads like wildfire.
00:28:58.780 Even if you don't have any principles and you're just in it for the power and the advancement, this is still in your interest.
00:29:05.340 This is still something that you should get involved in.
00:29:07.760 And that's why it's so confusing that more and more governors are not taking this kind of action because they should see that this is successful.
00:29:15.380 And this is gain, uh, this is garnering public support and they should be willing to go ahead and put themselves out there in a similar way.
00:29:23.000 Now, I think there's a couple of, of answers as to why they aren't doing this.
00:29:27.000 Some of it is just, as you point out, they're very lame.
00:29:29.500 They're very weak.
00:29:30.660 They're, you know, they're, they're completely cowed.
00:29:32.480 Like that's all a huge part of it.
00:29:34.680 Um, they're in many cases bought and sold.
00:29:36.900 I'm, I'm on board with all of that, but I think a huge part of this is how dependent, uh, state and, uh, municipal governments have become on federal money and, and, you know, that, that they have become so tied to these regulations.
00:29:51.840 They're terrified to push back against these things because they're worried that their federal funding or some, some part of that will be pulled.
00:30:00.260 And because of that, they're unwilling to take actions or push back even in the most minute areas.
00:30:06.500 Yeah, that is, that is a problem.
00:30:08.900 And so then, you know, there are a couple of approaches to that, but they're, they're not very promising.
00:30:13.840 One of them is you have to decide, um, you know, is, is, you know, is, is, um, is this important enough to you that you're willing to say, you know, we'll pay for our own damn highways.
00:30:28.500 You know, we'll figure it out.
00:30:29.980 You know, we'll, we'll hold a raffle, you know, like we'll figure it out, but you couldn't bribe me enough to go along with this requirement.
00:30:38.500 Like you just couldn't.
00:30:39.840 Like, I, I, I don't care if we don't get the highway money, if, you know, if we're not putting tampons in the boys' room, you know, that's okay.
00:30:49.320 I will, I'll deal with some potholes for a little while on the highways until normal people come back into office.
00:30:54.920 Like it just, at some point, you just have to ask yourself, what's your, what are your priorities?
00:30:59.340 Now, if we were really bold, if the federal government were in, were in a far more advanced stage of decay than it is now,
00:31:06.200 then you could think about like, well, we're going to take people's federal income tax payments and hold them in escrow.
00:31:12.620 And we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll deduct what, what we should, should have gotten.
00:31:16.360 And then we'll send you the rest.
00:31:17.720 I'd like to see something like that, but I don't think the public is ready.
00:31:20.540 Your FBI offices are closed here.
00:31:22.500 Your regional officers are closed.
00:31:24.180 We'll stop you at the border and turn you around if you show back up here.
00:31:27.120 Yeah.
00:31:27.280 That kind of stuff.
00:31:28.720 Yeah.
00:31:28.820 Well, by the way, you know, that reminds me, there was a moment, I mean, you know, that sometimes when we hear rumors that the federal government is thinking of doing some particular thing,
00:31:38.660 and then they deny it, they deny that they ever had the intention of doing it, that in fact, that rumor was a trial balloon.
00:31:46.600 They did actually let that rumor get out there.
00:31:48.780 They wanted to see what the reaction would be.
00:31:49.960 Right.
00:31:50.560 And, you know, as a fellow Floridian, I remember distinctly during COVID that the White House was very unhappy with how DeSantis was handling the situation.
00:31:59.360 And the rumor was they were considering blocking interstate traffic into Florida for everybody's safety.
00:32:05.840 You know, even though Florida's numbers were better than those of many states.
00:32:09.480 Do you remember this?
00:32:10.160 They were considering a blockade, in effect, of sorts.
00:32:13.620 And then they denied it.
00:32:14.720 Oh, we never, I don't know why you would think we would say.
00:32:17.500 But DeSantis said, let them try and let's see what happens.
00:32:20.640 Now, I don't know what.
00:32:21.800 That could have been a lot of bravado, for all I know.
00:32:24.160 Yeah.
00:32:24.260 I don't know what would have come of that.
00:32:25.600 But I have to think there are at least some Americans who would have been uncomfortable about the federal government having a military showdown with Florida.
00:32:36.080 I mean, there just have to be.
00:32:37.220 Right.
00:32:37.320 I mean, I would have been happy if they were stopping the flow of traffic into Florida.
00:32:41.660 That'd be fine.
00:32:42.380 Keep turning the New Yorkers back around with my, you know, my real estate prices are high enough.
00:32:47.640 My roads are clogged enough.
00:32:48.880 Let's send them back.
00:32:50.100 They have to go back.
00:32:51.080 You know, mass deportations.
00:32:52.480 You know, I'm fine with getting the New York out of Florida.
00:32:57.440 But yeah.
00:32:57.640 That's true.
00:32:58.060 But during COVID, I think some of the right people were starting to come.
00:33:00.800 Yes.
00:33:01.160 It was a nice sorting mechanism.
00:33:02.840 And this is important, too, right?
00:33:04.320 One of the things that allows the kind of actions we're talking about to take place is having a unified moral vision, right?
00:33:11.320 Having a understanding, a shared value set.
00:33:14.360 And this is something that has been a huge problem.
00:33:16.800 As you point out at the beginning, the peoples of the United States were, you know, there at the founding.
00:33:23.420 This is how it was understood.
00:33:24.820 Each state had its own community.
00:33:26.360 Each state had its own understanding of traditions, values, heritage, you know, a moral vision.
00:33:32.500 And while they had a unifying overcoat of the United States, it was distinctly understood that the character of the states were specific to those peoples.
00:33:41.040 And they mattered.
00:33:42.000 And the fact that that has fallen apart for people, especially in kind of the post-war consensus, the modern world, every state is more or less the same.
00:33:50.420 It's fine if you move around for economic opportunity.
00:33:53.280 It's fine if you, you know, you leave constantly.
00:33:55.980 You move every few years to find a new job or get this degree or, you know, whatever.
00:34:00.480 It doesn't really matter.
00:34:01.460 A state's a state's a state.
00:34:02.600 It's all the United States, right?
00:34:04.320 That's kind of become the understanding.
00:34:06.840 But I think what happened with COVID is people realized, oh, no, wait, it really does matter where you live.
00:34:14.020 It really does matter if your neighbor shares your values and cares about the same things you do.
00:34:18.940 If you have the same conception of liberty, if you have the same conception of how the government should work, it makes a huge difference.
00:34:24.500 And so what we're seeing is this great sort.
00:34:26.860 We're seeing people moving.
00:34:28.520 You know, obviously COVID was the catalyst, but there are a lot of things like trans issues and abortion and others that are forcing people because of the more polarizing legislation to move.
00:34:38.300 And as those states consolidate populations that share worldviews, I think we're going to see more and more states being willing to go to the mat like this because they actually have the popular mandate necessary to do it.
00:34:52.840 That is such a great insight.
00:34:54.700 I cannot believe it didn't occur to me that the natural sorting that's occurring is going to have the effect of giving a backbone to that rare politician that would like to have one.
00:35:05.560 You know, because he'll know he's got an awful lot of people behind him if he goes out on a limb like this.
00:35:12.740 I remember when when nullification came out in 2010, ABC News did this thing where they were talking about in Idaho.
00:35:21.100 Now, Idaho, there is real America right there.
00:35:23.320 I got a lot of friends in Idaho, but in Idaho, they were the state legislators were reading that book and passing it along to each other.
00:35:31.060 Now, I wish they'd each buy their own copy, but they're passing it around.
00:35:34.160 And they made and this made the news that, oh, my gosh, our legislators are reading this radical book about the powers of the states.
00:35:41.960 And then on that segment, one of the state legislators said, yeah, you know, and I I asked the governor.
00:35:47.600 It was Butch. I can't remember his last name.
00:35:49.840 I actually met with him, had breakfast, told him all about it.
00:35:52.640 Like he asked me to come meet with him.
00:35:54.680 And and this legislator said, I asked the governor if he wanted to borrow my copy.
00:35:59.320 And he said, no, I don't need to. I've already read it.
00:36:01.040 And I thought, what world is this? Right.
00:36:04.000 I mean, that was only Idaho. But Idaho had already been sorted, is my point.
00:36:07.340 Like once you're in Idaho, you know what you're in for.
00:36:10.040 You know what the lifestyle is. You know why you're in Idaho.
00:36:12.300 So if if the states do start to have more distinctive identities, at least morally and philosophically, well, you know, maybe they'll pass it around in other states.
00:36:23.880 So this is something and, you know, we've talked a little bit about this because we talked about the book, my book on your show.
00:36:32.020 But one of the things that I kind of traced in my book, The Total State, is this is this tendency of power to consolidate Bertrand de Juvenal, of course, lays this out beautifully.
00:36:42.840 And Hoppe does the same. You know, he follows it. I always forget. Is it Hoppe or Hoppe? I mess it up every time.
00:36:51.340 Thank you. Yeah. Someone will always make fun of me when I do it one way and they'll make fun of me when I do it the other.
00:36:55.300 And I completely forget. So Hoppe borrows this this metaphysics of power from de Juvenal and does a great job, you know, expanding on it as well.
00:37:03.340 But, of course, you know, we both know that the story of the United States is the story of the betrayal of the Constitution. Right.
00:37:11.260 Like, yeah, throughout history, power wants to consolidate.
00:37:15.000 And I think a lot of people believe that due to the principles in the Constitution, due to the restrictions in the Constitution, ultimately we would be spared this fate because, you know, we designed this novel piece of political technology.
00:37:30.100 You know, the Founding Fathers had staked this this amazing claim to rights and liberties and restrictions.
00:37:36.200 And so therefore, we just weren't going to see this. But step by step, there's always an excuse.
00:37:41.440 There's always a reason. There's always a 14th Amendment. 0.98
00:37:44.800 There's always something, you know, that allows you to basically just run roughshod over this and centralize your power more and more.
00:37:52.280 And I guess my question is, at this point, though, I think your arguments for constitutional, you know, nullification for states acting in this way are entirely based in history and fact and valid.
00:38:07.320 The problem, I think, ultimately, is there's just a practical issue that power, you know, in order especially to compete in a geopolitical climate, wants to centralize and create the leviathan.
00:38:21.260 And, you know, the reason that people are willing to do this is that it does have some positive impacts on their life.
00:38:28.860 Like, they do see some advantages from this. Let's just be clear, you know, being an individual is hard work.
00:38:36.080 Being a community is hard work. And so a lot of people are just willing to push a lot of this off to the government and allow them to centralize in this way.
00:38:44.500 Is there, in a modern world, a scenario in which we can actually restrain power in this sense?
00:38:52.820 Or is this simply an inevitable process that we undergo because of kind of the current paradigm when it comes to these monolithic states that are forming?
00:39:04.020 Well, I don't think there's any doubt that the trend is always is towards centralization.
00:39:10.980 But I wonder if what is going to start happening is that, for example, a lot of these Western governments will have been found to have overpromised to their people.
00:39:21.380 And they won't be able to deliver all the comforts that they thought they would.
00:39:25.520 And then what if what if things start to break down in that way?
00:39:28.260 Then people start looking for the next, you know, the the next level of authority, which would be the states.
00:39:34.620 So it's entirely possible if there's some, you know, and people have been predicting it for forever and it hasn't really broken.
00:39:42.080 But if there really is a major, major fiscal crisis and the federal government simply can't make good on its promises, then it becomes less less important in our lives.
00:39:53.820 It can't deliver. So then people will will turn and look elsewhere.
00:39:57.000 It's it's overpromised. But also, I think there's generally been a devolution of, let's say, if not political power, then then certainly we've seen a decentralization in the transmission of information.
00:40:11.920 Now, I won't repeat obvious, you know, commonplaces about the Internet.
00:40:16.600 But the fact is, in, you know, when when when my mother was born, she she had the three TV channels, you know, and now today nobody would even think of I mean, nobody would even even people on the left wouldn't say, I only want three TV channels.
00:40:34.560 So again, everybody gets information now in ways that are harder to control, even though there are sensors, but they're harder to control.
00:40:43.080 And so I think people are now instead of looking to that centralized information dispensing machine, they're not looking to that so much anymore.
00:40:52.380 They're looking in other places. So the way we get information is being decentralized.
00:40:57.380 I think, as you say, people are more conscious of the fact that they live in a really hostile world.
00:41:03.680 And when I say people, I mean our people. They live in a really hostile world and they can't take for granted that their neighbors have their backs the way you normally can in a neighborhood.
00:41:13.520 Your neighbor might want to call, you know, Department of Children and Families on you because you're not affirming your kid in some crazy gender ideology.
00:41:22.840 You know, so there's a more of a as you say, I think there's more of a conscious effort to seek out like minded people.
00:41:30.220 I mean, my friends at New Founding are investors who are looking to build like minded communities of like minded people like in Appalachia, for example, and in other parts of America.
00:41:42.340 And so far, they've raised an enormous amount of money to do that because people are looking for that.
00:41:48.480 So, again, that was that's a kind of a spiritual decentralization that's happening.
00:41:53.460 So could political decentralization be trailing it at some point in the future?
00:41:59.580 It would certainly correspond to what I think is happening to them in other ways in, you know, in their allegiances, in where they want to live.
00:42:08.340 They're they're not looking at the world the way they used to.
00:42:12.720 And so, you know, maybe this may have some especially if we here's the thing.
00:42:17.480 The left talks about something and 20 years later, it's a reality.
00:42:21.640 And the right sits there arguing with the left about its thing fecklessly because it still becomes a reality.
00:42:28.420 Our side just doesn't do that for some reason.
00:42:30.840 Now, it's started to happen over the past four to eight years.
00:42:33.480 If you go on Twitter, people are talking about things they're not allowed to talk about.
00:42:37.920 And that wasn't really happening so much on the right 10, 15 years ago.
00:42:42.680 And every and the left is up in arms.
00:42:44.160 Oh, my goodness.
00:42:44.740 People are expressing opinions that aren't officially authorized.
00:42:47.620 Well, that is that's a good first step.
00:42:52.600 But if we were to start talking about radical decentralization as the solution, you know, I'm not saying that we would have the success that the left has.
00:43:01.620 But let's at least get onto the playing field.
00:43:05.080 You know, the left says we want gay marriage.
00:43:07.340 And even Bill Clinton says, what are you crazy?
00:43:09.880 That's never going to happen.
00:43:10.920 And then your life is ruined if you don't support gay marriage.
00:43:13.880 So then it's we're going to turn your kid into a girl. 0.99
00:43:17.760 And you say, what?
00:43:18.920 There's absolutely no way.
00:43:20.700 And now if you talk about it, you know, they throw you off the school board or whatever.
00:43:25.360 It's absolutely nuts.
00:43:27.740 And how have they gotten that way?
00:43:29.300 Well, they've gotten that way because they put in the work.
00:43:31.700 They did get into the institutions.
00:43:33.780 You know, they didn't just sit home, go to the polling place and then go back home again.
00:43:38.100 They worked.
00:43:39.300 I mean, you have to hand it to these SOBs. 1.00
00:43:41.060 They worked.
00:43:41.940 They infiltrated those institutions.
00:43:43.880 They worked.
00:43:44.480 But they also were willing to introduce an idea and stay with it and push it and talk
00:43:51.780 about it and not be intimidated out of it.
00:43:55.000 There's nothing stopping us from doing that except timidity and feeling intimidated by the
00:44:01.720 powers that be and feeling intimidated by the left because they have infiltrated everything.
00:44:06.580 But for God's sake, liberalism is the ugliest, stupidest, dumb guy ideology of all time.
00:44:16.060 You know, if we can't stand up to that because we're intimidated by it, the left and its crazy
00:44:22.140 ideology does not—it doesn't inspire beauty or accomplishment or nobility or greatness.
00:44:28.560 It's all ugliness and hideousness and destruction.
00:44:33.300 And yet somehow it took over the Catholic Church.
00:44:36.360 It took over—I mean, it took over everything, even though it's the ugliest ideology in the world. 0.99
00:44:41.080 You know, we on the right, we're dissidents, and maybe each one of us has our own kind of different take on it.
00:44:45.780 But whatever our individual takes are, they're better than this reigning ideology that rules over us.
00:44:51.660 And we ought to be able to advance some forbidden ideas against it because there is no reason to be intimidated by it.
00:45:00.080 Yeah, there is—you know, the left understands the value of hyperstition, right?
00:45:06.120 Put something out there into the world, even if it seems crazy, even if it seems around the bend.
00:45:11.620 But simply by putting it out there and having people talking about it and making it the center of discussion,
00:45:18.240 it builds its own momentum, right?
00:45:20.680 It assembles itself because the people are entertaining the idea, even if they hate it, even if they're pushing against it.
00:45:27.240 They're dealing with it. They're rubbing up against it.
00:45:29.240 And it speaks itself into reality because it becomes normalized through constant iterations of discussion,
00:45:35.460 along with all of the large amounts of activism that you're talking about.
00:45:39.560 And one of the reasons that we don't see this on the right is that the right is obsessed with being in the good graces of the left,
00:45:46.320 in a way that the left is just not with the right.
00:45:48.240 And so the right cancels its vanguard, right?
00:45:50.500 The people who bring these outside ideas into reality are the vanguard,
00:45:56.760 that the people who are out on the edges, they're not the people in the mainstream.
00:45:59.900 Every effective political movement has a vanguard and has a mainstream,
00:46:03.700 but the right has just completely disassociated from theirs.
00:46:07.000 In fact, they often work to actively cancel their own vanguard just to say,
00:46:12.100 we're one of the good ones.
00:46:13.180 We're the good guys. It's okay.
00:46:15.160 New York Times, please write a nice piece about us.
00:46:17.060 See, I got rid of the bad, scary Republican.
00:46:19.280 I'm one of the good ones.
00:46:21.080 And so we see this.
00:46:22.300 Now, one of the things that I wonder is,
00:46:24.760 I've talked to a lot of guys from the Mises side of things,
00:46:29.100 and they're great.
00:46:30.140 They were right on a lot of things.
00:46:31.520 They had a lot of vision.
00:46:33.440 Obviously, guys like Ron Paul get a huge amount of credit for seeing well into the future.
00:46:38.820 But the problem, it seems, over and over again,
00:46:41.660 when it comes to especially the Libertarian side,
00:46:43.580 has always been organization.
00:46:45.260 They're just bad at it.
00:46:46.120 It's just herding cats. 0.62
00:46:47.420 Even in a year like this,
00:46:48.520 where we have basically two disastrous presidential candidates,
00:46:51.640 Libertarians still found a way to produce an even worse presidential candidate.
00:46:56.180 It's an amazing talent that they have.
00:46:58.360 It's a gift, to be sure.
00:47:00.040 But one of the things I wonder is,
00:47:02.820 as you say, Republican Party, absolute disaster.
00:47:05.520 You're not going to get any argument from me here on that.
00:47:08.460 But is there a way in which, at some point,
00:47:12.780 you can actually get a...
00:47:16.400 I mean, Trump obviously is a big disruptive element in many ways.
00:47:19.880 Again, I think he has plenty of his own problems,
00:47:24.400 but he does break a little bit of the paradigm inside the Republican Party.
00:47:29.500 Is there a moment at which the Libertarians can find their way to,
00:47:34.760 I guess, finding some kind of solution that allows them to produce a candidate
00:47:40.620 or someone who is viable,
00:47:42.820 or is just all federal-level action kind of moot,
00:47:47.700 and you just really need to focus on state-level and local-level stuff?
00:47:51.740 Well, I kind of am both-and on that,
00:47:54.740 because I'd love to...
00:47:56.600 I do think we neglect state and local stuff tremendously.
00:48:00.200 And I also think, in terms of getting elected,
00:48:02.440 there is so much low-hanging fruit there.
00:48:04.800 When you see how few votes people are winning with
00:48:07.620 and how little money is involved,
00:48:10.380 because one person in that state legislature...
00:48:14.920 Obviously, you want way more than that,
00:48:16.100 but one person who's super outspoken,
00:48:18.720 every one of whose speeches gets all over social media,
00:48:22.600 inspires people in other places.
00:48:25.120 So we shouldn't neglect that.
00:48:28.120 But yet, on the federal level,
00:48:30.660 that is where most people get their political philosophy.
00:48:33.840 Most people don't sit down and read
00:48:35.580 Joseph Demestra or Robert Nozick or whatever.
00:48:38.640 They read the newspaper or they read whatever, CNN.com.
00:48:41.460 If you're lucky, yeah, yeah.
00:48:42.720 And so every four years,
00:48:44.080 they kind of get some political ideas from that.
00:48:46.560 And I feel like if we're not actively trying to be present on that stage,
00:48:51.680 then it's not like they're going to hear us and reject us.
00:48:53.940 They're not going to hear us in the first place.
00:48:55.460 So I don't go along with some of the...
00:48:58.460 Certainly some of the libertarians
00:49:00.400 who take an extremely anti-political stance.
00:49:03.600 I mean, I don't mind if individually
00:49:05.220 they feel like that's not their thing.
00:49:06.840 But I wouldn't discourage people,
00:49:09.500 even though I am absolutely undeceived
00:49:12.220 about the realm of politics
00:49:14.500 and the likely people who get involved in it.
00:49:17.080 Absolutely.
00:49:18.260 But it is where people get their ideas.
00:49:20.240 So if Ron Paul, for example, accomplished nothing else,
00:49:23.920 he got a lot of people thinking in a new way.
00:49:26.580 And then now it's up to the next person
00:49:28.360 to then take that to the next level.
00:49:30.840 But as far as libertarians go,
00:49:35.000 there are just so many different kinds.
00:49:36.660 There are apolitical ones who just feel like
00:49:39.420 I'm going to build my own thing
00:49:41.380 and like in the countryside.
00:49:43.420 And if people want to join me there,
00:49:45.440 I'm going to do it,
00:49:46.040 but I am not going to fight fruitless battles.
00:49:48.660 But there are others who think with...
00:49:51.200 Like even Murray Rothbard,
00:49:52.900 who was Mr. Libertarian,
00:49:55.180 he was arguing with somebody
00:49:56.800 who thought that you could,
00:49:59.080 through black markets
00:50:00.000 and through various forms of resistance,
00:50:02.860 you could bring the state down.
00:50:04.180 And Rothbard said,
00:50:06.500 but the thing is,
00:50:07.600 you're not going to bring the Federal Reserve down that way.
00:50:10.080 You know, the way they got rid of the first bank
00:50:11.800 of the United States was the president didn't,
00:50:13.840 or the second bank,
00:50:14.800 the president didn't renew the charter.
00:50:16.440 That's how, you know?
00:50:17.600 Or how did they get rid of tariffs on...
00:50:19.940 The corn laws, tariffs on food,
00:50:23.180 was politicians repealed them.
00:50:25.640 You know, like there are some things
00:50:27.040 that it's not obvious
00:50:28.080 how you would carry this out
00:50:29.560 other than politically.
00:50:31.380 But yeah, I mean,
00:50:32.120 libertarians have all different ideas
00:50:33.360 of what should the candidate look like
00:50:35.740 and how pure does the candidate have to be?
00:50:38.040 And as I've gotten older,
00:50:39.800 I mean, I am over the halfway mark,
00:50:42.340 assuming I make it to 100.
00:50:44.120 I'm over the halfway mark at this point.
00:50:46.020 And I've kind of come to the conclusion
00:50:47.640 that I'm not going to get everything I want.
00:50:49.700 That's just a fact.
00:50:51.100 You know, in the marketplace,
00:50:52.680 I can get everything I want.
00:50:53.840 I can get the exact flavor
00:50:55.180 of sparkling water that I want.
00:50:57.420 I can get the exact model of cell phone that I want.
00:50:59.820 But in politics,
00:51:00.700 I am not going to get everything I want.
00:51:02.640 So therefore, I have to ask myself,
00:51:04.540 what are my priorities?
00:51:06.120 What do I absolutely have to have?
00:51:08.840 What are absolute no-brainer,
00:51:11.380 no-compromise things?
00:51:14.020 And right now,
00:51:15.040 I feel like society's collapsing
00:51:16.660 and people are aiding and abetting that gleefully.
00:51:20.700 So that, to me, is my top, you know,
00:51:22.540 my top few things derive all from that.
00:51:25.860 And so, yeah,
00:51:27.040 I'm not going to get the perfect person,
00:51:29.140 but can I at least get somebody in there
00:51:30.980 who could hold off
00:51:32.940 the worst of the barbarians 0.99
00:51:34.940 for four more years
00:51:35.940 while the good guys start getting more organized?
00:51:38.600 That's basically my ambition now.
00:51:41.120 Right.
00:51:41.280 And that really should be how people understand,
00:51:43.420 I think, federal elections at this point.
00:51:45.280 Even if Trump goes in
00:51:46.800 and, you know,
00:51:47.220 he's allowed to win
00:51:48.680 and he actually makes some positive changes,
00:51:51.300 all he's doing is creating breathing room for you.
00:51:53.560 You still have to do the work.
00:51:55.180 The work has to be local.
00:51:56.940 It has to be regional.
00:51:57.900 It has to be state-based.
00:51:59.220 If you have somebody in the federal seat
00:52:01.440 that allows you to get that work done,
00:52:03.000 that gives you the space to get that work done,
00:52:04.560 fantastic.
00:52:05.280 That's great.
00:52:05.760 That's well worth your energy and time
00:52:07.240 to try to make that happen.
00:52:08.280 But don't think that just because you put this guy
00:52:10.520 into office at some point,
00:52:12.120 that magically solves the problem.
00:52:13.720 The problem has to be solved
00:52:15.540 in the communities,
00:52:17.160 in states,
00:52:17.900 in municipalities,
00:52:19.160 in localities.
00:52:20.220 That's where work has to get done
00:52:21.720 no matter what happens at the federal level.
00:52:24.120 All right.
00:52:24.380 We woke up to find the world leftist
00:52:27.260 because those people put in the work.
00:52:29.900 The people who want to win,
00:52:31.460 they beat the people who want to be left alone.
00:52:33.480 Yeah.
00:52:33.780 And I know that's a hard thing for people,
00:52:36.020 but that's just the case.
00:52:37.000 I wish it were otherwise,
00:52:38.000 but it's a fact.
00:52:39.020 Someone's going to rule.
00:52:40.140 It can be you or it can be someone else,
00:52:41.680 but someone's going to rule.
00:52:43.020 All right.
00:52:43.400 So we can,
00:52:44.380 we're going to move over to the questions
00:52:45.400 of the people,
00:52:45.820 but before we do,
00:52:46.500 Tom,
00:52:46.740 where do they find your excellent work?
00:52:49.760 Well,
00:52:49.980 the best place right now,
00:52:51.940 because I'm actually giving away,
00:52:54.340 I have two history courses,
00:52:56.420 U.S. history courses,
00:52:57.300 where all the truth,
00:52:58.580 you get all the truth.
00:52:59.580 I basically open up your head
00:53:01.000 and anything that's still hanging around in there
00:53:03.380 that was put in there by people who hate you,
00:53:05.120 I pull it out
00:53:05.740 and I put the truth in there
00:53:07.680 and I close up your head.
00:53:08.900 And the website is woodshistory.com.
00:53:11.100 So Woods is my last name,
00:53:12.740 woodshistory.com.
00:53:13.820 You get all that stuff for free.
00:53:15.740 Excellent.
00:53:16.180 All right,
00:53:16.480 guys,
00:53:16.740 make sure you're checking out
00:53:17.960 all of Tom's work.
00:53:19.960 And let's go to the questions
00:53:21.420 of the people real quick.
00:53:22.760 Tiny Rick says,
00:53:23.540 seems to me like the defiance of the feds
00:53:25.600 depends on the issue.
00:53:27.200 Legalize pot,
00:53:27.980 defy,
00:53:28.520 income tax,
00:53:29.260 comply.
00:53:30.000 Do you think governors would be more likely
00:53:31.700 to defy with an R in the White House,
00:53:34.380 Trump,
00:53:34.960 or another?
00:53:35.880 Yeah,
00:53:36.060 I think it definitely depends
00:53:37.460 on whether the regime is aligned
00:53:39.260 with the issue or not.
00:53:40.140 If they want something to happen,
00:53:41.320 they allow it.
00:53:42.120 By the way,
00:53:42.560 guys,
00:53:42.800 this is how it worked
00:53:43.540 with the civil rights movement.
00:53:44.980 The government allows
00:53:46.600 certain illegal activities
00:53:47.960 if it actually wants the ends
00:53:49.740 that they facilitate.
00:53:50.680 See the Floyd riots.
00:53:53.400 So this is very specific.
00:53:56.440 I think that governors
00:53:57.760 would be more willing
00:53:58.920 to take action
00:53:59.740 if they knew,
00:54:00.520 yes,
00:54:00.800 that someone like Donald Trump
00:54:02.100 had their back
00:54:02.940 when they tried to push back
00:54:03.920 against certain things,
00:54:05.220 certain federal mandates.
00:54:06.360 Yeah,
00:54:06.500 I think that's exactly the case.
00:54:08.780 Yeah,
00:54:09.420 but also let's remember
00:54:10.840 that California
00:54:12.140 was talking about seceding.
00:54:14.360 We all knew that was a bluff,
00:54:16.240 but when Trump took office.
00:54:18.720 So sometimes for those people,
00:54:21.080 decentralization is good
00:54:22.380 if the enemy is in power.
00:54:24.040 But if the friend is in power,
00:54:26.180 then you're going to get it
00:54:27.060 good and hard.
00:54:27.780 Forget your theories
00:54:28.780 about decentralizing.
00:54:30.340 To be fair, though,
00:54:31.500 if California makes that move
00:54:33.140 next time,
00:54:33.620 just let it go.
00:54:34.920 Let it go.
00:54:35.780 Oh,
00:54:36.320 it would be a thrill.
00:54:38.260 Absolutely.
00:54:38.920 Just make sure to build the wall.
00:54:40.080 They can all go and do
00:54:40.160 everything they want.
00:54:40.900 All the crazy things
00:54:41.680 they want to do,
00:54:42.220 they can just go do.
00:54:43.520 Just make sure you build a wall.
00:54:44.640 Don't let them back in.
00:54:45.760 After they've destroyed themselves,
00:54:48.180 don't let the locust back in.
00:54:50.000 Robert Weinsfeld says,
00:54:52.820 are we putting libertarianism
00:54:54.260 on hold for 20 years
00:54:55.780 or just abandoning it outright?
00:54:57.420 Does not pursuing power
00:54:59.220 work with the opponents?
00:55:01.340 Have it.
00:55:03.020 I'll let you take a second.
00:55:04.040 I'm against pursuing power,
00:55:06.300 per se,
00:55:06.720 or ever have been,
00:55:07.780 as long as it's used
00:55:08.620 the right way.
00:55:09.260 Now,
00:55:09.400 I know that sounds really naive,
00:55:11.180 but if I want to dismantle
00:55:13.800 this oppressive structure
00:55:15.160 that rules over me,
00:55:16.640 I'm going to have to do it.
00:55:17.660 I mean,
00:55:17.900 I can try civil disobedience,
00:55:19.920 but when more than half
00:55:21.800 the public,
00:55:22.340 let's say,
00:55:22.640 is unsympathetic with me,
00:55:24.460 civil disobedience
00:55:25.200 doesn't go anywhere,
00:55:25.960 really.
00:55:26.580 I mean,
00:55:26.840 it makes me feel morally superior,
00:55:28.360 but it doesn't accomplish anything.
00:55:30.040 So I've always thought,
00:55:31.620 yeah,
00:55:31.860 I would love to see people get in
00:55:33.220 and just everything
00:55:34.740 that is making the lives
00:55:36.740 of ordinary people miserable 0.95
00:55:38.560 and is meant to humiliate them,
00:55:41.920 like all this stuff,
00:55:43.400 and I've got a long list,
00:55:45.280 and my job would just be
00:55:46.680 slash and burn.
00:55:49.320 Michael Robertson says,
00:55:50.760 if the federal government
00:55:51.820 keeps going like this,
00:55:52.900 it might be a good idea
00:55:53.980 for states to be able
00:55:55.000 to restrict interstate movement.
00:55:56.580 Do you agree?
00:55:57.320 Any idea what that would look like
00:55:59.460 any precedence for this?
00:56:01.720 Yeah,
00:56:02.140 I think that's one of those
00:56:03.600 kind of make or break moments.
00:56:05.200 I do think that there's a possibility
00:56:06.900 that at some point
00:56:07.980 the government becomes so weak,
00:56:10.760 the central government becomes so weak
00:56:12.380 that people might experiment
00:56:15.180 at least with
00:56:15.900 when it comes to residency
00:56:17.160 to some degree,
00:56:19.580 but that is certainly
00:56:20.480 one of those make or break
00:56:21.380 sovereignty moments
00:56:22.220 for the central government.
00:56:24.000 I think Rhode Island
00:56:24.660 considered something like this
00:56:26.040 during COVID.
00:56:27.180 I don't remember
00:56:27.620 what the rules were,
00:56:28.340 but they had a crazy governor
00:56:29.420 who for dumb guy reasons
00:56:32.080 wanted to close the state
00:56:33.460 to visitors or something.
00:56:36.380 And then Life of Brian says,
00:56:38.100 any thoughts on Joel Berry
00:56:39.300 canceling the Vanguard
00:56:40.480 with Pierce Morgan?
00:56:42.440 Should the right be more active
00:56:44.040 on canceling the rear guard?
00:56:46.000 I'm going to be honest.
00:56:48.060 Joel is a relatively nice guy
00:56:50.040 in conversation,
00:56:51.860 but I had to mute him on Twitter
00:56:53.200 because I simply could not
00:56:54.500 continue to kind of deal
00:56:57.020 with the level of opinions
00:56:59.780 that were being put out.
00:57:00.940 So I don't really know
00:57:02.320 what he's been doing on Twitter.
00:57:04.840 Again, seems like a nice guy
00:57:06.400 person to person,
00:57:07.420 but his political opinions
00:57:09.120 are bad, to say the least.
00:57:12.780 It's usually something
00:57:14.100 on the lines of,
00:57:15.240 you're probably Hitler 0.98
00:57:15.900 if you disagree with me,
00:57:17.040 but I mean that in good faith.
00:57:18.720 Let's see here.
00:57:19.780 City All The Way says,
00:57:22.820 the left's egalitarian messaging
00:57:24.200 is why they always win.
00:57:26.000 It's hard for conservatives
00:57:27.080 to argue against it.
00:57:28.720 HB or race IQ discussions
00:57:31.200 are way too out of the over
00:57:34.500 and window of our current society.
00:57:36.860 Let me just say this real quick, guys.
00:57:38.720 There's a lot of guys,
00:57:40.400 especially on what used
00:57:42.060 to be called the old right,
00:57:43.560 who thought that this was
00:57:44.680 a magical key, right?
00:57:46.040 Like once they had
00:57:47.880 the scientific data of this,
00:57:49.740 that that would just solve
00:57:50.660 all the problems
00:57:51.300 because science and data
00:57:53.020 are what people really care about.
00:57:54.940 And then what happened
00:57:55.700 is they got science and data
00:57:57.180 and nobody cared, right?
00:57:59.100 And if 2020 should teach you anything,
00:58:01.820 if the pandemic
00:58:02.340 should teach you anything,
00:58:03.440 it's that science and data
00:58:04.820 are not actually winning positions.
00:58:06.900 They don't actually solve
00:58:08.620 any of your problems.
00:58:09.840 So even if you think
00:58:10.580 this is the main problem
00:58:11.820 or this is some skeleton key
00:58:13.920 that unlocks all the answers
00:58:15.300 of social organization,
00:58:16.520 let me just impart
00:58:18.480 a little bit of tactical wisdom to you.
00:58:20.840 People who had this data
00:58:22.080 have already tried
00:58:22.800 and failed with it.
00:58:24.080 And so the thing
00:58:24.900 you want to understand
00:58:25.700 is that the left's arguments
00:58:27.620 win because they actually bolster
00:58:30.880 a moral vision,
00:58:33.720 perhaps not a good moral vision,
00:58:35.620 but a moral vision nonetheless.
00:58:37.280 And if you want yours to win,
00:58:38.740 you might want to take
00:58:39.700 some of those understandings
00:58:40.840 and turn them into something
00:58:42.220 that actually can inspire people
00:58:43.900 to create something better.
00:58:45.520 The raw facts and data
00:58:46.960 themselves ham-handedly
00:58:48.300 slammed into people
00:58:49.220 simply don't solve that problem,
00:58:51.180 even if the weight of science
00:58:52.840 one way or another
00:58:53.580 eventually drives people
00:58:54.920 to a certain understanding.
00:58:57.440 All right, guys,
00:58:58.180 we're going to go ahead
00:58:58.700 and wrap this up.
00:58:59.620 But again, I want to thank Tom
00:59:00.860 so much for coming on.
00:59:02.580 Make sure that you're
00:59:03.040 checking out his courses
00:59:04.120 and his books
00:59:05.480 and his podcasts.
00:59:06.640 If it's your first time
00:59:07.520 on this show,
00:59:08.620 make sure that you subscribe
00:59:09.560 to the channel,
00:59:10.840 click the notification
00:59:11.580 and the bells
00:59:12.160 so that you know
00:59:13.160 when this channel
00:59:14.320 is going live
00:59:14.940 with our shows.
00:59:15.880 If you'd like to get
00:59:16.780 these broadcasts as podcasts,
00:59:18.360 you need to subscribe
00:59:19.260 to The Oren McIntyre Show
00:59:20.540 on your favorite podcast platform.
00:59:22.420 And of course,
00:59:22.860 if you'd like to pick up
00:59:23.740 my book,
00:59:24.760 The Total State
00:59:25.440 or one of Tom's great books,
00:59:26.940 you can do that over
00:59:28.000 on Amazon,
00:59:28.900 Barnes & Noble,
00:59:29.480 Books A Million.
00:59:30.280 Thank you for coming, guys.
00:59:31.440 And as always,
00:59:32.560 I'll talk to you next time.
00:59:33.560 I'll talk to you next time.