Matt Kibbe of Kilbbe on Liberty joins Glenn Beck on the Glenn Beck Podcast to discuss the events of yesterday's protest in Washington, D.C. and the lessons we can learn from them. Matt is a veteran of the tea party movement and has been involved in the protest movement since the early days of the Tea Party movement.
00:00:00.000The last time we had today's guest on the Glenn Beck podcast was April of 2019, and the world was a vastly different place.
00:00:10.380The main thing you need to know going into this podcast is that today, the day we're recording this, is January 7th, 2021.
00:00:20.240This is the day after the protesters stormed Congress.
00:00:24.860Today's guest had one of the best responses to the chaos that took place yesterday.
00:00:29.400He tweeted a quote from Martin Luther King.
00:00:33.020The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy.
00:00:41.120Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.
00:00:45.940The guy who quoted Martin Luther King yesterday, Matt Kibbe of Kibbe on Liberty right here on Blaze TV.
00:00:54.980Welcome, Matt Kibbe, to the Glenn Beck podcast.
00:00:59.400Matt, I feel as though you and I have been here before.
00:01:16.340Uh, and, uh, there needs to be a new path forward, uh, to be able to save the Republic and save freedom.
00:01:29.220Uh, give me your first, your thoughts on what happened at the Capitol.
00:01:32.920Yeah, um, watching what went down at the Capitol yesterday, uh, forced me to go back and think about a lot of the things that we did together as we were participating in the early days of the Tea Party movement.
00:01:49.140And, and how this was fundamentally different, a mutation, a corruption of, of those principles.
00:01:57.080And, and I, I'll tell you a story that I don't think you've ever heard before.
00:02:01.660I think it was 2010 and we had organized a bunch of, of activists to come to Washington, D.C.
00:02:08.640We were fighting against Obama's health care bill.
00:02:13.260And one of the things we planned on doing, we spent the entire day reading about the civil rights movement and reading about Martin Luther King and nonviolence.
00:02:22.540And, and, and we actually did explicit nonviolent training because we knew that we knew that violence was not only morally, not us, but it was a really bad strategy to, to ape the tactics of the other side.
00:02:36.920Um, but one, one thing that happened during that day is a bunch of activists agreed to do, uh, what was called a die in.
00:02:44.520They were going to actually go to Nancy Pelosi's office and lie on the floor of her office and die.
00:02:51.200And this was a, this was a tactic, uh, borrowed from the left.
00:03:17.560And so they, they did not have it in them to do the sorts of things that the left does on a regular basis.
00:03:26.220And they very much respected that officer and they respected the rules and they, you know, they, they peacefully went on their way and we did other things.
00:03:34.080And, and I was thinking about that, watching the, the, uh, uh, uh, Trump activists in Pelosi's office.
00:03:43.840It's a, it's a disaster for our values, but it's also a disaster for our liberties.
00:03:48.640If you're, if you're wanting to move forward in agenda, um, creating the narrative that the left so wanted to say about us back in the tea party days.
00:04:02.140Now they got it now, now, now Trump activists, uh, fairly unfairly, everybody's going to get drawn into this narrative that this is a violent movement.
00:04:12.780Um, and you remember, they used to call us tea party activists, terrorists.
00:04:26.420There's many reasons that, um, what happened yesterday at the Capitol happened, but there was zero excuses for it.
00:04:33.200Um, other than, you know, people are frustrated and they don't know what else to do.
00:04:39.100I think there are some people, um, now that are on the right, um, that are frustrated and think that violence is the answer, but all you have to do is look at history to know that Malcolm X, his ideas were a disaster when he was saying, go after him, get him.
00:05:02.880Um, and while people fought Martin Luther King in his own movement, they fought him and said, come on, man, how much more of this do we have to take?
00:05:13.660His idea, Gandhi's idea, Jesus's idea is the right way to fight.
00:05:20.660Make the case for a nonviolent movement.
00:05:26.720Well, first of all, um, just aping the tactics of the violent left, you have to appreciate two things.
00:05:33.500One, that doesn't reflect our values and a movement that's not rooted in the values that you're fighting for is, is corrupt and will never work.
00:05:41.740And two, guess what people we've always known this.
00:05:46.300And if you're going to behave like the left, hoping that the political class and the media and law enforcement treat you the same way, that's, that's not going to happen.
00:05:56.080But the most important thing, and this is what Dr. King spoke about so often, and we've talked about this for years, you and I have, is that the tactic of nonviolence is the most powerful force in the world.
00:06:31.100You say violence never solved anything.
00:06:33.160Well, it solved the civil war and it solved slavery.
00:06:37.300You know, it's funny as, of course, we use the Boston Tea Party as the model for the actual Tea Party.
00:06:44.040And what was most interesting about the Boston Tea Party is the way that Sam Adams and other activists organized it in such a way so that it did not devolve into the kind of violence that you would have expected very much at the time.
00:06:59.480Because at the time of the colonists, the British soldiers were gunning them down in the streets.
00:07:36.140They were very careful that they did not do anything but dump the tea in.
00:07:42.100And that's, you know, there's that famous John Adams quote at the time he argued, and I'll butcher the quote, but he said at the time that one third of the American public were patriots.
00:07:54.200One third of the American public were in the tank with the British.
00:07:57.440And a third of the public were watching to see what was going to happen.
00:08:58.440Can you go into that to explain why it just doesn't ever work?
00:09:03.280I tweeted and I won't try to quote Martin Luther King because I would do a disservice to his quote.
00:09:09.420But he gives that amazing speech about how violence begets violence and hate begets hate and violent tactics only feed the evil that you're fighting against.
00:09:23.560And I think that's part of the problem is is violence gives demagogues.
00:09:28.680Think about think about think about your worst nightmare in terms of legislation, in terms of a politician that would have more power.
00:09:35.580Violence gives them a platform to delegitimize you and to expand their power.
00:09:42.240And I think one of the things that's going to come out of yesterday is a radical diminishment of our liberties in the name of public safety.
00:09:53.020But it's also, you know, and I think this is this is where and obviously MLK studied and spoke to Gandhi about this stuff.
00:10:03.780And and there's there's an entire global history of nonviolent movements that have fundamentally changed the world in favor of freedom.
00:10:12.680So the the secret, though, of it that Dietrich Bonhoeffer learned because he tried the nonviolent approach and then eventually he was part of the Valkyrie attempt on Hitler's life.
00:10:40.480And he was a pacifist. He didn't believe in killing me.
00:10:44.060I mean, he was he was he lived these principles.
00:11:14.300What Bonhoeffer, who was who wrote many times, I've got to talk to this Gandhi, I've got to talk to Gandhi.
00:11:20.200He gets it. He understands what he didn't understand until too late was the Germans had already darkened their heart so much that there was no Judeo-Christian value.
00:11:32.960That was the overriding mass appeal, correct?
00:11:51.980But you very much have a right to defend your life and your family when when someone has has aggressed against you.
00:11:59.700And that's not what we're talking about here.
00:12:01.520If I'm in Nazi Germany, I am fighting for my life.
00:12:05.760And the rules of the game are fundamentally different.
00:12:10.040That's not what we're talking about in America.
00:12:13.340And and I would I would go on like one of the textbooks that we provided Tea Party activists in that story that I told at the beginning of this conversation was a book called A Force More Powerful.
00:12:23.500I know I've sent you a copy of I've I share it with everybody and it's it's case studies of nonviolent revolutions that fundamentally changed the world.
00:12:32.080And and of course, Gandhi's story is in there and MLK and the civil rights movement is in there.
00:12:39.980And the the the it's just empirical evidence that shows that people united in a set of values that are universal, the values that are going to be appealing to the rest of your countrymen in your community, that that's how you do it.
00:13:00.620Well, I will tell you that I heard of a lot of people say, well, you know, this is the way they were doing it, you know, this summer.
00:13:07.760Yeah, they were. They were. And it was wrong for them to do it that way.
00:13:12.100But the proof is in the pudding at the beginning of Black Lives Matter, when nobody knew what it was and it was just, hey, do you hate black people or you think black people should be shot by cops for no reason?
00:13:26.560And everybody was in love with this idea and everybody was out marching.
00:13:31.460They had about a 78 percent approval rating.
00:13:34.280They were more popular, I believe, than the military was or within a couple of points.
00:13:40.880Most popular organization in all of America.
00:13:44.580By the end of the summer, it was in the toilet.
00:13:47.580It was in the 20s or just approaching 20.
00:14:00.860They just saw that as that's a violent group of people.
00:14:04.900I don't want to have anything to do with it.
00:14:06.520Yeah. And we should we should point out and I I was very sympathetic to the early nonviolent Black Lives Matter protests, because as I understood it, speaking to some of my progressive friends who are very much part of that, their argument was in the context of law enforcement and the justice system.
00:14:28.900Black lives are not treated equally with white lives.
00:14:35.040And I could show you data that that shows, particularly in the context of the drug war, there's been a very disproportionate enforcement of the laws.
00:14:44.540But the moment they got violent and by the way, it wasn't the people that were righteously showing up the street, no testing violence that got violence.
00:14:52.760There was a bad apple or bad apples or perhaps an organizational bent towards violence.
00:15:00.720That's absolutely the truth in Antifa.
00:15:02.920I believe that it's probably true with BLM's leadership as well.
00:15:06.580So you have to always distinguish between people that are trying to desperately fix the system and they're showing up because they don't know what else to do versus the professionals who want somebody to get hurt.
00:15:23.120We were covering the Black Lives Matter rally or march here in Dallas when policemen were shot.
00:15:31.700And because we were there and so were the marchers, when the shots rang out, all of us just became human.
00:15:41.000And we all, you know, rushed into alleys or hid behind cars.
00:15:45.900We didn't know what the shooter was, where the shooter was.
00:15:49.400And you kind of bond at that moment as humans.
00:15:53.620And I had an opportunity to actually sit and talk to the marchers.
00:16:00.700And when I was truly listening to them, what they were what they were marching for was, please, someone listen, someone listen to us, please.
00:16:13.920And they didn't associate with the Black Lives Matter, the anti-family.
00:16:19.200In fact, they were the opposite of that.
00:16:21.580That's the scary thing that you and I both have warned for so long.
00:16:26.400Be careful who you're standing next to.
00:16:29.060They you might agree with them on this one big issue, but you have to know what else they believe, because they are going to either ruin your movement or you're joining their movement.
00:16:43.460And you don't know what you're in for.
00:16:48.940Which which, by the way, is why we need to police our own community as aggressively, as fairly, maybe more so.
00:17:00.180We need to hold people sort of let's let's accept the right left thing, right of center.
00:17:05.020Even even though I've never been part of Trump nationalism, I feel an obligation to speak up.
00:17:12.820And I have all going all the way back to 2016.
00:17:15.480You can find an article I wrote on The Blaze talking about the violence at Trump rallies.
00:17:21.700And and it was very much Trump activists sort of falling into that trap when they were goaded and and even even violently attacked by leftist protesters.
00:17:44.600And to me, that and I wrote about it grossly irresponsible on on on candidate Trump's part.
00:17:53.320You have you have to speak up and hold your folks accountable first.
00:17:57.100And I'll go back to what we did with the Tea Party.
00:17:59.040You can go back and look at the rallies part by 2010.
00:18:03.940When we knew that people from the other side were going to infiltrate and make us look bad.
00:18:09.500And a key part of my stump speech, you can watch these old speeches on C-SPAN, was telling my folks and sometimes they didn't really enjoy it that much.
00:18:19.080But I said there's zero tolerance for violence, for bad actors, even if it's a sign that that doesn't match our values.
00:18:30.220And by that, by the way, it's not going to be me.
00:18:32.180It's going to be the neighbors that are going to surround you.
00:18:35.480You have to police your own community first.
00:18:37.560And and I see this dynamic where the left absolutely turns a blind eye to Antifa violence and and the looting of of shops and stuff like that.
00:18:49.060And I don't think that anybody that calls themselves a conservative or Republican, I'm a libertarian, whatever you want to call yourself, you've got to hold everybody to the same standard.
00:19:00.560You know, I remember doing the show on Fox where I asked everybody to come together and we started the 912 project and it was based on nine principles, 12 values.
00:19:16.560And and and I did that for a reason, because it wasn't about Donald.
00:19:30.820And and I remember meeting with you the first time you remember the first time we met.
00:19:37.460I think it was well, it would have been in Dallas, right?
00:19:42.640No, it was in New York in my office in New York.
00:19:44.860And and and I was very hesitant to meet meet with you because I did not at the time you're running FreedomWorks and I did not want this to turn political.
00:20:18.960In fact, I've heard several people who were at the march yesterday said, look, I attended all the old Tea Party things and the things that, you know, the restoring honor events.
00:20:28.640And this just felt different from the beginning.
00:20:32.560There was something that was different and it wasn't necessarily the leadership.
00:20:37.840It was just a pocket of people who nobody had briefed that crowd on and said, look, remember, we're not violent.
00:21:19.220It had to be bigger than a political party.
00:21:24.120And as you know, the whole Tea Party thing and even FreedomWorks kind of fell apart after you left because it was a hostile takeover by infiltrating of the GOP.
00:21:38.840They saw it as something they could use and it turned into something ugly.
00:21:42.540Politics, politics, politics broke the Tea Party ultimately.
00:21:47.680And I think that's so that's a lesson we can apply for for how we move forward.
00:21:52.780And I'm not against being involved in political races as long as you believe that the person that you're fighting for actually shares those values.
00:22:05.980And it's a very hard thing to figure out, as we've learned the hard way.
00:22:09.200But, you know, the very first race that we got involved in in the Tea Party movement was Mike Lee.
00:22:14.920And I have to say to this day, I'm I'm still really proud that I was involved in that fight.
00:22:20.040I have to tell you, I haven't I I can't think of another politician that I haven't been pissed at.
00:22:30.860You know what I mean? I might disagree with him from time to time, but I always I'll listen to him or I'll call him and I'll say, Mike, what is.
00:22:39.100And his answer makes me feel bad because I'm like, oh, crap.
00:22:43.280He's rooted in principle and the Constitution.
00:22:48.340But we had this we had this slogan back then.
00:22:50.880We have to beat the Republicans before we can beat the Democrats.
00:22:53.920Yeah, it was an absolutely values based, nonpartisan mission where we were going to hold everybody to the same standard.
00:23:01.240And, of course, Mike Lee took out a tired old incumbent that didn't stand for anything anymore.
00:23:06.560But what happened is once once we created that that community, it was like crack for opportunistic politicians.
00:23:14.640They wanted to get on that stage and what what became a principled fight for principled fighters eventually became, oh, we have to support the Republican slate to know we have to win the presidency.
00:23:29.600And I think once that once the Tea Party lost its moorings in those values and its willingness to hold everybody to the same standard, that's when things started to so way.
00:23:40.120That is I mean, that's it was the problem with this was rally where some people were saying, yeah, but I've had enough.
00:23:51.540So violence is no, you have to have the same standard.
00:23:55.200If it's wrong for them, it's wrong for you.
00:23:58.360And and but but it doesn't seem to me, Matt, and this really why I wanted to talk to you today.
00:24:05.380It doesn't seem to me that you could put the old Tea Party back together.
00:24:08.360First of all, a lot of the people I mean, that was, what, 10 years ago, 12 years ago now.
00:25:51.300And I could very much like you just described, follow this 10 year process, starting with President Obama, his campaign and David Axelrod, his key advisor, essentially calling us domestic terrorists just for yes, for peacefully petitioning our government for a redress of grievances.
00:26:11.040So I sort of I get how some people ended up here.
00:26:14.680But I think the the mistake going back to the to the to the to the sort of death of the Tea Party and then even Trump ism that the core value of any grassroots movement can't be in a charismatic leader.
00:26:50.920If you put all of your eggs in a basket where you're going to elect someone and they're going to solve all your problems for you, you're forgetting what our core philosophy is.
00:26:59.580We want to be left free enough that we can solve our own problems.
00:27:03.500And and that to me is a fundamentally different ethos.
00:27:07.060You know, I think with your original 9-11 platform, you got at what today is still the right strategy.
00:27:15.620It took us a while to get here and that's like we got to we got to take on the culture and let me define what I mean by that.
00:27:22.920Like, I I think we've we've been trying a top down approach to fixing our culture.
00:28:55.660I think it's it's telling that story and treating people that don't agree with us with a modicum of respect.
00:29:01.700So I I've talked to several senators and congressmen recently, and I've been saying this for a long time, but I think now it's really becoming important.
00:29:11.900And, you know, I told them the birth of the of the Republican Party in the 1850s was the beatdown of a senator who was standing up saying, I don't think either side, I don't think either party actually cares about slavery.
00:31:30.280You know, how do we get back there when we when that has been so eroded even more in the last 10 years?
00:31:39.280Well, isn't that potentially the counterrevolution?
00:31:43.340And we all know that counterrevolutions are super cool and you're fighting against the man and you're fighting against the status quo.
00:31:49.860But the new man is woke authoritarianism.
00:31:53.900Yes, it's absolute intolerance for anyone that deviates from your view of what what the righteous way to behave is.
00:32:03.820And to me, that's a big barn door opening for small L libertarianism because we don't really have any designs on your life.
00:32:14.620I just want you to leave me alone so that I can raise my family so that I can go worship where I choose to worship so that I can live my life as long as I don't hurt people or take their stuff.
00:32:30.380And Senator Mike Lee, a pretty conservative guy, make different versions of that argument, Mike, in the context of federalism, of the whole the whole genius of the federalist system.
00:32:41.760Is it allowed different states and different communities to make different decisions on how they would govern themselves?
00:32:46.880And and Ben argues that the the only way out of the culture war where we every four years we're going to fight so that we control power so that we can make everybody else live like us.
00:32:58.860The only way out of that death cycle is to embrace a libertarian ethos.
00:33:04.920And we shouldn't actually be using the L word.
00:33:07.120We should figure out a way to explain this because it's basically what your mom taught you.
00:33:14.440It's a it's it's a common sense ethos.
00:33:17.600It's it it it it it it amazes me that so many people today think they just have the right to tell me or you or somebody else how to live their life.
00:33:37.320And I know this must seem ironic to a lot of the to the left, because the honest ones were like fighting for the freedom of speech, you know, against conservatives that were saying you can't put a crucifix in urine.
00:33:57.640So it must be seem ironic for the honest ones.
00:34:02.380But it's ironic for me, because those people who said they were really for freedom of speech, they really were for equal rights with, you know, gay marriage and everything else.
00:34:15.380Because I agreed with you, I agreed with you, but where are you now?
00:34:19.840Yeah, we're because now everyone is being forced because of another religious group and their, you know, their their beliefs.
00:34:30.500I mean, global warming and and this Marxist critical theory that's become a religion and it's almost a theocracy that we're living in now.
00:34:43.580You deny it no matter what your evidence is, you're out.
00:34:48.220And by the way, that says illiberal as it is anti-constitutional conservative.
00:34:55.920Yes, that that entire ethos of authority and and appealing to people in power.
00:35:02.100And I and I see it in every argument we have today from from lockdowns to global warming and everything else and honest liberals.
00:35:10.080And there are absolutely all over the place in the United States, a huge population of honest liberals that are distraught by wokeism and the cancel culture and all of this stuff.
00:35:24.920And I think that's that's one place where we can begin.
00:35:28.020And it starts with the First Amendment and it it starts with being willing to not shout down someone that disagrees with you.
00:35:37.240But because but we are that's but at least half of the country is cheering.
00:35:43.820And I think to some degree, I bet it's 70 percent of the country cheers when their side silences the other.
00:35:54.200And that I mean, it's digital book burning right now.
00:36:00.100Well, I'll I'll I'll take 30 percent to start with.
00:36:03.580That's that's that's that's a lot more than any of the heroes we've been talking about had when they started their fights.
00:36:10.200So I'm I'm I'm very much comfortable with that.
00:36:13.160But I think like the difference and tactically and I don't want to go down the rabbit hole of of big tech and how they control the conversation.
00:36:21.940But but tactically, we have an advantage because we're not making stuff up.
00:36:36.060I mean, it could be it could be the newspaper, you know, if anybody read a newspaper anymore.
00:36:41.540But I mean, it's it's shocking how relevant it is today.
00:36:46.560But that like that, the challenge on a on a strategy moving forward that looks at speaking truth to power in this way, and that means calling out the media, that means calling out big tech.
00:37:00.800It means calling out the political class.
00:37:02.740It means calling out yourself when you're wrong.
00:37:05.680It means calling out yourself when you're wrong.
00:37:07.480Well, I wish we could learn how to do that again, because it doesn't seem like anybody feels the responsibility of doing that anymore.
00:37:18.280I have to tell you, Matt, I we sat around after my broadcast last night after a full day at the blaze of everybody, you know, broadcasting and and Elijah Schaefer there in D.C.
00:37:31.220And we all looked at each other, which I don't think we would have done 20 years ago because it would have been normal.
00:37:40.280But we looked at each other and said, who else has done what we've done?
00:37:45.880We have asked the really hard questions that we didn't want to ask because it will incriminate our side.
00:39:22.680But again, going back to this theme of a counter revolution, particularly young people, you know, they left Facebook a long time ago because they didn't want to be manipulated.
00:39:32.440They didn't like the idea that this scroll would prevent them from actually pursuing ideas that were interesting to them.
00:39:38.580So they binge watch things and they listen to Joe Rogan for three hours a day, which is utterly contrary to everything we thought we knew about about how people consume content.
00:39:49.020And so I again, you're not you're not going to start with a majority and go back to John Adams if if we have 30 percent and maybe we don't have 30 percent, maybe we have less.
00:40:02.060But that doesn't mean that you can't create a better product in active entrepreneurship where people that didn't even know they needed a better thing are still searching for things.
00:40:18.180And I I think I think we have to leave.
00:40:20.120This is what I get into leadership is leaders leading by example.
00:40:23.460Even if you're the only person in the world that's willing to do it, somebody steps out first.
00:40:30.520And all of the heroes we've mentioned, they they did that.
00:40:41.100You know, revolution and civil war for the last 20 years, a lot.
00:40:47.480But I was thinking about it here in the last probably eight, nine weeks, a lot, because I think the color revolution is is what we're witnessing right now.
00:40:59.440The beginnings of a color revolution and it's being prompted and pushed, I believe, by very influential people.
00:41:11.060And somebody said to me, it's time for a civil war.
00:41:14.220And I I said, do you even know what that means?
00:43:02.580Now, I've been thinking about this in the context of not just technology, but emergent workarounds to broken government systems.
00:43:13.320And a great example of this is how parents are hacking the education system, having discovered is sort of like it's sort of like they took the red Morpheus, gave them the red pill.
00:43:24.800And they discovered that is not a public education system.
00:43:29.760It's a government run education system that cares a lot more about education bureaucrats than it ever cared about your kids.
00:43:36.580And they're they're learning the hard way and they're going through the curriculums, perhaps for the first time, discovering that this system is no damn good.
00:43:47.000And I forget what the data is, but but so many parents have left the public system and pursuing alternatives to that.
00:43:55.180But to me, the the the revolution, if you will, is that individual action.
00:44:01.040If we if we've been trying to fix the education system from the top down and it just gets stronger and stronger, why don't we do it one household at a time?
00:44:10.980And you could apply that same logic to to charity.
00:44:15.040Like if you really want to dismantle the welfare state, take care of we've done this, too.
00:45:22.140If you can't get back to the things that are in our national archives that are protected behind glass, then you're in the wrong country or something because these are our principles.
00:45:32.860And it does no good to to talk about that, even though I don't think we have much in common anymore.
00:45:43.580We have to reunite common ideas and common sense back to all of us, both sides, all sides before we can come back together.
00:45:54.740But I worry about what might be coming down the tracks with, you know, an unbridled pack of of war horses that are moving this critical theory and Marxism and everything else down the road.
00:46:10.340Is there something to be said for a movement that is in your local and state and that's it?
00:46:48.520So like the L word, localism is a word that somewhere along the way we gave up.
00:46:55.960You know, we give up words like community and justice and and localism and democracy.
00:47:01.720And from my perspective, those are our words, localism, bottom up, neighbor helping neighbor, the unimaginable power when free people come together and decide to do something for the common good.
00:47:34.160So I think absolutely it has to be you have to focus on your community and focus on your states and maybe worry a lot less about what Washington, D.C. is up to.
00:48:03.220Libertarians are moving to New Hampshire.
00:48:04.920They're actually pledging and picking up their families and moving to New Hampshire because they want to make New Hampshire that place where they can live freely.
00:48:15.660And I think their license plate even says something about it.
00:48:58.140It's just as Vermont's biggest problem was people fleeing New York and then sending Bernie Sanders over, which, from my perspective, didn't work that well out for Vermont.
00:49:07.980But, you know, the idea was it's a small state and the ethos there left or right.
00:49:14.940I don't know what you call it, but there's there's an ethos of self-reliance, which, again, is a very American value.
00:49:38.040I'm not against political experiments.
00:49:40.940I spent a good part of my life trying to make the Republican Party pro-liberty.
00:49:45.500Um, I think it was a noble experiment that that hasn't paid off for me personally, where I sit today.
00:49:54.280Um, but but but getting back to this this culture stuff, um, the storytelling and the listening and the emotional appeal.
00:50:03.520I'm an economist who came to this very painful realization late in life that very few people think about things in the context of opportunity cost the way I do.
00:50:14.560And I drive my wife crazy with the way I think about the world.
00:50:17.780Um, but most people don't think about that.
00:50:19.680They consume things through their emotions and they process the way they interpret events through their emotions.
00:50:26.400So let me present a problem that you and I have dealt with for 20 years.
00:50:30.720Um, liberals get that the left understands that inside and out.
00:50:38.220It's I, I, I like the analogy of we need each other because if, if you can relate to the theater, a bunch of conservatives on stage, that theater sucks.
00:52:33.880We've, we've established that and we've probably, you know, my investors have spent lots of money over the years investing in, in very disappointing projects.
00:52:43.260So it's kind of a chicken and an egg thing, but the thing that I find most, um, exciting when I go speak to a group of young people, Terry and I now give these, my wife, Terry and I give these joint speeches called love, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, which is a series of personal stories about our life.
00:53:00.880And, and, and you go speak at young Americans for liberty or students for liberty, you go speak across the globe.
00:53:07.820We, we, we just spoke to 1200 kids in the country of Georgia right before the lockdowns on fire and, and they are artists and videographers and storytellers and novelists and technologists.
00:53:22.380They actually have all of the skillsets we need to create a culturally vibrant movement.
00:53:27.840Whereas old guys like me, you know, I read a bunch of books and I don't necessarily have the skillset to do that stuff, but we've been able to hire a lot of young people that do.
00:53:38.380So part of it's generational, part of it is proving to investors that we don't suck.
00:53:43.600And that's going to be a, we got to dig out of that hole because there have been attempts and they haven't been that great.
00:53:49.300Part of this is, um, you know, I think a lot of behavioral scientists because they, you know, uh, Bernays, you know, the history of Bernays, that guy changed the world, um, advertising until world war II was called propaganda.
00:55:13.140Do you remember, um, we're in Las Vegas and you and Penn Jillette and I had a conversation for my show and, and we kind of asked him the same question.
00:55:24.460And I think I said something like, how do we, how do we persuade people that Liberty is better?
00:55:29.760And he sort of dressed me down and in, in, in a way that only he could, um, because he, he argued that our job is not to convince people that we're right.
00:55:39.880And they're wrong. Um, our job has to be, um, and I, I don't know how he said this, but the way I would say it is we need to build it.
00:55:50.280And they will come live those values, create art that reflects those values and don't be people over the head over it.
00:55:59.280Don't suggest that they're not smart enough to figure out how smart you are.
00:56:03.540Um, and that is a very different strategy than the, the, the one you're describing the propaganda strategy, how to, how to manipulate people's emotions.
00:56:12.300And I don't want, I'm not saying, no, wait, wait, wait, I'm not saying that we should manipulate people's emotions, but we don't have, they are armed to the teeth with this machine.
00:56:25.300And the thing I love about libertarianism and at the same time, I'm so frustrated with libertarianism is nobody wants to work together.
00:56:37.420They got their thing. You do your thing. That's great. And that's good unless you're in war and we are in war for freedom right now.
00:56:46.120Yeah. Well, it's the, so the, the libertarian movement is still a cadre movement from my perspective and it's, it's populated by people with very strong opinions and, and that sort of instinct not to work together.
00:57:00.120But getting back to that next generation of young people, they gather, they cooperate, they get the idea that, um, free individuals can come together and create something bigger than they could have done by themselves.
00:57:17.120And to me, it's a, it's a, these are growing pains. And this is why I am involved in the libertarian party right now, because I think, I think there is an opportunity to do something bigger that, that shows people like you remember those, those original marches and the, the march on 912, 2000, the first one, but, but there were several, but, um, there is nothing like the energy.
00:57:47.120Of a million people showing up with the same values.
00:57:56.560And so we, we gotta, we gotta get people to understand that working together is, is a real, um, there's more, there's more energy and more satisfaction doing that.
00:58:53.400You've been watching this nightmare circus happen for a long time, up close and personal.
00:58:59.640Um, is it as bad as I think it's going to be?
00:59:05.260Are they, they, I, I really believe that they mean what they say.
00:59:10.560Um, you know, I've been, I've been called a crazy man for some of the things that I've said were coming and they turn out to be right only because I take people at their word.
00:59:22.700When they say crazy things and they have power, I take them at their word and it ends up usually that they're telling the truth.
00:59:37.480And they, they have a weapon that they've never had before.
00:59:41.540They finally figured out how to appeal to our fear.
00:59:45.660And I'm talking to one thing I haven't talked about this entire hour is the never ending lockdowns and the stripping of our humanity and the stripping of our ability to feed our families and how that fed into everything that happened yesterday.
01:00:00.140We haven't even discussed that, but they have found a weapon.
01:00:05.660Fear is their weapon to use against us.
01:00:10.040And, uh, Joe Biden has said, it's going to get worse before it gets better.
01:00:14.740No, a winter of discontent is what I think he, he was describing a cold, bleak winter was one of his, his phrases.
01:00:24.280So, um, to me, just on a practical level, um, breaking through that narrative that somehow you have to, um, attack your neighbor.
01:00:37.460All these videos I see of, of people attacking other people because they're not behaving the way that they should, they believe they should behave.
01:01:00.660There was a, there was a bar owner in New York city.
01:01:04.880Um, and I don't, there's so many of these stories, but, but I hope I get this one right.
01:01:09.580Who, um, refused to shut down and come up, came up with clever ways to avoid the mandates of Cuomo and, and the communist mayor of New York.
01:01:19.160And they came and they arrested him and the entire neighborhood showed up and, and peacefully protested in his behalf.
01:01:27.480But as I recall, the end of that story was he hit a cop with a car.
01:01:34.460Um, as frustrated as we are, as angry as we are, the people are shutting down our businesses are taking away our livelihoods are stripping us of our liberties.
01:01:42.840Um, we're going to have to practice civil disobedience in ways that galvanizes the rest of the American public that is afraid of the virus.
01:01:53.640Um, they're afraid that they don't know what's happening, but they also know that they can't live forever with the economy locked down and controlled by the government and, and government allocating resources and deciding that this industry makes this or not makes this.
01:02:08.740Um, that to me is an opportunity, but we got to do it right.
01:02:12.840Um, so what do you suggest those people do there in California?
01:02:18.620I'm really heartened by what's happening in California because people I disagree with and who would not, you know, be welcoming to a phone call from me saying, Hey, good job.
01:02:30.980Those people who have always seemingly voted a different way are now seeing, wait a minute, this is not what I thought it was going to be.
01:02:40.420Um, and they are standing up against the machine, peaceful, uh, most of it, uh, if not in, in California, in California, I think mainly all of it.
01:02:51.120I don't think I've heard a violent story out of California from somebody who was in experiencing lockdown and you have the biggest recall movement in the history of America happening right now.
01:03:01.440Um, yeah, that's, to me, that's exactly what you do.
01:03:07.300Um, this is to, to borrow a word, this is the resistance and, um, it's, it's a chicken and an egg thing.
01:03:15.360I understand why a gym owner or a nightclub owner or a restaurant owner puts their entire lives at risk when they defy the authorities, they lose their liquor license, they get shut down, they get hauled into court.
01:03:30.960Um, the only thing that protects them is a bunch of customers peacefully showing up and supporting them.
01:03:38.240And when they lose their license, showing up in the streets and defending them, um, we could go back to the civil rights movement and, and look at some of those tactics.
01:03:49.280Um, you know, go, go to the diner, sit down, have a cup of coffee.
01:03:54.460Um, if the police pull out the fire hoses, don't resist.
01:04:06.640Um, but you, by the way, you can't do it alone.
01:04:09.360If, if they, if they divide and separate us, they'll just take us down one at a time.
01:04:13.700The strength is in numbers and this gets to the sort of strength of community and the feeling that we had on that day in 2009 when we were not alone.
01:04:25.280Um, there's, there's, there's a safety in that.
01:04:27.960There's a sense that you can make progress.
01:04:30.320Um, but, but we have to resist and, and, and I, I love what I've seen in California, but honestly, I'm seeing other countries do it better than us.
01:04:38.800And I never thought that America would be sort of reticent in defending their liberties like I've seen over the last year.
01:04:46.040Uh, Matt, I hope that we can spend more time, uh, together in the next coming years because I, uh, I think that, um, it's important to share what we have learned and speak again to a lot of the people that were with us at the first time who thought,
01:05:11.280uh, I, I mean, it makes no difference.
01:05:16.420Did you see what he said about the tea party and how, Oh, you have to read it.
01:05:21.820He, uh, in fact, it's, it's actually quoted in some of the Obama, you know, action committee or whatever he's got going on.
01:05:32.740It's quoted that, uh, what happened to him and how he was thwarted and how he couldn't get things shoved through really happened because of a very effective tea party.
01:05:48.800Now they certainly weren't telling us that then, but here he is 10 years later going, the tea party was extraordinarily effective and modeling what they're doing off of us.
01:06:26.600I mean, I mean that there, we have, I still have an audience that was there and they're tired and they, they, I think they have been convinced that they can't make a difference.
01:06:41.180And we've learned a lot, we've gone through a lot and we need to, uh, find that spirit of hope and optimism that we had at one point and not this spirit of despair.
01:06:57.620It's over and the only answer is violence.
01:07:29.520And I, I point to the, the day that I discovered that the tea party existed was the day that Americans mobilized and shut down the wall street bailout that Nancy Pelosi and John Boehner, they were, they held hands on the house floor and they say, we're going to do this.
01:07:49.360And the American people discovering this, this new tool called technology, shut it down.
01:07:56.440And that day I knew something was different.
01:07:59.260Um, today our, our ability to know and do things and to organize is a thousand times better than it was then.
01:08:14.340And, and, and part of that is, is to tell that story and work from the bottom up.
01:08:19.420Imagine if millions and millions of people worked from the bottom up to take over their communities, to take over their school systems, to take over, um, their County councils or whatever it is.
01:08:29.960I don't want it to be too political, but take, take over, just take over control of their own life.
01:08:35.280Just take control of your own life and destiny.
01:08:38.820Just that stop listening to what these people are telling.
01:08:45.240I can't, I mean, I cannot believe you could have told me a year ago that there's no way, there's no way, uh, we're going to be free, uh, with our business.
01:08:57.560And, and we're, we're, we're going to be wearing a mask for a year and they're going to talk about maybe two years.
01:09:04.540And we're going to talk about mandatory vaccinations against something that was 99.6% non-lethal.
01:09:14.820I would have said, yeah, I would have said, you're crazy.
01:09:17.280And we've just rushed to, I think at first to try to be decent people.