The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - Libertarian Nationalism ｜ Interview with Austin Padgett

00:00:00.160 Hello, everyone. Welcome to this interview of the Lotus Eaters. I'm very pleased today to be interviewing Austin Padgett. Hello, Austin. 0.85

00:00:08.980 Hello. Great to be on with you, Stelios. Big fan. I've seen you guys around the internet for a long time, so it's fun to get on the Lotus Eaters.

00:00:19.380 Great. It's a pleasure for me to be interviewing you today. And I want to say that I'm really

00:00:24.740 interested in many of the things you have to say, because it seems to me that you are a libertarian

00:00:30.040 who is a bit dissatisfied with the current state of libertarianism, especially in the US.

00:00:39.140 Can you believe that?

00:00:40.080 Yeah. And you're also trying to develop a position along with some other people that

00:00:46.940 you describe as libertarian nationalism yes that could work you could describe it that way yes and

00:00:53.800 also i have another good friend austin peterson who who is trying to work in that area i'm really

00:01:00.760 interested to find out more about what you think about it because i will say i my heart is close

00:01:08.740 libertarianism but I think that it lacks realism and I think that in some respects especially in

00:01:17.960 the US there is even more of the opportunity to have the sort of what I call libertarian illusion

00:01:27.460 of if I mind my own business the government is just going to leave me alone than there is in

00:01:33.560 Europe. But in a way, I'm really attracted to the idea. But I would consider myself a realist.

00:01:41.500 And in some respects, I want to essentially say, right, I want libertarianism, but I may not be

00:01:49.060 able to get 100%, may not be able to live in libertarian utopia. So we'll have to make some

00:01:55.200 pragmatic concessions in order to not lose everything. So if I don't get 100%, it's not

00:02:01.680 100 or 0%, I could be satisfied with a 90 or 80%. But it seems to me that there are many people who

00:02:09.940 will say, well, if it isn't 100%, it's going to be a zero. I don't think you're one of them. That's

00:02:15.000 why I'm particularly interested in talking to you today. Yeah. So that's the classic dilemma of

00:02:22.160 you're walking through a desert, you're following the North Star, you've identified it as your

00:02:28.480 ethical end goal, whether it's a maximizing dynamic where the more freedom, the more property

00:02:35.900 rights, the better, because that's all we know so far, or whether it's a totalizing dynamic in

00:02:41.560 which eventually you organize around network states and government completely changes into

00:02:47.780 private networks. That's theoretical. I don't really care too much to that question. People

00:02:55.900 kind of fight about that a lot and then you get into this situation where like you describe

00:03:01.240 yourself as a realist maybe someone else would uh describe themselves as a moralist or something 0.96

00:03:06.500 but like or or seeking the truth despite your like stupid pragmatic real concerns but the truth is 0.98

00:03:15.020 that reality exists so unless you're accounting for it then you're not accounting for the full 0.99

00:03:20.200 truth or morality because you can be stubborn and then people can die and that's not moral

00:03:25.340 and it's like if you're walking to this north star and you come across a ravine like with a wall

00:03:32.240 then people are basically insisting no we have to go like you say hey okay let's go around this

00:03:39.660 ravine get around the waterfall go up and then continue straight over there and they're like

00:03:43.920 but that's not following the north star you're supposed to go right here as they're like bumping

00:03:48.100 into a wall not getting anywhere and i guess the way the national uh part uh ties in is that

00:03:56.300 you basically can't win without a national appeal and this is kind of a reality factor too where

00:04:02.980 this is the same thing that happened in in nazi germany and the soviet union and everywhere else

00:04:11.060 where marxism kind of breaks down the shared societal landscape right and then all you have

00:04:17.840 is like outside of the broken value landscape the only uniting factor because not everybody's

00:04:24.520 a marxist the only thing that we all have in common is that we're in america and so whoever

00:04:30.480 is able to successfully capture like portray themselves as working for the nation is the one

00:04:39.880 that's going to be successful. So Vox, the socialist publication, realized this was a

00:04:45.060 problem for the left around 2018, 2019, where they were like, oh, the left shouldn't be afraid

00:04:50.820 of nationalism. There's a big, long history with nationalism and socialism, and it's for the nation,

00:04:56.940 for the people. And they tried to create a weak mythos based around FDR and Lincoln. And they're

00:05:06.640 like you know we really are america um but it was kind of too shallow and there was too much disdain

00:05:12.820 for the country and like the culture on the left for them to successfully pull it off um so if if

00:05:21.480 libertarians want to be relevant and also um truthful and realistic about what's good

00:05:28.620 then they should kind of support, you know, the nation rather than just being like reflectively

00:05:38.600 anti-empire or for tearing down the system or, you know, fracturing it and an accelerationist

00:05:48.740 plan to bring about a utopia that will open up the door for communists.

00:05:53.360 awesome so the first thing i want to ask you before we get into these uh rich subjects is

00:06:00.740 first of all where can people find you and in a way where do you come from uh how will how is the

00:06:07.160 best way to introduce you to our audience i know you from x as well as from your youtube channel

00:06:13.240 and also you have also a collaboration with uh with um yes rudyard lynch yes in history 102 so

00:06:24.560 could you tell us a bit about uh where you come from and what you're doing yeah for sure um so

00:06:31.360 history 102 is an awesome show it's a history show with rudyard um most i mean that's the one

00:06:36.700 you got your audience would maybe be familiar with already if they haven't heard of it but it

00:06:41.680 It takes a really interesting view of history where Rudyard will combine kind of like psychology, religion, values, economics, not from a totally socialist perspective like most historians, even if they get beyond the battles and the kings and like who zigged right or left and how that changed everything rather than looking at a longer kind of value landscape.

00:07:07.840 Most of them, even if they get kind of more interesting, they're socialists.

00:07:11.340 So it's good to have more free market historian, because if the free market ideas are correct,

00:07:18.580 then that is actually informative about history and important for understanding it.

00:07:22.980 Like there's a few examples of that, but that that's kind of maybe more my angle on the

00:07:29.100 show.

00:07:29.620 What I'll do is I'll take Rudyard's historical examples and try to relate them to either

00:07:34.500 another historical example we covered or something in modern politics so it's like how do you

00:07:39.140 actually learn from history like okay we're learning about all this history what's the

00:07:42.920 lesson we can pull out of it can we get anything useful out of it and then I have my own show that

00:07:48.580 I started on YouTube just called Austin Padgett the at is Ludwig never Mises so you can check

00:07:55.720 that out on YouTube I cover a few topics did the Iran war last which was a good one because it I

00:08:02.700 did it right as it started and seems to be checking out okay so um uh yeah you can check

00:08:09.260 that out and then i'm on x ludwig never mises and uh yeah i've been a libertarian pretty much

00:08:14.840 forever uh i started like you know you could say my household starting politics would have been

00:08:21.880 like milton freeman republican and then i was into the ron paul campaigns and then i got online

00:08:29.100 and I did the six-month pipeline to ANCAP

00:08:33.380 and Minarchist ANCAP pipeline they talk about.

00:08:38.560 But they failed to get me out of the reactionary pipeline.

00:08:43.400 Right, okay.

00:08:44.000 I have a question here.

00:08:45.800 Could you explain these pipelines individually?

00:08:50.640 What are they exactly?

00:08:52.240 So I suspect you like Ludwig von Mises,

00:08:55.420 judging from your handle.

00:08:59.100 so yeah it's it's confusing because i mean i've been watching it forever since it started

00:09:04.200 happening online like 2015 2016 a lot of these intellectual circles are splits and then i mean

00:09:11.800 it's kind of gone so it's split in two ways along like more libertarian um i don't know if i want

00:09:22.080 to say purist but more libertarian and then more like alt-right um power based more of a power

00:09:29.900 based analysis but then that that libertarian group split in two and the other group split in

00:09:37.220 two too and half of the bottom group joined with half of the top group and half of the top group

00:09:42.420 joined with half of the bottom group so you have like a lot of the guys that went more alt-right

00:09:48.820 rather than libertarian back then are like pro-Trump and and productive a lot of the

00:09:57.260 libertarians are are pro-Trump and then you have like libertarians that are anti-Trump teaming up

00:10:03.080 with groopers who are anti-Trump and so that's kind of like uh it's an interesting double split

00:10:11.380 dynamic uh which can make it really confusing within libertarians but before before we talk

00:10:18.860 about this split and exactly how it occurred um could you describe briefly the pipeline

00:10:25.140 um which you mentioned the the initial pipeline you mentioned you said it's oh yeah yeah yeah

00:10:35.120 you go yeah yeah what course led to let's say to ancapism the double split and the reconnection

00:10:43.440 makes it extra confusing but the basic like if you go back to the basic is a lot of people were

00:10:48.920 pushed into the alt-right pipeline partly because libertarians make it so unworkable right because

00:10:56.120 they get uh attached to kind of the absolutist moral principle and then they say well okay then

00:11:02.920 if you're not against getting rid of taxes right now immediately like push the red button then

00:11:10.740 you're a bad then you're a bad person and and so then people are forced to say well your morality

00:11:16.540 must be wrong because they have to rationalize like their own survival because if you're trying

00:11:23.620 to like press the red button and get rid of the whole system without acknowledging dependencies

00:11:27.880 or the fact that we'd end up like slaves in the desert because like we're not a free people

00:11:33.080 anymore. All these problems, right, with welfare dependency, empire dependency, security dependency.

00:11:42.120 You can't just push the red button, right? So then if you're saying if you don't push the red

00:11:46.920 button, you're immoral, then people are going to be like, well, then your morality must be wrong.

00:11:51.940 Okay. So that's the first step. We have, I want to understand the scenery. That's why I'm asking.

00:11:57.200 So there is essentially, you enter libertarianism, and there is a very strong push for purism, and for really ideological thinking that I would consider unrealistic. And because that's the case, the next step that people are taking is to go to the alt-right.

00:12:15.940 right right okay so that manifests in different ways because like half of the alt-right ended up

00:12:23.740 circling back and joining the libertarians and like accelerationism purity spiraling around

00:12:30.460 maybe israel or jews right okay let's let's talk a bit about how this happened so we have

00:12:37.200 the purest libertarians that make some people dissatisfied with them and and make them approach

00:12:45.400 the old right so how would you describe the old right and how did the wedge took place

00:12:52.600 well back in 2018 i would say like i had a negative view of it um but inside of how it

00:13:03.820 existed back in the day were those two potentials so i was worried forever about the rise of national 0.79

00:13:10.200 socialism on the new right right because the boomers are pretty socialist it's a 0.69

00:13:13.980 sclerotic system but if the new right fails to be like really free market then we're not

00:13:21.220 actually going to be able to fix these bureaucracy problems which are killing civilization and so i

00:13:28.680 was like oh no don't i don't like the people talking about this power-based framework they're

00:13:34.880 adopting like I could you know they were like leftists like I was like you're just I just had

00:13:39.740 this argument with a leftist you know so I was already identifying this in like 2016 17 18 but

00:13:47.980 the the nuance to that is dependencies so Hobbes it's like Hobbes Rousseau and Locke is what I

00:13:57.360 always say right and I was like I like Locke so I don't I don't like this Hobbesian stuff

00:14:02.240 But Hobbes' point was that basically like what you were saying about security is that like society, he's writing in the context of societal collapse and a breakdown in order.

00:14:17.680 You want to prevent society from collapsing.

00:14:20.880 Right, right. You want to prevent society from collapsing. Thank you.

00:14:23.240 Like, that is, he's correct about that.

00:14:25.720 Like, if you push the red button, it's not going to magically organize.

00:14:29.660 You need to, like, consider the context of the forced arrangement you're in.

00:14:36.520 And so that is a correct point.

00:14:38.780 And that is something, like, libertarians could have learned from the Hobbesian point.

00:14:43.520 But taking that into the Marxist analysis of, like, pursuing power and abandoning the truth, that is wrong.

00:14:50.060 So, like, that's where the split happened, I guess.

00:14:52.780 Right, okay.

00:14:53.240 so thank you and this is clarifying and i want to go a bit back to it and describe how i view it

00:15:01.420 or how i listen what you said and there's really good room for for expanding our discussions so

00:15:09.400 we have a the first stage which is libertarian purism and people live you know several people

00:15:17.080 get dissatisfied with it and exit the purest libertarian cab and go to the alt-right, which

00:15:23.520 is in a way an umbrella term. Right. So within the alt-right, I suspect you would put MAGA within

00:15:32.320 the alt-right. Yeah. Yeah. You could say, especially in the 2017 context. Okay. So let's

00:15:39.500 say that the alt-right is a bit more, let's say, happy to use state power than the purest

00:15:48.480 libertarians. But there are all sorts of ways in which this could happen. So they could

00:15:57.000 use power for leftist purposes, they could use power for conservative purposes, they

00:16:02.340 could use power for, let's say, paleoconservative purposes, but also they could use power for

00:16:07.940 the national socialist avenue that you mentioned at the beginning you were worried about.

00:16:13.700 So, question, is it fair to say that one of the questions then, or one of the worries

00:16:19.400 of people who were initially very worried with the alt-right was to say, well,

00:16:27.300 we may have stopped being libertarian purists, but we still are libertarians in saying that

00:16:36.080 using state power is statism so we see the alt-right being happy with using state force

00:16:45.420 and then it's just a matter of time it's uh you know whether you have you know the

00:16:52.260 they would say yeah it's yeah and it would be like saying well the i think the objectivists

00:16:59.300 are saying that nazism and marxism are just ominous parallels so they would say well is

00:17:05.920 it fair to say that lots of people were dissatisfied with purist libertarianism, but they kept

00:17:11.300 viewing alternatives with the purist libertarian commitment to extreme skepticism of political

00:17:25.180 power? Is that correct to say? Yeah. And ironically, that's one of the touch points.

00:17:31.580 that not all the it's clearly the case that the old right isn't isn't uh nazism let's say it's

00:17:38.460 right it's not you're either you're not either myself a nazi yeah it's not you're either a

00:17:46.000 purist libertarian or you're a nazi within the right yeah so this is part of the split where

00:17:51.720 like a lot of the purist libertarians actually don't like the constitution and you know it's

00:17:56.700 just a piece of paper uh prefer the articles confederation or like the constitution is statist

00:18:02.600 like those kind of arguments and then a lot some of the people on the all right were like well the 0.96

00:18:07.920 the constitution is stupid it's like silly we should violate it for power or whatever but and 0.95

00:18:17.360 so they ended up agreeing on the libertarians on the part that like of of tearing down the 0.99

00:18:22.640 constitution right so then they found themselves on the same team the half of this side and half

00:18:26.580 of this side and then the the other dynamic is like okay yes the constitution is just a piece

00:18:32.580 of paper um yeah it's maybe it's not perfect but it's like it's a a really strong cultural appeal

00:18:40.920 that's like to a shared value base like more people appreciate the constitution than your

00:18:46.840 like esoteric philosophy like so it's a it's a great thing to appeal to to reduce the bureaucratic

00:18:53.520 state and now a lot of this like philosophical conversation gets muddied when you take it away

00:18:58.680 from examples because it's not perfectly clean right like they're like and some people do take

00:19:04.100 this approach where they like get almost there where they're as pragmatic as me but they're like

00:19:07.980 you can only reduce bureaucracy you can never grow it they're like so you can be pragmatic but

00:19:14.940 you can only reduce it and it's like well you might need to grow it here to shrink it here and

00:19:20.260 like grow it temporarily to go down there or or you might have like a key thing that the government

00:19:25.900 needs to do well into the foreseeable future like well before your theoretical utopia like

00:19:33.120 immigration enforcement right so like funding ice isn't violating the principles and then and then 0.54

00:19:39.260 you can get also paralyzed by the constitution where you have this like um feckless catonian

00:19:45.560 politics right where you're like well the president shouldn't decide tariffs or or well um

00:19:53.060 tariffs are like a much different thing than they were in in the beginning like and the the way the

00:20:03.220 whole society works depends on certain authority so like you you can't run an empire like you could

00:20:12.380 a constitutional republic because there's different constraints of the system like it's already it's a

00:20:19.420 walking existing constitutional violation so if you just like stomp your feet and say well that's

00:20:25.840 not constitutional you're not addressing all the the real constraints of the situation right okay

00:20:32.640 so i want to ask you from the old right there how was the new split how did the new split emerge

00:20:40.380 because you mentioned that there was another split

00:20:43.420 in the old right that led many

00:20:45.560 back into libertarian purism.

00:20:48.280 Yeah, and I would say

00:20:49.200 MAGA is becoming the libertarian

00:20:51.240 nationalism.

00:20:53.520 Okay, so when did this

00:20:55.540 happen?

00:21:00.780 I'm not talking about Trump becoming

00:21:02.960 what you call

00:21:04.120 essentially libertarian here.

00:21:07.280 I'm talking about the

00:21:08.700 split in the alt-right camp oh that leads back people back into libertarian purism 0.60

00:21:15.380 um well i wouldn't say it leads them back into libertarian purism but the groipers and

00:21:23.660 libertarians are aligned on accelerationist goals right and there's still a difference between the

00:21:29.380 the half the libertarians that are pro-trump and half the alt-right that's pro-trump but they're

00:21:34.780 like pro-civilizational versus pro-accelerationist right okay and the

00:21:42.300 Groypers and Libertarians have totally different plans for the

00:21:44.620 accelerationism which is why I kind of make fun of Libertarians because 0.88

00:21:47.440 if the Groypers succeed and messing things up getting the Democrats back in 1.00

00:21:52.860 so society denigrates to the point where that people get mad enough that they 0.98

00:21:56.960 might have a chance to advance their politics which already is

00:22:00.700 kind of like a gamble like that's much more likely than the libertarians because when you're talking

00:22:07.720 about this kind of um when you're talking about populism that appeals to the current value

00:22:14.280 landscape rather than creating a new value then you're never going to end up in control of the

00:22:20.880 pile it's like hitler was an ab tester right he brought marxists in and worked with marxists and

00:22:25.960 socialists and he a b tested points and so he was like discovering uh he was like a vessel for the

00:22:34.900 crowd right so if you have a movement where like you lose control of it and you just become a

00:22:38.740 vessel for the crowd then libertarians are not going to rise to the top of that that's going to

00:22:42.880 be like something that reflects the baseline values of the population which are still broadly

00:22:49.240 marxist despite jordan peterson's best attempts to take a good chunk out of that like that's still

00:22:54.880 the underlying situation so um it's kind of like in a lot of ways libertarians have ceded the

00:23:01.280 intellectual battle to these people because they they prioritize the um issue of israel and so 0.92

00:23:09.220 we'll we like they would never end up being like the top of basically the shit pile they're trying 0.99

00:23:17.820 to create right okay so you you say that the split and the alt-right happened with the groypers 0.86

00:23:26.300 uh or before yeah yeah you could say that because like they were and their main issue was maybe

00:23:35.200 immigration but like like the people who it's the same thing with the libertarian thing like

00:23:41.920 if you see the progress trump is making and deregulation and re-industrialization and all

00:23:47.320 that then you're like wait a minute that's good i don't want like accelerationism and if if you

00:23:53.940 come from the immigration camp then you say hey wait a minute trump is reversing net migration

00:24:01.100 for the first time in 100 years he is deporting a ton of people they are actually getting the

00:24:06.080 states on board to uh deputize them towards this end they're enforcing visas like um and then so 0.93

00:24:14.280 they're like, wait a minute, I don't want to do this Kruper accelerationist thing. I actually like

00:24:18.140 this. And so that's where it comes. That's how you get into like libertarianism plus nationalism,

00:24:23.780 right? It's around like kind of like the property rights and immigration factions

00:24:27.620 that are aligned towards being productive rather than accelerationist.

00:24:33.240 Okay. So when it comes to accelerationism, I'm thinking of a part of Adla Shrugged,

00:24:41.680 And I'm sure objectivists would hate to be called as being close to libertarians, but that's not what I'm going to do. There's another bit there because it seems to me that there is a sort of assumption that if society goes gold, if they stop working in a way and they stop and they say, right, we're going to, the productive are going to start a strike.

00:25:08.800 Marjorie Taylor Greene is encouraging a tax revolt now.

00:25:11.880 It's pretty funny. 0.80

00:25:13.020 You're a Greek, so you know all about that.

00:25:15.380 Yes.

00:25:15.940 If a strike of this sort happens, the system is going to completely break down

00:25:21.500 and people will sort of understand that, hey, we need to go back to common sense.

00:25:27.240 Do you think that some people find that this sort of mentality

00:25:32.380 or this sort of optimism makes people be a bit more prone to be accelerationist

00:25:40.320 because they think that fundamentally if society collapses

00:25:43.620 or if the system collapses, the immediate effect will be

00:25:48.860 people becoming commonsensical again.

00:25:52.420 Is that what they say?

00:25:54.840 The question is, this is how it seems to me to be happening

00:25:59.580 And that's how I think it's pertinent to mention Hobbes, because you could say that, well, the outcome of a sort of societal collapse of the sort that Atlas Shrugged involves towards the end isn't going to be followed by people understanding common sense again, but it's most probably going to be followed by chaos.

00:26:25.640 in which case right you do need someone who is more like hobbes in the sense of saying well

00:26:33.020 sorry listen you may not get a hundred percent even if i don't get a hundred percent i still

00:26:39.240 have a job to do to prevent chaos and i have to put order even if that order isn't perfect

00:26:45.840 and is it and isn't just according to you know libertarian idealism idealism right and that's

00:26:53.980 the funny part about it because the libertarians and the groypers are aligned but the libertarians

00:27:00.000 are like yeah let's tear it tear it down and the groypers are like yeah let's tear it down

00:27:05.360 because they know that that like creates the conditions for a hobbesian response um to the 0.92

00:27:11.740 chaos right and so they're like the libertarians are thinking that it's going to it'll work out 0.57

00:27:16.560 fine okay the groypers are like perfect this will be my chance yes okay okay right um and but the 0.77

00:27:23.720 a better example than maybe taxes that's more relevant and like realistic is in terms of how 0.72

00:27:29.100 they're checking out. Um, cause it's hard for me to argue against, uh, a tax revolt, but like when

00:27:36.540 they're saying, uh, don't, uh, don't vote, right. Oh, you're never going to vote your way out of

00:27:41.620 this. What is it like? That doesn't just make it collapse. Like that gives it to the Dems to make

00:27:49.760 them like they actually have to do the the collapsing so that's kind of painful and also

00:27:55.020 leaves the potential for them to lock us down and a digital tyranny flood the borders and and

00:28:01.220 prevent us from actually recapturing the system at all um so there's all those kind of you know

00:28:07.980 risks which i guess they don't care about uh yeah and then it gets into like the um

00:28:15.100 do you need what are the conditions that bring about a hobbesian leader because if you the the

00:28:22.800 more like government grows and the more or maybe a napoleonic leader is a better example the more

00:28:29.640 uh the government grows and gets centralized and powerful and bureaucratic the the more there is

00:28:35.020 to fight over and then you have a fractured value landscape and so just like iraq eventually what

00:28:41.280 you have is like one side dominating the other the left or the right the shia the the sunni or

00:28:46.940 you have like a secular dictator um above that and that's that's kind of like it's true so

00:28:56.820 or on mcintyre will make this point a lot that like that creates the conditions for

00:29:02.580 a dictator and oh i don't really want that but oh oh well that's where we're going so let's

00:29:08.160 Let's do it. And I'm saying like that's terribly fatalistic because Trump is actually showing us a way that the executive can, using executive power and the Constitution, dismantle the bureaucracy and the Supreme Court, you know, depending on which issue they're aligned with you.

00:29:30.020 and the supreme court is pretty good on a lot of issues even though they're they're bad on other

00:29:35.020 ones so there's like a lot of opportunity to actually cut bureaucracy and this was the hope

00:29:40.000 in france um that napoleon would do this because he was a federalist right like corsican nationalists

00:29:48.220 um the they the federalists wanted more decentralization in france uh away from paris

00:29:55.560 after the revolution but napoleon ended up strengthening the bureaucracy because he needed

00:30:01.780 it for his conquests and so that that prevented france from having the same liberal evolution as

00:30:09.900 as the u.s and the republicans before napoleon which is kind of like where we are they failed

00:30:16.600 to do enough like the the post-revolution chaos there was eight years where like the moderate

00:30:22.780 republicans were in control and they didn't do enough to reduce the bureaucracy and so eventually

00:30:28.440 there was the demand for the napoleon trump is cutting bureaucracy he's doing much better than

00:30:34.260 the republicans post french revolution pre-napoleon and so that is kind of like the ideal path to avoid

00:30:41.560 disaster the other silly thing about being fatalistic about dictatorship is the left is

00:30:46.860 completely capable of doing a dictatorship through the bureaucracy in a way that's sold

00:30:53.880 as a democracy while in reality the right is like deconstructing this dictatorial anti-constitutional

00:31:01.340 bureaucracy and so then if we market ourselves it's like oh monarchy is cool yeah we're edgy

00:31:08.500 pro-dictator then it's easy for the left to paint us as that while they go do it and while we're

00:31:14.540 actually the opposite of that at least trump is i think right okay so there are there are many

00:31:20.360 things you're throwing into the mix and i want to discuss uh uh some of them so well i mean i'm not

00:31:27.540 so sure about the analogy you're drawing between napoleon and uh trump in some respects are you

00:31:36.560 drawing an analogy between no no i'm saying okay trump's not doing what napoleon did yes okay okay

00:31:41.500 Because Trump is is drastically shrinking the bureaucracy. So like an example of something like Chevron, right, which is based on a Supreme Court case that it basically declares like 80 percent of federal regulations unconstitutional.

00:32:01.000 and so through that framework then you can through the executive then you can start

00:32:06.460 tearing stuff down and it's not going to get challenged in the courts and the bureaucracy

00:32:13.120 is really what runs the country because it's the it's the organizing method of central planning

00:32:20.020 okay so i have a question here because i'm i'm trying to think about trump and i will i will

00:32:26.040 say this also for our audience here is that I think that there are two forms of TDS, Trump 0.94

00:32:33.000 defecation syndrome and Trump derangement syndrome. And I suffer from neither and I go on a case by 0.81

00:32:39.320 case thing. So when it comes to this, it seems to me that in some respects, Trump is definitely not

00:32:47.360 libertarian and he is definitely uh having some red flags for libertarians so for instance

00:32:56.720 the tariffs you you could say that are necessarily a libertarian policy it's a tax so yes but you can

00:33:07.940 also argue that it's different it's different if he has a major um if he he uses it as a major

00:33:16.100 policy as opposed to a to a temporary negotiation tactic which he also does it right but the point

00:33:25.820 is that frequently he is going to to do things that i can definitely see from a libertarian

00:33:33.220 perspective that a libertarian wouldn't want because for instance when he he's very volatile

00:33:39.740 and when it comes to his volatility and and the statements he make he knows how markets are going

00:33:47.500 to react that's why for instance frequently he's going to make some of those announcements

00:33:53.660 friday or saturday morning yes in order for the war is over to not react instantly but i think

00:34:01.840 that this is creating a sort of volatility in the market and in society as well but in the market

00:34:07.820 which benefits people close to him, who have access to information that the general public

00:34:16.200 doesn't. So if, for instance, they know that Trump is going to cause the market to go down

00:34:24.280 and it's time to buy, because they know, for instance, that he may not intend to destroy

00:34:31.060 completely Iran or something. Because almost everyone knew this.

00:34:35.640 I told people that publicly, so they had just as much of an opportunity to invest.

00:34:40.940 Yeah, but it seems to me that from that perspective, there is a libertarian argument to be made that, well, this is a kind of distortion of the market, which benefits people who are lobbying with the government and is a form of statism and arguably corruption.

00:34:57.780 because you could say that in a way it it it in the signal it sends is keep lobbying and being

00:35:06.720 close to trump and supporting his administration and smart money buys the dip which it doesn't

00:35:14.500 yeah but it's also kind of like it that that example is just so uh political because what

00:35:21.400 what trump is doing there is he's talking tough to iran but his plan forever was that he doesn't

00:35:28.340 want to destroy the country he doesn't want to occupy it like obviously that's going to create

00:35:32.900 a situation in which you can invest on it but what is he supposed to do different like he's still

00:35:36.920 like that if he was going to do his plan his plan is to make threats and then okay get a deal so

00:35:42.620 like yeah i understand he may obviously when you say you said from the beginning that it's not a

00:35:48.060 hundred percent or a zero percent so when you say that he he's uh he is in a way libertarian

00:35:54.820 you don't mean in a hundred percent so that's it's kind of a it's there's a bunch of layers

00:36:00.080 to that because it's like a kind of a joke but also because the system is so socialist like

00:36:04.180 he's gotten more libertarian wins than anybody in history like depending on how you want to like

00:36:10.380 classify the founders as libertarians in the different context of the time they're in because

00:36:15.180 um it's a totally different question of creating an empire before you have an empire than after

00:36:21.460 you have an empire um so but in what in what that's kind of funny but with with tariffs it's

00:36:28.540 like a lot of libertarians got really mad about tariffs but um i had a panel with bob murphy at

00:36:37.620 pork fest where i talked about this unfortunately it wasn't recorded but he basically agreed with

00:36:42.980 every single thing i said in my perspective because i just highlighted the context of like

00:36:47.160 you're freaking out about tariffs as an anti-libertarian policy um but tariffs are a tax

00:36:54.380 and tax taxation levels are are determined by spending so like when you're uh increasing

00:37:02.900 tariffs all you're doing then is cutting into money printing or maybe you know taxes on tips

00:37:08.480 or a little income tax or whatever you want to substitute it out with.

00:37:11.340 Like the core issue is the spending problem.

00:37:14.100 And when they compared it to the tariffs in the depression,

00:37:18.020 the tariffs in the depression were used to raise money

00:37:22.420 for a three times increase in federal spending

00:37:25.360 from 3% to 9% of the budget.

00:37:28.480 Federal spending now as a percent of GDP is remaining consistent.

00:37:31.760 So the tariffs aren't being used to like rally extra taxes.

00:37:36.900 That's determined on spending.

00:37:38.480 So it's like there's a lot of hubbubaloo about things that are, you know, not really being spoken about in their proper context.

00:37:47.920 But like you mentioned, in the context of international markets and the changing conditions, like that might be a more fair point about destabilization or especially from like a European perspective.

00:37:58.460 I can understand why people wouldn't be as happy about it.

00:38:01.640 But I think the overall end result of the negotiations is tariffs globally have gone down.

00:38:07.380 like um especially against the u.s right okay so the the other bit i want to ask you about

00:38:17.320 has to do with the with the libertarian party do you think right now they sort of lost their

00:38:27.160 way politically or or not because yeah i think the yeah the libertarian party is kind of just in a

00:38:35.140 uh stand still in between phase like you know the lights are being kept on kind of thing for a while

00:38:43.320 all the libertarians at least were pretending to play for the right right there was like this

00:38:49.780 like say like the oran mcintyre side of the alt-right which ended up teaming up with the

00:38:54.220 libertarian side and oran is kind of split in between two of the splits like his soul is being

00:38:59.260 torn apart so it's more even more complicated um but uh they were explicit about how we need to

00:39:07.700 play for the right like the right is the game in town like it's the only way to go like give up on

00:39:13.500 this idea of middle ground like we have to win this civilizational struggle and they've kind of

00:39:19.520 totally abandoned that pretense at this point which is destroying their popularity with the actual

00:39:28.480 right um as they make this kind of like you know nick fuentes appeal to the democrats and

00:39:34.980 the libertarians hang out with st cougar and like all that kind of stuff that's not

00:39:40.060 and they pretend it kind of represents the middle but the middle is grilling the middle

00:39:45.160 isn't st cougar that's like you took and taking the margins from uh both sides which

00:39:50.900 isn't what um the grillers or the normies are are interested in so is there a sort of infight

00:40:00.120 politically speaking between the those who are purists who are teaming right now with

00:40:07.220 and accelerationists against those who are a bit more friendly to the MAGA side it's complicated

00:40:14.940 because they're not actually purists um so because except for on foreign policy so there's a big

00:40:22.520 faction of the libertarians like that got on board they got on board with trump even which like the

00:40:31.060 purist libertarians freaked out about for their purist reasons the leftist libertarians freaked

00:40:36.700 out about it for their leftist reasons and then um uh and they and they acknowledged things like

00:40:44.560 oh you know what that's right like like dave smith's debate with sam cedar right where sam

00:40:49.960 cedar's like okay what are you going to do when you get rid of social security all at once and

00:40:54.540 then seniors start showing up on the street and they're hungry and then this happens and that and

00:40:59.760 it's like oh crap like we have these dependencies we have to unwind and so we figured that out

00:41:04.700 we figured that out like on immigration um but we didn't figure that out on foreign policy 0.94

00:41:11.260 and there was a couple like thought terminating cliches to get people to go along with that which

00:41:18.600 is like war is the health of the state so unless you get rid of the military because the military

00:41:24.380 ends up reducing domestic freedom so unless you get rid of that and the empire then you're never

00:41:30.560 going to um fix it and then the other part is just like killing people is the worst thing you can do

00:41:38.080 so blah blah but like in my opinion the worst thing you can do is for civilization to collapse

00:41:44.240 and they end up helping the enemies of civilization uh justified on the moral principle of war and

00:41:53.120 they're not acknowledging that just like welfare there's dependencies uh associated with empire

00:41:58.720 because the U.S. has taken over the security services of a lot of areas.

00:42:03.040 So if you take out that service, that's going to change demand.

00:42:07.360 It's going to change how people act.

00:42:08.880 Right. Question.

00:42:09.960 Are there people who are seriously saying that the army should be dismantled?

00:42:20.080 Well, that every troop should come home.

00:42:25.840 Okay. So that's not dismantled the army.

00:42:28.280 that's uh and complete foreign presence yeah and there are people saying dismantle the army or

00:42:35.960 dismantle the military but this is where it gets into like the you know hypothetical utopian land

00:42:44.680 and kind of you have a hand wave in between those stages but um even just bringing all the troops

00:42:51.860 home is ignoring a dependency in and of itself right because then you obviously have a vacuum

00:42:57.980 in europe and you have a vacuum in asia and you have a vacuum in the middle east and the whole

00:43:02.780 point of trump's policy and this is why i call trump like the most libertarian president ever

00:43:07.460 because there's a lot of things trump's doing where he's more effective in advancing libertarianism

00:43:13.200 than uh libertarians could even strategically figure out how to do in office because their

00:43:19.480 anti-realism would put them against roadblocks right so give me some examples because i'm really

00:43:24.860 best in their military yeah go ahead give me some examples because i really want to i'm really

00:43:28.860 interested in hearing out about this what what are the in what respects is he promoting libertarian

00:43:34.440 it's not a trick question not a trap question yeah yeah genuinely it's just the baseline reality is

00:43:40.580 kind of crazy right because what trump is doing is he's he's re-industrializing he's killing he's

00:43:46.160 pulling the plug on the wf globalist cartel which is like global the threat of global communism

00:43:52.660 comes from that, which is the attempts of all these countries' oligarchies to insulate themselves

00:43:58.200 by standardizing tax and regulatory systems across nations so that you can't have one country

00:44:09.440 like going more free and then undermining the market share of this country, right? And they

00:44:15.160 let the developing nations catch up. And then when they catch up, they have to have the shared

00:44:19.200 regulatory framework and similar levels of tax. And this is the socialist philosophy of a race

00:44:25.440 to the bottom, right? Which is the reason they think you need the UN and international government

00:44:29.680 is otherwise that one country will get rid of their regulations and degrade their environment.

00:44:35.560 And then you'll have to get rid of your regulations. They'll lower their corporate

00:44:40.180 taxes and then you'll have to lower your corporate taxes or there will be corporate flight. We need

00:44:44.600 the same corporate tax rate across the whole world so that people can't leave if it's raised um and

00:44:50.280 in reality what we know is that is a race to the bottom that um and that enforces like so he's a

00:44:57.800 bulwark against so he's killing he's he's killing that just by deregulating right because if you

00:45:04.280 leave a cartel we know how cartels work then then it uh undermines the system and everybody else

00:45:11.480 has to leave and the us is like such a big economic block that if we pull the plug on that

00:45:16.600 it's toast and i worked in site selection in asia and we maybe we can get into that later like the

00:45:22.040 trends and like where manufacturing is going but so trump's doing that on that on that end and he's

00:45:28.680 also um uh disrupting the rest of the empire where he's he's getting europe to pay for their

00:45:36.200 own defense europe is paying for the ukraine war they're buying the weapons uh they are investing

00:45:42.280 in their own militaries japan he's getting japan to develop their military for the first time since

00:45:47.800 world war ii he's uh denigrating iran's capabilities and and all what all these things are aimed at

00:45:56.280 doing is reducing our regional allies dependence on the us and that's how you actually get rid of

00:46:03.960 nato and uh he also directly questions nato right which is and you may say oh is trump going to get

00:46:12.600 out of nato or not and maybe some of the uh european audience might have different feelings

00:46:17.240 about this um but what libertarians always say is because they're out of power anyways they say

00:46:23.800 the most important thing is the overton window it's like okay like even if trump doesn't complete

00:46:29.480 the exit of nato he's setting the conditions for it to be possible and he's expanding the

00:46:35.400 overton window on it more than anybody else because like the half the country that loves

00:46:40.500 trump cares more about what he says about nato than what you say about nato so you should say

00:46:44.700 thank you it's fair to say that there is a strong sentiment of isolationism in libertarians is that

00:46:53.140 mm-hmm uh yeah well i would i call it uh non-interventionism right which is like

00:47:01.820 smart foreign policy like um not bad anthropological assumptions of democracy building and um nation

00:47:10.240 uh wariness of the of the difficulties of empire right but we are an empire so it's about like

00:47:15.880 managing dependencies rather than just stomping your feet and repeating um what the founders said

00:47:22.060 in a different context yeah so then so then isolationist was kind of like the smear term

00:47:26.860 and interventionist was the term that we would use and i would say like if you want to if you

00:47:31.820 want to take a negative i don't care what you call it isolationism non-intervention but the

00:47:35.980 negative side of that is when you become so anti-empire that you start reflexing reflexively

00:47:45.000 siding with everybody in opposition to the empire yeah which is basically the opposite of what the

00:47:51.480 cia did where the cia doesn't care if you're a communist a theocracy a monarch an anarcho-capitalist

00:47:59.780 as long as you're aligned with them strategically and the empire then you're good and so then

00:48:07.820 libertarians took like the flip approach to that and were like well as long as you're aligned

00:48:12.620 against the empire you're good because i want to see this empire collapse so i'm rooting for

00:48:18.800 iran now i'm rooting for russia and that may seem crazy but like that's daniel mcadams position

00:48:24.320 uh which is ron paul's co-host and he's kind of like been a lot of a big vector for a lot of this

00:48:29.480 negativity right okay so here's a question because to my mind i i've said this before

00:48:36.800 and some people think this is a bit uh far-fetched or something but when it comes to the

00:48:42.720 anti-Western rhetoric that we see on X and on some other platforms. And the trend,

00:48:52.560 which I think to some extent, it's an interesting question to decipher what exactly it is. But

00:48:58.240 the main question I ask is who benefits? And it seems to me that when we're talking about

00:49:04.420 anti-Western propaganda, the main sides that benefit are essentially the West's major

00:49:13.220 geopolitic rivals.

00:49:16.420 And I think that to some extent, they are taking advantage of this sentiment to drive

00:49:23.340 a wedge and split the US from Europe.

00:49:28.040 Now, let me be very clear. I think that in some respects, both sides of the Atlantic and Europe and the U.S. have grievances with each other. And there is a case-by-case discussion to be made about whether these grievances are justified or not.

00:49:50.060 um yeah that well let's put that aside but it seems to me that when we are talking about this

00:49:56.920 massive intervention no um these massive anti-western trends especially online i think

00:50:04.660 that they're very much funded by the major geopolitical rivals of the u.s yeah and not only

00:50:11.900 that but the globalists right which is connected to a lot of those international rivals who are

00:50:16.780 working with the Democrats against the U.S. for a shared technocratic international vision.

00:50:23.800 Right. Okay. So we'll get there, but let's take one step at a time. From a libertarian standpoint,

00:50:31.400 isn't there such a danger as their tendencies being taken advantage of by

00:50:39.740 sides that want to increase their power on the world stage and have absolutely zero libertarian

00:50:49.820 sentiments and zero respect for libertarian principles. So, for instance, let me just say,

00:50:58.480 If there is a complete focus of the U.S. on the U.S. alone and there is no such thing as an ally anymore in the Western camp, which I think is what Tucker Carlson is promoting.

00:51:19.240 Tucker will oscillate between saying Qatar and Russia are friends.

00:51:23.820 Let's have bases there. 0.76

00:51:24.280 Is the best allies ever and no allies.

00:51:26.500 But also, on the other hand, his message is consistently bad things happen to you when you care about your allies.

00:51:35.640 Yes, and this is where there's the nuance between, this is why it's bad to take the opposite of the CIA approach, right?

00:51:43.380 Because when I mentioned the CIA would work with anybody as long as they get inside the globalist infrastructure, that wasn't a compliment.

00:51:49.900 like it still matters if somebody's a communist or somebody's if uh there's a dictatorship or

00:51:57.460 alliances yeah like like the international value landscape still matters like if like

00:52:04.840 and there a bit of this comes from this like over reactive correction against any type of

00:52:11.860 universalism but just because like not everything is universal doesn't mean there aren't universal

00:52:17.920 trend lines like property rights work for everybody like it's better for people in 0.69

00:52:22.660 Argentina if Malay you know libertarian makes all this ground and pulls millions of people 0.61

00:52:29.860 out of poverty like it's okay to be happy about that it's okay to be more happy about 0.66

00:52:34.640 that than you are mad because of uh they're aligned with Israel or whatever like which

00:52:40.780 is aligned with the U.S. empire which is against your alliance like start focusing on the good

00:52:44.880 and the bad more than your reactive game to the CIA, especially since the CIA or the globalists,

00:52:53.220 the old ones, are losing. So the question is, from a libertarian standpoint, is there no concern

00:52:59.240 of the Western camp splitting, the U.S. becoming entirely inward looking and the rest of the world

00:53:08.000 becoming way more attached to to putin's russia china right so is there no problem i'm not worried

00:53:22.020 about that at all in their mind because of in their minds wait wait so first of all i don't

00:53:28.040 think it will happen i don't think it will happen yeah second if it did we are talking about a

00:53:33.140 hypothetical question if it did happen would it affect people in the u.s would it affect

00:53:38.760 in the u.s i think the answer is a crystal it's crystal clear it would affect them but

00:53:44.520 do they act and speak as if they think it wouldn't affect them

00:53:47.860 um because let's say let's yeah i mean yeah if they are against if they are against tariffs

00:53:56.200 and tariffs against foreign governments,

00:54:01.580 then they presumably want free trade.

00:54:04.280 But the sides that would cover this gap

00:54:09.660 aren't interested in free trade.

00:54:13.640 Right.

00:54:14.540 We want tariffs lower.

00:54:17.340 Well, so they would kind of blithely...

00:54:19.580 They would disrupt...

00:54:20.540 That's not the word.

00:54:21.200 They would definitely disrupt the conditions

00:54:24.500 of free trade of trade of global trade and they would definitely not make them pro the average

00:54:32.520 u.s libertarian right i think they would probably just dismiss that and they would do it by saying

00:54:39.160 like well they're just paying they're just giving us free stuff by subsidizing their industry and

00:54:47.120 lowering the prices on that and they're paying for it so you know go ahead hurt yourself whatever

00:54:52.520 what do i care um but yeah there is a real clear worry to that to like which way the world goes

00:55:00.440 obviously that makes a huge impact on no not only america but the world and in general but the reason

00:55:07.120 why i'm and we can get into why we don't think that will happen or the reason why i'm not worried

00:55:12.020 about that is because if the u.s continues to go in a more free direction then europe is also going

00:55:20.640 to have to go in a more free direction or fall further behind right this is why the globalists

00:55:26.920 are afraid of trump because that competitive pressure will kill them as they know because

00:55:32.040 it creates a race to the bottom or as we call the top yeah okay yeah so if if it's essentially they

00:55:39.780 would feel that they would have to compete with the u.s you mean and they would have to

00:55:44.320 slash down their red tape and bureaucracy yeah which is what would save europe like no amount

00:55:50.900 of political talking or whatever like if the u.s doesn't put any pressure on the european market

00:55:56.620 then europe's not yeah gonna change no no i understand okay thanks so the next question i

00:56:02.900 want to ask is a bit philosophical and it has to do with libertarian nationalism as

00:56:08.020 you and others describe it. I'm not saying it can't work. Question. Isn't it not a paradox

00:56:16.820 or inconsistent in what respect? In the respect that libertarianism is supposed to be

00:56:22.640 ultra-individualistic, whereas nationalism is supposed to be, in the libertarian mind,

00:56:30.220 collectivist so sure how is this relationship between individualism and collectivism going

00:56:38.860 to be mitigated within this new movement right i guess on a base like libertarian view then i

00:56:48.300 don't think there is actually a contradiction between pragmatism and idealism because the

00:56:55.840 nation is just part of the that collection of dependencies that we talked about even to the

00:57:02.480 point where like like you know getting rid of the military and then border enforcement are like

00:57:09.220 the last possible things you could ever do which would only be like in this totally different

00:57:15.540 context of a private property society in which you can enforce population flows which is like

00:57:20.660 a situation that doesn't exist and the the end point that we're talking about is is theoretical

00:57:25.820 like whether whether whether whether that's a contradiction of principles or not is ultimately

00:57:32.340 a theoretical question based on like how far private property society can go and like i don't

00:57:42.600 think that that question even needs to be answered i don't think it's relevant like you could be

00:57:47.940 totally pro-nationalist and still have that exist as a possibility in your mind like a thousand

00:57:56.380 years in the future if let's say you were elected and you had the libertarian nationalist campaign

00:58:02.420 and government right there you would have to in a way break lots of eggs and from people from both

00:58:13.400 sides because libertarians would say, well, you're watering down your individualist sentiments

00:58:21.220 and nationalists would say, well, you are watering down your nationalist sentiments

00:58:26.200 because you're also individualist. So question is, in what way would this be convincing to

00:58:34.900 people who'd say, well, no, you have to give an answer because you have to have a border policy.

00:58:40.900 Mass migration is arguably the hot topic of the last years,

00:58:47.080 and you do have to have some stance on this

00:58:50.620 because if you look at the world and history,

00:58:54.440 you would say that right now Europe, for instance,

00:58:58.240 doesn't exactly have a good experience with multiculturalism.

00:59:03.700 Oh, yeah.

00:59:05.140 And I am also certain that many people in the U.S.

00:59:09.780 are complaining about illegal migration but also mass migration and they're complaining about

00:59:16.000 policies border policies that aren't necessarily tuned to promote the nation's interest

00:59:24.680 so right or property rights yeah so again i think i think it is important to focus on it and mitigate

00:59:31.480 and how to mitigate this distinction between individualism and collectivism yeah well i guess

00:59:37.520 i would say i would leave room for like theoretical possibilities and not and i'm not

00:59:44.880 implying that that theoretical network state would imply that now uh you have free population flow

00:59:51.300 um part of the condition for that even being possible would be whether it could control

00:59:56.420 for that or not and then i would say like so in the in the current context yes you can absolutely

01:00:03.680 justify the nation, just like I justified not deconstructing the empire. And then I would say

01:00:10.100 to those people who are concerned, I would be like, okay, well, with my policies, I increased

01:00:17.060 U.S. security by making us productive and reducing dependencies on the empire. We've stopped

01:00:23.640 immigration and we've deported people and we've increased property rights and prevented people

01:00:30.900 from voting against property rights in the future, which is libertarian. So like, what does either

01:00:35.560 side have to be upset about? Like, this is how you advance the goals of nationalism and

01:00:40.940 libertarianism. Like one doesn't work without the other. If you want to promote the national

01:00:46.100 nationalism and national interest, and you want to take a socialist policy, then your system's

01:00:50.760 going to fail, you're going to get voted out, you're going to fail to meaningfully change things

01:00:55.160 like with the trump admin doesn't reduce enough socialism right then they will they will fail on

01:01:01.060 their long-term immigration goal and um that's just the baseline reality right that's why victor

01:01:09.460 orban kind of lost yeah and what is a bit funny about the reaction to it is that many people

01:01:17.740 rushed to present the new guy as the sort of democrat or top leftist answer to orban and he

01:01:25.820 isn't but we will have to see how he how he is going to act more but yeah or how the eu being

01:01:34.600 intertwined with the eu could eventually take those decisions out of your hands because suddenly

01:01:40.360 it's like a school in arkansas right which is like oh no i have to make this woke policy otherwise

01:01:45.340 i'll lose federal benefits which i've now become dependent on crap so like that's the worry but

01:01:50.320 you're right yeah yeah one thing to mention before on the libertarian nationalism divide there and

01:01:56.360 individual and collectivism i think i think there is a way to sort of combine them especially in

01:02:03.500 action and in practice because you're always going to have the ideological purist who says

01:02:08.440 well no i am gonna i'm not gonna make any concession either way you're gonna have them

01:02:14.560 on both sides. But in practice, I think there is an argument to be made. And it has to do with

01:02:22.560 focusing on history, but also on the importance of culture. Because it seems to me that

01:02:28.820 a good way of talking to libertarians about this is to say that the freedoms you enjoy

01:02:38.480 are just like the wealth and luxury that leftists enjoy.

01:02:43.460 So don't think about the freedoms you enjoy

01:02:45.800 and the way leftists are thinking about the luxuries they enjoy.

01:02:51.860 Interesting.

01:02:53.280 And why is this?

01:02:54.700 Because if you look at classical liberal and libertarian thought,

01:03:00.700 there is a tremendous focus on institutions.

01:03:04.620 and institutions as well are must be in place they don't work automatically

01:03:12.940 institutions require people who value them and consider them important to honor and also defend

01:03:21.840 when they are going to be subverted or against dangers of subversion so historically

01:03:28.200 ideologically speaking we can talk about rights and rights and privileges and liberties and

01:03:36.300 whatever but historically speaking and we can always we must always think of what we're enjoying

01:03:44.060 and liberties we're enjoying as liberties we're enjoying at a time in a place

01:03:50.820 and culture plays

01:03:53.580 a tremendous role there

01:03:55.440 because you can't

01:03:57.060 simultaneously

01:03:57.640 if libertarians are saying

01:04:00.940 well nation building doesn't work

01:04:02.900 didn't work in Iraq so don't try it 0.81

01:04:05.240 the question is

01:04:07.220 right why does it not work

01:04:08.780 does it not work

01:04:11.060 because for instance

01:04:12.220 I think one of the major

01:04:14.160 one of the most important factors

01:04:17.100 is that the Iraqi culture 1.00

01:04:19.420 isn't so compatible

01:04:22.020 or so continuous with Western culture. 0.78

01:04:25.700 So the people of Iraq

01:04:28.500 weren't as, let's say,

01:04:31.260 interested in or able to

01:04:33.580 sustain and defend

01:04:35.280 their institutions

01:04:37.640 that frequently libertarians love.

01:04:40.380 So, I mean, the way I see it,

01:04:42.540 there's no way.

01:04:43.700 There have to be concessions.

01:04:46.120 But concessions don't imply

01:04:48.020 that you have to become a Marxist or a Hitler,

01:04:52.860 which libertarians feel.

01:04:55.240 So it's all a question of degrees.

01:04:58.140 And that's an issue.

01:04:59.120 It seems to me that lots of ideologues

01:05:01.120 think in terms of either or.

01:05:03.240 You either get 100% or 0%.

01:05:05.820 And they think this way.

01:05:08.360 But if we start thinking in terms of degrees,

01:05:12.100 I think things like culture

01:05:13.640 are going to become a bit more evident.

01:05:16.920 And, you know, if nation building doesn't work there because of culture, why do you not want to, why do you think that culture isn't important in sustaining your institutions?

01:05:31.480 If this culture gets eroded, if the psyops get away, if this culture get eroded, then you are not going to have your rights.

01:05:42.640 so in a way it seems to me that every right we have and every liberty we have we have it

01:05:48.760 in a society at a time and at a place that doesn't make you a collectivist

01:05:54.320 right totally i don't think it does yeah in the same way that you say well i do want people to

01:06:01.560 have liberties and and rights doesn't make you a max sterner type of ultra individualist yeah i

01:06:08.320 mean who was it that said that like the best way to define a nation is by like people and language

01:06:14.860 groups rather than borders and that nations with borders are an important um like bulwark against

01:06:23.540 communism and like an important foundation uh ludwig von mises said that like the most libertarian

01:06:31.560 guy ever who called hayek a socialist so i totally agree that like it's silly to not be aware of this

01:06:37.580 And like Rudyard and I go into an even deeper level of this analysis where like we're looking at people groups within the British diaspora of America and finding like the stark differences between even them and the long running implications in politics.

01:06:55.080 Because if, like, the Celts and the Saxons have been fighting for literally thousands of years, and there's consistent voting differences between the areas of England that are more Saxon versus Celts, and then those voting differences are carried over exactly into the U.S.,

01:07:15.080 then like maybe also like india would have some um different political cultural like trends and

01:07:27.220 trajectory and some people take this too far where they try and eliminate the idea of universals

01:07:34.020 um totally which uh i think is also wrong because property rights do work for for india they work

01:07:42.140 for china um uh it's just that you have to like build build it from the bottom up just like in

01:07:51.740 the same way the u.s is no longer untouchable where marxism has eroded so many of our values 0.93

01:07:56.580 we're in the same situation if you take a certain subset of our population

01:08:00.800 where it's like you don't have a a nation capable of managing these institutions i agree but

01:08:07.400 There is also an extra argument to be made that even if you do respect some property rights, there are also other institutions that you require.

01:08:18.160 So, for instance, you need a functioning legal system to enforce contracts when individuals don't want to honor their word.

01:08:25.760 You can't have a functioning liberal or libertarian society without this.

01:08:31.100 there are all sorts of all sorts of institutions that are required in order to to make property

01:08:38.920 rights strong and sensible and and and enjoyable in a way and there's a lot of ways that like more

01:08:47.440 collectivist impulses will will make that difficult even like people will revert to a lot

01:08:54.920 of those positions. Even if you get them to improve philosophically, it's just like the

01:09:05.080 Saxons and the Celts, right? There's been a bunch of Saxons and Celts on both sides of the 0.98

01:09:09.520 socialist property right agreement. So it's not clean, but there are still differences in how 0.90

01:09:16.940 it's expressed. Right. Thanks. And for the last question and topic for discussion, I want us to

01:09:22.640 touch a bit about the upcoming midterms, the midterm elections in November, unless I'm

01:09:28.920 mistaken. How do you see discourse evolving surrounding the midterms? Because there are

01:09:37.760 people who are saying, for instance, vote Democrat within the so-called right, which

01:09:46.860 is loosely defined admittedly but i would like to see what you you think about this well i i bet

01:09:55.020 150 bucks that the republicans would win the midterms a few months ago so uh when it was like

01:10:01.560 at its lowest odds so i have a personal invest stake in it okay thanks for saying

01:10:06.760 poly uh poly market or whatever um but yeah i mean it it's interesting because well the one

01:10:15.900 side is that usually you do lose the house uh on the two-year election if like your republican

01:10:24.140 president usually people vote in a democratic house after two years it's it's normally how it

01:10:29.880 happens except for um uh like i think apparently bush and obama where that that didn't actually

01:10:39.180 happen uh and then and then there's kind of this narrative that so and those were more recent

01:10:45.580 election so maybe that will be relevant for this but then there's this sort of narrative that it

01:10:50.560 doesn't matter because it's just like two wings of the same bird uni party stuff punish them you

01:10:57.840 know don't let them get away with it and i think this misses the context of the large of the

01:11:03.760 difference between trump and past republican presidents and that it's not just like a

01:11:10.980 meaningless opposition the left is actually threatened by them which is why like the southern

01:11:15.740 poverty law center is fueling a lot of you know groups like that are fueling these um sentiments

01:11:21.540 and more importantly like the past context is the democrats had the control of the house from like

01:11:28.540 1950 to like 1994 so it's not like it's not like um it's just going back and forth in this two

01:11:37.500 bird wings forever it's like we're we're dismantling like the progressive era which is

01:11:45.860 running to like a tipping point where it's like running out of juice where it has to reveal its

01:11:50.480 hand and either have a successful dictatorship or just fail politically great okay so um thank

01:11:58.060 you very much for this interview and i'm really interested in seeing how this concept of libertarian

01:12:05.180 nationalism is going to be is going to evolve and also apart from the concept the movement itself

01:12:11.260 and thank you very much for this interview and it was really a nice opportunity that

01:12:17.940 we took in order to to chat so i hope you enjoyed it let us know in the comments if you did and i

01:12:25.400 would like us to end this interview with you austin again telling our audience where they

01:12:30.000 can find uh more work from you absolutely uh so history 102 again is the show with rudyard

01:12:37.400 really awesome history show trying to pull out explicitly like okay so what did we actually

01:12:43.320 learn from this how can we apply it and also taking a deeper historical lens so that you have

01:12:48.280 more material to mine in that regard and then my personal show is on youtube austin paget at

01:12:56.140 ludwig never mises where i i kind of give uh more of my expanded political takes than i do

01:13:04.300 in history 102 which we also try and design to be to be watchable in a hundred years um so

01:13:11.600 sometimes you can't get totally contemporary and then the uh yeah you can find me also on my

01:13:19.220 x account ludwig never mises austin paget uh the at is missing an e there because of the

01:13:26.800 character limit but you know you'll figure it out thank you very much

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - April 30, 2026

Libertarian Nationalism ｜ Interview with Austin Padgett

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