00:00:00.160Hello, everyone. Welcome to this interview of the Lotus Eaters. I'm very pleased today to be interviewing Austin Padgett. Hello, Austin.0.85
00:00:08.980Hello. 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.
00:00:19.380Great. It's a pleasure for me to be interviewing you today. And I want to say that I'm really
00:00:24.740interested in many of the things you have to say, because it seems to me that you are a libertarian
00:00:30.040who is a bit dissatisfied with the current state of libertarianism, especially in the US.
00:00:40.080Yeah. And you're also trying to develop a position along with some other people that
00:00:46.940you describe as libertarian nationalism yes that could work you could describe it that way yes and
00:00:53.800also i have another good friend austin peterson who who is trying to work in that area i'm really
00:01:00.760interested to find out more about what you think about it because i will say i my heart is close
00:01:08.740libertarianism but I think that it lacks realism and I think that in some respects especially in
00:01:17.960the US there is even more of the opportunity to have the sort of what I call libertarian illusion
00:01:27.460of if I mind my own business the government is just going to leave me alone than there is in
00:01:33.560Europe. But in a way, I'm really attracted to the idea. But I would consider myself a realist.
00:01:41.500And in some respects, I want to essentially say, right, I want libertarianism, but I may not be
00:01:49.060able to get 100%, may not be able to live in libertarian utopia. So we'll have to make some
00:01:55.200pragmatic concessions in order to not lose everything. So if I don't get 100%, it's not
00:02:01.680100 or 0%, I could be satisfied with a 90 or 80%. But it seems to me that there are many people who
00:02:09.940will 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
00:02:15.000why I'm particularly interested in talking to you today. Yeah. So that's the classic dilemma of
00:02:22.160you're walking through a desert, you're following the North Star, you've identified it as your
00:02:28.480ethical end goal, whether it's a maximizing dynamic where the more freedom, the more property
00:02:35.900rights, the better, because that's all we know so far, or whether it's a totalizing dynamic in
00:02:41.560which eventually you organize around network states and government completely changes into
00:02:47.780private networks. That's theoretical. I don't really care too much to that question. People
00:02:55.900kind of fight about that a lot and then you get into this situation where like you describe
00:03:01.240yourself as a realist maybe someone else would uh describe themselves as a moralist or something0.96
00:03:06.500but like or or seeking the truth despite your like stupid pragmatic real concerns but the truth is0.98
00:03:15.020that reality exists so unless you're accounting for it then you're not accounting for the full0.99
00:03:20.200truth or morality because you can be stubborn and then people can die and that's not moral
00:03:25.340and it's like if you're walking to this north star and you come across a ravine like with a wall
00:03:32.240then people are basically insisting no we have to go like you say hey okay let's go around this
00:03:39.660ravine get around the waterfall go up and then continue straight over there and they're like
00:03:43.920but that's not following the north star you're supposed to go right here as they're like bumping
00:03:48.100into a wall not getting anywhere and i guess the way the national uh part uh ties in is that
00:03:56.300you basically can't win without a national appeal and this is kind of a reality factor too where
00:04:02.980this is the same thing that happened in in nazi germany and the soviet union and everywhere else
00:04:11.060where marxism kind of breaks down the shared societal landscape right and then all you have
00:04:17.840is like outside of the broken value landscape the only uniting factor because not everybody's
00:04:24.520a marxist the only thing that we all have in common is that we're in america and so whoever
00:04:30.480is able to successfully capture like portray themselves as working for the nation is the one
00:04:39.880that's going to be successful. So Vox, the socialist publication, realized this was a
00:04:45.060problem for the left around 2018, 2019, where they were like, oh, the left shouldn't be afraid
00:04:50.820of nationalism. There's a big, long history with nationalism and socialism, and it's for the nation,
00:04:56.940for the people. And they tried to create a weak mythos based around FDR and Lincoln. And they're
00:05:06.640like you know we really are america um but it was kind of too shallow and there was too much disdain
00:05:12.820for the country and like the culture on the left for them to successfully pull it off um so if if
00:05:21.480libertarians want to be relevant and also um truthful and realistic about what's good
00:05:28.620then they should kind of support, you know, the nation rather than just being like reflectively
00:05:38.600anti-empire or for tearing down the system or, you know, fracturing it and an accelerationist
00:05:48.740plan to bring about a utopia that will open up the door for communists.
00:05:53.360awesome so the first thing i want to ask you before we get into these uh rich subjects is
00:06:00.740first of all where can people find you and in a way where do you come from uh how will how is the
00:06:07.160best way to introduce you to our audience i know you from x as well as from your youtube channel
00:06:13.240and also you have also a collaboration with uh with um yes rudyard lynch yes in history 102 so
00:06:24.560could you tell us a bit about uh where you come from and what you're doing yeah for sure um so
00:06:31.360history 102 is an awesome show it's a history show with rudyard um most i mean that's the one
00:06:36.700you got your audience would maybe be familiar with already if they haven't heard of it but it
00:06:41.680It 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.
00:07:07.840Most of them, even if they get kind of more interesting, they're socialists.
00:07:11.340So it's good to have more free market historian, because if the free market ideas are correct,
00:07:18.580then that is actually informative about history and important for understanding it.
00:07:22.980Like there's a few examples of that, but that that's kind of maybe more my angle on the
00:08:59.100so yeah it's it's confusing because i mean i've been watching it forever since it started
00:09:04.200happening online like 2015 2016 a lot of these intellectual circles are splits and then i mean
00:09:11.800it's kind of gone so it's split in two ways along like more libertarian um i don't know if i want
00:09:22.080to say purist but more libertarian and then more like alt-right um power based more of a power
00:09:29.900based analysis but then that that libertarian group split in two and the other group split in
00:09:37.220two too and half of the bottom group joined with half of the top group and half of the top group
00:09:42.420joined with half of the bottom group so you have like a lot of the guys that went more alt-right
00:09:48.820rather than libertarian back then are like pro-Trump and and productive a lot of the
00:09:57.260libertarians are are pro-Trump and then you have like libertarians that are anti-Trump teaming up
00:10:03.080with groopers who are anti-Trump and so that's kind of like uh it's an interesting double split
00:10:11.380dynamic uh which can make it really confusing within libertarians but before before we talk
00:10:18.860about this split and exactly how it occurred um could you describe briefly the pipeline
00:10:25.140um which you mentioned the the initial pipeline you mentioned you said it's oh yeah yeah yeah
00:10:35.120you go yeah yeah what course led to let's say to ancapism the double split and the reconnection
00:10:43.440makes it extra confusing but the basic like if you go back to the basic is a lot of people were
00:10:48.920pushed into the alt-right pipeline partly because libertarians make it so unworkable right because
00:10:56.120they get uh attached to kind of the absolutist moral principle and then they say well okay then
00:11:02.920if you're not against getting rid of taxes right now immediately like push the red button then
00:11:10.740you're a bad then you're a bad person and and so then people are forced to say well your morality
00:11:16.540must be wrong because they have to rationalize like their own survival because if you're trying
00:11:23.620to like press the red button and get rid of the whole system without acknowledging dependencies
00:11:27.880or the fact that we'd end up like slaves in the desert because like we're not a free people
00:11:33.080anymore. All these problems, right, with welfare dependency, empire dependency, security dependency.
00:11:42.120You can't just push the red button, right? So then if you're saying if you don't push the red
00:11:46.920button, you're immoral, then people are going to be like, well, then your morality must be wrong.
00:11:51.940Okay. So that's the first step. We have, I want to understand the scenery. That's why I'm asking.
00:11:57.200So 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.
00:12:15.940right right okay so that manifests in different ways because like half of the alt-right ended up
00:12:23.740circling back and joining the libertarians and like accelerationism purity spiraling around
00:12:30.460maybe israel or jews right okay let's let's talk a bit about how this happened so we have
00:12:37.200the purest libertarians that make some people dissatisfied with them and and make them approach
00:12:45.400the old right so how would you describe the old right and how did the wedge took place
00:12:52.600well back in 2018 i would say like i had a negative view of it um but inside of how it
00:13:03.820existed back in the day were those two potentials so i was worried forever about the rise of national0.79
00:13:10.200socialism on the new right right because the boomers are pretty socialist it's a0.69
00:13:13.980sclerotic system but if the new right fails to be like really free market then we're not
00:13:21.220actually going to be able to fix these bureaucracy problems which are killing civilization and so i
00:13:28.680was like oh no don't i don't like the people talking about this power-based framework they're
00:13:34.880adopting like I could you know they were like leftists like I was like you're just I just had
00:13:39.740this argument with a leftist you know so I was already identifying this in like 2016 17 18 but
00:13:47.980the the nuance to that is dependencies so Hobbes it's like Hobbes Rousseau and Locke is what I
00:13:57.360always say right and I was like I like Locke so I don't I don't like this Hobbesian stuff
00:14:02.240But 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.
00:14:17.680You want to prevent society from collapsing.
00:14:20.880Right, right. You want to prevent society from collapsing. Thank you.
00:14:23.240Like, that is, he's correct about that.
00:14:25.720Like, if you push the red button, it's not going to magically organize.
00:14:29.660You need to, like, consider the context of the forced arrangement you're in.
00:21:08.700split in the alt-right camp oh that leads back people back into libertarian purism0.60
00:21:15.380um well i wouldn't say it leads them back into libertarian purism but the groipers and
00:21:23.660libertarians are aligned on accelerationist goals right and there's still a difference between the
00:21:29.380the half the libertarians that are pro-trump and half the alt-right that's pro-trump but they're
00:21:34.780like pro-civilizational versus pro-accelerationist right okay and the
00:21:42.300Groypers and Libertarians have totally different plans for the
00:21:44.620accelerationism which is why I kind of make fun of Libertarians because0.88
00:21:47.440if the Groypers succeed and messing things up getting the Democrats back in1.00
00:21:52.860so society denigrates to the point where that people get mad enough that they0.98
00:21:56.960might have a chance to advance their politics which already is
00:22:00.700kind of like a gamble like that's much more likely than the libertarians because when you're talking
00:22:07.720about this kind of um when you're talking about populism that appeals to the current value
00:22:14.280landscape rather than creating a new value then you're never going to end up in control of the
00:22:20.880pile it's like hitler was an ab tester right he brought marxists in and worked with marxists and
00:22:25.960socialists and he a b tested points and so he was like discovering uh he was like a vessel for the
00:22:34.900crowd right so if you have a movement where like you lose control of it and you just become a
00:22:38.740vessel for the crowd then libertarians are not going to rise to the top of that that's going to
00:22:42.880be like something that reflects the baseline values of the population which are still broadly
00:22:49.240marxist despite jordan peterson's best attempts to take a good chunk out of that like that's still
00:22:54.880the underlying situation so um it's kind of like in a lot of ways libertarians have ceded the
00:23:01.280intellectual battle to these people because they they prioritize the um issue of israel and so0.92
00:23:09.220we'll we like they would never end up being like the top of basically the shit pile they're trying0.99
00:23:17.820to create right okay so you you say that the split and the alt-right happened with the groypers0.86
00:23:26.300uh or before yeah yeah you could say that because like they were and their main issue was maybe
00:23:35.200immigration but like like the people who it's the same thing with the libertarian thing like
00:23:41.920if you see the progress trump is making and deregulation and re-industrialization and all
00:23:47.320that then you're like wait a minute that's good i don't want like accelerationism and if if you
00:23:53.940come from the immigration camp then you say hey wait a minute trump is reversing net migration
00:24:01.100for the first time in 100 years he is deporting a ton of people they are actually getting the
00:24:06.080states on board to uh deputize them towards this end they're enforcing visas like um and then so0.93
00:24:14.280they're like, wait a minute, I don't want to do this Kruper accelerationist thing. I actually like
00:24:18.140this. And so that's where it comes. That's how you get into like libertarianism plus nationalism,
00:24:23.780right? It's around like kind of like the property rights and immigration factions
00:24:27.620that are aligned towards being productive rather than accelerationist.
00:24:33.240Okay. So when it comes to accelerationism, I'm thinking of a part of Adla Shrugged,
00:24:41.680And 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.
00:25:08.800Marjorie Taylor Greene is encouraging a tax revolt now.
00:25:54.840The question is, this is how it seems to me to be happening
00:25:59.580And 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.
00:26:25.640in which case right you do need someone who is more like hobbes in the sense of saying well
00:26:33.020sorry listen you may not get a hundred percent even if i don't get a hundred percent i still
00:26:39.240have a job to do to prevent chaos and i have to put order even if that order isn't perfect
00:26:45.840and is it and isn't just according to you know libertarian idealism idealism right and that's
00:26:53.980the funny part about it because the libertarians and the groypers are aligned but the libertarians
00:27:00.000are like yeah let's tear it tear it down and the groypers are like yeah let's tear it down
00:27:05.360because they know that that like creates the conditions for a hobbesian response um to the0.92
00:27:11.740chaos right and so they're like the libertarians are thinking that it's going to it'll work out0.57
00:27:16.560fine okay the groypers are like perfect this will be my chance yes okay okay right um and but the0.77
00:27:23.720a better example than maybe taxes that's more relevant and like realistic is in terms of how0.72
00:27:29.100they're checking out. Um, cause it's hard for me to argue against, uh, a tax revolt, but like when
00:27:36.540they're saying, uh, don't, uh, don't vote, right. Oh, you're never going to vote your way out of
00:27:41.620this. What is it like? That doesn't just make it collapse. Like that gives it to the Dems to make
00:27:49.760them like they actually have to do the the collapsing so that's kind of painful and also
00:27:55.020leaves the potential for them to lock us down and a digital tyranny flood the borders and and
00:28:01.220prevent us from actually recapturing the system at all um so there's all those kind of you know
00:28:07.980risks which i guess they don't care about uh yeah and then it gets into like the um
00:28:15.100do you need what are the conditions that bring about a hobbesian leader because if you the the
00:28:22.800more like government grows and the more or maybe a napoleonic leader is a better example the more
00:28:29.640uh the government grows and gets centralized and powerful and bureaucratic the the more there is
00:28:35.020to fight over and then you have a fractured value landscape and so just like iraq eventually what
00:28:41.280you have is like one side dominating the other the left or the right the shia the the sunni or
00:28:46.940you have like a secular dictator um above that and that's that's kind of like it's true so
00:28:56.820or on mcintyre will make this point a lot that like that creates the conditions for
00:29:02.580a dictator and oh i don't really want that but oh oh well that's where we're going so let's
00:29:08.160Let'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.
00:29:30.020and the supreme court is pretty good on a lot of issues even though they're they're bad on other
00:29:35.020ones so there's like a lot of opportunity to actually cut bureaucracy and this was the hope
00:29:40.000in france um that napoleon would do this because he was a federalist right like corsican nationalists
00:29:48.220um the they the federalists wanted more decentralization in france uh away from paris
00:29:55.560after the revolution but napoleon ended up strengthening the bureaucracy because he needed
00:30:01.780it for his conquests and so that that prevented france from having the same liberal evolution as
00:30:09.900as the u.s and the republicans before napoleon which is kind of like where we are they failed
00:30:16.600to do enough like the the post-revolution chaos there was eight years where like the moderate
00:30:22.780republicans were in control and they didn't do enough to reduce the bureaucracy and so eventually
00:30:28.440there was the demand for the napoleon trump is cutting bureaucracy he's doing much better than
00:30:34.260the republicans post french revolution pre-napoleon and so that is kind of like the ideal path to avoid
00:30:41.560disaster the other silly thing about being fatalistic about dictatorship is the left is
00:30:46.860completely capable of doing a dictatorship through the bureaucracy in a way that's sold
00:30:53.880as a democracy while in reality the right is like deconstructing this dictatorial anti-constitutional
00:31:01.340bureaucracy and so then if we market ourselves it's like oh monarchy is cool yeah we're edgy
00:31:08.500pro-dictator then it's easy for the left to paint us as that while they go do it and while we're
00:31:14.540actually the opposite of that at least trump is i think right okay so there are there are many
00:31:20.360things you're throwing into the mix and i want to discuss uh uh some of them so well i mean i'm not
00:31:27.540so sure about the analogy you're drawing between napoleon and uh trump in some respects are you
00:31:36.560drawing an analogy between no no i'm saying okay trump's not doing what napoleon did yes okay okay
00:31:41.500Because 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.
00:32:01.000and so through that framework then you can through the executive then you can start
00:32:06.460tearing stuff down and it's not going to get challenged in the courts and the bureaucracy
00:32:13.120is really what runs the country because it's the it's the organizing method of central planning
00:32:20.020okay so i have a question here because i'm i'm trying to think about trump and i will i will
00:32:26.040say this also for our audience here is that I think that there are two forms of TDS, Trump0.94
00:32:33.000defecation syndrome and Trump derangement syndrome. And I suffer from neither and I go on a case by0.81
00:32:39.320case thing. So when it comes to this, it seems to me that in some respects, Trump is definitely not
00:32:47.360libertarian and he is definitely uh having some red flags for libertarians so for instance
00:32:56.720the tariffs you you could say that are necessarily a libertarian policy it's a tax so yes but you can
00:33:07.940also argue that it's different it's different if he has a major um if he he uses it as a major
00:33:16.100policy as opposed to a to a temporary negotiation tactic which he also does it right but the point
00:33:25.820is that frequently he is going to to do things that i can definitely see from a libertarian
00:33:33.220perspective that a libertarian wouldn't want because for instance when he he's very volatile
00:33:39.740and when it comes to his volatility and and the statements he make he knows how markets are going
00:33:47.500to react that's why for instance frequently he's going to make some of those announcements
00:33:53.660friday or saturday morning yes in order for the war is over to not react instantly but i think
00:34:01.840that this is creating a sort of volatility in the market and in society as well but in the market
00:34:07.820which benefits people close to him, who have access to information that the general public
00:34:16.200doesn't. So if, for instance, they know that Trump is going to cause the market to go down
00:34:24.280and it's time to buy, because they know, for instance, that he may not intend to destroy
00:34:31.060completely Iran or something. Because almost everyone knew this.
00:34:35.640I told people that publicly, so they had just as much of an opportunity to invest.
00:34:40.940Yeah, 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.
00:34:57.780because you could say that in a way it it it in the signal it sends is keep lobbying and being
00:35:06.720close to trump and supporting his administration and smart money buys the dip which it doesn't
00:35:14.500yeah but it's also kind of like it that that example is just so uh political because what
00:35:21.400what trump is doing there is he's talking tough to iran but his plan forever was that he doesn't
00:35:28.340want to destroy the country he doesn't want to occupy it like obviously that's going to create
00:35:32.900a situation in which you can invest on it but what is he supposed to do different like he's still
00:35:36.920like that if he was going to do his plan his plan is to make threats and then okay get a deal so
00:35:42.620like yeah i understand he may obviously when you say you said from the beginning that it's not a
00:35:48.060hundred percent or a zero percent so when you say that he he's uh he is in a way libertarian
00:35:54.820you don't mean in a hundred percent so that's it's kind of a it's there's a bunch of layers
00:36:00.080to that because it's like a kind of a joke but also because the system is so socialist like
00:36:04.180he's gotten more libertarian wins than anybody in history like depending on how you want to like
00:36:10.380classify the founders as libertarians in the different context of the time they're in because
00:36:15.180um it's a totally different question of creating an empire before you have an empire than after
00:36:21.460you have an empire um so but in what in what that's kind of funny but with with tariffs it's
00:36:28.540like a lot of libertarians got really mad about tariffs but um i had a panel with bob murphy at
00:36:37.620pork fest where i talked about this unfortunately it wasn't recorded but he basically agreed with
00:36:42.980every single thing i said in my perspective because i just highlighted the context of like
00:36:47.160you're freaking out about tariffs as an anti-libertarian policy um but tariffs are a tax
00:36:54.380and tax taxation levels are are determined by spending so like when you're uh increasing
00:37:02.900tariffs all you're doing then is cutting into money printing or maybe you know taxes on tips
00:37:08.480or a little income tax or whatever you want to substitute it out with.
00:37:11.340Like the core issue is the spending problem.
00:37:14.100And when they compared it to the tariffs in the depression,
00:37:18.020the tariffs in the depression were used to raise money
00:37:22.420for a three times increase in federal spending
00:37:38.480So it's like there's a lot of hubbubaloo about things that are, you know, not really being spoken about in their proper context.
00:37:47.920But 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.
00:37:58.460I can understand why people wouldn't be as happy about it.
00:38:01.640But I think the overall end result of the negotiations is tariffs globally have gone down.
00:38:07.380like um especially against the u.s right okay so the the other bit i want to ask you about
00:38:17.320has to do with the with the libertarian party do you think right now they sort of lost their
00:38:27.160way politically or or not because yeah i think the yeah the libertarian party is kind of just in a
00:38:35.140uh stand still in between phase like you know the lights are being kept on kind of thing for a while
00:38:43.320all the libertarians at least were pretending to play for the right right there was like this
00:38:49.780like say like the oran mcintyre side of the alt-right which ended up teaming up with the
00:38:54.220libertarian side and oran is kind of split in between two of the splits like his soul is being
00:38:59.260torn apart so it's more even more complicated um but uh they were explicit about how we need to
00:39:07.700play for the right like the right is the game in town like it's the only way to go like give up on
00:39:13.500this idea of middle ground like we have to win this civilizational struggle and they've kind of
00:39:19.520totally abandoned that pretense at this point which is destroying their popularity with the actual
00:39:28.480right um as they make this kind of like you know nick fuentes appeal to the democrats and
00:39:34.980the libertarians hang out with st cougar and like all that kind of stuff that's not
00:39:40.060and they pretend it kind of represents the middle but the middle is grilling the middle
00:39:45.160isn't st cougar that's like you took and taking the margins from uh both sides which
00:39:50.900isn't what um the grillers or the normies are are interested in so is there a sort of infight
00:40:00.120politically speaking between the those who are purists who are teaming right now with
00:40:07.220and accelerationists against those who are a bit more friendly to the MAGA side it's complicated
00:40:14.940because they're not actually purists um so because except for on foreign policy so there's a big
00:40:22.520faction of the libertarians like that got on board they got on board with trump even which like the
00:40:31.060purist libertarians freaked out about for their purist reasons the leftist libertarians freaked
00:40:36.700out about it for their leftist reasons and then um uh and they and they acknowledged things like
00:40:44.560oh you know what that's right like like dave smith's debate with sam cedar right where sam
00:40:49.960cedar's like okay what are you going to do when you get rid of social security all at once and
00:40:54.540then seniors start showing up on the street and they're hungry and then this happens and that and
00:40:59.760it's like oh crap like we have these dependencies we have to unwind and so we figured that out
00:41:04.700we figured that out like on immigration um but we didn't figure that out on foreign policy0.94
00:41:11.260and there was a couple like thought terminating cliches to get people to go along with that which
00:41:18.600is like war is the health of the state so unless you get rid of the military because the military
00:41:24.380ends up reducing domestic freedom so unless you get rid of that and the empire then you're never
00:41:30.560going to um fix it and then the other part is just like killing people is the worst thing you can do
00:41:38.080so blah blah but like in my opinion the worst thing you can do is for civilization to collapse
00:41:44.240and they end up helping the enemies of civilization uh justified on the moral principle of war and
00:41:53.120they're not acknowledging that just like welfare there's dependencies uh associated with empire
00:41:58.720because the U.S. has taken over the security services of a lot of areas.
00:42:03.040So if you take out that service, that's going to change demand.
00:49:28.040Now, 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.
00:49:50.060um yeah that well let's put that aside but it seems to me that when we are talking about this
00:49:56.920massive intervention no um these massive anti-western trends especially online i think
00:50:04.660that they're very much funded by the major geopolitical rivals of the u.s yeah and not only
00:50:11.900that but the globalists right which is connected to a lot of those international rivals who are
00:50:16.780working with the Democrats against the U.S. for a shared technocratic international vision.
00:50:23.800Right. Okay. So we'll get there, but let's take one step at a time. From a libertarian standpoint,
00:50:31.400isn't there such a danger as their tendencies being taken advantage of by
00:50:39.740sides that want to increase their power on the world stage and have absolutely zero libertarian
00:50:49.820sentiments and zero respect for libertarian principles. So, for instance, let me just say,
00:50:58.480If 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.
00:51:19.240Tucker will oscillate between saying Qatar and Russia are friends.
00:51:24.280Is the best allies ever and no allies.
00:51:26.500But also, on the other hand, his message is consistently bad things happen to you when you care about your allies.
00:51:35.640Yes, and this is where there's the nuance between, this is why it's bad to take the opposite of the CIA approach, right?
00:51:43.380Because when I mentioned the CIA would work with anybody as long as they get inside the globalist infrastructure, that wasn't a compliment.
00:51:49.900like it still matters if somebody's a communist or somebody's if uh there's a dictatorship or
00:51:57.460alliances yeah like like the international value landscape still matters like if like
00:52:04.840and there a bit of this comes from this like over reactive correction against any type of
00:52:11.860universalism but just because like not everything is universal doesn't mean there aren't universal
00:52:17.920trend lines like property rights work for everybody like it's better for people in0.69
00:52:22.660Argentina if Malay you know libertarian makes all this ground and pulls millions of people0.61
00:52:29.860out of poverty like it's okay to be happy about that it's okay to be more happy about0.66
00:52:34.640that than you are mad because of uh they're aligned with Israel or whatever like which
00:52:40.780is aligned with the U.S. empire which is against your alliance like start focusing on the good
00:52:44.880and the bad more than your reactive game to the CIA, especially since the CIA or the globalists,
00:52:53.220the old ones, are losing. So the question is, from a libertarian standpoint, is there no concern
00:52:59.240of the Western camp splitting, the U.S. becoming entirely inward looking and the rest of the world
00:53:08.000becoming way more attached to to putin's russia china right so is there no problem i'm not worried
00:53:22.020about that at all in their mind because of in their minds wait wait so first of all i don't
00:53:28.040think it will happen i don't think it will happen yeah second if it did we are talking about a
00:53:33.140hypothetical question if it did happen would it affect people in the u.s would it affect
00:53:38.760in the u.s i think the answer is a crystal it's crystal clear it would affect them but
00:53:44.520do they act and speak as if they think it wouldn't affect them
00:53:47.860um because let's say let's yeah i mean yeah if they are against if they are against tariffs
00:53:56.200and tariffs against foreign governments,
01:05:13.640are going to become a bit more evident.
01:05:16.920And, 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?
01:05:31.480If this culture gets eroded, if the psyops get away, if this culture get eroded, then you are not going to have your rights.
01:05:42.640so in a way it seems to me that every right we have and every liberty we have we have it
01:05:48.760in a society at a time and at a place that doesn't make you a collectivist
01:05:54.320right totally i don't think it does yeah in the same way that you say well i do want people to
01:06:01.560have liberties and and rights doesn't make you a max sterner type of ultra individualist yeah i
01:06:08.320mean who was it that said that like the best way to define a nation is by like people and language
01:06:14.860groups rather than borders and that nations with borders are an important um like bulwark against
01:06:23.540communism and like an important foundation uh ludwig von mises said that like the most libertarian
01:06:31.560guy ever who called hayek a socialist so i totally agree that like it's silly to not be aware of this
01:06:37.580And 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.
01:06:55.080Because 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.,
01:07:15.080then like maybe also like india would have some um different political cultural like trends and
01:07:27.220trajectory and some people take this too far where they try and eliminate the idea of universals
01:07:34.020um totally which uh i think is also wrong because property rights do work for for india they work
01:07:42.140for china um uh it's just that you have to like build build it from the bottom up just like in
01:07:51.740the same way the u.s is no longer untouchable where marxism has eroded so many of our values0.93
01:07:56.580we're in the same situation if you take a certain subset of our population
01:08:00.800where it's like you don't have a a nation capable of managing these institutions i agree but
01:08:07.400There 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.
01:08:18.160So, for instance, you need a functioning legal system to enforce contracts when individuals don't want to honor their word.
01:08:25.760You can't have a functioning liberal or libertarian society without this.
01:08:31.100there are all sorts of all sorts of institutions that are required in order to to make property
01:08:38.920rights strong and sensible and and and enjoyable in a way and there's a lot of ways that like more
01:08:47.440collectivist impulses will will make that difficult even like people will revert to a lot
01:08:54.920of those positions. Even if you get them to improve philosophically, it's just like the
01:09:05.080Saxons and the Celts, right? There's been a bunch of Saxons and Celts on both sides of the0.98
01:09:09.520socialist property right agreement. So it's not clean, but there are still differences in how0.90
01:09:16.940it's expressed. Right. Thanks. And for the last question and topic for discussion, I want us to
01:09:22.640touch a bit about the upcoming midterms, the midterm elections in November, unless I'm
01:09:28.920mistaken. How do you see discourse evolving surrounding the midterms? Because there are
01:09:37.760people who are saying, for instance, vote Democrat within the so-called right, which
01:09:46.860is loosely defined admittedly but i would like to see what you you think about this well i i bet
01:09:55.020150 bucks that the republicans would win the midterms a few months ago so uh when it was like
01:10:01.560at its lowest odds so i have a personal invest stake in it okay thanks for saying
01:10:06.760poly uh poly market or whatever um but yeah i mean it it's interesting because well the one
01:10:15.900side is that usually you do lose the house uh on the two-year election if like your republican
01:10:24.140president usually people vote in a democratic house after two years it's it's normally how it
01:10:29.880happens except for um uh like i think apparently bush and obama where that that didn't actually
01:10:39.180happen uh and then and then there's kind of this narrative that so and those were more recent
01:10:45.580election so maybe that will be relevant for this but then there's this sort of narrative that it
01:10:50.560doesn't matter because it's just like two wings of the same bird uni party stuff punish them you
01:10:57.840know don't let them get away with it and i think this misses the context of the large of the
01:11:03.760difference between trump and past republican presidents and that it's not just like a
01:11:10.980meaningless opposition the left is actually threatened by them which is why like the southern
01:11:15.740poverty law center is fueling a lot of you know groups like that are fueling these um sentiments
01:11:21.540and more importantly like the past context is the democrats had the control of the house from like
01:11:28.5401950 to like 1994 so it's not like it's not like um it's just going back and forth in this two
01:11:37.500bird wings forever it's like we're we're dismantling like the progressive era which is
01:11:45.860running to like a tipping point where it's like running out of juice where it has to reveal its
01:11:50.480hand and either have a successful dictatorship or just fail politically great okay so um thank
01:11:58.060you very much for this interview and i'm really interested in seeing how this concept of libertarian
01:12:05.180nationalism is going to be is going to evolve and also apart from the concept the movement itself
01:12:11.260and thank you very much for this interview and it was really a nice opportunity that
01:12:17.940we took in order to to chat so i hope you enjoyed it let us know in the comments if you did and i
01:12:25.400would like us to end this interview with you austin again telling our audience where they
01:12:30.000can find uh more work from you absolutely uh so history 102 again is the show with rudyard
01:12:37.400really awesome history show trying to pull out explicitly like okay so what did we actually
01:12:43.320learn from this how can we apply it and also taking a deeper historical lens so that you have
01:12:48.280more material to mine in that regard and then my personal show is on youtube austin paget at
01:12:56.140ludwig never mises where i i kind of give uh more of my expanded political takes than i do
01:13:04.300in history 102 which we also try and design to be to be watchable in a hundred years um so
01:13:11.600sometimes you can't get totally contemporary and then the uh yeah you can find me also on my
01:13:19.220x account ludwig never mises austin paget uh the at is missing an e there because of the
01:13:26.800character limit but you know you'll figure it out thank you very much