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Speaker 1: Meaning a live man like this man letting butterfly flapping

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his wing.

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Speaker 2: Dig down in the forest. Man, it gonna cause the

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tree fall, letting five thousand miles away. Man, nobody seen nobody.

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Speaker 1: You don't need to know many story and.

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Speaker 2: You got directed like that. That's way man. Don't blackly

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dang on the panel. Mann.

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Speaker 1: All right, aren, welcome back to the Jay Burden Show.

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How you doing that?

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Speaker 2: Thanks for having me.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm excited to have you back on now. I

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just want to say before we get into it. Uh,

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we are recording this on the afternoon where I think

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everyone learned exactly what Christy Nome's husband gets up to

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in his free time. That's really funny. I don't know

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if there's a whole lot of commentary deep political philosophy

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to it, but it is amusing. It's an info hazard.

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Search at your own risk, but it is kind of funny.

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In all seriousness. Arn, we are here to talk about libertarians.

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As I said before we went live, I think that

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many libertarians have been taking a victory lap after the

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war in Iran. Oh, we told you so. You should

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never have tried to get involved in politics. You should

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never have casted a vote, cast a vote, because this

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is what happens, right, you should simply be like and

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then the kind of you know, vague prescriptions of whichever

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chapter of libertarian you're speaking to come up so or

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before we launch into it. I'm just curious. Did you

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go through the sort of infamous libertarian stage, and I

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guess if you could, what has been your should we say,

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relationship to that school of thought?

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Speaker 2: Well? I never went through the I need to read

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you know, a bunch of meases and hayek and know,

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swear off the state and cap phase of politics. I think,

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like a lot of conservatives, especially in you know, the

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the two thousands, I was sold this idea that perhaps

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the future of conservatism was somewhat libertarian. That obviously we

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had lost on the issues like gay marriage and abortion

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and other you know, kind of the culture war as

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it would eventually be called, and so what we really

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needed to do was focus on economics and free trade

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and these things, and ultimately that's what would make the

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right work. We had guys like Neil Bort's and Herman

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Kin who were libertarian adjacent and would talk about, you know,

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getting rid of the income tax and these kind of things.

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And that was the winning agenda for the right. I

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bought into some of that for a while. It quickly

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became clear to me that wasn't the case. Now every

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time I say this, a bunch of libertarians run around

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screaming their heads off. Oh, that's not libertarian, that's not

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real libertarian. The GOP never a libertarian. There's no trend

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towards libertarian in the GOP. But like obviously, this was

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relatively a large switch from the religious right, and it's

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understanding that we had and perhaps the eighties or earlier nineties,

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and so I think it is fair to say that,

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however imperfect and in not illogically pure, the kind of

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drift to libertarianism was in the Republican Party. It was

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a real phenomenon. It did really exist. We were told this,

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if we're not adopting libertarianism as such, at least our

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messaging on social issues should be more libertarian. And that

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was what was gonna, you know, take us into the future.

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As long as your gay neighbors can have gun rights

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and you know, ultimately push for free trade, that's what

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was going to make right wing politics work. I think

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we've seen pretty much the collapse of that understanding, I

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think we've seen a resurgence in the idea that perhaps

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right wing governments can be interested in the good of

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their people, and that the culture war isn't it actually

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a winning issue as opposed to a losing issue. Again,

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I'm sure many libertarians will, you know, kick back at

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the idea that this is the structure of kind of

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where the party was going, But it's very clear that

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it is swerved back the other way. In some places,

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you know, to to I think you know, our profit,

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in other places, to our detriment. I think you might

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be muted on that one.

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Speaker 1: This is a professional podcast, ladies and gentlemen, But I

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think I have a very similar sort of relationship with

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the philosophy because at a certain time where it seemed

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as if the right in America had well and truly

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been routed during the Obama Reich, there was sort of

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this question of, well, what do we do now? And

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I think that for a brief period of time, if

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you were a right winger constitutionally right, that's what you

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felt deep in your bones, The relatively safe place you

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could stand was well, I'm a libertarian. I believe in

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freedom of choice, and so I believe in the freedom

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for you to you know, get gay, married, or to

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have an abortion, and so we don't touch those sort

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of subjects that are quite hot. But also I, you know,

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get to keep gun rights. I don't want to live

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around certain types of people, whether stated or unstated. And

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so for a while it was sort of a spot

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on the slippery slope where you could hang out right,

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a way to talk about politics without you know, being

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subjected to a rant about you know, racist rednecks, right,

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sort of a third position. But the problem is, and

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I think many of us realized, and that's why there

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are so many post libertarians or you know, people who

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pass through that is that you realize very quickly that's

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a losing prospect. You don't win there. You are simply

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ushered to one side at best. And I think that's

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part of the reason why so many people left it.

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Right we saw during COVID very dramatically, well, that doesn't work, right,

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The state will get you. And so at the most

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basic level, I'm going to title this something you know, clickbaity,

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like the five questions libertarians can't answer, because I do

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have five general objections that I have seen no convincing

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answer to And look, there are good libertarians, you know, obviously,

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you know Tom Woods and Scott Horton. I'm not talking

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about them, but I think the most fundamental right if

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we assume that libertarianism is this philosophy or tendency that

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puts individual choice right, some form of self determinism at

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the center. Right, the best society is the one where

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you were constrained by the least things, you were the

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most free. Well, an important question is, well, what is

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freedom right? Is this a universal right, a sort of

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right granted to you by God. You will hear that

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idea even from some self described conservatives. Or is it

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specific and cultural? Is it the product of a tradition?

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Because one, when we talk about freedom, we're basically talking

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about a Western conception.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 1: Sure, other peoples at times have advocated for their self determination,

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liberation from a ruler, but it's sort of a different thing.

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And even in the Western tradition, there are many different

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versions of freedom. So, for instance, right when the gulls

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are rebelling against Caesar for liberty, what do they mean?

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Are they big fans of, you know, gay marriage? Are

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they big fans of, you know, all of the sort

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of you know, things that we associate with libertarian conventions.

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I mean now that I say that running around naked

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with funny hats is pretty close to it. But in

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all seriousness, right, clearly this is a different conception of

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what freedom is. This is a through line in Western thought.

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But we've seen many different permutations of even the society

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we see so often in constitutional conservative and libertarian means

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that of the American founding? Is that a libertarian society?

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On one level? Well, I mean, yes, you know, you

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didn't have a lot of taxes, but a sodomy was illegal,

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there were blasphemy laws. It's sort of ridiculous on its face.

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So i'll throw it to you, arin, Right, what do

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we make of that question of well, what is freedom?

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And how is it sort of twisted in the kind

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of you know, Twitter dot com version of what libertarians think?

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Speaker 2: Well, one of the problems with libertarianism is that it

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is itself a universalist ideology, and as with all universal

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universalist ideologies, it tends towards utopianism. So while libertarianism pretends

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to take on this hard realistic edge of just well,

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this is how market forces work, and this is just

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the science, and this is the way it is. Apology

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is just terrible. The libertarian anthropology is deeply flawed in

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this understanding that freedom is simply an absence of official

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government control by something called the state TM, and if

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we just get rid of the state TM, then people

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will live in some kind of spontaneous order and everything

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will be good. And this is what we're looking for

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from life. Now. It's very interesting because there's actually a

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perfect answer to this, and it sits inside the libertarian tradition.

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Bertrand Jujuvenile is a guy I reference all the time

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because he's one of the most important and underappreciated figures

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in political theory. And he wrote a book on power

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and another one on sovereignty, which are just absolutely critical.

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They're actually even put out by Freedom Press, a libertarian

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you know, imprint, and he's often cited inside the libertarian tradition,

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or at least the class of liberal tradition. He's literally

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the basis for Hans Hermann Hopp's Democracy The God That Failed.

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Like if you like Hoop, if you've thought his arguments

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against democracy were persuasive, congratulations they were stolen directly from

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Bertrand di Juvenal and I say this with like the

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greatest admiration for hop because like only the great seal

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from bertrand di juvenal, like this is not me slandering him.

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I say all that to point out that this guy

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is really well grounded and is somebody that like especially

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Mesa's style, libertarians rely on without recognizing that they owe

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him the intellectual lineage that they do. And inside on Power,

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Dijuvenile makes exactly the point we're making now that radical

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libertarianism and radical communism were always destined to meet in

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the center. They were always destined to create the same outcome.

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And his point is that what we're looking for is

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not just radical freedom. What we're looking for is order liberty,

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and liberty in the classical sense is the freedom to

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pursue the good as your society understands it. It is

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an Aristotilian concept that it is only inside our interactions

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with other political entities that we can grasp our role

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and we can recognize our or we could realize our liberty.

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That is what creates liberty, is having a shared understanding

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of the good and having the ability to pursue it.

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In fact, in on Sobiergty di Juvenal goes a step

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further and says that it is not the power of

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the government that makes a man free or not free.

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It is that the government acts in accordance with the

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general understanding of the good. People who are asked to

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only pursue that which they already inherently understand through their

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traditions and their folk ways and their religion as virtuous.

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They are people who are free. That feels now natural

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to them. Even if they can never achieve exactly what

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they set out, they feel those goals to be ones

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that are in alignment with what they already want to pursue,

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and so the government encouraging them or bolstering the pursuit

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of something they already agree with, does not feel oppressive.

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It feels liberate. What really makes people feel oppressed is

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a government or a state that tries to force them

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into doing things they don't agree with, things that they

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do not see as virtuous, things that do not work

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inside their tradition, their understanding of the good. This is

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what tyranny ultimately is. It's not the abuse of government power,

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it's not the exercise of government power. It's the use

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of government power to force peoples into a way of

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being that does not complement them, that does not attain

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that ultimate good that they are aiming for. And so

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when we're talking about liberty, what we need to understand

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is it's not about the government having more or less power.

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It's about the government working for the good of people,

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the collective understanding of where we should be as a people,

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as a nation. If it's doing that, we feel liberated.

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If it doesn't, we feel constrained. That's why even if

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a group of people fights for their liberation from another nation,

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so they can immediately impose a bunch of religious restrictions

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on top of themselves, which is exactly what America did.

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We feel like that's our independence day because we are

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now free not to do math or you know, get

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gay married, but to live in accordance with a religious

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tradition and our understanding as a people.

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Speaker 1: Well, on that point, I think that this misunderstanding of

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power you also see in my second objection, which is

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how do you bring out how do you bring about

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rather in campus dan right, how do we get to

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a libertarian society? Because the answer is, well, I will

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simply behave as if I were already in such a society.

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That will spread and bring about that reality. This is

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the point that Moldbug makes back when he was still Moldbug.

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Where he goes from that that sort of desired end

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state of spontaneous order, right, a truly liberated society where

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you know, what state as it exists is in line

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with the people. Right, there is no feeling of tyranny

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or disconnect between the state and those rules. And he says,

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of course, well, if that's what you want, speaking, shall

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we say slightly hyperbolically, you should be a fascist, right,

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You should want to crush disorder so that order can exist. Now,

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this comes from his understanding of that duality of order

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and chaos. He believes, and as did many before him,

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this is not D and D right, You cannot be

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chaotic good. Chaotic chaos is synonymous with evil. An order

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that which is necessary, you know, for a functional society

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is a good and what steps you need to take

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towards that are good steps. Now, I think it's important

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to say that this misconception that in order to achieve

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an end you should act as if it already is

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the case. It runs rampant through education and child rearing.

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Right in our last episode, it's never quite stated this way,

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but the idea is, well, I want X y Z

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child to be a functional adult. So if I just

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treat them at age four, how I would one of

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my coworkers, one of my friends, Well, then they will

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become that. Clearly that doesn't work, right, We've all been

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to the supermarket and seen a mother trying to reason

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with her three year old. Doesn't work. Sure, you or

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I might feel very embarrassed that we are causing a

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scene at a local coals. You know that we're screaming

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and crying and throwing things A three year old does not.

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You have to act in a different way so that

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later down the line you can pull back. Right, you

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don't have to have that insane level of top down control.

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And to that point, when we look at libertarian societies,

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you know what are often tauted as you know, a

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successful functioning society full of spontaneous order. Well, how do

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the people act? Right? Do they act like modern libertarians

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from a certain perspective? Maybe right, they don't have a

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policeman over their shoulder. But what got them there?

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Speaker 2: Right?

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Speaker 1: Was it this kind of insane you know, porkfest style

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libertine event? No? And I mean you can look at

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you know, the opposite example, right, is O Block the

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most free place in America? Well, sure, arn, if you're

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interested in you know, like you're squeezing off thirty rounds

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from you know, a glock switch out of the back

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of your hell cat. Maybe, But if you're actually interested

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in having a business, you're interested in walking wherever you want,

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a very basic level of freedom. That's not free for you.

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But you look to places like, up until recently, something

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like England, right, kind of the pre Tony Blair version. Well,

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you know Victorian England, We'll go to that. Well, functionally,

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you have an immense amount of freedom. You can walk

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wherever you want. You know, infamously women walked around London

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late at night without being bothered. Well, how did we

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get there? One of the most punishing criminal justice regimes

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in history, right, hanging people, sending them to Australia. It

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was what many moderns would call fascistic. I go back,

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as we mentioned multiple times to the American founders, right,

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a society much freer than ours. But again, if you

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stole a horse, they hanged you. You could not be gay.

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Gay marriage was I mean, it would be comical to

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explain it. You cannot create a libertarian society by acting

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as a libertarian. And so the question is, okay, even

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if you are, you know you have that end goal,

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you have that vision of society. Well it's not how

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you should act now, you should be much like Crothbard

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was closer to the end of his life, right encouraging

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the cops to send in the hounds, right to stamp

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out disorder, because disorder is inherently in tropic It will

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make it impossible for rational spontaneous order to exist because

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quite simply, it is not safe to do so. So

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are That's a bit of a monologue for me, but

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I'd be curious to get your thoughts as well.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, back to what you're saying there with Moldbug. It's

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the problem is that libertarians have the order reversed once again.

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Their anthropology is bad. They think that if people are free,

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then spontaneously they will become virtuous. If libertarians are even

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interested in virtue, which sadly very often they are not,

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they will say, well, if people are free, they will

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act virtuously. They will create this ordered society once they

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are free. But this is the inverse of what actually happens.

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As Moldbug lays out, humanity starts in a state of war.

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Then you move to a state of order. Then you

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move to a state of law, and if you're very,

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very lucky, then you move to a state of liberty.

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And it is only after going through those steps that

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you achieve that final state. And if you do not

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go through this process, you cannot expect that final state

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to emerge. Libertarians say, I don't need the state, I

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don't need the thing that brings order. I don't need

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the thing that ends the war. I just need the

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last part of that, and I will therefore then generate

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out all the benefits. But that is just observably false.

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We see this over and over again that as long

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as you say people are allowed to take certain actions

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that they seemed themselves as being free to take, they

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actually reduced the amount of order, and therefore the liberty

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inside it is virtue that creates liberty, not liberty that

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creates virtue. And if you don't spend time with the

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population cultivating that virtue, you simply cannot bring about the

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type of society that liberty that libertarians want. So, for instance,

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Alexis de Tokville famously observed that the reason that America

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was basically allowed to more or less self govern, as

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we often put it, is that actually it didn't self

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govern at all. That it was all of these smaller

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civic organizations, the church, the guild, the you know, the community,

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you know organization, these things came together and created a

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straight from which American society could emerge. And because people

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had a loyalty to their union, or to their church,

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or to their community, or to their club, or to

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their fire brigade or all these other voluntary associations, the government,

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the official state TM didn't have to take very many actions.

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And again this is what bertrand Juvenile echoes in on power,

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that is, these alternative spheres of sovereignty that limit the government.

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In fact, he takes at another level and says, it

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is not the constitution and it's checks and balances that

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ultimately limits the government. It is the fact that those

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checks and balances of the Constitution are meant to represent

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different social forces that actually brings limitation on the government itself.

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And so if you don't have a virtual society and

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which people enter into these voluntary organizations and see themselves

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as beholden to them and see power to them. Then

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there is no social force to push back against the

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central power of the state. And we can see that

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as those intermediate forces, the family, the church, the community,

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have eroded, we've required more and more government to step

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in and take action. But it's not the loss of

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you know, it's not the removal of government that creates that.

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Freedom is the imposition of order from virtuous people spontaneously.

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But you can't have that until you have virtuous people.

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You don't get those just because you were liberated in

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some way. If you do not enhance the character of

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the people, you simply cannot live in the way that

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libertarians would like. And so that's why, for instance, neo

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reactionary theory has always been authoritarian on the outside, libertarian

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on the inside. This was the post libertarian realization that

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a libertarian order, while desirable, can only come through authoritarian means.

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And that's kind of the realization that occurred after they

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really looked at all the libertarian theory. This is a

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beautiful worldview that only exists when a certain type of

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environment is produced, and the only way to produce that

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is through strict amounts of authority, often handed down by

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the state.

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Speaker 1: So arin if anyone in the audience is perhaps interested

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in reading a book about the relationship between the state

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a total state, one might even say any sort of

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intermediate institutions. How you know it's in the state's interest

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to push out, yep, such organizations. Where could they find one?

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Speaker 2: Well, I just happened to have written one, which you

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know you can find. It's coming out soon and it's

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secondition paperback with an extra chapter if you want to

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enjoy it. But the Total State or mctyre, it's an

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Amazon bestseller in a couple categories, so you know, make

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sure to pick that up if you want to hear

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a little more.

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Speaker 1: That was entirely planned. By the way, this is the

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whole reason we're doing this episode is just to show

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the But in all seriousness, this leads into let's just say,

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this is like a secret sixth point that I should

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have mentioned in the notes and then didn't, which is

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that libertine behavior right, living as a libertarian, having a

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approximately libertarian society produces people who are not suited for liberty,

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and that leads us to another large objection here, which

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is libertarians presupposed, at least from what I've seen that

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at the base of Maslow's hierarchy of need is liberty, right,

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that that is what all men are striving for, what

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all people want. And maybe that was true. We can

400
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put a pin in that at a previous point in time.

401
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Very clearly that is not true today. As the total

402
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state has grown, as it has taken more and more institutions,

403
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whether it is marriage, the rearing of children, education, out

404
00:24:57,720 --> 00:25:01,839
of informal social structure and into the realm of the

405
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political well, we very clearly see people want that. They

406
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want security, They do not necessarily want maximum liberty. You

407
00:25:14,759 --> 00:25:17,720
may remember several years ago there was a pandemic, and

408
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well what happened. Did the masses rise up? Did people say,

409
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you know, I will not be confined to my home? Well,

410
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clearly not. The majority of people went along with it.

411
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And sure there were relocations within the US to escape

412
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the excesses of the COVID regime. As someone in Florida,

413
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you're note out aware of that. But nonetheless we understand

414
00:25:40,440 --> 00:25:44,319
and we're seeing it on almost a daily basis. The

415
00:25:44,400 --> 00:25:48,400
average American does not desire liberty, at least in the

416
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sense often meant by libertarians. And so if you have

417
00:25:53,440 --> 00:25:58,039
a universalist ideology, right, an idea for everyone all at once,

418
00:25:58,839 --> 00:26:02,279
and not even and everyone, but just almost everyone disagrees

419
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with it. Well, what is to be done there?

420
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Speaker 2: Right?

421
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Speaker 1: Your universalist ideology has failed to attract the universal man.

422
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So I'm curious, arn, do you see that most Americans,

423
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most people period desire this sort of rootless conception of liberty.

424
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If not, what do people seemingly ask for in politics?

425
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Speaker 2: Yeah? There is again, once again, like just this complete

426
00:26:34,000 --> 00:26:38,359
failure of libertarian anthropology. The idea that all human beings

427
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are just born with this innate desire for liberty has

428
00:26:41,680 --> 00:26:43,799
been proven incorrect over and over. It. In fact, it's

429
00:26:43,799 --> 00:26:46,680
something we generally scoff at now at this point, right, Oh,

430
00:26:46,720 --> 00:26:50,000
Thomas Jefferson hiding in the caves of Afghanistan. Right, But

431
00:26:50,119 --> 00:26:53,240
this is still something that while libertarians will laugh at

432
00:26:53,240 --> 00:26:57,039
this implication and foreign policy will still basically pick up

433
00:26:57,079 --> 00:27:00,400
this assumption when it comes to human organization. Well, of

434
00:27:00,480 --> 00:27:04,200
course we can't force you know, liberal democracy on the Afghanis,

435
00:27:04,559 --> 00:27:06,759
But of course every human being actually yearns to be

436
00:27:06,839 --> 00:27:11,799
free and looks for libertarian ideology and existence. As you

437
00:27:11,839 --> 00:27:14,720
point out, this is just absolutely not true, and you

438
00:27:14,799 --> 00:27:19,799
can evidence is if only because the ideology of communism,

439
00:27:19,880 --> 00:27:24,039
well equally ridiculous and universal, has always had more adherents

440
00:27:24,400 --> 00:27:28,119
than the ideology of libertarianism. If libertarianism was so much

441
00:27:28,160 --> 00:27:30,720
truer to human nature, you think it would just naturally

442
00:27:30,799 --> 00:27:33,240
went out in that old marketplace of ideas, and yet

443
00:27:33,319 --> 00:27:35,759
it never does. In fact, reliably, if we look at

444
00:27:35,799 --> 00:27:39,160
the libertarian quadrant of the political compass, we find it

445
00:27:39,240 --> 00:27:43,079
is the place with zero voters, It has almost no support,

446
00:27:43,359 --> 00:27:45,880
and pretty much every bit of polling and data finds

447
00:27:45,920 --> 00:27:49,720
that libertarians are the least likely to actually produce any

448
00:27:49,759 --> 00:27:52,599
kind of popular movement. And that's for a very simple reason.

449
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Most people can't live this way. And you know a

450
00:27:56,240 --> 00:27:58,839
lot of people have made the joke that classical liberalism,

451
00:27:58,880 --> 00:28:03,400
and therefore libertarians, which is its spiritual descendant, it was

452
00:28:03,440 --> 00:28:05,799
made for one hundred and thirty iq Anglos. It works

453
00:28:05,839 --> 00:28:08,359
for a society of one hundred and thirty iq Anglos.

454
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To the point where my buddy Carl Benjamin has put

455
00:28:11,319 --> 00:28:14,880
it this way, classical liberalism is Sharia law for the English,

456
00:28:15,200 --> 00:28:17,640
which I think is a pretty good formulation for how

457
00:28:17,640 --> 00:28:20,559
to understand this. So we have in libertarianism is not

458
00:28:20,759 --> 00:28:26,039
a universal understanding of you know, human behavior, but a

459
00:28:26,119 --> 00:28:29,000
very specific understanding of how a very particular set of

460
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people and a specific culture can conduct itself. And this

461
00:28:33,039 --> 00:28:35,319
is the problem is so much of libertarianism is based

462
00:28:35,359 --> 00:28:37,960
on this idea that because you have understood economics at

463
00:28:37,960 --> 00:28:40,759
some level, well, I have Kinsian economics, and this is

464
00:28:40,799 --> 00:28:44,200
the magic bullet. It explains the world. It's just Marxism,

465
00:28:44,240 --> 00:28:48,680
it's just inverted Marxism. It's just materialism for you know,

466
00:28:48,799 --> 00:28:51,240
the guy who wants to make money and do drugs.

467
00:28:51,079 --> 00:28:54,759
It doesn't. It has this anthropology that says, well, people

468
00:28:54,839 --> 00:28:57,559
are driven by these material causes, and as long as

469
00:28:57,599 --> 00:29:00,720
you arrange the material underlying material cause this is correctly,

470
00:29:00,839 --> 00:29:03,599
this will produce the society that you're looking for. I've

471
00:29:03,640 --> 00:29:07,680
studied the economics, and that is the universal science that

472
00:29:07,680 --> 00:29:10,240
will allow me to understand all human beings. What we

473
00:29:10,279 --> 00:29:12,000
see is that's absolutely not the case. And if you

474
00:29:12,000 --> 00:29:15,960
don't tailor your understanding of your social organization to the

475
00:29:16,000 --> 00:29:19,319
people it's actually organizing, you lose. Which is why again

476
00:29:20,079 --> 00:29:22,240
people like Bertrand to Juvenil to the extent they are

477
00:29:22,279 --> 00:29:25,960
in any way libertarian or inside the libertarian tradition are correct,

478
00:29:26,319 --> 00:29:28,720
because they're the ones who are saying no, you have

479
00:29:28,799 --> 00:29:31,440
to actually look at the people you're governing. It matters

480
00:29:31,759 --> 00:29:33,720
what their folk ways are. It matters if you want

481
00:29:33,720 --> 00:29:36,240
to create liberty in the society, you must align it

482
00:29:36,759 --> 00:29:39,119
with the way of life of the people who are

483
00:29:39,119 --> 00:29:42,119
actually going to be subject to the rule of the state.

484
00:29:42,400 --> 00:29:45,440
You can't just go around saying, well, because I think

485
00:29:45,680 --> 00:29:48,559
in this abstract sense that everyone should be able to

486
00:29:48,720 --> 00:29:51,599
spontaneously order their life, I'm just going to impose that

487
00:29:51,839 --> 00:29:54,759
on the world because what we see reliably, and this

488
00:29:54,839 --> 00:29:58,279
is always the problem libertarianism is that while they advocate

489
00:29:58,359 --> 00:30:01,079
for a total removal of state and vault, the only

490
00:30:01,119 --> 00:30:04,319
places where they ever make gains are the leftist ones.

491
00:30:04,559 --> 00:30:08,240
Right Like, they help push open the door for gay marriage,

492
00:30:08,240 --> 00:30:11,240
they help push open the door for drug legalization, but

493
00:30:11,319 --> 00:30:14,359
they never push open the door for anything that's actually

494
00:30:14,359 --> 00:30:18,039
going to conserve society. They never happen to push away

495
00:30:18,480 --> 00:30:21,319
the welfare state. Oh, they never happened to push away

496
00:30:21,480 --> 00:30:24,079
public education. They never win any of these battles. The

497
00:30:24,079 --> 00:30:27,680
battles they win are almost exclusively ones that help degenerate

498
00:30:27,759 --> 00:30:30,960
society because they're pushing an open door in those situations.

499
00:30:31,359 --> 00:30:33,680
And so this is why we never end up creating

500
00:30:33,720 --> 00:30:36,279
the society they're looking for, because they never bother to

501
00:30:36,279 --> 00:30:38,000
look at the people they're actually trying to create the

502
00:30:38,079 --> 00:30:41,079
society for. They start with the ideology and then they

503
00:30:41,119 --> 00:30:43,039
just try to universally apply it to whatever people they

504
00:30:43,039 --> 00:30:45,640
happen to have any level of influencer control over.

505
00:30:47,200 --> 00:30:50,599
Speaker 1: Well, I'm glad you brought that up. The shared materialism

506
00:30:50,680 --> 00:30:55,559
between Marxism socialism, you know, the kind of softer version

507
00:30:55,559 --> 00:31:00,839
in libertarianism. From a certain perspective, they have the same peleology,

508
00:31:00,920 --> 00:31:03,759
the same sunum bonum, right, the kind of ultimate goal

509
00:31:04,119 --> 00:31:08,720
which is material abundance. Right. The difference between you know,

510
00:31:08,759 --> 00:31:13,279
gay space communism and then you know in Campistan and

511
00:31:13,359 --> 00:31:17,240
the Stars, it's really not that different. And when presented

512
00:31:17,480 --> 00:31:20,680
in that marketplace of ideas, you know, which is going

513
00:31:20,720 --> 00:31:24,599
to win out the the story of socialism, which we

514
00:31:24,680 --> 00:31:27,440
understand is not true, but the idea of you know,

515
00:31:27,480 --> 00:31:30,799
you will have these things taken care for you. You know

516
00:31:30,839 --> 00:31:32,559
you will not have to pay for this, you will

517
00:31:32,559 --> 00:31:35,400
not have to pay for that. And sure, hypothetically you

518
00:31:35,519 --> 00:31:40,559
might not be able to make seven figures, but most

519
00:31:40,599 --> 00:31:44,000
people can't do that. Most people don't want that. The

520
00:31:44,079 --> 00:31:47,359
social safety net sounds great, you know, that is a

521
00:31:47,359 --> 00:31:52,359
certain degree of freedom, right, freedom from worry. Now, let's

522
00:31:52,359 --> 00:31:55,319
look at the kind of story presented, you know, of

523
00:31:55,359 --> 00:31:58,279
the of the ancams. It's this idea that you know,

524
00:31:58,359 --> 00:32:01,759
I will be able to become guy earning seven figures

525
00:32:02,240 --> 00:32:06,079
by finding the best workers, you know, the best eight

526
00:32:06,160 --> 00:32:10,240
year olds to you know, man my meth plantation. It's like, well, okay, sure,

527
00:32:10,880 --> 00:32:14,200
but again, remember you were playing for people who are

528
00:32:14,440 --> 00:32:18,599
or let's be honest, more often view themselves as exceptional

529
00:32:19,279 --> 00:32:24,440
and desire that same material abundance, but only for that

530
00:32:25,279 --> 00:32:27,960
right they think that they will and it is you know,

531
00:32:28,000 --> 00:32:30,799
materialism plus a certain amount of social Darwinism is what

532
00:32:30,839 --> 00:32:33,559
you often see as well, the idea that simply we

533
00:32:33,640 --> 00:32:36,799
will create a society where it will all sort itself

534
00:32:36,799 --> 00:32:40,000
out right, the best will rise to the top. You know,

535
00:32:40,039 --> 00:32:43,759
they will be you know, drug lords and crypto scammers,

536
00:32:44,119 --> 00:32:46,440
and they will live in you know, this kind of

537
00:32:46,599 --> 00:32:52,039
again very truncated version of gay space communism, right, not

538
00:32:52,480 --> 00:32:57,039
particularly like they don't say to communism, but effectively unlimited abundance,

539
00:32:57,599 --> 00:33:02,759
right with full freedom of personal interaction, and one we

540
00:33:02,839 --> 00:33:05,680
have to ask is that a good end goal for society?

541
00:33:06,079 --> 00:33:08,519
That is a separate question. You and I would say no.

542
00:33:10,519 --> 00:33:13,559
But also we have to address the factor that it

543
00:33:13,599 --> 00:33:18,640
is much much easier to convince people of the original

544
00:33:18,680 --> 00:33:22,519
formula of materialism than it is. This what we would

545
00:33:22,559 --> 00:33:27,160
say kind of like Anglo innovation, right, And so to

546
00:33:27,200 --> 00:33:30,440
kind of carry through another part of this, when we're

547
00:33:30,440 --> 00:33:37,440
talking about the libertarian's horrible anthropology, and this is exactly

548
00:33:37,440 --> 00:33:40,200
why I wanted you on, right, is a very core point,

549
00:33:40,319 --> 00:33:43,920
which is the man who wants to rule always beats

550
00:33:44,039 --> 00:33:46,960
the guy who wants to be left alone. And when

551
00:33:46,960 --> 00:33:50,720
we're talking about power, this conception of power, that power

552
00:33:50,799 --> 00:33:54,079
must be avoided, that you must take the ring up

553
00:33:54,240 --> 00:33:56,559
the ring being power of course, up Mount Doom and

554
00:33:56,680 --> 00:34:00,720
destroy it so that you can be left alone, is

555
00:34:00,759 --> 00:34:04,920
shot through libertarian and conservative thought, right, This idea of

556
00:34:05,079 --> 00:34:09,360
I just want to be left alone. The problem is,

557
00:34:09,400 --> 00:34:11,840
of course, there are people who don't want to leave

558
00:34:11,880 --> 00:34:15,480
you alone, and they want that way harder. And you

559
00:34:15,559 --> 00:34:18,599
see this anytime there's you know, a riot in the offing,

560
00:34:18,920 --> 00:34:23,079
anytime there's one of these disruptive, irritating events, you get

561
00:34:23,119 --> 00:34:27,159
the argument of try that in a small town, right

562
00:34:27,239 --> 00:34:29,400
that you know, someone will show up and put a

563
00:34:29,400 --> 00:34:34,880
stop to it. And the problem is they don't. It

564
00:34:34,960 --> 00:34:38,800
is irrational for any one person without the States backing

565
00:34:39,039 --> 00:34:41,000
to do that. You know, even in the case of

566
00:34:41,039 --> 00:34:44,559
Kyle Rittenhouse, who you know, successfully avoided going to jail

567
00:34:44,599 --> 00:34:47,840
for the rest of his life. One that was a

568
00:34:47,840 --> 00:34:52,639
fairly miraculous situation on multiple levels, but two that was

569
00:34:52,679 --> 00:34:56,599
a near run thing. He almost got sent to, you know,

570
00:34:56,920 --> 00:34:59,760
stabbed with the screwdriver sorts of prisons, as we've seen

571
00:34:59,800 --> 00:35:03,400
with other enemies of that part of society that does

572
00:35:03,480 --> 00:35:06,480
want to rule your life, that does want to step

573
00:35:06,480 --> 00:35:09,480
on you. And so this conception that I will simply

574
00:35:10,360 --> 00:35:14,119
retreat certainly is very Anglo, right. You see that in

575
00:35:14,199 --> 00:35:17,800
lands Cracker Factory. It is sort of our tradition. But

576
00:35:17,880 --> 00:35:22,960
fundamentally it doesn't work. It doesn't let you have that

577
00:35:23,079 --> 00:35:25,079
society effectively.

578
00:35:25,440 --> 00:35:26,199
Speaker 2: In order to.

579
00:35:28,360 --> 00:35:30,800
Speaker 1: Establish that sort of unity between the ruler and the

580
00:35:30,880 --> 00:35:34,519
rule that creates liberty, well, you got to have a

581
00:35:34,519 --> 00:35:40,000
guy in power. Otherwise, as the you know, as the

582
00:35:40,000 --> 00:35:42,280
the sort of mocking you know, anti fook graffiti says

583
00:35:42,880 --> 00:35:45,159
they will step on you, right, with a picture of

584
00:35:45,199 --> 00:35:47,280
the you know, the jack boot on the on the snake.

585
00:35:48,039 --> 00:35:50,960
And I don't want to be rude about this, but

586
00:35:51,079 --> 00:35:53,719
history is on my side. We've seen this over and

587
00:35:53,800 --> 00:35:58,480
over and over again, and this tactical retreat does not

588
00:35:58,679 --> 00:36:01,840
produce any sort of long term results. The best you

589
00:36:01,840 --> 00:36:07,320
can hope for is approximate win. Right. I live in Massachusetts.

590
00:36:07,360 --> 00:36:09,920
I prefer to live in Idaho, fair enough, and you

591
00:36:09,920 --> 00:36:12,199
can do that. But if that's all you're doing, that's

592
00:36:12,199 --> 00:36:14,559
the only game you're playing of I just want to

593
00:36:14,639 --> 00:36:17,760
be left alone, you know. I only want power so

594
00:36:17,800 --> 00:36:22,719
that I can destroy power. At best, let's a loser mentality.

595
00:36:23,480 --> 00:36:29,320
And the whole time that that cope has been in vogue,

596
00:36:29,519 --> 00:36:33,519
let's just say what last twenty thirty forty years? Pick

597
00:36:33,559 --> 00:36:37,199
your number. The question is, well, has the country gotten

598
00:36:37,199 --> 00:36:40,760
more or less free? And by all but a few metrics,

599
00:36:41,000 --> 00:36:45,320
the country has gotten dramatically less free. Ar And I'll

600
00:36:45,400 --> 00:36:46,280
let you speak.

601
00:36:47,920 --> 00:36:53,079
Speaker 2: So as you point out, Nick Land has laid this

602
00:36:53,280 --> 00:36:59,159
idea that kind of the classical liberal and the Anglo

603
00:36:59,199 --> 00:37:03,920
Protestant tradition from which classical liberalism, you know, arose this

604
00:37:04,639 --> 00:37:07,880
response repeatedly whenever it's been pressured. Whenever it's come to

605
00:37:08,000 --> 00:37:11,639
blows over whether we should one side should rule the

606
00:37:11,679 --> 00:37:16,159
other and impose its will, the answer has been exit, right, flee,

607
00:37:16,280 --> 00:37:19,079
Flee from England to the United States. When you get

608
00:37:19,079 --> 00:37:22,960
to the United States and things in Massachusetts or New

609
00:37:23,039 --> 00:37:26,559
York become too constrict, a move to the Midwest. When

610
00:37:26,559 --> 00:37:29,000
they get too constricting there, head to the you know,

611
00:37:29,360 --> 00:37:31,920
further west, to the wild West. And we just kept

612
00:37:32,440 --> 00:37:36,239
escaping to frontier to frontier to frontier in order to

613
00:37:36,320 --> 00:37:39,559
kind of avoid this issue. You can see this so

614
00:37:39,679 --> 00:37:43,280
much in of course, the American founding, where once the

615
00:37:43,320 --> 00:37:47,599
issue slavery becomes central, you just see you know, different

616
00:37:47,599 --> 00:37:51,440
peoples going west and trying to kind of incorporate more

617
00:37:51,480 --> 00:37:54,599
and more of the states into their ideology, until eventually

618
00:37:54,920 --> 00:37:57,119
there's nowhere left to run and the states have to

619
00:37:57,159 --> 00:38:00,360
clash over this issue. Right, one side is going to

620
00:38:00,400 --> 00:38:03,079
dominate the other. One side is going to rule. And

621
00:38:03,239 --> 00:38:06,239
let's be really clear. The North decides to rule, it

622
00:38:06,320 --> 00:38:09,239
kills a lot of people, It crushes the governments, It

623
00:38:09,280 --> 00:38:14,079
imprisons the governments that of different states that avoid it.

624
00:38:14,079 --> 00:38:17,440
It throws the constitution in the trash. Lincoln decides that

625
00:38:17,599 --> 00:38:20,960
you don't need habeas corpus er in these other legal

626
00:38:21,000 --> 00:38:25,320
traditions that came from classical liberalism, because ultimately, the question

627
00:38:25,440 --> 00:38:27,639
is who's going to rule and who's going to dominate,

628
00:38:27,880 --> 00:38:30,440
and the answer is the North. And as much as

629
00:38:30,719 --> 00:38:33,480
you know, any good Southerner like you or me understands

630
00:38:33,480 --> 00:38:36,960
the War of Northern Aggression as a violation of constitutional principles,

631
00:38:37,519 --> 00:38:39,239
it doesn't matter. We're still under the rule of the

632
00:38:39,320 --> 00:38:43,519
Union at this point, right there is no conversation anymore

633
00:38:43,559 --> 00:38:47,079
about how we really have these rights in the Tenth Amendment.

634
00:38:47,119 --> 00:38:49,000
No one cares. The Tenth Amendment is sitting in the trash.

635
00:38:49,039 --> 00:38:51,559
It doesn't matter. And things like COVID and others just

636
00:38:51,599 --> 00:38:55,719
continue to reinforce this point, and so it quickly becomes clear.

637
00:38:55,840 --> 00:38:58,400
And this is one of my most hated tweets of

638
00:38:58,440 --> 00:39:01,840
all time. I've gotten this response to you know, I

639
00:39:02,519 --> 00:39:05,320
hate that. I think you're right about this, about this

640
00:39:05,360 --> 00:39:08,000
tweet more than anything else I've ever said, which is

641
00:39:08,280 --> 00:39:10,800
the side that wants to win always beats the side

642
00:39:10,800 --> 00:39:14,679
that wants to be left alone. Because as painful as

643
00:39:14,679 --> 00:39:17,840
it is in the American mind to admit that, it's

644
00:39:17,840 --> 00:39:23,039
so obviously true that it's simply undeniable. And once you

645
00:39:23,119 --> 00:39:28,079
recognize that truth, then you recognize that while at some

646
00:39:28,199 --> 00:39:31,119
point the idea that investing the government and let with

647
00:39:31,199 --> 00:39:34,880
less power was a noble understanding, it was something that

648
00:39:34,920 --> 00:39:40,480
was foundational to our way of being as Americans over time. Instead,

649
00:39:40,800 --> 00:39:43,480
what that schibbalith has become is a way to control

650
00:39:43,519 --> 00:39:47,360
conservative America. Oh well, you're the side that thinks we

651
00:39:47,360 --> 00:39:49,719
shouldn't have government power, right, Well, then it would be

652
00:39:50,840 --> 00:39:53,639
a violation of your own principles to take government power

653
00:39:53,719 --> 00:39:55,639
or to use government power. If you happen to win

654
00:39:55,679 --> 00:39:58,519
an election, at best, your job is to sit there

655
00:39:58,559 --> 00:40:01,679
and sit in place, or maybe you know, diffuse some

656
00:40:01,840 --> 00:40:04,599
level of government power for a little while. And then

657
00:40:04,679 --> 00:40:06,760
the other guys come into power and they do the

658
00:40:06,800 --> 00:40:08,840
thing that's in accordance with their principles, which is to

659
00:40:08,920 --> 00:40:11,239
rule you with an iron fist. And so if one

660
00:40:11,280 --> 00:40:13,639
side says power is good and I can do whatever

661
00:40:13,679 --> 00:40:15,440
I want with it, and I'm righteous for doing so,

662
00:40:15,880 --> 00:40:18,599
and one side says power is bad and if I

663
00:40:18,639 --> 00:40:20,800
attain it, then I'm a bad person. And if I attain

664
00:40:20,840 --> 00:40:23,920
it and use it, I'm basically hitler. Well, which side

665
00:40:23,960 --> 00:40:26,440
is going to win in a contest of power. The

666
00:40:26,480 --> 00:40:30,559
answer is glaringly obvious. And so what we're going through

667
00:40:30,599 --> 00:40:34,360
now is really just the painful forcing every single idiot

668
00:40:34,480 --> 00:40:38,039
who has bought into this to ultimately admit that this

669
00:40:38,119 --> 00:40:40,760
is true, right, And this is the difficulty. This is

670
00:40:40,800 --> 00:40:43,320
why I'm so hard on libertarians. You know a lot

671
00:40:43,320 --> 00:40:45,719
of people, you know, Oh, you give libertarians so much heat,

672
00:40:45,960 --> 00:40:49,000
you must hate them. No, I love libertarians. The problem

673
00:40:49,039 --> 00:40:52,360
is that libertarians are so close to understanding the truth,

674
00:40:52,599 --> 00:40:55,199
but they can't get over the last hurdle. They are

675
00:40:55,719 --> 00:40:58,280
not They have not made that post libertarian switch, that

676
00:40:59,079 --> 00:41:02,960
NRX switch, of understanding that the very society they want

677
00:41:03,000 --> 00:41:08,079
to achieve could only be achieved through the acquisition and

678
00:41:08,199 --> 00:41:13,119
exercise of power. It is only through absolute authority that

679
00:41:13,159 --> 00:41:15,800
they can create the level of liberty they are attempting

680
00:41:16,360 --> 00:41:19,679
to achieve. And that's really the barrier that we have

681
00:41:19,760 --> 00:41:22,480
to understand. If you are not looking to rule, if

682
00:41:22,519 --> 00:41:26,880
you're not looking to impose even a libertarian order on others,

683
00:41:27,440 --> 00:41:29,440
they will impose their way of life on you. And

684
00:41:29,480 --> 00:41:33,360
there's simply never some kind of detente in which you

685
00:41:33,800 --> 00:41:35,679
live the way you want and they live the way

686
00:41:35,719 --> 00:41:36,079
they want.

687
00:41:36,239 --> 00:41:36,280
Speaker 1: No.

688
00:41:37,079 --> 00:41:39,880
Speaker 2: If you are forming a society without a state, and

689
00:41:39,920 --> 00:41:42,719
they are forming a society with centralized state authority, then

690
00:41:42,760 --> 00:41:45,559
one day the state with centralized authority will come knocking

691
00:41:45,760 --> 00:41:48,920
on your disorganized state and they will win. And we

692
00:41:48,960 --> 00:41:50,800
see it over and over and over again.

693
00:41:52,159 --> 00:41:55,639
Speaker 1: Will you see that in the history of the American right.

694
00:41:56,519 --> 00:41:58,360
Many have said, and there's a great deal of truth

695
00:41:58,400 --> 00:42:02,000
to this, that America does really have a right wing

696
00:42:02,239 --> 00:42:07,559
tradition in the same way as other countries. The contention is, effectively,

697
00:42:07,599 --> 00:42:11,280
America is a contest between two different types of progressives.

698
00:42:12,119 --> 00:42:15,679
Now not necessarily looking to litigate that at this moment,

699
00:42:15,880 --> 00:42:18,920
but if we look at the origin of what we

700
00:42:19,039 --> 00:42:23,159
consider to be the Republican Party functionally, we have to

701
00:42:23,199 --> 00:42:26,639
go back to FDR. Right, that's where this and let's

702
00:42:26,639 --> 00:42:29,599
be honest, also, the Libertarians sort of get their start

703
00:42:30,480 --> 00:42:33,719
because you have a pre existing order, right, and at

704
00:42:33,760 --> 00:42:36,679
least one large portion of this was very pro what

705
00:42:36,880 --> 00:42:41,000
we consider a big business in high finance. And when

706
00:42:41,079 --> 00:42:45,440
FDR comes in rules like an American season, starts changing things,

707
00:42:45,800 --> 00:42:51,119
you know, violating the previous understanding of the constitution, Well,

708
00:42:51,559 --> 00:42:56,079
this force builds up in opposition and They're referred to,

709
00:42:57,159 --> 00:42:59,280
depending on who you ask, as sort of the old right,

710
00:42:59,719 --> 00:43:03,079
you know, pre uh, you know, pre FDR, kind of

711
00:43:03,119 --> 00:43:07,800
that desire, and so you see people like you know,

712
00:43:07,840 --> 00:43:10,559
Garrett Garrett who sort of defected from one side to another.

713
00:43:10,920 --> 00:43:15,199
But these are seminal figures. They influenced, you know, Goldwater,

714
00:43:15,320 --> 00:43:20,719
They influenced the kind of nation American right, and so

715
00:43:21,400 --> 00:43:25,199
I think it is relevant to say, well, what did

716
00:43:25,199 --> 00:43:28,920
they do? How successful were they? I have a great

717
00:43:28,960 --> 00:43:30,960
deal of affection for these men. I think they were right.

718
00:43:31,079 --> 00:43:32,960
You know, FDR was not a good guy, and he

719
00:43:33,039 --> 00:43:36,639
didn't do good things to the country, but we're still

720
00:43:36,719 --> 00:43:40,159
living in the house that FDR built. Obviously there's a

721
00:43:40,239 --> 00:43:42,480
dramatic change in the sixties with you know, how we

722
00:43:42,559 --> 00:43:46,840
understood the purpose of this nation. But fundamentally our government

723
00:43:46,880 --> 00:43:51,159
looks much much, much more like FDR's version than the

724
00:43:51,199 --> 00:43:56,559
government ten years before he ever showed up. Fundamentally, that

725
00:43:56,559 --> 00:44:00,239
that process that or sorry that that protest you could

726
00:44:00,239 --> 00:44:05,400
say against FDR, this American dictator, well it failed because

727
00:44:05,440 --> 00:44:06,360
he was in charge.

728
00:44:06,639 --> 00:44:07,559
Speaker 2: He had power.

729
00:44:08,159 --> 00:44:12,880
Speaker 1: He could successfully remake the ground on which we play politics.

730
00:44:13,400 --> 00:44:17,840
And sure, those guys who wanted to go back to

731
00:44:17,880 --> 00:44:20,440
a previous version where the state was small, where many

732
00:44:20,519 --> 00:44:25,480
things were not regulated. They were right, that would be better.

733
00:44:26,440 --> 00:44:28,599
I think the country was better before him on any

734
00:44:28,679 --> 00:44:32,440
number of metrics. But fundamentally, if you don't have power,

735
00:44:32,599 --> 00:44:39,039
it doesn't matter because power lets you not only make changes,

736
00:44:39,559 --> 00:44:44,559
but define to crib aligned from Tom Woods right, the

737
00:44:44,559 --> 00:44:47,880
three x five card of allowable opinions, you have set

738
00:44:48,280 --> 00:44:54,079
what is acceptable for generations. And so fundamentally, if you

739
00:44:54,159 --> 00:44:59,559
are unwilling to assume power, you are relegating yourself to

740
00:44:59,559 --> 00:45:06,000
a statu of eternal loser. You were also letting your enemy, unopposed,

741
00:45:06,480 --> 00:45:09,880
remake the fabric of society. And this matter is quite

742
00:45:09,920 --> 00:45:13,679
a bit going back to earlier in our conversation, because

743
00:45:13,719 --> 00:45:18,639
remember what determines liberty, what determines tyranny is that relationship

744
00:45:18,719 --> 00:45:21,920
between the ruler and the world. Are they aligned? And

745
00:45:22,599 --> 00:45:26,800
if you, like FDR was able to do successfully socially

746
00:45:26,800 --> 00:45:29,480
engineer your society, right, you put in all of these

747
00:45:29,519 --> 00:45:33,800
programs that have now become entitlements. Social security is a

748
00:45:33,800 --> 00:45:38,039
great example for generations. That is simply part of what

749
00:45:38,079 --> 00:45:40,559
it means to be in America. You reach sixty two

750
00:45:40,599 --> 00:45:45,719
and you collect social security, well, for any number of reasons.

751
00:45:46,000 --> 00:45:50,039
If that, if you have decided that needs to go away, well,

752
00:45:50,079 --> 00:45:53,679
all of a sudden, the vast majority of people, you

753
00:45:53,760 --> 00:45:57,599
are a tyrant. You're taking away grandma's retirement, You're taking

754
00:45:57,599 --> 00:46:01,519
away her ability to support herself. And is that true

755
00:46:01,559 --> 00:46:05,599
in an absolute sense, right, comparing tyranny to Genghis Khan. No,

756
00:46:06,079 --> 00:46:11,559
of course not. But functionally, by failing the contest, by

757
00:46:11,599 --> 00:46:15,320
being driven out of power, you have allowed your enemy

758
00:46:15,599 --> 00:46:19,079
a massive hand up for the next iteration of the game. Right,

759
00:46:19,199 --> 00:46:22,239
going forward, you are not simply stuck at a fifty

760
00:46:22,239 --> 00:46:24,840
to fifty anymore. If this is tug of war, you're

761
00:46:24,880 --> 00:46:28,360
on your tiptoes on the line. And so the idea

762
00:46:28,360 --> 00:46:32,880
that you can simply continue to give up, continue not

763
00:46:32,960 --> 00:46:35,480
to fight, and then well, at some point in the

764
00:46:35,480 --> 00:46:39,159
future things will get bad enough clearly not. That's not

765
00:46:39,360 --> 00:46:42,920
how it works. And so this this assumption about politics,

766
00:46:43,079 --> 00:46:47,480
you know, this assumption about power, is deeply, deeply buried

767
00:46:47,559 --> 00:46:50,639
in both and I'm using these terms semi interchangeably because

768
00:46:51,159 --> 00:46:54,519
on this issue at least they are aligned Libertarians and conservatives.

769
00:46:54,760 --> 00:46:57,400
They need to get rid of this because this is

770
00:46:57,440 --> 00:47:00,920
why you always lose and as Arun said earlier, this

771
00:47:01,000 --> 00:47:04,440
criticism is not coming from a place of personal hatred,

772
00:47:05,440 --> 00:47:08,280
far from it. These are my people, this is who

773
00:47:08,320 --> 00:47:11,920
I grew up around. But if I want those people

774
00:47:12,000 --> 00:47:16,760
to have a certain degree of liberty, right to escape

775
00:47:17,119 --> 00:47:22,719
or to sort of throw off this tyranny, well someone

776
00:47:22,760 --> 00:47:25,760
needs to have power and someone who shares those values.

777
00:47:25,920 --> 00:47:29,039
That is the only way out of this, because otherwise

778
00:47:29,320 --> 00:47:32,639
it will be someone else making that decision. But no

779
00:47:32,639 --> 00:47:36,400
matter what, no matter the situation, a decision is being made.

780
00:47:36,880 --> 00:47:40,840
It is not simply left up to kind of trends

781
00:47:40,840 --> 00:47:46,239
and forces the market whatever. That means. Power and politics

782
00:47:46,320 --> 00:47:49,280
are a function of human organization. There's no way to

783
00:47:49,320 --> 00:47:52,039
get around that, no matter how ichy or gross you

784
00:47:52,039 --> 00:47:56,920
think that is. And if you're not in power, someone

785
00:47:56,960 --> 00:48:00,639
else will and they will impose their there's set of

786
00:48:00,679 --> 00:48:05,880
values on you. There's no way around that. One more thing,

787
00:48:06,199 --> 00:48:10,039
I think, and we've been dancing around this partially due

788
00:48:10,039 --> 00:48:12,440
to the fact that I, as you've probably noticed, arn Am,

789
00:48:12,440 --> 00:48:17,679
not the most organized podcaster, is the sort of floating

790
00:48:17,719 --> 00:48:23,119
target of what is or what constitutes a libertarian society.

791
00:48:23,679 --> 00:48:28,360
Because these guys will very accurately make fun of socialists

792
00:48:28,360 --> 00:48:32,199
and Marxists, they will say, hahaha, real communism has never

793
00:48:32,239 --> 00:48:39,679
been tried. But of course the next question is, well, like,

794
00:48:39,920 --> 00:48:44,199
where is your ideology been tried? Right, where do we

795
00:48:44,320 --> 00:48:50,519
find a version of your society working out? And so arn,

796
00:48:51,320 --> 00:48:55,840
I'm curious to get your thoughts on and Kapistan has

797
00:48:55,880 --> 00:48:59,199
never been tried. Sort of argumentation that tends to happen

798
00:48:59,199 --> 00:49:01,440
when you actually try to, you know, dig down on

799
00:49:01,480 --> 00:49:02,039
this issue.

800
00:49:03,519 --> 00:49:06,239
Speaker 2: Well, I think that often they'll cite something like the

801
00:49:06,320 --> 00:49:08,960
United States, as you know, early in the United States

802
00:49:09,039 --> 00:49:11,400
is an example. But as you've already pointed out, that

803
00:49:11,519 --> 00:49:15,400
version of libertarian society came with, you know, anti blasphemy laws,

804
00:49:15,480 --> 00:49:18,239
and you if you brought up game erriage, they'd probably

805
00:49:18,280 --> 00:49:21,079
execute you as a heretic. And you know, these these

806
00:49:21,079 --> 00:49:24,559
are not things that modern libertarianism can even really broach.

807
00:49:24,639 --> 00:49:28,480
Which is one of the main problems with libertarian as such.

808
00:49:29,280 --> 00:49:31,000
One of the issues that we could run up almost

809
00:49:31,079 --> 00:49:34,679
immediately with anytime you have a conversation with libertarian is

810
00:49:34,719 --> 00:49:36,400
the minute you point out a flaw, they say, well,

811
00:49:36,440 --> 00:49:39,400
that's not real Libertarians, by which they mean there are

812
00:49:39,440 --> 00:49:42,800
at least nineteen different splinter groups of libertarianism, and you

813
00:49:42,880 --> 00:49:46,000
happen to have not identified the exact boutique brew of

814
00:49:46,079 --> 00:49:48,960
libertarianism that I have my head, and so therefore any

815
00:49:49,000 --> 00:49:51,320
objection you have, we'll run up against one of the

816
00:49:51,400 --> 00:49:54,679
thirteen niche little things that I believe, and therefore cannot

817
00:49:54,679 --> 00:49:58,360
be accurate. And to be fair, any you know, movement

818
00:49:58,440 --> 00:50:00,960
has its splinters. Obviously, if we think of ourselves as

819
00:50:01,000 --> 00:50:04,559
conservatives or right wingers, we would also be looping in

820
00:50:04,639 --> 00:50:07,119
with a lumped in with guys like Lindsey Graham or

821
00:50:07,119 --> 00:50:11,119
something with which we disagree quite quite fervently. So I'm

822
00:50:11,159 --> 00:50:13,519
sympathetic to that. But it is a real issue, and

823
00:50:13,519 --> 00:50:16,920
that whenever you have a discussion with libertarian the question is,

824
00:50:17,559 --> 00:50:19,599
you know, the first thing you should ask is which

825
00:50:19,719 --> 00:50:23,199
libertarian are you? Because there's at least twenty different varieties

826
00:50:23,199 --> 00:50:24,480
I can think of off the top of my head,

827
00:50:24,800 --> 00:50:26,360
and they don't agree with each other on a lot

828
00:50:26,400 --> 00:50:28,519
of things. Some of them are open borders, some of

829
00:50:28,559 --> 00:50:32,320
them are pro pedophilia or child trafficking. Some of them

830
00:50:32,360 --> 00:50:36,360
think that you can have like really strict contracts that

831
00:50:36,440 --> 00:50:40,239
allow you to you know, segregate society inside libertarian society.

832
00:50:40,639 --> 00:50:43,159
The differences are vast to the point where they basically

833
00:50:43,239 --> 00:50:46,920
share nothing. And so saying the word libertarian society is

834
00:50:47,280 --> 00:50:50,760
you know, it's nothing. It means nothing. It has no content.

835
00:50:51,599 --> 00:50:56,119
And so if Greg Guttfeld and Bill Maher can both

836
00:50:56,159 --> 00:50:59,159
call themselves libertarians, what does the word even mean? Right

837
00:50:59,239 --> 00:51:02,239
like that? That's a huge issue. So the first problem

838
00:51:02,280 --> 00:51:03,760
is you can't even nail them down on what a

839
00:51:03,800 --> 00:51:08,199
libertarian society would be. But then if you look on like, okay,

840
00:51:08,199 --> 00:51:13,280
what versions of like hyper capitalistic libertarian societies are successful? Well,

841
00:51:13,320 --> 00:51:15,760
you got to look at a place like Singapore, right, Well,

842
00:51:15,760 --> 00:51:19,079
what Singapore got going for it? Is it free? Well,

843
00:51:19,159 --> 00:51:22,920
in many instances, yes, is orderly. Oh yes, very orderly.

844
00:51:23,440 --> 00:51:26,519
But they'll lasso cane you in the streets for spitting gum.

845
00:51:26,800 --> 00:51:30,239
You know, they'll they'll they'll execute you for smuggling marijuana

846
00:51:30,280 --> 00:51:35,039
into their society. So it's the inverse of libertarian in

847
00:51:35,360 --> 00:51:38,239
certain areas, which is what allows it to be successfully

848
00:51:38,320 --> 00:51:41,800
libertarian in every other area. The only reason that Singapore

849
00:51:41,880 --> 00:51:46,920
can be a multi ethnic, multi religious, capitalistic paradise is

850
00:51:46,960 --> 00:51:48,760
because it's willing to beat you to death if you

851
00:51:48,800 --> 00:51:51,639
don't follow the rules. And so this is what you

852
00:51:51,679 --> 00:51:55,119
know libertarianism requires in the real world. Again, this is

853
00:51:55,159 --> 00:52:00,039
the NRX understanding of libertarianism, authoritarianism on the outside to

854
00:52:00,039 --> 00:52:04,159
allow for libertarianism on the inside. But there's another problem

855
00:52:04,199 --> 00:52:07,920
that libertarians never really want to face, which is scale, which,

856
00:52:07,920 --> 00:52:09,800
to be fair, is a problem that no one wants

857
00:52:09,840 --> 00:52:12,039
to face, which is why it's my number one hobby horse.

858
00:52:12,400 --> 00:52:14,880
When you don't think about how scale impacts your society,

859
00:52:15,159 --> 00:52:18,679
you don't take into account critical aspects of your social organization.

860
00:52:19,320 --> 00:52:22,599
So for a while there, you know, we had a

861
00:52:22,719 --> 00:52:27,320
situation where governments were so disjointed that a single person acting,

862
00:52:27,519 --> 00:52:30,719
you know, with a enough initiative, could create large amounts

863
00:52:30,719 --> 00:52:33,639
of wealth and a large prosperity for themselves and the

864
00:52:33,679 --> 00:52:37,079
people around them. But as societies have scaled up, we've

865
00:52:37,079 --> 00:52:40,159
seen that the ability to do that shrinks, and it

866
00:52:40,239 --> 00:52:43,000
doesn't get solved just because your society is libertarian and

867
00:52:43,079 --> 00:52:46,840
another isn't. A good example would be medieval Europe. Many

868
00:52:46,880 --> 00:52:51,000
people call this medieval anarchy, which might sound crazy to people,

869
00:52:51,199 --> 00:52:53,719
but if you talk to actual libertarian scholars, many of

870
00:52:53,719 --> 00:52:56,880
them will tell you that actually, the you know, feudal

871
00:52:57,119 --> 00:53:01,719
Europe was more libertarian then modern societies because there was

872
00:53:02,119 --> 00:53:06,079
no central government, not because they didn't desire a central government,

873
00:53:06,480 --> 00:53:09,199
not because they were ideologically opposed to central government, but

874
00:53:09,280 --> 00:53:12,519
because after the devastation of the Roman Empire, there was

875
00:53:12,519 --> 00:53:15,440
simply no force that could unify the different areas of

876
00:53:15,480 --> 00:53:18,599
Europe underwent authority, and so we developed a system where

877
00:53:19,400 --> 00:53:24,800
feudal lords, barons and counts and these other dukes would

878
00:53:24,880 --> 00:53:29,599
ultimately secure an area for themselves through violence, and then

879
00:53:29,639 --> 00:53:33,079
eventually you would have a higher warlord, a king, and

880
00:53:33,119 --> 00:53:36,440
he would kind of unify those barons under him. But

881
00:53:36,679 --> 00:53:38,800
still there was a high degree of autonomy in any

882
00:53:38,800 --> 00:53:40,960
given region because there was simply no way for the

883
00:53:41,000 --> 00:53:46,880
king to ultimately impress compel behavior from his different barons.

884
00:53:47,039 --> 00:53:48,679
Most of the time, it was more of the king

885
00:53:48,719 --> 00:53:52,280
as a first among equals, trying to convince his different

886
00:53:52,320 --> 00:53:55,960
nobles to give their banners to his cause, rather than

887
00:53:56,039 --> 00:53:59,840
some almighty emperor who was weighing down on the four

888
00:54:00,360 --> 00:54:04,280
of any given piece of his society. And it wasn't

889
00:54:04,400 --> 00:54:07,599
until we started to see the modernization and increase of

890
00:54:07,719 --> 00:54:09,960
scale that we started to see what we think of

891
00:54:10,079 --> 00:54:15,679
now as absolutism. And again, while absolutism is distinctly something

892
00:54:15,800 --> 00:54:19,679
that is monarchical. People like bertrand Jujuvenile I think credibly

893
00:54:19,760 --> 00:54:23,760
point to its development as actually an inevitable step towards

894
00:54:23,840 --> 00:54:26,800
modernity in which the state would unify under what we

895
00:54:26,840 --> 00:54:29,400
think of now as liberal democracy. But it couldn't have

896
00:54:29,440 --> 00:54:32,519
happened until you had kings powerful enough to centralize their

897
00:54:32,559 --> 00:54:36,159
power inside their entire kingdom to the point where that

898
00:54:36,199 --> 00:54:40,360
medieval anarchy fell away. So you had moments where in

899
00:54:40,400 --> 00:54:45,599
that anarchic structure, a quasi libertarian existence was reasonable. But

900
00:54:45,760 --> 00:54:50,480
once you saw the absolutism start to solidify in these

901
00:54:50,519 --> 00:54:53,719
European nations, less and less it became clear, or more

902
00:54:53,719 --> 00:54:57,159
and more it became clear that this libertarian existence was

903
00:54:57,239 --> 00:55:00,840
no longer viable with these larger states. This is Alul's

904
00:55:00,920 --> 00:55:05,320
famous tank problem. Once you have the leveon mass, everybody

905
00:55:05,320 --> 00:55:07,920
has to have the leveon mass. Once you have control

906
00:55:08,000 --> 00:55:11,000
of propaganda in your state, everyone needs to have control

907
00:55:11,039 --> 00:55:12,599
of propaganda in your state. And this is the great

908
00:55:12,599 --> 00:55:16,840
revolution in managerial styles. This is what James Burnham was

909
00:55:16,920 --> 00:55:20,719
pointing to that yes, you have technically fascism and liberal

910
00:55:20,760 --> 00:55:24,320
democracy and communism, but FDR and Stalin and Hitler, We're

911
00:55:24,360 --> 00:55:26,400
all trying to do the same thing. They're all trying

912
00:55:26,440 --> 00:55:29,480
to bring mass production and mass consumption and the mass

913
00:55:29,519 --> 00:55:33,159
understanding of politics under centralized control. They simply gave different

914
00:55:33,159 --> 00:55:38,039
political formulas for the same outcome. And so whether libertarianism

915
00:55:38,159 --> 00:55:40,440
or not as achievable, it's not something that any given

916
00:55:41,039 --> 00:55:43,960
area or group of people gets to decide, because you're

917
00:55:44,000 --> 00:55:46,199
not the only actors. It's nice if you have a

918
00:55:46,280 --> 00:55:49,760
nice libertarian society. But if China decides that they're collective,

919
00:55:50,280 --> 00:55:57,000
quasi communists, fascistic, neo you know, capitalistic empire, whatever we're

920
00:55:57,000 --> 00:55:58,840
calling it. If they decide that they're going to roll

921
00:55:58,880 --> 00:56:01,079
you over, well, what are you going to do? Do

922
00:56:01,159 --> 00:56:04,960
you have the production to outrun a billion plus people?

923
00:56:05,400 --> 00:56:08,039
Do you have the military might to stop an empire

924
00:56:08,079 --> 00:56:11,840
of that size? Is your libertarian advantage through three free

925
00:56:11,840 --> 00:56:14,639
market economics and the ability of people to choose what

926
00:56:14,639 --> 00:56:16,800
they want? Is that going to stop China from rolling

927
00:56:16,800 --> 00:56:20,119
you up like a carpet? Probably not, And so it

928
00:56:20,159 --> 00:56:23,400
doesn't matter ultimately if you want to be a libertarian society.

929
00:56:23,440 --> 00:56:26,119
If your neighbor has collectivized to the point where they

930
00:56:26,119 --> 00:56:29,280
can crush your libertarian society, just like we saw in

931
00:56:29,639 --> 00:56:33,039
feudal Europe. Well, then it doesn't matter what you want

932
00:56:33,079 --> 00:56:35,920
as an individual, baron or count. And that's again something

933
00:56:35,920 --> 00:56:38,840
that libertarians never factor in when they're thinking about their

934
00:56:38,920 --> 00:56:39,840
ultimate society.

935
00:56:41,800 --> 00:56:45,400
Speaker 1: And the problem of scale, I mean, really is that

936
00:56:45,599 --> 00:56:49,039
is the rub that's what makes conversations about modern politics

937
00:56:49,079 --> 00:56:53,599
so difficult. And one of the things that I have

938
00:56:54,000 --> 00:56:56,840
and many others have noted is the fact that you're

939
00:56:56,880 --> 00:57:01,599
seeing within America sort of a great re organization where

940
00:57:01,679 --> 00:57:06,199
people are moving from you know, Republican voters from blue

941
00:57:06,199 --> 00:57:09,800
states are moving to red states and sort of vice versa. Right,

942
00:57:09,840 --> 00:57:13,960
we see people polarizing, and at least a large part

943
00:57:13,960 --> 00:57:16,320
of that, and I don't want to, you know, overemphasize

944
00:57:16,320 --> 00:57:21,679
that trend is the fact that it's almost impossible to

945
00:57:21,760 --> 00:57:24,639
get what you want on you know, a specific issue

946
00:57:24,639 --> 00:57:29,119
by issue basis from national politics, right, like even issues

947
00:57:29,199 --> 00:57:32,440
like you know, gun control. Right, yes, sure, you know,

948
00:57:33,039 --> 00:57:35,840
the Democrats, you know, whine and moan about that, but

949
00:57:35,920 --> 00:57:39,679
the probability of federal level gun control is relatively small, right,

950
00:57:39,719 --> 00:57:41,920
it seems to be sort of a dead issue, whereas

951
00:57:41,960 --> 00:57:45,280
in blue states or recently blue states, well, you can

952
00:57:45,320 --> 00:57:49,079
have you know, Britain levels right if you want, and

953
00:57:49,119 --> 00:57:52,239
so seemingly if you are passionate about that issue or

954
00:57:52,400 --> 00:57:56,280
any others, the solution is we'll move to a smaller place,

955
00:57:56,519 --> 00:57:59,599
move to a place where you can create a consensus

956
00:57:59,599 --> 00:58:03,840
around it. Right. But steering this whole ship of you know,

957
00:58:04,000 --> 00:58:07,800
four hundred million people is incredibly difficult to do. Now,

958
00:58:07,800 --> 00:58:10,280
that doesn't mean it can't happen, right, clearly, you know

959
00:58:10,280 --> 00:58:12,719
we have federal level laws at any given moment that

960
00:58:12,760 --> 00:58:18,159
are making life difficult. Not my point, but the problem

961
00:58:18,159 --> 00:58:22,199
of how to make this massive scrotic machine do anything

962
00:58:22,880 --> 00:58:26,920
is yeah, Look, it's felt by everyone, right, We understand

963
00:58:26,960 --> 00:58:29,559
that it's very difficult to actually get this ship to

964
00:58:29,679 --> 00:58:32,840
move one side or the other. Well maybe more one

965
00:58:32,880 --> 00:58:34,480
side than the other. But that's a discussion for a

966
00:58:34,480 --> 00:58:38,119
different day. So Arn, thank you so much for coming on.

967
00:58:38,159 --> 00:58:41,239
This was a very fascinating discussion. I enjoyed it greatly.

968
00:58:42,320 --> 00:58:44,480
People are interested in you. We've mentioned you have a

969
00:58:44,480 --> 00:58:47,079
book now coming out in a second edition, but where

970
00:58:47,079 --> 00:58:48,079
else can people find you?

971
00:58:49,199 --> 00:58:51,599
Speaker 2: Well? Thanks always a pleasure to be with you, Jay,

972
00:58:51,639 --> 00:58:54,280
And of course people can catch Jay Burden regularly on

973
00:58:54,320 --> 00:58:57,159
my show on the Blaze. You can go to Blaze TV.

974
00:58:57,320 --> 00:59:00,719
You can head to YouTube, Rumble, Odyssey. Of course I'm

975
00:59:00,760 --> 00:59:05,119
on places like Spotify, any podcast network, Apple, all those things.

976
00:59:05,159 --> 00:59:06,159
You can always find me there.

977
00:59:07,519 --> 00:59:09,840
Speaker 1: Well great, those will all be linked in the description

978
00:59:10,000 --> 00:59:13,920
as far as my stuff. The Jay Burton Show available Apple, Spotify, YouTube,

979
00:59:13,960 --> 00:59:16,920
anywhere you want to listen to podcasts what I do now.

980
00:59:17,079 --> 00:59:19,119
If you want to support me and avoid all those

981
00:59:19,159 --> 00:59:21,960
irritating ads, you can head over to Patreon, Substack or

982
00:59:22,000 --> 00:59:26,400
gum Road get the episodes early and ad free again. Aaron,

983
00:59:26,519 --> 00:59:29,159
it was a pleasure. Never went home. Keep your head up.

984
00:59:29,320 --> 01:00:00,760
I can't last forever. Good Night six