Speaker 1: Meaning a live man like this man letting butterfly flapping
Speaker 1: his wing.
Speaker 2: Dig down in the forest. Man, it gonna cause the
Speaker 2: tree fall, letting five thousand miles away. Man, nobody seen nobody.
Speaker 1: You don't need to know many story and.
Speaker 2: You got directed like that. That's way man. Don't blackly
Speaker 2: dang on the panel. Mann.
Speaker 1: All right, aren, welcome back to the Jay Burden Show.
Speaker 1: How you doing that?
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm excited to have you back on now. I
Speaker 1: just want to say before we get into it. Uh,
Speaker 1: we are recording this on the afternoon where I think
Speaker 1: everyone learned exactly what Christy Nome's husband gets up to
Speaker 1: in his free time. That's really funny. I don't know
Speaker 1: if there's a whole lot of commentary deep political philosophy
Speaker 1: to it, but it is amusing. It's an info hazard.
Speaker 1: Search at your own risk, but it is kind of funny.
Speaker 1: In all seriousness. Arn, we are here to talk about libertarians.
Speaker 1: As I said before we went live, I think that
Speaker 1: many libertarians have been taking a victory lap after the
Speaker 1: war in Iran. Oh, we told you so. You should
Speaker 1: never have tried to get involved in politics. You should
Speaker 1: never have casted a vote, cast a vote, because this
Speaker 1: is what happens, right, you should simply be like and
Speaker 1: then the kind of you know, vague prescriptions of whichever
Speaker 1: chapter of libertarian you're speaking to come up so or
Speaker 1: before we launch into it. I'm just curious. Did you
Speaker 1: go through the sort of infamous libertarian stage, and I
Speaker 1: guess if you could, what has been your should we say,
Speaker 1: relationship to that school of thought?
Speaker 2: Well? I never went through the I need to read
Speaker 2: you know, a bunch of meases and hayek and know,
Speaker 2: swear off the state and cap phase of politics. I think,
Speaker 2: like a lot of conservatives, especially in you know, the
Speaker 2: the two thousands, I was sold this idea that perhaps
Speaker 2: the future of conservatism was somewhat libertarian. That obviously we
Speaker 2: had lost on the issues like gay marriage and abortion
Speaker 2: and other you know, kind of the culture war as
Speaker 2: it would eventually be called, and so what we really
Speaker 2: needed to do was focus on economics and free trade
Speaker 2: and these things, and ultimately that's what would make the
Speaker 2: right work. We had guys like Neil Bort's and Herman
Speaker 2: Kin who were libertarian adjacent and would talk about, you know,
Speaker 2: getting rid of the income tax and these kind of things.
Speaker 2: And that was the winning agenda for the right. I
Speaker 2: bought into some of that for a while. It quickly
Speaker 2: became clear to me that wasn't the case. Now every
Speaker 2: time I say this, a bunch of libertarians run around
Speaker 2: screaming their heads off. Oh, that's not libertarian, that's not
Speaker 2: real libertarian. The GOP never a libertarian. There's no trend
Speaker 2: towards libertarian in the GOP. But like obviously, this was
Speaker 2: relatively a large switch from the religious right, and it's
Speaker 2: understanding that we had and perhaps the eighties or earlier nineties,
Speaker 2: and so I think it is fair to say that,
Speaker 2: however imperfect and in not illogically pure, the kind of
Speaker 2: drift to libertarianism was in the Republican Party. It was
Speaker 2: a real phenomenon. It did really exist. We were told this,
Speaker 2: if we're not adopting libertarianism as such, at least our
Speaker 2: messaging on social issues should be more libertarian. And that
Speaker 2: was what was gonna, you know, take us into the future.
Speaker 2: As long as your gay neighbors can have gun rights
Speaker 2: and you know, ultimately push for free trade, that's what
Speaker 2: was going to make right wing politics work. I think
Speaker 2: we've seen pretty much the collapse of that understanding, I
Speaker 2: think we've seen a resurgence in the idea that perhaps
Speaker 2: right wing governments can be interested in the good of
Speaker 2: their people, and that the culture war isn't it actually
Speaker 2: a winning issue as opposed to a losing issue. Again,
Speaker 2: I'm sure many libertarians will, you know, kick back at
Speaker 2: the idea that this is the structure of kind of
Speaker 2: where the party was going, But it's very clear that
Speaker 2: it is swerved back the other way. In some places,
Speaker 2: you know, to to I think you know, our profit,
Speaker 2: in other places, to our detriment. I think you might
Speaker 2: be muted on that one.
Speaker 1: This is a professional podcast, ladies and gentlemen, But I
Speaker 1: think I have a very similar sort of relationship with
Speaker 1: the philosophy because at a certain time where it seemed
Speaker 1: as if the right in America had well and truly
Speaker 1: been routed during the Obama Reich, there was sort of
Speaker 1: this question of, well, what do we do now? And
Speaker 1: I think that for a brief period of time, if
Speaker 1: you were a right winger constitutionally right, that's what you
Speaker 1: felt deep in your bones, The relatively safe place you
Speaker 1: could stand was well, I'm a libertarian. I believe in
Speaker 1: freedom of choice, and so I believe in the freedom
Speaker 1: for you to you know, get gay, married, or to
Speaker 1: have an abortion, and so we don't touch those sort
Speaker 1: of subjects that are quite hot. But also I, you know,
Speaker 1: get to keep gun rights. I don't want to live
Speaker 1: around certain types of people, whether stated or unstated. And
Speaker 1: so for a while it was sort of a spot
Speaker 1: on the slippery slope where you could hang out right,
Speaker 1: a way to talk about politics without you know, being
Speaker 1: subjected to a rant about you know, racist rednecks, right,
Speaker 1: sort of a third position. But the problem is, and
Speaker 1: I think many of us realized, and that's why there
Speaker 1: are so many post libertarians or you know, people who
Speaker 1: pass through that is that you realize very quickly that's
Speaker 1: a losing prospect. You don't win there. You are simply
Speaker 1: ushered to one side at best. And I think that's
Speaker 1: part of the reason why so many people left it.
Speaker 1: Right we saw during COVID very dramatically, well, that doesn't work, right,
Speaker 1: The state will get you. And so at the most
Speaker 1: basic level, I'm going to title this something you know, clickbaity,
Speaker 1: like the five questions libertarians can't answer, because I do
Speaker 1: have five general objections that I have seen no convincing
Speaker 1: answer to And look, there are good libertarians, you know, obviously,
Speaker 1: you know Tom Woods and Scott Horton. I'm not talking
Speaker 1: about them, but I think the most fundamental right if
Speaker 1: we assume that libertarianism is this philosophy or tendency that
Speaker 1: puts individual choice right, some form of self determinism at
Speaker 1: the center. Right, the best society is the one where
Speaker 1: you were constrained by the least things, you were the
Speaker 1: most free. Well, an important question is, well, what is
Speaker 1: freedom right? Is this a universal right, a sort of
Speaker 1: right granted to you by God. You will hear that
Speaker 1: idea even from some self described conservatives. Or is it
Speaker 1: specific and cultural? Is it the product of a tradition?
Speaker 1: Because one, when we talk about freedom, we're basically talking
Speaker 1: about a Western conception.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Sure, other peoples at times have advocated for their self determination,
Speaker 1: liberation from a ruler, but it's sort of a different thing.
Speaker 1: And even in the Western tradition, there are many different
Speaker 1: versions of freedom. So, for instance, right when the gulls
Speaker 1: are rebelling against Caesar for liberty, what do they mean?
Speaker 1: Are they big fans of, you know, gay marriage? Are
Speaker 1: they big fans of, you know, all of the sort
Speaker 1: of you know, things that we associate with libertarian conventions.
Speaker 1: I mean now that I say that running around naked
Speaker 1: with funny hats is pretty close to it. But in
Speaker 1: all seriousness, right, clearly this is a different conception of
Speaker 1: what freedom is. This is a through line in Western thought.
Speaker 1: But we've seen many different permutations of even the society
Speaker 1: we see so often in constitutional conservative and libertarian means
Speaker 1: that of the American founding? Is that a libertarian society?
Speaker 1: On one level? Well, I mean, yes, you know, you
Speaker 1: didn't have a lot of taxes, but a sodomy was illegal,
Speaker 1: there were blasphemy laws. It's sort of ridiculous on its face.
Speaker 1: So i'll throw it to you, arin, Right, what do
Speaker 1: we make of that question of well, what is freedom?
Speaker 1: And how is it sort of twisted in the kind
Speaker 1: of you know, Twitter dot com version of what libertarians think?
Speaker 2: Well, one of the problems with libertarianism is that it
Speaker 2: is itself a universalist ideology, and as with all universal
Speaker 2: universalist ideologies, it tends towards utopianism. So while libertarianism pretends
Speaker 2: to take on this hard realistic edge of just well,
Speaker 2: this is how market forces work, and this is just
Speaker 2: the science, and this is the way it is. Apology
Speaker 2: is just terrible. The libertarian anthropology is deeply flawed in
Speaker 2: this understanding that freedom is simply an absence of official
Speaker 2: government control by something called the state TM, and if
Speaker 2: we just get rid of the state TM, then people
Speaker 2: will live in some kind of spontaneous order and everything
Speaker 2: will be good. And this is what we're looking for
Speaker 2: from life. Now. It's very interesting because there's actually a
Speaker 2: perfect answer to this, and it sits inside the libertarian tradition.
Speaker 2: Bertrand Jujuvenile is a guy I reference all the time
Speaker 2: because he's one of the most important and underappreciated figures
Speaker 2: in political theory. And he wrote a book on power
Speaker 2: and another one on sovereignty, which are just absolutely critical.
Speaker 2: They're actually even put out by Freedom Press, a libertarian
Speaker 2: you know, imprint, and he's often cited inside the libertarian tradition,
Speaker 2: or at least the class of liberal tradition. He's literally
Speaker 2: the basis for Hans Hermann Hopp's Democracy The God That Failed.
Speaker 2: Like if you like Hoop, if you've thought his arguments
Speaker 2: against democracy were persuasive, congratulations they were stolen directly from
Speaker 2: Bertrand di Juvenal and I say this with like the
Speaker 2: greatest admiration for hop because like only the great seal
Speaker 2: from bertrand di juvenal, like this is not me slandering him.
Speaker 2: I say all that to point out that this guy
Speaker 2: is really well grounded and is somebody that like especially
Speaker 2: Mesa's style, libertarians rely on without recognizing that they owe
Speaker 2: him the intellectual lineage that they do. And inside on Power,
Speaker 2: Dijuvenile makes exactly the point we're making now that radical
Speaker 2: libertarianism and radical communism were always destined to meet in
Speaker 2: the center. They were always destined to create the same outcome.
Speaker 2: And his point is that what we're looking for is
Speaker 2: not just radical freedom. What we're looking for is order liberty,
Speaker 2: and liberty in the classical sense is the freedom to
Speaker 2: pursue the good as your society understands it. It is
Speaker 2: an Aristotilian concept that it is only inside our interactions
Speaker 2: with other political entities that we can grasp our role
Speaker 2: and we can recognize our or we could realize our liberty.
Speaker 2: That is what creates liberty, is having a shared understanding
Speaker 2: of the good and having the ability to pursue it.
Speaker 2: In fact, in on Sobiergty di Juvenal goes a step
Speaker 2: further and says that it is not the power of
Speaker 2: the government that makes a man free or not free.
Speaker 2: It is that the government acts in accordance with the
Speaker 2: general understanding of the good. People who are asked to
Speaker 2: only pursue that which they already inherently understand through their
Speaker 2: traditions and their folk ways and their religion as virtuous.
Speaker 2: They are people who are free. That feels now natural
Speaker 2: to them. Even if they can never achieve exactly what
Speaker 2: they set out, they feel those goals to be ones
Speaker 2: that are in alignment with what they already want to pursue,
Speaker 2: and so the government encouraging them or bolstering the pursuit
Speaker 2: of something they already agree with, does not feel oppressive.
Speaker 2: It feels liberate. What really makes people feel oppressed is
Speaker 2: a government or a state that tries to force them
Speaker 2: into doing things they don't agree with, things that they
Speaker 2: do not see as virtuous, things that do not work
Speaker 2: inside their tradition, their understanding of the good. This is
Speaker 2: what tyranny ultimately is. It's not the abuse of government power,
Speaker 2: it's not the exercise of government power. It's the use
Speaker 2: of government power to force peoples into a way of
Speaker 2: being that does not complement them, that does not attain
Speaker 2: that ultimate good that they are aiming for. And so
Speaker 2: when we're talking about liberty, what we need to understand
Speaker 2: is it's not about the government having more or less power.
Speaker 2: It's about the government working for the good of people,
Speaker 2: the collective understanding of where we should be as a people,
Speaker 2: as a nation. If it's doing that, we feel liberated.
Speaker 2: If it doesn't, we feel constrained. That's why even if
Speaker 2: a group of people fights for their liberation from another nation,
Speaker 2: so they can immediately impose a bunch of religious restrictions
Speaker 2: on top of themselves, which is exactly what America did.
Speaker 2: We feel like that's our independence day because we are
Speaker 2: now free not to do math or you know, get
Speaker 2: gay married, but to live in accordance with a religious
Speaker 2: tradition and our understanding as a people.
Speaker 1: Well, on that point, I think that this misunderstanding of
Speaker 1: power you also see in my second objection, which is
Speaker 1: how do you bring out how do you bring about
Speaker 1: rather in campus dan right, how do we get to
Speaker 1: a libertarian society? Because the answer is, well, I will
Speaker 1: simply behave as if I were already in such a society.
Speaker 1: That will spread and bring about that reality. This is
Speaker 1: the point that Moldbug makes back when he was still Moldbug.
Speaker 1: Where he goes from that that sort of desired end
Speaker 1: state of spontaneous order, right, a truly liberated society where
Speaker 1: you know, what state as it exists is in line
Speaker 1: with the people. Right, there is no feeling of tyranny
Speaker 1: or disconnect between the state and those rules. And he says,
Speaker 1: of course, well, if that's what you want, speaking, shall
Speaker 1: we say slightly hyperbolically, you should be a fascist, right,
Speaker 1: You should want to crush disorder so that order can exist. Now,
Speaker 1: this comes from his understanding of that duality of order
Speaker 1: and chaos. He believes, and as did many before him,
Speaker 1: this is not D and D right, You cannot be
Speaker 1: chaotic good. Chaotic chaos is synonymous with evil. An order
Speaker 1: that which is necessary, you know, for a functional society
Speaker 1: is a good and what steps you need to take
Speaker 1: towards that are good steps. Now, I think it's important
Speaker 1: to say that this misconception that in order to achieve
Speaker 1: an end you should act as if it already is
Speaker 1: the case. It runs rampant through education and child rearing.
Speaker 1: Right in our last episode, it's never quite stated this way,
Speaker 1: but the idea is, well, I want X y Z
Speaker 1: child to be a functional adult. So if I just
Speaker 1: treat them at age four, how I would one of
Speaker 1: my coworkers, one of my friends, Well, then they will
Speaker 1: become that. Clearly that doesn't work, right, We've all been
Speaker 1: to the supermarket and seen a mother trying to reason
Speaker 1: with her three year old. Doesn't work. Sure, you or
Speaker 1: I might feel very embarrassed that we are causing a
Speaker 1: scene at a local coals. You know that we're screaming
Speaker 1: and crying and throwing things A three year old does not.
Speaker 1: You have to act in a different way so that
Speaker 1: later down the line you can pull back. Right, you
Speaker 1: don't have to have that insane level of top down control.
Speaker 1: And to that point, when we look at libertarian societies,
Speaker 1: you know what are often tauted as you know, a
Speaker 1: successful functioning society full of spontaneous order. Well, how do
Speaker 1: the people act? Right? Do they act like modern libertarians
Speaker 1: from a certain perspective? Maybe right, they don't have a
Speaker 1: policeman over their shoulder. But what got them there?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Was it this kind of insane you know, porkfest style
Speaker 1: libertine event? No? And I mean you can look at
Speaker 1: you know, the opposite example, right, is O Block the
Speaker 1: most free place in America? Well, sure, arn, if you're
Speaker 1: interested in you know, like you're squeezing off thirty rounds
Speaker 1: from you know, a glock switch out of the back
Speaker 1: of your hell cat. Maybe, But if you're actually interested
Speaker 1: in having a business, you're interested in walking wherever you want,
Speaker 1: a very basic level of freedom. That's not free for you.
Speaker 1: But you look to places like, up until recently, something
Speaker 1: like England, right, kind of the pre Tony Blair version. Well,
Speaker 1: you know Victorian England, We'll go to that. Well, functionally,
Speaker 1: you have an immense amount of freedom. You can walk
Speaker 1: wherever you want. You know, infamously women walked around London
Speaker 1: late at night without being bothered. Well, how did we
Speaker 1: get there? One of the most punishing criminal justice regimes
Speaker 1: in history, right, hanging people, sending them to Australia. It
Speaker 1: was what many moderns would call fascistic. I go back,
Speaker 1: as we mentioned multiple times to the American founders, right,
Speaker 1: a society much freer than ours. But again, if you
Speaker 1: stole a horse, they hanged you. You could not be gay.
Speaker 1: Gay marriage was I mean, it would be comical to
Speaker 1: explain it. You cannot create a libertarian society by acting
Speaker 1: as a libertarian. And so the question is, okay, even
Speaker 1: if you are, you know you have that end goal,
Speaker 1: you have that vision of society. Well it's not how
Speaker 1: you should act now, you should be much like Crothbard
Speaker 1: was closer to the end of his life, right encouraging
Speaker 1: the cops to send in the hounds, right to stamp
Speaker 1: out disorder, because disorder is inherently in tropic It will
Speaker 1: make it impossible for rational spontaneous order to exist because
Speaker 1: quite simply, it is not safe to do so. So
Speaker 1: are That's a bit of a monologue for me, but
Speaker 1: I'd be curious to get your thoughts as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, back to what you're saying there with Moldbug. It's
Speaker 2: the problem is that libertarians have the order reversed once again.
Speaker 2: Their anthropology is bad. They think that if people are free,
Speaker 2: then spontaneously they will become virtuous. If libertarians are even
Speaker 2: interested in virtue, which sadly very often they are not,
Speaker 2: they will say, well, if people are free, they will
Speaker 2: act virtuously. They will create this ordered society once they
Speaker 2: are free. But this is the inverse of what actually happens.
Speaker 2: As Moldbug lays out, humanity starts in a state of war.
Speaker 2: Then you move to a state of order. Then you
Speaker 2: move to a state of law, and if you're very,
Speaker 2: very lucky, then you move to a state of liberty.
Speaker 2: And it is only after going through those steps that
Speaker 2: you achieve that final state. And if you do not
Speaker 2: go through this process, you cannot expect that final state
Speaker 2: to emerge. Libertarians say, I don't need the state, I
Speaker 2: don't need the thing that brings order. I don't need
Speaker 2: the thing that ends the war. I just need the
Speaker 2: last part of that, and I will therefore then generate
Speaker 2: out all the benefits. But that is just observably false.
Speaker 2: We see this over and over again that as long
Speaker 2: as you say people are allowed to take certain actions
Speaker 2: that they seemed themselves as being free to take, they
Speaker 2: actually reduced the amount of order, and therefore the liberty
Speaker 2: inside it is virtue that creates liberty, not liberty that
Speaker 2: creates virtue. And if you don't spend time with the
Speaker 2: population cultivating that virtue, you simply cannot bring about the
Speaker 2: type of society that liberty that libertarians want. So, for instance,
Speaker 2: Alexis de Tokville famously observed that the reason that America
Speaker 2: was basically allowed to more or less self govern, as
Speaker 2: we often put it, is that actually it didn't self
Speaker 2: govern at all. That it was all of these smaller
Speaker 2: civic organizations, the church, the guild, the you know, the community,
Speaker 2: you know organization, these things came together and created a
Speaker 2: straight from which American society could emerge. And because people
Speaker 2: had a loyalty to their union, or to their church,
Speaker 2: or to their community, or to their club, or to
Speaker 2: their fire brigade or all these other voluntary associations, the government,
Speaker 2: the official state TM didn't have to take very many actions.
Speaker 2: And again this is what bertrand Juvenile echoes in on power,
Speaker 2: that is, these alternative spheres of sovereignty that limit the government.
Speaker 2: In fact, he takes at another level and says, it
Speaker 2: is not the constitution and it's checks and balances that
Speaker 2: ultimately limits the government. It is the fact that those
Speaker 2: checks and balances of the Constitution are meant to represent
Speaker 2: different social forces that actually brings limitation on the government itself.
Speaker 2: And so if you don't have a virtual society and
Speaker 2: which people enter into these voluntary organizations and see themselves
Speaker 2: as beholden to them and see power to them. Then
Speaker 2: there is no social force to push back against the
Speaker 2: central power of the state. And we can see that
Speaker 2: as those intermediate forces, the family, the church, the community,
Speaker 2: have eroded, we've required more and more government to step
Speaker 2: in and take action. But it's not the loss of
Speaker 2: you know, it's not the removal of government that creates that.
Speaker 2: Freedom is the imposition of order from virtuous people spontaneously.
Speaker 2: But you can't have that until you have virtuous people.
Speaker 2: You don't get those just because you were liberated in
Speaker 2: some way. If you do not enhance the character of
Speaker 2: the people, you simply cannot live in the way that
Speaker 2: libertarians would like. And so that's why, for instance, neo
Speaker 2: reactionary theory has always been authoritarian on the outside, libertarian
Speaker 2: on the inside. This was the post libertarian realization that
Speaker 2: a libertarian order, while desirable, can only come through authoritarian means.
Speaker 2: And that's kind of the realization that occurred after they
Speaker 2: really looked at all the libertarian theory. This is a
Speaker 2: beautiful worldview that only exists when a certain type of
Speaker 2: environment is produced, and the only way to produce that
Speaker 2: is through strict amounts of authority, often handed down by
Speaker 2: the state.
Speaker 1: So arin if anyone in the audience is perhaps interested
Speaker 1: in reading a book about the relationship between the state
Speaker 1: a total state, one might even say any sort of
Speaker 1: intermediate institutions. How you know it's in the state's interest
Speaker 1: to push out, yep, such organizations. Where could they find one?
Speaker 2: Well, I just happened to have written one, which you
Speaker 2: know you can find. It's coming out soon and it's
Speaker 2: secondition paperback with an extra chapter if you want to
Speaker 2: enjoy it. But the Total State or mctyre, it's an
Speaker 2: Amazon bestseller in a couple categories, so you know, make
Speaker 2: sure to pick that up if you want to hear
Speaker 2: a little more.
Speaker 1: That was entirely planned. By the way, this is the
Speaker 1: whole reason we're doing this episode is just to show
Speaker 1: the But in all seriousness, this leads into let's just say,
Speaker 1: this is like a secret sixth point that I should
Speaker 1: have mentioned in the notes and then didn't, which is
Speaker 1: that libertine behavior right, living as a libertarian, having a
Speaker 1: approximately libertarian society produces people who are not suited for liberty,
Speaker 1: and that leads us to another large objection here, which
Speaker 1: is libertarians presupposed, at least from what I've seen that
Speaker 1: at the base of Maslow's hierarchy of need is liberty, right,
Speaker 1: that that is what all men are striving for, what
Speaker 1: all people want. And maybe that was true. We can
Speaker 1: put a pin in that at a previous point in time.
Speaker 1: Very clearly that is not true today. As the total
Speaker 1: state has grown, as it has taken more and more institutions,
Speaker 1: whether it is marriage, the rearing of children, education, out
Speaker 1: of informal social structure and into the realm of the
Speaker 1: political well, we very clearly see people want that. They
Speaker 1: want security, They do not necessarily want maximum liberty. You
Speaker 1: may remember several years ago there was a pandemic, and
Speaker 1: well what happened. Did the masses rise up? Did people say,
Speaker 1: you know, I will not be confined to my home? Well,
Speaker 1: clearly not. The majority of people went along with it.
Speaker 1: And sure there were relocations within the US to escape
Speaker 1: the excesses of the COVID regime. As someone in Florida,
Speaker 1: you're note out aware of that. But nonetheless we understand
Speaker 1: and we're seeing it on almost a daily basis. The
Speaker 1: average American does not desire liberty, at least in the
Speaker 1: sense often meant by libertarians. And so if you have
Speaker 1: a universalist ideology, right, an idea for everyone all at once,
Speaker 1: and not even and everyone, but just almost everyone disagrees
Speaker 1: with it. Well, what is to be done there?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Your universalist ideology has failed to attract the universal man.
Speaker 1: So I'm curious, arn, do you see that most Americans,
Speaker 1: most people period desire this sort of rootless conception of liberty.
Speaker 1: If not, what do people seemingly ask for in politics?
Speaker 2: Yeah? There is again, once again, like just this complete
Speaker 2: failure of libertarian anthropology. The idea that all human beings
Speaker 2: are just born with this innate desire for liberty has
Speaker 2: been proven incorrect over and over. It. In fact, it's
Speaker 2: something we generally scoff at now at this point, right, Oh,
Speaker 2: Thomas Jefferson hiding in the caves of Afghanistan. Right, But
Speaker 2: this is still something that while libertarians will laugh at
Speaker 2: this implication and foreign policy will still basically pick up
Speaker 2: this assumption when it comes to human organization. Well, of
Speaker 2: course we can't force you know, liberal democracy on the Afghanis,
Speaker 2: But of course every human being actually yearns to be
Speaker 2: free and looks for libertarian ideology and existence. As you
Speaker 2: point out, this is just absolutely not true, and you
Speaker 2: can evidence is if only because the ideology of communism,
Speaker 2: well equally ridiculous and universal, has always had more adherents
Speaker 2: than the ideology of libertarianism. If libertarianism was so much
Speaker 2: truer to human nature, you think it would just naturally
Speaker 2: went out in that old marketplace of ideas, and yet
Speaker 2: it never does. In fact, reliably, if we look at
Speaker 2: the libertarian quadrant of the political compass, we find it
Speaker 2: is the place with zero voters, It has almost no support,
Speaker 2: and pretty much every bit of polling and data finds
Speaker 2: that libertarians are the least likely to actually produce any
Speaker 2: kind of popular movement. And that's for a very simple reason.
Speaker 2: Most people can't live this way. And you know a
Speaker 2: lot of people have made the joke that classical liberalism,
Speaker 2: and therefore libertarians, which is its spiritual descendant, it was
Speaker 2: made for one hundred and thirty iq Anglos. It works
Speaker 2: for a society of one hundred and thirty iq Anglos.
Speaker 2: To the point where my buddy Carl Benjamin has put
Speaker 2: it this way, classical liberalism is Sharia law for the English,
Speaker 2: which I think is a pretty good formulation for how
Speaker 2: to understand this. So we have in libertarianism is not
Speaker 2: a universal understanding of you know, human behavior, but a
Speaker 2: very specific understanding of how a very particular set of
Speaker 2: people and a specific culture can conduct itself. And this
Speaker 2: is the problem is so much of libertarianism is based
Speaker 2: on this idea that because you have understood economics at
Speaker 2: some level, well, I have Kinsian economics, and this is
Speaker 2: the magic bullet. It explains the world. It's just Marxism,
Speaker 2: it's just inverted Marxism. It's just materialism for you know,
Speaker 2: the guy who wants to make money and do drugs.
Speaker 2: It doesn't. It has this anthropology that says, well, people
Speaker 2: are driven by these material causes, and as long as
Speaker 2: you arrange the material underlying material cause this is correctly,
Speaker 2: this will produce the society that you're looking for. I've
Speaker 2: studied the economics, and that is the universal science that
Speaker 2: will allow me to understand all human beings. What we
Speaker 2: see is that's absolutely not the case. And if you
Speaker 2: don't tailor your understanding of your social organization to the
Speaker 2: people it's actually organizing, you lose. Which is why again
Speaker 2: people like Bertrand to Juvenil to the extent they are
Speaker 2: in any way libertarian or inside the libertarian tradition are correct,
Speaker 2: because they're the ones who are saying no, you have
Speaker 2: to actually look at the people you're governing. It matters
Speaker 2: what their folk ways are. It matters if you want
Speaker 2: to create liberty in the society, you must align it
Speaker 2: with the way of life of the people who are
Speaker 2: actually going to be subject to the rule of the state.
Speaker 2: You can't just go around saying, well, because I think
Speaker 2: in this abstract sense that everyone should be able to
Speaker 2: spontaneously order their life, I'm just going to impose that
Speaker 2: on the world because what we see reliably, and this
Speaker 2: is always the problem libertarianism is that while they advocate
Speaker 2: for a total removal of state and vault, the only
Speaker 2: places where they ever make gains are the leftist ones.
Speaker 2: Right Like, they help push open the door for gay marriage,
Speaker 2: they help push open the door for drug legalization, but
Speaker 2: they never push open the door for anything that's actually
Speaker 2: going to conserve society. They never happen to push away
Speaker 2: the welfare state. Oh, they never happened to push away
Speaker 2: public education. They never win any of these battles. The
Speaker 2: battles they win are almost exclusively ones that help degenerate
Speaker 2: society because they're pushing an open door in those situations.
Speaker 2: And so this is why we never end up creating
Speaker 2: the society they're looking for, because they never bother to
Speaker 2: look at the people they're actually trying to create the
Speaker 2: society for. They start with the ideology and then they
Speaker 2: just try to universally apply it to whatever people they
Speaker 2: happen to have any level of influencer control over.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm glad you brought that up. The shared materialism
Speaker 1: between Marxism socialism, you know, the kind of softer version
Speaker 1: in libertarianism. From a certain perspective, they have the same peleology,
Speaker 1: the same sunum bonum, right, the kind of ultimate goal
Speaker 1: which is material abundance. Right. The difference between you know,
Speaker 1: gay space communism and then you know in Campistan and
Speaker 1: the Stars, it's really not that different. And when presented
Speaker 1: in that marketplace of ideas, you know, which is going
Speaker 1: to win out the the story of socialism, which we
Speaker 1: understand is not true, but the idea of you know,
Speaker 1: you will have these things taken care for you. You know
Speaker 1: you will not have to pay for this, you will
Speaker 1: not have to pay for that. And sure, hypothetically you
Speaker 1: might not be able to make seven figures, but most
Speaker 1: people can't do that. Most people don't want that. The
Speaker 1: social safety net sounds great, you know, that is a
Speaker 1: certain degree of freedom, right, freedom from worry. Now, let's
Speaker 1: look at the kind of story presented, you know, of
Speaker 1: the of the ancams. It's this idea that you know,
Speaker 1: I will be able to become guy earning seven figures
Speaker 1: by finding the best workers, you know, the best eight
Speaker 1: year olds to you know, man my meth plantation. It's like, well, okay, sure,
Speaker 1: but again, remember you were playing for people who are
Speaker 1: or let's be honest, more often view themselves as exceptional
Speaker 1: and desire that same material abundance, but only for that
Speaker 1: right they think that they will and it is you know,
Speaker 1: materialism plus a certain amount of social Darwinism is what
Speaker 1: you often see as well, the idea that simply we
Speaker 1: will create a society where it will all sort itself
Speaker 1: out right, the best will rise to the top. You know,
Speaker 1: they will be you know, drug lords and crypto scammers,
Speaker 1: and they will live in you know, this kind of
Speaker 1: again very truncated version of gay space communism, right, not
Speaker 1: particularly like they don't say to communism, but effectively unlimited abundance,
Speaker 1: right with full freedom of personal interaction, and one we
Speaker 1: have to ask is that a good end goal for society?
Speaker 1: That is a separate question. You and I would say no.
Speaker 1: But also we have to address the factor that it
Speaker 1: is much much easier to convince people of the original
Speaker 1: formula of materialism than it is. This what we would
Speaker 1: say kind of like Anglo innovation, right, And so to
Speaker 1: kind of carry through another part of this, when we're
Speaker 1: talking about the libertarian's horrible anthropology, and this is exactly
Speaker 1: why I wanted you on, right, is a very core point,
Speaker 1: which is the man who wants to rule always beats
Speaker 1: the guy who wants to be left alone. And when
Speaker 1: we're talking about power, this conception of power, that power
Speaker 1: must be avoided, that you must take the ring up
Speaker 1: the ring being power of course, up Mount Doom and
Speaker 1: destroy it so that you can be left alone, is
Speaker 1: shot through libertarian and conservative thought, right, This idea of
Speaker 1: I just want to be left alone. The problem is,
Speaker 1: of course, there are people who don't want to leave
Speaker 1: you alone, and they want that way harder. And you
Speaker 1: see this anytime there's you know, a riot in the offing,
Speaker 1: anytime there's one of these disruptive, irritating events, you get
Speaker 1: the argument of try that in a small town, right
Speaker 1: that you know, someone will show up and put a
Speaker 1: stop to it. And the problem is they don't. It
Speaker 1: is irrational for any one person without the States backing
Speaker 1: to do that. You know, even in the case of
Speaker 1: Kyle Rittenhouse, who you know, successfully avoided going to jail
Speaker 1: for the rest of his life. One that was a
Speaker 1: fairly miraculous situation on multiple levels, but two that was
Speaker 1: a near run thing. He almost got sent to, you know,
Speaker 1: stabbed with the screwdriver sorts of prisons, as we've seen
Speaker 1: with other enemies of that part of society that does
Speaker 1: want to rule your life, that does want to step
Speaker 1: on you. And so this conception that I will simply
Speaker 1: retreat certainly is very Anglo, right. You see that in
Speaker 1: lands Cracker Factory. It is sort of our tradition. But
Speaker 1: fundamentally it doesn't work. It doesn't let you have that
Speaker 1: society effectively.
Speaker 2: In order to.
Speaker 1: Establish that sort of unity between the ruler and the
Speaker 1: rule that creates liberty, well, you got to have a
Speaker 1: guy in power. Otherwise, as the you know, as the
Speaker 1: the sort of mocking you know, anti fook graffiti says
Speaker 1: they will step on you, right, with a picture of
Speaker 1: the you know, the jack boot on the on the snake.
Speaker 1: And I don't want to be rude about this, but
Speaker 1: history is on my side. We've seen this over and
Speaker 1: over and over again, and this tactical retreat does not
Speaker 1: produce any sort of long term results. The best you
Speaker 1: can hope for is approximate win. Right. I live in Massachusetts.
Speaker 1: I prefer to live in Idaho, fair enough, and you
Speaker 1: can do that. But if that's all you're doing, that's
Speaker 1: the only game you're playing of I just want to
Speaker 1: be left alone, you know. I only want power so
Speaker 1: that I can destroy power. At best, let's a loser mentality.
Speaker 1: And the whole time that that cope has been in vogue,
Speaker 1: let's just say what last twenty thirty forty years? Pick
Speaker 1: your number. The question is, well, has the country gotten
Speaker 1: more or less free? And by all but a few metrics,
Speaker 1: the country has gotten dramatically less free. Ar And I'll
Speaker 1: let you speak.
Speaker 2: So as you point out, Nick Land has laid this
Speaker 2: idea that kind of the classical liberal and the Anglo
Speaker 2: Protestant tradition from which classical liberalism, you know, arose this
Speaker 2: response repeatedly whenever it's been pressured. Whenever it's come to
Speaker 2: blows over whether we should one side should rule the
Speaker 2: other and impose its will, the answer has been exit, right, flee,
Speaker 2: Flee from England to the United States. When you get
Speaker 2: to the United States and things in Massachusetts or New
Speaker 2: York become too constrict, a move to the Midwest. When
Speaker 2: they get too constricting there, head to the you know,
Speaker 2: further west, to the wild West. And we just kept
Speaker 2: escaping to frontier to frontier to frontier in order to
Speaker 2: kind of avoid this issue. You can see this so
Speaker 2: much in of course, the American founding, where once the
Speaker 2: issue slavery becomes central, you just see you know, different
Speaker 2: peoples going west and trying to kind of incorporate more
Speaker 2: and more of the states into their ideology, until eventually
Speaker 2: there's nowhere left to run and the states have to
Speaker 2: clash over this issue. Right, one side is going to
Speaker 2: dominate the other. One side is going to rule. And
Speaker 2: let's be really clear. The North decides to rule, it
Speaker 2: kills a lot of people, It crushes the governments, It
Speaker 2: imprisons the governments that of different states that avoid it.
Speaker 2: It throws the constitution in the trash. Lincoln decides that
Speaker 2: you don't need habeas corpus er in these other legal
Speaker 2: traditions that came from classical liberalism, because ultimately, the question
Speaker 2: is who's going to rule and who's going to dominate,
Speaker 2: and the answer is the North. And as much as
Speaker 2: you know, any good Southerner like you or me understands
Speaker 2: the War of Northern Aggression as a violation of constitutional principles,
Speaker 2: it doesn't matter. We're still under the rule of the
Speaker 2: Union at this point, right there is no conversation anymore
Speaker 2: about how we really have these rights in the Tenth Amendment.
Speaker 2: No one cares. The Tenth Amendment is sitting in the trash.
Speaker 2: It doesn't matter. And things like COVID and others just
Speaker 2: continue to reinforce this point, and so it quickly becomes clear.
Speaker 2: And this is one of my most hated tweets of
Speaker 2: all time. I've gotten this response to you know, I
Speaker 2: hate that. I think you're right about this, about this
Speaker 2: tweet more than anything else I've ever said, which is
Speaker 2: the side that wants to win always beats the side
Speaker 2: that wants to be left alone. Because as painful as
Speaker 2: it is in the American mind to admit that, it's
Speaker 2: so obviously true that it's simply undeniable. And once you
Speaker 2: recognize that truth, then you recognize that while at some
Speaker 2: point the idea that investing the government and let with
Speaker 2: less power was a noble understanding, it was something that
Speaker 2: was foundational to our way of being as Americans over time. Instead,
Speaker 2: what that schibbalith has become is a way to control
Speaker 2: conservative America. Oh well, you're the side that thinks we
Speaker 2: shouldn't have government power, right, Well, then it would be
Speaker 2: a violation of your own principles to take government power
Speaker 2: or to use government power. If you happen to win
Speaker 2: an election, at best, your job is to sit there
Speaker 2: and sit in place, or maybe you know, diffuse some
Speaker 2: level of government power for a little while. And then
Speaker 2: the other guys come into power and they do the
Speaker 2: thing that's in accordance with their principles, which is to
Speaker 2: rule you with an iron fist. And so if one
Speaker 2: side says power is good and I can do whatever
Speaker 2: I want with it, and I'm righteous for doing so,
Speaker 2: and one side says power is bad and if I
Speaker 2: attain it, then I'm a bad person. And if I attain
Speaker 2: it and use it, I'm basically hitler. Well, which side
Speaker 2: is going to win in a contest of power. The
Speaker 2: answer is glaringly obvious. And so what we're going through
Speaker 2: now is really just the painful forcing every single idiot
Speaker 2: who has bought into this to ultimately admit that this
Speaker 2: is true, right, And this is the difficulty. This is
Speaker 2: why I'm so hard on libertarians. You know a lot
Speaker 2: of people, you know, Oh, you give libertarians so much heat,
Speaker 2: you must hate them. No, I love libertarians. The problem
Speaker 2: is that libertarians are so close to understanding the truth,
Speaker 2: but they can't get over the last hurdle. They are
Speaker 2: not They have not made that post libertarian switch, that
Speaker 2: NRX switch, of understanding that the very society they want
Speaker 2: to achieve could only be achieved through the acquisition and
Speaker 2: exercise of power. It is only through absolute authority that
Speaker 2: they can create the level of liberty they are attempting
Speaker 2: to achieve. And that's really the barrier that we have
Speaker 2: to understand. If you are not looking to rule, if
Speaker 2: you're not looking to impose even a libertarian order on others,
Speaker 2: they will impose their way of life on you. And
Speaker 2: there's simply never some kind of detente in which you
Speaker 2: live the way you want and they live the way
Speaker 2: they want.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 2: If you are forming a society without a state, and
Speaker 2: they are forming a society with centralized state authority, then
Speaker 2: one day the state with centralized authority will come knocking
Speaker 2: on your disorganized state and they will win. And we
Speaker 2: see it over and over and over again.
Speaker 1: Will you see that in the history of the American right.
Speaker 1: Many have said, and there's a great deal of truth
Speaker 1: to this, that America does really have a right wing
Speaker 1: tradition in the same way as other countries. The contention is, effectively,
Speaker 1: America is a contest between two different types of progressives.
Speaker 1: Now not necessarily looking to litigate that at this moment,
Speaker 1: but if we look at the origin of what we
Speaker 1: consider to be the Republican Party functionally, we have to
Speaker 1: go back to FDR. Right, that's where this and let's
Speaker 1: be honest, also, the Libertarians sort of get their start
Speaker 1: because you have a pre existing order, right, and at
Speaker 1: least one large portion of this was very pro what
Speaker 1: we consider a big business in high finance. And when
Speaker 1: FDR comes in rules like an American season, starts changing things,
Speaker 1: you know, violating the previous understanding of the constitution, Well,
Speaker 1: this force builds up in opposition and They're referred to,
Speaker 1: depending on who you ask, as sort of the old right,
Speaker 1: you know, pre uh, you know, pre FDR, kind of
Speaker 1: that desire, and so you see people like you know,
Speaker 1: Garrett Garrett who sort of defected from one side to another.
Speaker 1: But these are seminal figures. They influenced, you know, Goldwater,
Speaker 1: They influenced the kind of nation American right, and so
Speaker 1: I think it is relevant to say, well, what did
Speaker 1: they do? How successful were they? I have a great
Speaker 1: deal of affection for these men. I think they were right.
Speaker 1: You know, FDR was not a good guy, and he
Speaker 1: didn't do good things to the country, but we're still
Speaker 1: living in the house that FDR built. Obviously there's a
Speaker 1: dramatic change in the sixties with you know, how we
Speaker 1: understood the purpose of this nation. But fundamentally our government
Speaker 1: looks much much, much more like FDR's version than the
Speaker 1: government ten years before he ever showed up. Fundamentally, that
Speaker 1: that process that or sorry that that protest you could
Speaker 1: say against FDR, this American dictator, well it failed because
Speaker 1: he was in charge.
Speaker 2: He had power.
Speaker 1: He could successfully remake the ground on which we play politics.
Speaker 1: And sure, those guys who wanted to go back to
Speaker 1: a previous version where the state was small, where many
Speaker 1: things were not regulated. They were right, that would be better.
Speaker 1: I think the country was better before him on any
Speaker 1: number of metrics. But fundamentally, if you don't have power,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter because power lets you not only make changes,
Speaker 1: but define to crib aligned from Tom Woods right, the
Speaker 1: three x five card of allowable opinions, you have set
Speaker 1: what is acceptable for generations. And so fundamentally, if you
Speaker 1: are unwilling to assume power, you are relegating yourself to
Speaker 1: a statu of eternal loser. You were also letting your enemy, unopposed,
Speaker 1: remake the fabric of society. And this matter is quite
Speaker 1: a bit going back to earlier in our conversation, because
Speaker 1: remember what determines liberty, what determines tyranny is that relationship
Speaker 1: between the ruler and the world. Are they aligned? And
Speaker 1: if you, like FDR was able to do successfully socially
Speaker 1: engineer your society, right, you put in all of these
Speaker 1: programs that have now become entitlements. Social security is a
Speaker 1: great example for generations. That is simply part of what
Speaker 1: it means to be in America. You reach sixty two
Speaker 1: and you collect social security, well, for any number of reasons.
Speaker 1: If that, if you have decided that needs to go away, well,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, the vast majority of people, you
Speaker 1: are a tyrant. You're taking away grandma's retirement, You're taking
Speaker 1: away her ability to support herself. And is that true
Speaker 1: in an absolute sense, right, comparing tyranny to Genghis Khan. No,
Speaker 1: of course not. But functionally, by failing the contest, by
Speaker 1: being driven out of power, you have allowed your enemy
Speaker 1: a massive hand up for the next iteration of the game. Right,
Speaker 1: going forward, you are not simply stuck at a fifty
Speaker 1: to fifty anymore. If this is tug of war, you're
Speaker 1: on your tiptoes on the line. And so the idea
Speaker 1: that you can simply continue to give up, continue not
Speaker 1: to fight, and then well, at some point in the
Speaker 1: future things will get bad enough clearly not. That's not
Speaker 1: how it works. And so this this assumption about politics,
Speaker 1: you know, this assumption about power, is deeply, deeply buried
Speaker 1: in both and I'm using these terms semi interchangeably because
Speaker 1: on this issue at least they are aligned Libertarians and conservatives.
Speaker 1: They need to get rid of this because this is
Speaker 1: why you always lose and as Arun said earlier, this
Speaker 1: criticism is not coming from a place of personal hatred,
Speaker 1: far from it. These are my people, this is who
Speaker 1: I grew up around. But if I want those people
Speaker 1: to have a certain degree of liberty, right to escape
Speaker 1: or to sort of throw off this tyranny, well someone
Speaker 1: needs to have power and someone who shares those values.
Speaker 1: That is the only way out of this, because otherwise
Speaker 1: it will be someone else making that decision. But no
Speaker 1: matter what, no matter the situation, a decision is being made.
Speaker 1: It is not simply left up to kind of trends
Speaker 1: and forces the market whatever. That means. Power and politics
Speaker 1: are a function of human organization. There's no way to
Speaker 1: get around that, no matter how ichy or gross you
Speaker 1: think that is. And if you're not in power, someone
Speaker 1: else will and they will impose their there's set of
Speaker 1: values on you. There's no way around that. One more thing,
Speaker 1: I think, and we've been dancing around this partially due
Speaker 1: to the fact that I, as you've probably noticed, arn Am,
Speaker 1: not the most organized podcaster, is the sort of floating
Speaker 1: target of what is or what constitutes a libertarian society.
Speaker 1: Because these guys will very accurately make fun of socialists
Speaker 1: and Marxists, they will say, hahaha, real communism has never
Speaker 1: been tried. But of course the next question is, well, like,
Speaker 1: where is your ideology been tried? Right, where do we
Speaker 1: find a version of your society working out? And so arn,
Speaker 1: I'm curious to get your thoughts on and Kapistan has
Speaker 1: never been tried. Sort of argumentation that tends to happen
Speaker 1: when you actually try to, you know, dig down on
Speaker 1: this issue.
Speaker 2: Well, I think that often they'll cite something like the
Speaker 2: United States, as you know, early in the United States
Speaker 2: is an example. But as you've already pointed out, that
Speaker 2: version of libertarian society came with, you know, anti blasphemy laws,
Speaker 2: and you if you brought up game erriage, they'd probably
Speaker 2: execute you as a heretic. And you know, these these
Speaker 2: are not things that modern libertarianism can even really broach.
Speaker 2: Which is one of the main problems with libertarian as such.
Speaker 2: One of the issues that we could run up almost
Speaker 2: immediately with anytime you have a conversation with libertarian is
Speaker 2: the minute you point out a flaw, they say, well,
Speaker 2: that's not real Libertarians, by which they mean there are
Speaker 2: at least nineteen different splinter groups of libertarianism, and you
Speaker 2: happen to have not identified the exact boutique brew of
Speaker 2: libertarianism that I have my head, and so therefore any
Speaker 2: objection you have, we'll run up against one of the
Speaker 2: thirteen niche little things that I believe, and therefore cannot
Speaker 2: be accurate. And to be fair, any you know, movement
Speaker 2: has its splinters. Obviously, if we think of ourselves as
Speaker 2: conservatives or right wingers, we would also be looping in
Speaker 2: with a lumped in with guys like Lindsey Graham or
Speaker 2: something with which we disagree quite quite fervently. So I'm
Speaker 2: sympathetic to that. But it is a real issue, and
Speaker 2: that whenever you have a discussion with libertarian the question is,
Speaker 2: you know, the first thing you should ask is which
Speaker 2: libertarian are you? Because there's at least twenty different varieties
Speaker 2: I can think of off the top of my head,
Speaker 2: and they don't agree with each other on a lot
Speaker 2: of things. Some of them are open borders, some of
Speaker 2: them are pro pedophilia or child trafficking. Some of them
Speaker 2: think that you can have like really strict contracts that
Speaker 2: allow you to you know, segregate society inside libertarian society.
Speaker 2: The differences are vast to the point where they basically
Speaker 2: share nothing. And so saying the word libertarian society is
Speaker 2: you know, it's nothing. It means nothing. It has no content.
Speaker 2: And so if Greg Guttfeld and Bill Maher can both
Speaker 2: call themselves libertarians, what does the word even mean? Right
Speaker 2: like that? That's a huge issue. So the first problem
Speaker 2: is you can't even nail them down on what a
Speaker 2: libertarian society would be. But then if you look on like, okay,
Speaker 2: what versions of like hyper capitalistic libertarian societies are successful? Well,
Speaker 2: you got to look at a place like Singapore, right, Well,
Speaker 2: what Singapore got going for it? Is it free? Well,
Speaker 2: in many instances, yes, is orderly. Oh yes, very orderly.
Speaker 2: But they'll lasso cane you in the streets for spitting gum.
Speaker 2: You know, they'll they'll they'll execute you for smuggling marijuana
Speaker 2: into their society. So it's the inverse of libertarian in
Speaker 2: certain areas, which is what allows it to be successfully
Speaker 2: libertarian in every other area. The only reason that Singapore
Speaker 2: can be a multi ethnic, multi religious, capitalistic paradise is
Speaker 2: because it's willing to beat you to death if you
Speaker 2: don't follow the rules. And so this is what you
Speaker 2: know libertarianism requires in the real world. Again, this is
Speaker 2: the NRX understanding of libertarianism, authoritarianism on the outside to
Speaker 2: allow for libertarianism on the inside. But there's another problem
Speaker 2: that libertarians never really want to face, which is scale, which,
Speaker 2: to be fair, is a problem that no one wants
Speaker 2: to face, which is why it's my number one hobby horse.
Speaker 2: When you don't think about how scale impacts your society,
Speaker 2: you don't take into account critical aspects of your social organization.
Speaker 2: So for a while there, you know, we had a
Speaker 2: situation where governments were so disjointed that a single person acting,
Speaker 2: you know, with a enough initiative, could create large amounts
Speaker 2: of wealth and a large prosperity for themselves and the
Speaker 2: people around them. But as societies have scaled up, we've
Speaker 2: seen that the ability to do that shrinks, and it
Speaker 2: doesn't get solved just because your society is libertarian and
Speaker 2: another isn't. A good example would be medieval Europe. Many
Speaker 2: people call this medieval anarchy, which might sound crazy to people,
Speaker 2: but if you talk to actual libertarian scholars, many of
Speaker 2: them will tell you that actually, the you know, feudal
Speaker 2: Europe was more libertarian then modern societies because there was
Speaker 2: no central government, not because they didn't desire a central government,
Speaker 2: not because they were ideologically opposed to central government, but
Speaker 2: because after the devastation of the Roman Empire, there was
Speaker 2: simply no force that could unify the different areas of
Speaker 2: Europe underwent authority, and so we developed a system where
Speaker 2: feudal lords, barons and counts and these other dukes would
Speaker 2: ultimately secure an area for themselves through violence, and then
Speaker 2: eventually you would have a higher warlord, a king, and
Speaker 2: he would kind of unify those barons under him. But
Speaker 2: still there was a high degree of autonomy in any
Speaker 2: given region because there was simply no way for the
Speaker 2: king to ultimately impress compel behavior from his different barons.
Speaker 2: Most of the time, it was more of the king
Speaker 2: as a first among equals, trying to convince his different
Speaker 2: nobles to give their banners to his cause, rather than
Speaker 2: some almighty emperor who was weighing down on the four
Speaker 2: of any given piece of his society. And it wasn't
Speaker 2: until we started to see the modernization and increase of
Speaker 2: scale that we started to see what we think of
Speaker 2: now as absolutism. And again, while absolutism is distinctly something
Speaker 2: that is monarchical. People like bertrand Jujuvenile I think credibly
Speaker 2: point to its development as actually an inevitable step towards
Speaker 2: modernity in which the state would unify under what we
Speaker 2: think of now as liberal democracy. But it couldn't have
Speaker 2: happened until you had kings powerful enough to centralize their
Speaker 2: power inside their entire kingdom to the point where that
Speaker 2: medieval anarchy fell away. So you had moments where in
Speaker 2: that anarchic structure, a quasi libertarian existence was reasonable. But
Speaker 2: once you saw the absolutism start to solidify in these
Speaker 2: European nations, less and less it became clear, or more
Speaker 2: and more it became clear that this libertarian existence was
Speaker 2: no longer viable with these larger states. This is Alul's
Speaker 2: famous tank problem. Once you have the leveon mass, everybody
Speaker 2: has to have the leveon mass. Once you have control
Speaker 2: of propaganda in your state, everyone needs to have control
Speaker 2: of propaganda in your state. And this is the great
Speaker 2: revolution in managerial styles. This is what James Burnham was
Speaker 2: pointing to that yes, you have technically fascism and liberal
Speaker 2: democracy and communism, but FDR and Stalin and Hitler, We're
Speaker 2: all trying to do the same thing. They're all trying
Speaker 2: to bring mass production and mass consumption and the mass
Speaker 2: understanding of politics under centralized control. They simply gave different
Speaker 2: political formulas for the same outcome. And so whether libertarianism
Speaker 2: or not as achievable, it's not something that any given
Speaker 2: area or group of people gets to decide, because you're
Speaker 2: not the only actors. It's nice if you have a
Speaker 2: nice libertarian society. But if China decides that they're collective,
Speaker 2: quasi communists, fascistic, neo you know, capitalistic empire, whatever we're
Speaker 2: calling it. If they decide that they're going to roll
Speaker 2: you over, well, what are you going to do? Do
Speaker 2: you have the production to outrun a billion plus people?
Speaker 2: Do you have the military might to stop an empire
Speaker 2: of that size? Is your libertarian advantage through three free
Speaker 2: market economics and the ability of people to choose what
Speaker 2: they want? Is that going to stop China from rolling
Speaker 2: you up like a carpet? Probably not, And so it
Speaker 2: doesn't matter ultimately if you want to be a libertarian society.
Speaker 2: If your neighbor has collectivized to the point where they
Speaker 2: can crush your libertarian society, just like we saw in
Speaker 2: feudal Europe. Well, then it doesn't matter what you want
Speaker 2: as an individual, baron or count. And that's again something
Speaker 2: that libertarians never factor in when they're thinking about their
Speaker 2: ultimate society.
Speaker 1: And the problem of scale, I mean, really is that
Speaker 1: is the rub that's what makes conversations about modern politics
Speaker 1: so difficult. And one of the things that I have
Speaker 1: and many others have noted is the fact that you're
Speaker 1: seeing within America sort of a great re organization where
Speaker 1: people are moving from you know, Republican voters from blue
Speaker 1: states are moving to red states and sort of vice versa. Right,
Speaker 1: we see people polarizing, and at least a large part
Speaker 1: of that, and I don't want to, you know, overemphasize
Speaker 1: that trend is the fact that it's almost impossible to
Speaker 1: get what you want on you know, a specific issue
Speaker 1: by issue basis from national politics, right, like even issues
Speaker 1: like you know, gun control. Right, yes, sure, you know,
Speaker 1: the Democrats, you know, whine and moan about that, but
Speaker 1: the probability of federal level gun control is relatively small, right,
Speaker 1: it seems to be sort of a dead issue, whereas
Speaker 1: in blue states or recently blue states, well, you can
Speaker 1: have you know, Britain levels right if you want, and
Speaker 1: so seemingly if you are passionate about that issue or
Speaker 1: any others, the solution is we'll move to a smaller place,
Speaker 1: move to a place where you can create a consensus
Speaker 1: around it. Right. But steering this whole ship of you know,
Speaker 1: four hundred million people is incredibly difficult to do. Now,
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean it can't happen, right, clearly, you know
Speaker 1: we have federal level laws at any given moment that
Speaker 1: are making life difficult. Not my point, but the problem
Speaker 1: of how to make this massive scrotic machine do anything
Speaker 1: is yeah, Look, it's felt by everyone, right, We understand
Speaker 1: that it's very difficult to actually get this ship to
Speaker 1: move one side or the other. Well maybe more one
Speaker 1: side than the other. But that's a discussion for a
Speaker 1: different day. So Arn, thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 1: This was a very fascinating discussion. I enjoyed it greatly.
Speaker 1: People are interested in you. We've mentioned you have a
Speaker 1: book now coming out in a second edition, but where
Speaker 1: else can people find you?
Speaker 2: Well? Thanks always a pleasure to be with you, Jay,
Speaker 2: And of course people can catch Jay Burden regularly on
Speaker 2: my show on the Blaze. You can go to Blaze TV.
Speaker 2: You can head to YouTube, Rumble, Odyssey. Of course I'm
Speaker 2: on places like Spotify, any podcast network, Apple, all those things.
Speaker 2: You can always find me there.
Speaker 1: Well great, those will all be linked in the description
Speaker 1: as far as my stuff. The Jay Burton Show available Apple, Spotify, YouTube,
Speaker 1: anywhere you want to listen to podcasts what I do now.
Speaker 1: If you want to support me and avoid all those
Speaker 1: irritating ads, you can head over to Patreon, Substack or
Speaker 1: gum Road get the episodes early and ad free again. Aaron,
Speaker 1: it was a pleasure. Never went home. Keep your head up.
Speaker 1: I can't last forever. Good Night six