You're NOT a REAL Libertarian...

In this episode, Steve explores the various factions and beliefs with in the group that identifies themselves as "Libertarians."

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

It's a beautiful day on the South Strand. Welcome to Conversations with the Hoff. I'm Steve Hoffman, your host, and with me in the studio today are the usual suspects, Randy Oporowski and Tripp Detmering.

SPEAKER_05 0:23

Which, you know, he should get extra points for being able to pronounce our last names.

SPEAKER_03 0:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:31

So we're not going to have a guest in the studio today, but we are going to have a conversation, a very interesting conversation, somewhat controversial conversation, but a must-have conversation, very relevant in today's politics. And it's called Tribalism Within the Libertarian Party. What? You're kidding. So I know there are there are many libertarians out there in our audience. How many times have you heard a conversation with other libertarians where you hear the phrase, well, you're not a real libertarian, or I'm a better libertarian than you are? It's one of the games we play, one of our favorite games. You put ten libertarians in a room who share the same basic values of less government, more freedom, and be prepared for something right out of the World Wrestling Wrestling Federation, but with more casualties because there are no referees. To understand the reason behind all this constant bickering, you need to know the various types of libertarians. So that's going to be our basis for discussion today. Are the different types of libertarians. And you might want to listen carefully, and I then and Nayuki can pick out what type represents me. So the first type is the anarcho-capitalists. Oh starting with actual libertarians right from the anarcho-capitalists don't like government, obviously. And they believe that the services can best be provided. All services can best be provided in the free market, with no involvement by government. So what do you think? Do you think it could work? Legalize meth and machine guns.

SPEAKER_06 2:39

That's basically the Rothbard uh point of view.

SPEAKER_05 2:42

Yeah. Prostitution of everything.

SPEAKER_06 2:45

Prostitution, privatized roads.

SPEAKER_00 2:47

Yes. Murray Rothbard, uh, if you read The Anatomy of the State, you will probably end up as an anarcho-capitalist.

SPEAKER_06 2:58

He coined the term, too, anarcho-capitalist. I think you're right. Yeah. Yeah. And he's the greatest libertarian philosopher of all time.

SPEAKER_00 3:06

But but one thing about them is that they don't like formal organizations. It's kind of hard to get an anarcho-capitalist to join the Libertarian Party. Because one of our goals is to elect people to public office. Whoops, that's government. So you can see why it's somewhat of a problem getting anarcho-capitalists to join our efforts. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_06 3:30

Rothbard did say the LP, the Libertarian Party's like the political wing of the liberty movement. And he was involved pretty much since the beginning.

SPEAKER_05 3:42

Well, we've had we've had several people run for uh the presidential uh office for you know the libertarians, who's outwardly said the first thing I do as president is dissolve the the uh the the seat. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 4:01

Well and on that point before we uh move on to the other lesser. 30,000 different 14 of them. Yeah. Lysander Spooner was also a proto, anarchist, libertarian, and uh criticism of the social contract, don't believe in the constitution. Yep, taxationist theft, yeah, privatized adjudication.

SPEAKER_05 4:27

Beards are really cool.

SPEAKER_06 4:28

Beards are cool. He had his own private post office for a while. He did, and the government shut him down because you can't legally compete with the post office. That's why FedEx and UPS have to deliver packages and not mail. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 4:41

Okay, the next type of libertarian is the civil libertarian. And when you think of civil libertarians, you think of the ACLU, who spend most of their time suing everyone who that infringes on the rights of others. Now, unfortunately, they're not very well liked down here in my my part of the country, down south, because they spend a lot of their time trying to keep Christianity out of public places.

SPEAKER_05 5:11

Yay! While taking a blind eye to all the other really oppressive religions that are out there that have been doing terrible things in our society.

SPEAKER_06 5:28

Yeah, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_05 5:30

Kind of like the Southern Poverty Law Center. Which they they have nothing to do with the South. They have nothing to do with poverty. They definitely don't know anything about the law.

SPEAKER_06 5:42

They mainly uh specialize in slandering everyone.

SPEAKER_05 5:44

Well, that's it. They should be they should be the northern Yankee slander center.

SPEAKER_00 5:50

Yeah. But they are libertarians because they spend a lot of time defending individual and economic rights, especially when the government infringes upon those rights, or local communities infringe upon those rights. So even though they're probably not well liked in my area of the country, they are libertarians.

SPEAKER_06 6:09

Yeah, I know the Nadine Strassman or something, one of the old CEOs, used to I think you got it right.

SPEAKER_05 6:15

Strassman.

SPEAKER_06 6:16

Strassman. Uh she used to work with Cato and was very friendly to libertarians. Yeah. It wasn't just they get most of their funding from the left, so they they're bent a certain way. Right. But they they've made alliances and stuff.

SPEAKER_05 6:28

Of course, libertarians, you have to be bent.

SPEAKER_06 6:30

Yeah, yeah. Bend over.

SPEAKER_00 6:36

Okay, classical liberals. Oh no, there's that word liberal. Today's liberal is not the same as the original liberals who believed that all people have basic human rights, and that the sole legitimate function of government is to protect those rights. However, the progressives have bastardized that term liberal. So today, a liberal is one who believes in big government, and the government knows better than you. But that's not a classical liberal. You must realize that it was the works of John Locke and other classical liberals who helped define what this country was going to be all about. The Declaration of Independence is written from a classical liberal perspective.

SPEAKER_05 7:27

When I think of a modern classical liberal, though, I mean in today's, you know, talk, I think of Bill Maher.

SPEAKER_06 7:35

Bill Maher, he he he's like an old school liberal. The the prefix liber is Latin for free. That's why liberation, liberty, liberal, libertarian, libertine.

SPEAKER_05 7:49

But it also has the roots in life. But yeah.

SPEAKER_06 7:52

Yeah, but the thing about John Locke, the old Whigs in Scotland are basically, he worked for a Whig politician in the 17th century, and he developed his ideas, and he wrote the uh two treaties on government that is basically it's the beginning of the Enlightenment era.

SPEAKER_04 8:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 8:11

And liberalism is an Enlightenment philosophy, and that's basically the systematic beginning of liberal or libertarian uh principles. And he j uh Thomas Jefferson called him one of the three greatest humans to ever live. He basically paraphrases him in uh the declaration and in the Bill of Rights, I think it's the Fifth Amendment, the life, liberty, and property line from the Second Treaties is a direct quote from John Locke.

SPEAKER_05 8:40

Which is not to be confused with libertine.

SPEAKER_06 8:43

Libertine is with a bend over part.

SPEAKER_05 8:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 8:46

That's right. Thank you, French.

SPEAKER_00 8:47

So the classical uh liberals, also the term laissez-faire comes to mind. Yeah. And uh what does that mean, laissez-faire?

SPEAKER_06 8:54

I mean, uh, yeah, laissez-faire is French for like let it be or let it leave it alone.

SPEAKER_00 9:00

Let it be. I got it.

SPEAKER_06 9:03

Laissez-faire, laissez faire. Well, and it's interesting you mentioned the word liberal because in most of the world, in North America, liberal means leftist in the 20th and 21st century. If you're for austerity and cover cutting government spending in Europe, you're called a neoliberal. Yeah. It means the opposite. In the US, an extreme liberal means socialist leftist. Uh, and that started in the early 20th century when the Democratic Party, uh, Grover Cleveland was basically classical liberal at the end of the 19th century. And then by the time it got to Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, the party and the term had flipped on its head over that 30-year period or so. And for some reason, it's like Orwellian. Now liberal means a leftist anti-liberal. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:53

1913, a year to remember. But yes, uh, the uh phrase life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, I think John Wocke would be upset with that because his was life, liberty, and the pursuit of property.

SPEAKER_06 10:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:10

Because if you lived in Europe or other countries, you know, prior to that time, you could not own land. The land was owned by the aristocracy. Well, look in a woman's uh shoe closet. That's happiness.

SPEAKER_06 10:23

That's property. I don't know. Well, John Locke, the first treaties on government, people were defending absolute monarchy, and they were using biblical arguments that it descended from Adam and Eve. And his whole first treatise on government was criticizing that by I think the guy's name is Robert Filmer. And then the second treatise, he just went blank slate and created a whole philosophy of liberalism.

SPEAKER_04 10:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 10:48

Based off of life, liberty, and property and the core of uh libertarianism, the non-aggression principle. He's basically the first person to systematically expand on that idea. Yeah. And it spread all throughout the world. And basically, the American experiment, and Thomas Jefferson, who was the philosopher king of all the founders, he took those ideas and created uh a republic out of it.

SPEAKER_00 11:12

Yeah. Okay, moving on, we have fiscal libertarians, just like fiscal conservatives. The core idea there is minimal government involvement in economic life, rooted in individual freedom, free markets, and strict limits on taxation and spending. To me, that brings to mind the Koch brothers.

SPEAKER_06 11:50

Yes. It's like the flip side of uh uh civil libertarian. They believe in the other half of liberty. Yeah. You combine them and you get a libertarian.

SPEAKER_00 11:58

Also, uh Milton Friedman, I believe, he was a strict fiscal libertarian. Yeah. And uh Chicago School. Chicago School of Economics, right. Free to Choose was his uh his book. Yep. But uh it's it's very prominent today in uh the Libertarian Party. We have a lot of fiscal libertarians, so they're very active. And uh they definitely, in my point of view, adhere by the um core libertarian principles of limited government, individual, and economic freedom. Now let's move on to one that's could be somewhat questionable.

SPEAKER_06 12:40

To put it mildly.

SPEAKER_00 12:42

Yeah. This is gonna be a fun one, I know. Yeah. Geolibertarians. A fusion between libertarianism and Georgism, and it's built around the idea that you can fully own what you create, but no one can fully own what they have not created, namely land and natural resources. So Georgism believes that we have to have economic rent from land that should be returned to the community. Oh, it takes a village.

SPEAKER_05 13:20

Oh, and so if you have a child, that is all of a sudden your property?

SPEAKER_00 13:25

Well, you created it, so that would be your property.

SPEAKER_06 13:28

Well, the one of John Locke's original ideas was homesteading. Yeah. You mix with the land. If you this is basically the beginning of what I would call the non-libertarian libertarians, yeah. Where you're basically totally flipping all the ideas of liberty on its head in many ways. Yeah. In my opinion. Uh, I know in the They're not real libertarians. This is the workarians. I'm gonna pull the trigger on it. These are not real libertarians.

SPEAKER_05 13:55

Hey, I'm I'm I'm still uh holding out to call out a name of a dear friend of mine as we're going through here. So um and you guys are gonna be shocked, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_06 14:06

Oh, who's a Georgist? GL.

SPEAKER_05 14:08

Close, but it i it's it's gonna be coming up.

SPEAKER_00 14:10

We're gonna be talking about it. So where does this rent money go? It goes to some form of government, right? So Yeah. I think it violates the basic tenet of limited government. You have all this money going to whether it's local government, state government, county government, and w what what do we know about when a lot of money goes to government? It disappears. It well who does it really support? It supports special interest groups, especially in the state of South Carolina and other parts, you know, the the big money funds and campaigns and re-election campaigns. So if you got all this money poured into some kind of government enter enterprise, that's not gonna support individual individual and economic freedom. It's gonna be it's gonna infringe on that.

SPEAKER_06 15:05

Well, and Henry George was basically a very confused leftist philosopher in many ways. And when I was in high school, you have the Republican Liberty Caucus, that's pretty large, and then you have this little microgroup called the Democratic Freedom Caucus. Yeah. And I joined their little Yahoo group like 20 years ago, and they're all Georgists, and it's all this weird kind of leftist statist point of view. Yeah, and he was writing in the late 19th century and was saying, Oh, we could just totally fund all the government, assuming there's a massive state that has all these land restrictions and everything. And there's no way government was maybe 1% of GDP then. Yeah, there's no way when the government's 25, 35, 45% of GDP, you could either control all land and or tax people who own the land to pay for everything. It makes no sense, and it's a total violation of the non-aggression principle. And another issue with it is John Locke, who was writing two centuries before when you mix your labor with land, you're creating ownership of that property. And one of Henry George's views was oh, land is scarce, so it's different, but everything else is scarce. Uh yeah everything that's not land is scarce, that's all of economics, is dealing with scarcity.

SPEAKER_05 16:26

So is water, so is uh water scarcity scarce, everything.

SPEAKER_06 16:30

And it's a very confused, almost Orwellian kind of philosophy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:37

This Georgeism stuff, was that around before Marx's Marx or after Marx?

SPEAKER_06 16:42

That's around the same time.

SPEAKER_00 16:44

Because he they use a phrase redistribution of unearned land rent. Now that term um kind of peaks up the fact that they might have been Marxists, redistribution.

SPEAKER_06 16:56

Well, and he I think it was 1879, maybe he wrote his main work. So that's after all three volumes of Capital and the Communist Manifesto and everything.

SPEAKER_05 17:03

And yeah, because the the ideas behind Marx and Engels were not their original ideas either. They they pieced and stole stole piece and pierced and knit this whole philosophy together. They didn't come up with it. Yeah. Well, of course that's true Marxism. They have to steal from other people in order to come up with something to be profitable.

SPEAKER_06 17:25

And you don't own anything, and it's all no private property. And one last thing before we get to the next wild section of your list.

SPEAKER_04 17:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 17:33

Hunter-gatherers basically they're surviving day-to-day and there's no property. Yeah. But they live in total poverty and live in the woods and die off and lots of violence within their community. Violence and everything else. And the leftist mentality is sort of this hunter-gatherer 10,000 years ago, pre-civilization thing, where there's no hierarchy, there's no hierarchy of talents and wealth and everything else. It's all uh evened out through force. Oh, yeah. And there's uh even something known as primitivism, where certain hardcore leftists want to like live in the woods and get rid of civilization, and it's in line with the overall leftist ideology, and the Georgist thing is right in the middle of all that.

SPEAKER_00 18:16

So we just learned that the American Indian were geo-libertarians. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Now that's something you'll never learn on any other c podcast.

SPEAKER_06 18:26

Well, and that's why that's uh the evolutionary biology of like these different views is the leftist view is kind of a hunter-gatherer view, and the libertarian view is when you have in social groups reciprocity and you have to deal with fairness, the law and order view of fairness, right? Where you basically the non-aggression principle comes out of. Yeah, but they are not consistent with each other.

unknown 18:52

Nope.

SPEAKER_00 18:53

Okay, the next one is libertarian socialism. Here we go. What a time for me to forget my my chill pills at home.

SPEAKER_05 19:01

Okay, my my best friend or one of my best friends growing up, and we're still friends today, has a very fairly popular podcast called The Log with Charles Brussel. And people, if you want to listen to it and and you want to hear someone who is a LibSock, uh he is he is your guy. He uh he actually tries to challenge me with, you know, uh you know, do you think you don't think this you know quote from Marx is noble? I said, Well, I think a lot of things are noble. Even Hitler had some things noble in his speech, but it doesn't mean that it's going to be workable or that it is moral.

SPEAKER_06 19:48

Yeah, this is getting into Orwellian territory. This is like war is peace, freedom is slavery. This is getting crazy.

SPEAKER_05 19:54

And and and and this is the other thing, is when I find when I come up to LibSocks is that they think they have the moral high ground. And so I'll challenge them right away. I said, okay, you think you have the moral high ground because you say that capitalism has the problem of greed as being the number one difficulty. I said, I'll agree with that. But I think communism or Marxism or socialism, whatever you have, has envy, which is a combination of greed and the desire to have someone else's wealth. And that is even more evil than the greed on steroids. It's greed on steroids, and so therefore, it's out of the lesser of two evils, I'll take capitalism over Marxism.

SPEAKER_00 20:43

Officially, libertarian socialism is anti-authoritarian, anti-capitalist. And they believe that maximum individual and freedom is uh general social and economic equality. You can't have real freedom without equality. And they don't like big government because the state centralizes political power. They don't like capitalism because capitalism centralizes economic power. And both, they feel, limit human autonomy. A well-known American libertarian socialist was Noam Chomsky.

SPEAKER_06 21:28

I had an email exchange with Noam Chomsky when I was 18. I was shocked he responded to them. He's fame kind of famous for doing that. And he made all sorts of wing-nut arguments that basically libertarianism would lead to the worst tyranny in human history. Noam Chomsky's the same guy who was on firing line with uh William Buckley. Yeah. And if you watch the last 10 minutes of it, it's from the late 60s. He completely denies and downplays all of the deaths under Mao Zedong.

SPEAKER_05 21:58

Oh, yeah. You have to.

SPEAKER_06 22:00

Which, you know, I guess that's not one of the most authoritarian uh regimes in human history. It's capitalism and Walmart.

SPEAKER_05 22:06

Stalin, yeah. Mao Zedong, uh what is it, Pol Pot? Um Pol Pot. You know, uh the uh even Fidel Castro. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:16

It's uh if you follow my uh Facebook postings or my blogs, you'll constantly hear me say that the progressive movement or the progressive agenda has infiltrated just about every American institution, businesses, religious institutions, and of course our political institutions. And I I view libertarian socialism as one of those institutions that has been infiltrated by the progressive movement. Now that's just my own opinion. Um I'm in in where I live in my state, that has been a big issue. We have a lot of libertarian socialists. And in in America, there was actually a convention in Reno, Nevada that addressed this issue, and they called it the Reno Reset, where they b basically tried to have people other than LibSocks run the Libertarian Party. And even to this day, that's still a battle that's going on within the Libertarian Party.

SPEAKER_06 23:24

That is definitely libertarian socialism is probably the most anti-liberty sect in the entire liberty movement by far. If this was if you had non-libertarian libertarians in my point of view, they would be the apex right at the top. And didn't we have Bruce Reeves? Like some one of the candidates who ran for governor was like a lip sock in South Carolina. I mean, it's just it's crazy. And notice on the description uh George Orwell, who was also kind of a leftist, he would write in an anti-authoritarian way. But he has this uh article on uh the English language where euphemisms and bending words and meanings is something that's rampant in all political areas, and the way they twist and bend language with libertarian socialist philosophy is insane.

SPEAKER_00 24:20

You are such a fascist by saying something like that. But but to be fair, we have to realize that there is such a thing as the world's smallest political quiz. It's called uh for operation politically homeless. You take a 10-questioned quiz and you plot yourself on a quadrant, either high on individual freedom or high on economic freedom. And then you kind of cross the lines and it'll give you your libertarian score. Now, keep in mind that quadrant cons it consists of people who might be considered leftists and people who might be considered left uh right wing people. So libertarian socialists do fall within the left side of that quad quadrant, and they are a part of the libertarian community.

SPEAKER_05 25:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:12

Now I say this because I hope that the result of this program will eventually help us to work together and not succumb to tribalism, which I'm guilty of. We're all guilty of that. I'm super guilty. Yeah, we all have our I'm not.

SPEAKER_05 25:27

I am just so pure.

SPEAKER_06 25:29

Well, and that's something it ties back to this hunter-gatherer thing. Yeah. Like it mentions they don't like capitalism. Capitalism is civilian private ownership of the means of production. Yeah. And when people talk about voluntary socialism, that's called capitalism.

SPEAKER_05 25:43

Well, yeah. Well, you know, it and then the the argument of, well, that's not real socialism, or that's not been real communist. We can make the same argument here. We still don't enjoy real capitalism. We we have yeah, it's corporatism. It's corporatism. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:00

So you're not a real libertarian if I guess we all play that game. Now the next category, which I'm I identify as, I'm a I'm a conservatarian. Fascist. Well, that's just another name for Republican. So conservatarians blend conservatarian and libertarian principles. We normally favor limited government, free markets, and individual liberty, while holding on to certain traditional conservative positions. Such as? Such as basic morality. That there is a right and wrong.

SPEAKER_05 26:47

There is no such thing.

SPEAKER_00 26:49

Plus a lot of us are um active in our local churches, but yet we're libertarians. So we come at issues also from a moralistic perspective.

SPEAKER_05 27:02

Well, not just churches, but uh synagogues and mosques.

SPEAKER_00 27:06

Yeah. Yeah. Right. You have religious beliefs, but yet you believe in individual and economic freedom for the most part.

SPEAKER_05 27:14

Because I mean, I I I have to say, uh some of my Muslim friends are more conservative than some of my uh my uh Christian friends.

SPEAKER_06 27:24

Oh yeah. Oh, they're very conservative. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 27:28

I mean, it's not I'm not talking about burqa. I'm not talking about you know running around with burkas on. They they're not that conservative, but you know, they they yeah, they generally don't want the garbage in schools, and they they're not object, they don't object to having the Ten Commandments and the uh prayer in school for anybody. Oh boy, okay. Yeah, and these are Muslims, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 27:51

Well, that's interesting because Ron Paul might be one of the most famous examples of a conservatarian.

SPEAKER_04 27:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 27:59

He's definitely uh socially conservative and personally conservative, and that's where you can divide personal beliefs from politics. I only saw him more as a minarchist, though. Well, they're minarchists too. I mean, unless you're an ANCAP, they're basically all minarchists to one degree or another, except Lip Sox.

SPEAKER_00 28:18

Conservatarians are basically fiscally conservative, socially moderate, emotionally bankrupt. And I take a lot of moderate positions on key issues like uh foreign policy or abortion. Now, I came to the conservatarian position after reading Frank Meyer's uh essays on on freedom and liberty back, it was written back in the 1950s. I also read Charles C.W. Cook's book, The Conservatarian Manifesto. Uh-uh. And that explains what it is to be a conservatarian. Uh Frank Meyer believed that if if you merge the best of the libertarian principles and mesh them with the best of the conservative principles, that the Republican Party would never lose another election. And he called his philosophy fusionism. And we have a lot of fusionists out there in government today. Thomas Massey, Rand Paul, and there there are other ones that are. Justin Amosh. Yeah, Justin Amosh. Right. So the conservatarian movement is still active in America today, and we d we are a small part of the uh Libertarian Party. Many of us are members of the Mises Caucus, and that is probably has a lot of conservatarians.

SPEAKER_06 29:53

Well, that's when you mention fiscal libertarians, I mean the conservatarian type figures like Ron Paul and Massey and Rand Paul are some of the most influential people in the entire liberty movement.

SPEAKER_05 30:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 30:09

And have I'm basically libertarian because of Ron Paul from like 20 years ago. Yeah. So they're in immensely influential, and there's a lot of alliances you can have with people, and fiscal libertarianism and conservatarian views are a major one.

SPEAKER_04 30:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:27

And uh we can also move on to the one that I'm not going to talk a lot about, and that's the menarchist. Obvious, obviously, you have the anarcho-capitalists, but the menarchists believe in libertarian principles, but but basically small government. Just minimum, think uh That's probably where I think I align.

SPEAKER_06 30:44

Yeah, that's most libertarian.

SPEAKER_00 30:46

Think minimalist art, minimalist music, minimalist architecture, minimalist clothing. Less is more. So I could easily become a minarchist.

SPEAKER_06 30:58

Yay! Minarchy, so archy means like ruler. That's like anarchy. Yeah. Uh minarchy is mini archy, mini state. And that's definitely vast majority. Thomas Jefferson, John Locke, all the major philosophers. It wasn't until the 18th and 19th century, or the 19th and 20th century with Spooner and Rothbard that it really went more extreme than minarchism. But that's definitely vast majority. Probably 80% or 90% of libertarians are minarchists.

SPEAKER_00 31:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 31:28

I I I would think so. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:30

And now for the one that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Neolibertarians.

SPEAKER_06 31:36

Ah, Larry Elder.

SPEAKER_00 31:37

That word near Neo. That word neo kind of gets me because neoconservatives was then the progressives finally made their influence in the Republican Party, in the conservative movement.

SPEAKER_06 31:49

Well, and here's the thing: libertarian socialists or socialists who call themselves libertarians. Neo-libertarians are basically neocons who call themselves uh libertarians. So it's uh freedom domestically, and then we'll spread it abroad infinitely. And you know, trying to mix Bill Crystal and like Murray Rothbard doesn't really make it.

SPEAKER_05 32:11

When I hear of that, sometimes it brings to mind like a Ronald Reagan uh type of libertarian claim. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 32:20

Well, and the thing with uh with Reagan is he spoke libertarian and he even made explicit libertarian quotes, like it's the heart of conservatism, but then he was not libertarian in any way. Yeah, not not in the way he governed. Yeah. Domestically or uh in foreign policy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:36

Yes, they believe in individu individual liberty, economic freedom, and limited government. However, they also believe that the United States has an obligation to interfere in the foreign affairs of other countries. Interventionism.

SPEAKER_06 32:52

Yeah, neolibertarianism is very extreme. It's an extreme war hawk. Like Larry Elder, I got in Twitter debates with them 10 years ago about it, and it's basically the George W. Bush Trump Iran policy, like somehow mixed with some sort of minarchist libertarian view, and they're very aggressive. And the whole neocon movement came from Trotskyists who wanted to Trotsky might have been worse than Stalin. It might be good that he had got kind of shoved out and animal farmers written about him.

SPEAKER_05 33:26

I mean, the Clintons could almost be put into that neo- Oh, well, that's like a leftist interventionist.

SPEAKER_06 33:32

Yeah. I mean, she just came out and praised Trump on her rent. If she's as she's getting interrogated over the Epstein files, files. But she had to pause everything in Libya and everything else. Yeah. Neo-libertarians are a a uh I I would personally, out of all these ones you've mentioned, date one? That that might be fine. One more after video. Uh neolibertarians, geo-libertarians, and libsocks, libertarian socialists, I would personally, as the Ayatollah high priest of libertarian lecturing, I would call them non-libertarian libertarians.

SPEAKER_00 34:13

Thank you for that.

SPEAKER_06 34:15

They are the reason I would end this nice discussion with the.

SPEAKER_05 34:18

Well, you you you completely shot his closing, but yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:23

Why can't we all just get on to the last one I want to talk about are the objectivists. This is a movement that probably brought more people into the Libertarian Party than any other movement.

SPEAKER_04 34:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:38

Think Ann Rand.

SPEAKER_04 34:39

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 34:40

How many of you have read Atlas Shrugged? And after reading Atlas Shrugged, you may have changed your position on government. You realize that government is not your friend, that there are other options. And the Libertarian Party probably started to look pretty good at you for you.

SPEAKER_06 34:59

Ayn Rand's a really interesting figure. And she had a she her family owned property in I think St. Petersburg. And when the October Revolution happened, they basically destroyed her whole family and took all their property.

SPEAKER_00 35:12

Right.

SPEAKER_06 35:13

And she ended up coming to the U.S. alone. And I think it traumatized her. And there were some issues with her later on, might be related to the extreme trauma she went through. But she's a very interesting fictional writer, like Anthem. I I haven't read The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged, but I've read Anthem and she's done all three, but uh yeah.

SPEAKER_05 35:32

But her her contemporaries too have been really uh in the objectivist movement have been really good. But what's real consistent with the objectivists is their uh rejection of libertarianism.

SPEAKER_06 35:47

Oh yeah, well she wouldn't use the term, she didn't agree with the non-aggression principle either. That's correct. And I think part of she had a big falling out with Murray Rothbard. And she influenced me because I was atheist before I was libertarian. And I thought it was interesting that that's a right-wing figure, including Milton Friedman and some of these other ones, and it was persuasive, and she's really aggressive on that those issues. Yeah. But one thing with Ayn Rand is objectivism turned it. Murray Rothbard wrote uh Mozart was a Red.

SPEAKER_04 36:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 36:19

Kind of mocking her because right when she wrote Atlas Shrugged, uh, he started associating with her. I went to her where her apartment was in New York City by the Empire State Building a year ago.

SPEAKER_05 36:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 36:28

And she would objectivism as an overall philosophy, has metaphysical claims, epistemological claims, certain ethics claims, and it's a whole concrete philosophy. And she would interpret things like aesthetics in a sort of militant way, like Mozart was a red, or you know, you'd listen to certain music or stuff, and you're like a leftist authoritarian. Oh yeah. And she ended up basically blackmailing Murray Rothbard because he wouldn't leave his Christian wife. And it we would I I I me personally, I I would say she she she dipped into cult territory and was very uh she might have had some mental trauma and illness going on, but she's insanely influential. Atlas Shrugged is one of the most influential novels of all time, definitely, definitely, and one of the most extreme defenders of capitalism, and she had this whole Art Deco classical view of human nature, and very interesting.

SPEAKER_00 37:28

Her whole emphasis was on rugged individualism and the virtue of selfishness.

SPEAKER_05 37:35

Yeah. But what, you know, where is John Gall?

SPEAKER_00 37:41

So if you want to learn more about the objectivist philosophy, I would recommend you go to the Atlas Society webpage. That's the premier organization in America today that uh pushes objectivism.

unknown 37:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:56

So that that was a very interesting discussion. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 37:59

And uh So now you know that I am sitting here having conversations with the Hoff, with nobody here being a real libertarian.

SPEAKER_00 38:08

Hopefully, our listening audience by now should realize that I cherish, the Hoff cherishes, the concepts of limited government, individual, and economic freedom. And that is what most libertarians cherish. I believe that if we libertarians could ever put aside our differences and work together as a cohesive team, okay, we we would soon rule the world and leave everyone alone. So as Jeff Foxworthy might say, if you have a bumper sticker on your car that reads, Less government, more freedom, you might be a libertarian. Next week on Conversations with the Hoff, we have a person who has been known as a person who could actually bridge the party, bridge the traditional libertarians with the radical libertarians. That person has his own podcast called The Sharp Way. Yes, you guessed it by now. Larry Sharp will be our next guest guest on Conversations with the Health. And now a word from our glorious leader, the executive producer of Liberty Crack Media, Trip Detmering.

SPEAKER_05 39:24

Yeah, and you got to tune in for more of these conversations with the Hoff. They're really entertaining. And then uh, if you want to get a less serious side of life, tune in to Microsoft Monkeys. Once again, Microsoft. Microsoft Microphone Monkeys. I am just I'm I'm forever. I don't know why I've got that brain worm that's going in there. Uh the uh the third thing is if you're really into books, check out the bookworm mom and um see some entertainment. If you are uh just trying to get your head around a bunch of really weird issues, try Trip and Graham have issues. And um, we're gonna have some more exciting uh content for you at libertypreckmedia.com. Take care, everybody, and have a great week.