 This is a reason Livestream, it's Zach Weismiller my colleague and we're talking to Michael Heist the founder and supreme commander of the Mises caucus the Segment of the Libertarian Party which took over control of the party last Whatever it was May June at the Reno convention at the Reno reset He also runs the Mises pack, which is political action coalition Michael, I guess let's start off with talking about the Decentralized revolution document the Mises caucus dropped earlier this year project Decentralized revolution for a new Libertarian Party. I hear echoes of Murray Rothbard's for a new Liberty in that title Give us the What's the elevator pitch? What is project decentralized revolution? so echoes of Murray Rothbard as well as Ron Paul with the revolution there, but but so the elevator pitch is We're the point of the takeover was always to develop a political strategy in the long term for the political for the Political party that is the LP and to this point. I don't think there has been a cohesive strategy I for as long as I can remember as long as I can tell I think there's just kind of been this what we just want to run candidates We just want to get ballot access and and nothing that kind of is sustainable in the long term And so the effect of that has been to kind of spin our wheels for a while And there's a lot of people who have done a lot of good work But we've got to develop something in the long term And and something that takes stock of where we're at within political reality right now as a third party And what's realistic for us and attainable for us and use that as a foundation to build into the future Five years ten years 15 20 years. Yeah, what what's the core essence because it's true It's it's a long-range strata strategy document But you know, what's what's kind of at the core of the strategy? Well again that the beginning of the document is a lot about kind of accepting Maybe some bitter truths, you know and and shooting for the top is not helping us And it's not it's not helping us to earn trust and the concept of trust is something that is repeated over and over again In that document and and so basically what we're saying is we should shoot locally But when I say locally, it's just the same as I said in the our first interview at Reno We got to shoot for city council. We got to shoot for a mayor sheriff judge school board seats that are able to do something about our problem with the federal government today that Also like put us in the mix in the culture at the local level because what I believe is that, you know We're being trained to believe that culture is something that is dictated from the top down Because of the fact that the political left and the progressives have essentially taken over the institutions of the country And they're using those institutions to push ideology through culture and and I and I don't think that's organic in any sense I think culture is something that emerges naturally from the the individual through the family and through the community So in a very real sense if we say, okay, we're gonna take it to this community level the culture is what we're mixing it up with in real time and at the same time that local level is where Americans at large perceive the political stakes to be the lowest and therefore most likely to maybe listen to us and not at the Highest level where they where they perceive the stakes to be the highest where they don't believe that we're going to win So we've got a lot easier It's a lot easier to get somebody to vote for a libertarian dog catcher or even tax assessor at the county level than present Again city council. I don't care about dog catcher. I don't care about things that can't materially change our position with with the with the federal government I Want to dig a little bit more into the Strategy for winning local elections and how you plan to select what kind of elections to run for but I want to back up for a Second to something else you said about accepting the political reality because that's kind of how this this document opens And I'm just gonna read from this a bit at length and get you to expand on One of the ideas here This is a section called accepting political realities We must accept certain realities about the political landscape in the United States and where third parties are within that landscape Some of this may be bitter medicine as you said, but it's crucial that we get real with ourselves The ruling class with its allies in the corporate media and academia waged a subtle divide and conquer campaign Against the American people in the last century or so and it has largely succeeded The electorate has been conditioned to identify with either team red or team blue and to take part in fierce political debate and Life or death battle with a very constricted range of opinions and topics which is sometimes called the overton window And you go on that this team mentality is not merely political It's psychological and emotional and to leave one's team Which is what libertarians are asking people to do is to leave one social circle and status It's a significant price to pay and we have to have a compelling reason to ask people to make that sacrifice So I guess my opening question off of that is What are the immediate steps that you're taking or how does that? integrate into your strategy to Break people out of that very ingrained red blue mentality. What is the compelling? What are the compelling reasons? That the new libertarian party plans to put forth So it's a it's a multitude of things like at first stated kind of tamping down our ambition about where we're actually going to win I think that's a big part of it because then we can kind of come to people where they're at and where they're willing to Maybe make a change Whereas they won't be at the federal level or something like that And then other than that We've also got to meet them where they're at on the issues that are of overlap with us because in my opinion The name of the game is trust we have to earn trust and this is something that is a little bit more Psychological than how we talk about ideas and how we how we want to advance our ideas and and how people are going to Accept ideas is determined by what you might call their psychic environment or their social environment And you kind of peer you have to pierce through all of that So what I'm saying is there is a lot of distrust in politicians right now There's a lot of people on the political left who are not getting what they want from their their political class There's a lot of rank and file on the political right who are not getting what they want on their political class And so we can exploit those gaps and and come in on the issues and basically push the the political right The actual politicians with their rank and file behind us to actually pass gun sanctuary legislation at the local level Or at the county level you know or drug decriminalization if you live in a left area and all that kind of stuff and this goes to both create liberty In the the locality that you're in give you street kept credit because maybe they still think of the libertarian party is a joke But now they see you personally as a doer and you've achieved something that they want I fundamentally don't think in some sense that we can even have the conversations really in good faith Until there's a level of trust because of this team environment that the social environment of it is to You know not listen to us until we either a are a threat to them B can help them destroy their enemies or C create trust and we just don't have the political capital to be a direct threat or A direct aid to helping them destroy their enemies. So we've got to figure out how to generate trust What's the what's the timeline on this? Oh? God this is going to be multiple decades long and that's that's you know, it's you can get elected into a city council today But in order the idea is that as I stated in the article that this is gonna Liberty is gonna have to be successful as a cultural movement before it could ever be success Hope to be successful as a political movement and that takes time and it takes kind of the the seeds that we're planning at the local level to flower over time and Collectively shift that culture to where we can make bigger changes down the line This is something that the progressives have been doing for a hundred years and and so, you know It could take that long, but I think at the very least if we try it out in the five year and And start to see progress we would have therefore have The emotional fuel and the proof of concept that we need to see what happens in the next five years in the next five Years tweaking along the way as we need to a new data and new experiences come in But the shooting for the top thing is not working and it's and again It's not it's not generating trust because as far as people can tell They don't they don't interact with the libertarian party. They don't see us They don't see us in their communities. They just see us come up every two four years or whatever in their in their Presidential races in their senate races and fuck up their Candidates and stuff like that and then to disappear back into the ether again only to re-emerge two four years later We that's not a trust-building exercise. Just a real quick note. You had mentioned The the document is attributed to Aaron Harris. Who is Aaron Harris? So here's our communications director It was a collaborative effort between myself Aaron Harris and David Hines, you know, they helped me editorialize it Thanks. That's I was just curious Zach. So the the way that it seems like you want to Get libertarians to gain that trust though is to get them into offices that are Kind of the low-hanging fruit. Well, well, it's like it's both like Offices that are very local and maybe not a lot of people vote in these elections, but also they are They they have kind of levers that can be pulled to actually achieve change I found this section to be kind of interesting you said only nine percent of the 673 LP candidates were for local office Which is you define as lower than county level yet all but one of the 22 LP victories were in those local races And then there's a kind of extrapolation as to if you if you kind of expanded that strategy What the numbers might have been but my question I guess from just very Mechanical point of view is what is the plan to identify? You know, how do you go about identifying good Offices to run for and good people to run for those offices because that seems like really the the task of of the political party, right? so tooth well the two things there and and One both of them are outlined in the document. So what I propose is the year one Strategy at a state party level is and and this is happening this year in Pennsylvania This is kind of the prototype. You know our team here that I'm basing this off of they Went county by county and looked at the municipal elections from the previous time that they had municipal level elections And essentially what they found was that there was dozens in our state at least dozens of city councillors and mayors that One where the entire race had less than 50 votes Not just one candidate the entire race had less than 50 votes So you can then set your sights in on those and say, okay this is the absolute lowest hanging fruit of positions that actually matter and start to then send out You know mailers and and recruitment efforts and membership drives towards those areas to get people to run and then What I kind of tie in there is that again because the political partner because the Libertarian Party has not really had a Political strategy. They don't really have anything to inform their fundraising strategy And if you don't have anything that that does either of those you don't really have a recruitment strategy The recruitment strategy is well our ideas are awesome and that's all well and good But we need to have an avenue to make those ideas win in order for people to have you know the psychic motivation to do the drudgery that this is going to require and So by having an actual political strategy You can then ask for money on the basis of that strategy to get the tools needed to Maximally do that strategy which then allows you to go out to say all these registered Libertarians who are not in the party Or at least the ones that vote regularly and say listen, we're getting our shit together. We have an actual strategy It's different now. We want you in we can hook you up with tools We can get you experience helping these candidates yada yada get them into the community and then once that once the community element takes Oh, that's the other thing that the community element is crucial to all of this I don't think any strategy will work without a comprehensive community element from which a culture of liberty can emerge What do you mean by that? What's what's so what's so unity strategy? Well, it goes back to this idea that we're gonna have to be successful as a cultural movement and and you know I outside of the presidential elections. You don't see events, you know, like look at the Tom Woods 2000 episode event. There was two thousand people at that event. That's bigger that there's that's bigger than any Presidential campaign I can think of within the LP in their events We've got to do things to bring people together and get them connecting and getting our creatives together supporting our Entrepreneurs and and that's what I mean like we have to bring the people together and then start supporting each other In our projects whether we're doing political-based projects or not And then a culture and our creatives our artists all of this stuff so that a culture of liberty liberty can emerge because again This isn't just political an idea ideas We have to offer something in the social realm for people if they're gonna leave their old social circles We have to have a robust community So if we have that robust community when we invite people in It's not just bickering and fighting and eight people at a meeting and and all of this stuff That's kind of characterized the LP experience to this point, you know It's we have a strategy we have a community We have a reason for you to do the kind of work that we're asking you to do in the long term Just to get real specific about the political strategy Because obviously the Libertarian party has run local candidates for a long time what Where what would be different here is it you're it seems like you're saying it's the state affiliates are the ones that would be Really the ones employing this strategy. It's not it's not like the national party is suddenly Funding you know city council races if I'm understanding you correctly. It's the state's chapter would be funding these really local races Is that fundamentally different than how things have worked in the past? I don't think there's been a focus on it I think there's just been a we want people to run man So like do what you want instead of like this focus of well We've got a campaign and we've got these tools and we're gonna do this and we're gonna do that We've got volunteers and we're aiming at these races because a lot of times people come in there's not there's a lack of infrastructure and and a lack of experience so when people come in they have no Direction and as much as you know, like we are Individualists and all of that people do need leaders and I and I don't mean political leaders I mean they I mean competence leaders, you know, like they and and so people do look to leaders to tell them to Help guide them in a direction So we have to have that in place for people to not just say hey You know come in and run for whatever race and you're definitely not gonna win and you know just do it Of your own device. It's like no we've got an infrastructure in place It's aimed at these races and for this goal. Are you with us? and then what is the role of the state level offices because you do mention that it's not that you're gonna abandon running for senator or Governor and so forth, but that it's going to be really targeted. So how do you decide what to do at the state level? in my opinion the state level is like a microcosm of Running for president They are essentially marketing and recruitment campaigns and they should be used to maximize the other efforts that are built around Actually gaining political capital whether that be city counselor and all of that So, you know, they're the ones who have the perhaps the widest microphone You know, we got we had several Senate candidates and governor candidates this year that who were able to get into the debates So those are the people who have perhaps the best opportunity within their state to drive the messaging drive the recruitment and Give a vision of what it means to be a libertarian and what our culture is like to then drive people towards us And once they're towards us we have our shit together. We have a strategy. We have tools now There's an actual reason beyond just what we have ideas So it's it's to work synchronistically around the the local strategy but you would be much more selective and who Kind of gets backing to run at the state level is that accurate? I mean in fear That's up to the state level, but if I had to suggest I would say yeah, you're gonna need a strong messenger You're gonna need somebody with charisma You're gonna need somebody who is who has some gravitas to them Maybe it may be a business owner or somebody who people can respect and and take seriously when they put this message forward Because again, we're not winning the race What we're not so we can't compel people on put on that those grounds We have to compel them on different grounds at that level of race so I mean at this in the past midterm There was the kind of the the race that got the most attention was in Georgia because the candidate there chase Oliver Forced to run off What was your and and I talked to chase Oliver a little bit before this and I see he's he's watching as well We might bring up a couple of his comments He said he didn't really get a lot of backing from the national LP until he was kind of already making a splash. What was your evaluation of The kind of campaign chase ran is that the sort of thing you would want to see in the future? I think he had some great moments in the debates, you know, I think when he's pointing out They don't read the bills what he's trying to tap into there is that these people don't have your interest at heart They're not representing you. They're not serving you and and I don't know if he would word it this way But that's essentially a populist message you know Tapping into how the little guy is being screwed over by the big guy and I think that's great And and I actually publicly, you know, congratulated him on his getting the runoff and getting the attention from stuff like that So I do think that we need to go in that direction I do think populism is something that and that we do need to employ I don't think populism is is I think it's a tool. It's not an end of itself You know, there's a reason why Bernie Sanders who is on the political left is a populist was also so is Trump like Populism isn't isn't something in and of itself Ron Paul I thought I thought he employed a libertarian populist message. Yeah, I think and the Fed is very populist It's it's you're the little guy. Maybe you're of modest means Maybe you're you know concerned about how you're gonna afford the groceries next week And that's all being screwed up by this banking elite that doesn't have your interest at heart I think we have to push a little bit on the populist issue in relation to chase Oliver's campaign to what was different about him is that he also pushed for very strongly for Kind of protection of minority rights, whether they're ethnic or a sexual or racial minorities Which cuts against the populist message was that a big part of his appeal as well It's hard to say it's certainly libertarian right because it's like hey You know, we're all individuals and we get to kind of live how we want as long as we're not, you know Really getting in the face of other people and then let me add one little bit of context here because I have some of the I have some of the results from that Georgia race. So up on the top there You see chase Oliver kind of that he's the one that covered the spread there got about 81,000 Running for Senate then in the governor's race. There was Shane Hazel who I think you would agree is more the Mises caucus mold candidates. He's actually mentioned in the decentralized Decentralized revolution document and forced to run off Two years ago to you so was actually in a scene a very similar situation And so he got about 28,000 and then the lieutenant governor Ryan Graham candidate got about 85,000 What do that those results mean, you know, if anything to you in the context of next question So again, I put this in the article and this might be one of those hard pills for people to swallow I honest to God. I'm starting to truly believe that our result our vote results at this level of race is not Primarily driven by our own I don't think we have the level of control over the vote totals that we get at this level of races We might like to think Because you know Shane forced the runoff. He's a different style of messaging then then chase So like how do you account for that in just two years? You know fundamentally we're arguing the difference between 1% or 3% which again in the long term You're not building political capital. What's the real difference here? I'm a you know reach the remnant guy if if you reach 1% or 3% electorally that doesn't matter, but if a Thousand of those people really get it and then come in That's what matters. So can I I would judge the results off of something like that? Yeah, so that goes to chase has a put a question in our comment section Saying how do we get our name out there if we're not if we aren't competing in the highest profile races? Higher profile is meant to help down ballot. So I mean in a way, aren't you making an argument that? You know, you're gonna reach the remnant or you have a bigger chance of reaching the remnant not just in Georgia But across the country If you end up becoming a spoiler I don't mind being a spoiler and and I think when those opportunities come up Yeah, we have to narratively run with that as okay We're a political threat and I'm not suggesting that we don't compete. I mean we're talking exactly would said yourself about how We're not abandoning that what I'm saying is that the reality is we're not competitive We might be in the race, but we're not competitive and people know that like nobody nobody is fooled by this and things I think the libertarians got a real chance this year. I could see all these libertarian elected state House members and blah blah blah Like This is one of the areas where we gotta get real about ourselves and figure out what's causing people to Vote for this level of race and tap into that because if we don't have control of it, then maybe it's just discuss, you know Let me let me let me bring up one other question here from Chase while we're talking about him and also the state level issue He mentions Nationally, we had the frontier project that helped us elect our first state legislator in a Generation that was in Wyoming. I believe I think was his name and yeah, he did not win re-election Some libertarian party regulars see that as as a big failure because you know, this is the one state Legislator that that we hadn't that the libertarian party had in the whole country and now with this new strategy Kind of that the wind has been taken out of those sales First of all first of all the Mises pack had given thousands of dollars to the frontier project I appreciate their use of data and their use of targeting to be as realistic as possible at that level of race So we had given thousands of dollars to the frontier project directly and we had also I feel bad I forget her name the other woman that ran in Wyoming that lost by tiny bit. We donated her directly as well however He did not win re-election And and he won that race when it was him versus a Democrat and then when the Republicans put somebody up for the first time in something like 15 20 years He got he lost and lost by a wide margin despite the fact that he was already elected and had that kind of name recognition So again, I just don't think that we have the trust at that level of race And we have got to get serious and real with ourselves about building from the ground up We have to there's no narrative around us. What is that? What is the grand narrative from people who are not already libertarians about libertarians? That's up to us to craft in their minds because we haven't done it What should it be? So I kind of made a post about this in my opinion that the most basic way of describing it is I would say that We don't have any political voice in this country that is about free markets about the individual about free speech Property and all of these these kind of core to our founding ideas We have two flavors of progressivism progressivism in this context meaning People who think that the state can solve problems and and make you a better person in some sense You know, you have left progressives that think they can make you more equal and less bigoted You've got right progressives that think they can make you more responsible the state can make you more responsible and and more moral And meanwhile the whole paradigm the entire Overton window is touched in that is progressive And so we have to challenge that So can I ask I mean I I agree with that but I already agree, you know, I'm a libertarian So like, you know, the Republican Party doesn't agree with that and the Republican Party has, you know, effectively 50% market share Along with 50% for the Democrats. They were not progressives if you ask You know Marjorie Taylor if you asked Donald Trump if you asked Lauren Bovert if you ask the you know the members of the Republican Party who just You know the the rump group that essentially forced Kevin McCarthy to do their bidding if he were to become speaker They're not they're not defining themselves as progressive and nobody in the mainstream media is Defining them as progressive the only people who are are Libertarians and that that includes everybody from the Cato Institute to reason to the Mises caucus to the Mises Institute to the LP How would you know, how do you measure the effectiveness? Not of what you're saying or the internal consistency, but how will you see it actually changing people's minds? We have to connect the dots because at the end of the day, we have to tell the truth That's what has to be at the core of it. It can't just be ideology for ideology's sake We have to tell the truth and if the truth is that they're a flavor of progressivism Then we have to run with that. So then the question is is how do we connect the dots? And and I think you have to hit both sides from different ways I mean, yes, you have to hit the left from the left and hit the right from the right But even deeper than that, I would argue that the left side of the paradigm Opposes libertarianism on what you might call a first principal basis I think they they actually oppose in large part property rights and they they they agree with the collective over the individual The problem with the right side of it is that they're full of shit They claim to be for liberty in some sense and liberty principles But then their protectionists and then they you know, they want their Trump checks and you know all of this So we've got to hit them on their own terms and connect the dots while politically building the trust to make the Be able to open that conversation In a significant way, I mean your your political strategy is not about the grand narrative Your political strategy is going into towns, you know towns and cities at the at the council level at the sub county level and Saying hey, you know, we we're not Republicans or Democrats. We're not team red or team blue here What we are is we have a problem with crime. We have a problem with garbage collection We have a problem with really shitty zoning with onerous drug Crime, you know drug laws and things like that and we're going to elect people who are livered who happen to be libertarian But you you Democrat you Republican will want to work with in order to make your little town better Yeah, I would say that's the building political capital part of the strategy You do that's the other reason why you have to have your state-wides and your president You do have to have somebody to kind of craft that grand narrative because that's going to reach the remnant But once you reach that remnant and they come in yet got to funnel it into something. That's actually viable Otherwise, they're gonna burn out They're gonna not see the point of all of this and then they're gonna leave and either go apolitical or go back to one Of these other parties or whatever So like we have to excite people about the ideas and then with that excitement drive them down into viable activity in the long term I'm gonna bring up a couple comments here that I think will allow us to dig a little bit more into something you mentioned about progressives versus the right and you know The likelihood that libertarians are gonna reach one one side or another I'm gonna hit you with a little bit of sugar and then something a little bitter after that first. This is David versus Goliath who says the the LPMC is the best thing to happen to the libertarian party since David Nolan's living room Then we've got someone named the mechanic is here saying the Mises caucus is purely conservative scum who oppose everything that libertarianism is about so quite a bit of polarization and opinion here and With regard to you know the charge that you are really a bunch of conservatives or a bunch of right wingers is that Is that how accurate is that because you do definitely say that you know the progressives are the problem But do you have a fundamental critique of kind of what's ascended on the right? The the riot like what I'll call the national conservatives the napkin That's what no so party. I it's our problem with that or are you trying to actually? Draw from that and say we are actually the more right-wing party than the Republicans Well, we have to draw from wherever we can but as far as like the political right I actually think call it what you want call it the dissident right call it the new American or the America first right I think that's who we have to be having the arguments with primarily right now I think we're in competition with the right in a way that we're not with the left and again It goes back to this point where the left is basically already run the culture war They've already done their war march through the institutions. They're already You know bombarding us from Hollywood and pop meet and pop culture and all of this stuff They've already won that so then the question is is what do we do about that? And we are in competition with this new right or whatever you want to call call it up to on how to push back With that so I actually think we have to open up the debates and the arguments and the fights with the right in In higher priority because again, I think they're they are trying to speak our language They're trying to say that we're Liberty people, but we know that you know their protectionist We know that they have not been good on war and all these other things So we've got to do battle with them to reclaim the narrative on what to do with the fact that the culture war has Already been one whereas with the left That's a lot easier for for us to be working against because again, I think they oppose us on a first principle basis I think they oppose us on property rights. They're not really making that argument The right is and that's why we have to kind of do narrative battle with them I think in a way that we don't with the left. Okay, but what about what you said earlier about the rights Assumption that the state is going to enforce morality because that really seems to be what's heating up now You know if in the broad what we call culture wars like it's about You know how far should a governor or a mayor go in kind of trying to advance a certain view of morality where Does the Mises caucus fall on that and like what what? Like how does it see the Libertarian Party? You know aligning in those cases. I think we need organic leaders again leaders of competence not political so no one's saying like You know take the Sex surgery stuff for kids, you know like we need to have our own leaders Who are outside of politics that we elevate who have a strong voice and can speak from a place of strength You don't have to be a conservative to see a problem with the the trans kids issue and and and you know sex surgeries for for kids who aren't even allowed to join the military and this kind of thing But is anyone saying that oh the state is the proper role for what is or is not moral? No And again, I think this is something where where Libertarians kind of blur lines a little bit We we tend to take Libertarianism and make it out to be a full-scale world view when it's not it's a political and legal theory And there's a lot of aspects of life that are outside of those things that we have free reign to operate in So we got to be on on the right side of that. I think we do have to pitch a better story that that Makes a stronger society Why race responsibility? Basically? I guess so from and I think this is going to what zack was talking about in some of the comments it you know if you want a politician who is saying no to and and you know to Sex reassignment surgery for gender reassignment surgery for minors. You've already got that That's what the republican party is. You know, they're going whole hog on that So how does that? In somebody like ron de santis who seems to be conservative who seems to be you know, he He does say that he wants the state to be an instrument of moral instruction But he's also not a progressive. He's not a conservative like i'm trying to get a sense of how How do you how do you separate from somebody like that from a mesis caucus point of view? Well, I think what's happening within libertarian circles right now is you kind of have this narrative You know There's a conversation that's happening We're like traditionally we'll say the left and the right are the exact same thing and right now the left is dominating So that is has to go has to go by the wayside And and you know, we have to deal with what's in front of us and the left is clearly worse And on one hand I can see where they're coming from like because frankly the right is better than the left right now In terms of the culture war And and like I said in the document Um, that's really the only thing that's separating the political parties anymore Now that doesn't mean that libertarians ought to advocate government intrusion into the culture war But I think again, what is the proper role for things to engage for people to engage in the culture war? I think it's example. I think it's leadership. I think it's taking responsibility I think it's the same thing that we ought to be doing with foreign policy where we can we can offer Uh diplomacy we can offer advice we can live the best that we can we can take responsibility for ourselves And and encourage that throughout society So I I don't What's that? Yeah, well, I guess what what I was also trying to get at is that Is there a role for Libertarian party to offer a you know You say that, um, you know, there's no kind of cultural Or let's say, uh, you know libertarianism is not about dictating what kind of someone's personal morality is So there can be conservative libertarians. There can be more progressive Or socially liberal, I guess libertarians, but it really comes down to what is the role of the state in enforcing morality and you know, the The kind of thrust of the libertarian party now is going against wokeness, right and so is but is there a a line that The libertarian party can draw or a critique that the libertarian party can make of the right on this because You know nick brought up desantis before and desantis is very aggressively going into educational institutions and Kind of dictating, you know, what is proper and improper to be taught and so At both the k through 12 any attempted at the at higher education as well He didn't just attempted at higher education. It is happening in in higher education. It's being challenged in the courts now but Like is there a hard line that the libertarian party should be drawing there and saying like Yeah, maybe uh, a lot of us are against some of these excesses or we think that, you know, a surgery for minors is wrong but There is a line that can be crossed in terms of the state trying to enforce a conservative World view. Yeah, but I don't I don't see them advocating the state on things outside of violence You know, like I I don't see them that I mean even I think even most anarchists would say that within political reality It's okay to default to minarchism in in practical reality You know and and again this boils down to what does practical reality look like for libertarians if we were engaged in it So like let me give you a thought experiment as a hypothetical. Let's say somehow you had libertarians enough libertarians in congress Right where you know, there's enough of us to influence policy But we can't abolish the department of education You know, we can't get that full separation of church and state and a bill comes up that says Hey, we're either going to have economics in one lesson in the schools or we're going to have some critical race theory book Are you are you doing a no vote? Are you doing a present why would I'm voting for economic, huh? Yeah, I don't understand though that question I mean, that's a great thought experiment and everything But what it comes down to is like we are advocating for I would assume a school system where Individuals have maximum choice to go to schools right what I'm right. You always aim for that You always agitate towards that you always argue to that and if we ever know does that mean in a florida context You are comfortable with the state saying here is a list of ideas and concepts that are absolutely forbidden to be taught in public schools I'm saying if I can't get the ideal I will take better I know but is that the better because that's the real life situation now where in florida and a number of other states You have governors saying these concepts these lists of words Sometimes particular books cannot be taught in public schools Well, that's that's what a curriculum is a curriculum is we're teaching these books and nothing else You know, I mean, so like that's you're making it illegal. No, it's not necessarily nothing else I'm saying like under under dissensus's law even charter schools would not be allowed to do You know to to participate in oh, no, no, no, I a wholesale. Yeah, no wholesale like that. No but again if I was if I was in like a A board or whatever that decided curriculum and I couldn't get the full abolition of of the state and education then yeah, I'm going for I accept that michael and like, you know, it's you're kind of asking like if your choices between florida or california schools like what are you going to do because they're both kind of being shaped by the government and I mean I've made my choice, but At the same time, I do think there's value in the libertarian party being the party that Reframes these things and says this is not really the correct lens. I agree with that looking at things through like All like forced into a one-size-fits-all system Yeah, or or two I mean aren't we or aren't you by participating in the culture or the libertarian party saying we're going after wokeness Wokeness is the is the enemy. This is a culture war phenomenon I mean, you know, what if they gave a culture war and the libertarian party or the muses caucus didn't come You know and instead of playing that game Where it's easy to be mistaken for you know, if the old joke Was that libertarians were republicans who smoked pot now? It's maybe libertarians or republicans who do shrooms But you know like You know where you know who is talking about Actually, you know balancing the budget who is talking about policy as opposed to these hot button issues And it seems in many ways the muses caucus Takeover of the libertarian party has coincided with saying, you know what we're you know, we're not talking about abortion Because it's too complicated. We're not talking about this. We're not talking about that But like you've actually abdicated some policy questions there And so again, I think I think I think the role of the lp is you have to agitate and argue towards the ideal And and so I think we have done a lot on war. I mean the party is on several issues I think they are talking about inflation. They are talking about the fed They are talking about war the throwing a coalition anti-war rally And people could go to rage against war.com and check that out But um, so I think they are doing that but I think peppered into that We have to find our lanes to get into the the zeitgeist essentially We have and so I think the hot button issues is how you can do that How do we enter the conversation if they're not inviting us to the conversation? We have to force our idea Thank you. I I appreciate that Clarification and I guess but then my question is if you enter the trans debates Which are, you know, so overheated for the number of people are affected by it and and the sides like I I know of virtually no people who say that You know the state or you know that that chill underage children should have Absolute right to gender reassignment surgery against their parents wishes But if you're entering these debates On the team of somebody who's already kinds of owns that issue. I think you risk confusing The libertarian identity with a republican identity in this case Right, but again, we have to be truth-based. You know, what if it's both true that the the political right is is Narratively better on this issue and also true that biden ended the war in afghanistan in foreign policy That makes him better than trump Like what what if that's just true Yeah, what about? I think um, just to make a little bit of a pivot here to bring it back to the policies That that are outlined in this document as a little bit of a palette cleanser I want to play this montage of clips from uh, harry brown who was the 1996 and 2000 uh libertarian candidate for president and he's somebody Joe jorgensen was his vp And um, he's mentioned in the means that this document that we're discussing today So let me just play these this montage from harry brown and then get you to talk a little bit about What uh, you think uh, the the new libertarian party might learn from the old libertarian party Pardon everyone who has been found guilty of a federal non-violent gun control offense I will pardon everyone who has been found guilty on a federal tax evasion charge I will pardon anyone else who has been convicted of any kind of victimless crime by the federal government I will end federal affirmative action immediately I will end all federal potas set asides preferential treatments and any other form of discrimination that the federal government is engaged in I will bring to an end immediately all asset forfeiture cases And I will take immediate steps to try to apply restitution to anyone who has been victimized by the federal government in the past As commander in chief of the armed forces. I will immediately Bring all american troops back home to america where they belong I will personally go through and get rid of all the regulations that run up the price of all the things we buy and hold down the wages We earn and then I will break for lunch Okay, so what uh, what lessons are you taking from the days of harry brown? So I think the biggest appeal at least to me personally is that he's kind of a radical in a suit Like that's and it's the same thing with ron paul. He's kind of a radical in a suit. Um, and and I think there's been I don't know like I think there's been a conflation when it comes to this whole radical versus pragmatic debate That radical necessarily means making a spectacle for the sake of the spectacle Um, and and I don't think that's right. I think you can be a radical in a suit and I think that's how it kind of punches the hardest and So I hear that I that's I think I see that in his presentation. I hear him speaking to To you know pure first principles in in his solutions. So I think those are two You know really strong things for him and I also think at the time the libertarian party itself Like the leadership of the party itself was engaged in way better strategy You know, they were engaged in data sharing with uh with harry brown They were they were buying data from other Organizations as you know, the harry brown thing was going on So they had this high peak of energy around harry brown They were getting data and then using him as the lightning rod to excite people kind of like what i'm saying to funnel And and then from there, I don't think they had like the ground Game for the local strategy that i'm going to try to use to keep people in the long term But I think those are all very strong points in his favor And why did you want to pull up a little bit of data there, um, you know You've mentioned in the document and this this is backed up by this data that you see the spike In the libertarian party donors Back that spike is during the harry brown years of 1996 Through 2000 so that was kind of the high point of the donor numbers electorally harry brown, uh did not do particularly well compared to electorally, yeah What do you what do you think explains the disconnect michael? electorally thing with same thing with ron paul. Yeah, uh, you know, uh, You know very first principle oriented, you know radical in a suit Um, why didn't they pull better numbers? Uh, electorally My theory is that again, I don't think our our Uh Outcomes at that level are primarily driven by our own efforts I think they are driven by how disgusted people are With the status quo You know one way or the other and they just can't take it anymore And I think we have a much higher level of disgust with politics in general and politicians in general Uh today than we did back then I don't I don't think that's really up for debate Uh, yeah, I mean it's also though in 96. I mean, uh, there was a huge level of Affectation between bill clinton and bob dole. I mean nobody was excited about that race and Clinton wasn't even able to win 50 of the vote against the weakest republican going downhill for a long time. I know No, and in 2000 there was a palpable sense of Contempt for al gore as well as for george bush, which also led to neither candidate winning 50 percent It's uh, I mean, I'm just curious of Yeah, so there's basically there's a lot of your there's a lot of complicated factors both at the electoral level you could also argue At the fact that there was that spike during the harry brown years could have had to do with these external factors And not as much to do with harry brown because as nick just mentioned, you know, ron paul ran as a candidate in 1988 Pretty hard core radical guy. Uh, and yet the spike did not come until later I mean, obviously the end of the end of the cold war The rise of the internet, uh, you know a the economy taking off in the second half of the 90s all changed things I mean the the the broader cultural context for libertarianism exploded in the 90s for a lot of different reasons including the rise to, uh, you know, kind of Visibility of the cato institute and reason we saw Exponential growth particularly online as the decade unwind. So but so we've talked, you know, local state now. What is the Me the project decentralization strategy or decentralized revolution strategy for the at the national level It's it's basically just a macro version of what I've already said about the state level That is that is our biggest megaphone opportunity. That is our biggest opportunity to attract people And to to get ourselves into the conversation and hopefully expanding that overton window because like again, if if i'm right and my theory is right and then and People aren't voting for libertarians necessarily because of the candidate itself. It's not necessarily it's it's more about who you attract more than How many you attract? So we want what we want is people coming in on the right basis and with the right attitude and with the Right level of motivation to actually become members and do this work in the long term by joining our community So it's it's the same thing. It's getting as much media attention as possible But again, I think the term media is a little bit different today than than before, you know Yeah, very different. Yeah, you mentioned that in the document. Um, hold on. I gotta find that Uh, but but there's something about oh, yeah, you mentioned that the there's a media landscape that actually now favors A radical decentralized approach where libertarians can have a voice and then you talk about all the podcasters out there Um, someone like dave smith, you know goes on the joe rogan experience gets millions of views on a clip Or he's you know talking about the ukraine intervention um How far do you think that ultimately can be pushed in terms of uh translating into electoral success because yeah I mean joe rogan experience is is huge On the other hand, how many joe rogan listeners are ultimately going to go and you know How many how many cnn listeners are going to go and take up cause with us? I mean what media if joe rogan isn't the fertile environment or one one example of the fertile environment Sure, who exactly is the big whale that we're chasing? Otherwise, what's the point of media? Yeah, I mean, maybe it's not media driven. I mean, that's part of the question, right? But again, we have to we have to have our grand narrative out there We have to have our grand narrative out there. So to kind of just put context like numbers context You know, we could sit here and say well, maybe joe rogan's audience is this or that last time I looked maybe six months ago um Tucker Carlson was the biggest news show on cable television at about 3.3 million viewers per episode Joe rogan 12 or 13 million. He's three to four times bigger than the biggest news show and and again This is all still emergent. We don't have a podcast. That's regular hit regularly hitting 50 million downloads The paradigm is still shifting. That's going to happen. This is all still emergent You know, uh, uh, greg gutfield 2.2 million beating all of the the late night comedy shows Um And yet that's nothing. I mean that's probably tim pool probably gets more than that Let alone all this other patchwork of people who have a million subscribers here 900 thousand subscribers there You know, so it there's a lot there Yeah, I I mean I I basically agree with you that uh, it's the the kind of fracturing media landscape is Probably a good thing for libertarians. That's a great thing other outsiders and there's a lot of opportunities there Uh, my pessimism there is that the the debates still seem to be very important And that's been a big hurdle for the libertarian party forever is getting into those debates They spent a lot of effort, you know trying to get past that threshold and you know Just falling short with the gary johnson campaign. Is that even worth worrying about anymore in your world? Are you saying that's just kind of we're I think we can get around them I think we can get around them and and because well two things one I have no idea what the debates are even going to look like now because the republicans pull it out of the debate commission That may be a good thing. That may be a bad thing. I I don't know what that is going to mean for the debates honestly, I don't and and um But I also think that when you have this new media paradigm What happens when tim if if and when uh tim pool and joe rogan and jimmy door or something come together and saying We're throwing our own debates. That's on the table. That's something that could realistically happen, you know, and and I mean, I know in 2016 I forget if it was 16 or 20 Um trump at one point even said yeah, I'll come on joe rogan and debate now. He knew that I think it was 20 20 I think it I think it was uh, biden he knew biden wouldn't do it But the point of the matter is that you have the the already sitting president saying I'll do that. There's a demand for it if I may though Realistically when you're talking about media exposure and you're trying to appeal to a remnant You're looking for people who are going to become party actors primarily at the local level and win races Where there might be 50 votes cast in an entire slate of of elections. You're one. Yeah Okay, so I mean in a way, uh, you know Because it seems that most political organizers will tell you that, you know The way that you win elections is by having door knockers and people going out into communities Oh, yeah, turning out the vote that way Um, can I ask what have you uh, is the mises caucus working with groups like young americans for liberty or other? Uh, you know groups that are I you know mostly identified or affiliated with republican party candidates But are you know, are they playing ball with you or what what are you doing about that ground game? So we have run as libertarian.com and so far we've recruited almost 300 candidates and campaign managers through that Through that funnel and we're putting on trainings twice a month online. Uh, so far. It's been a mix of The leadership institute and our own training modules Um, so I mean we're we're utilizing already established organizations that have a history of doing this stuff As well as starting to get ourselves off the ground and get the community training the community And and those modules do things like this is how you put out a press release. This is uh, how you file for this This is you know, how you go how you have a rally things. I mean basic nuts and bolts type stuff Oh, yeah, yeah, no, of course, of course you have to have door knockers I'm just saying that I don't know if door knockers at the presidential level was going to overcome the distrust and the knowledge That they're not going to win But it might do it at the local level where people are willing to take a chance Yeah Uh, I think uh, you know since we're bringing up the local level again This might be a good moment to bring in this clip. Uh, this other clip that I pulled Um from the decriminalized denver movement This was the initiative to uh the successful initiative to decriminalize magic mushrooms in denver and it's uh now been decriminalized statewide um, but uh, this is something you identify as a kind of model that You want to uh, so I want you to let I want to play this clip and then Um, just react and and tell me, you know, what what this means, uh from a political strategy standpoint It's one of the first two u.s states to legalize recreational cannabis sales, which it did by voter initiative in 2012 Putting it on the frontier of american drug policy then And now this is the best place in the country to do this right now denver and maybe the state of colorado Uh is in in many ways at least with drug policy embracing more of this libertarian concept that You know, as long as i'm not causing harm to self or others We should be we should have the freedom to use whatever substances we choose and put into our bodies, whatever we choose denver's decriminalization initiative makes the possession or use of psilocybin the city's lowest law enforcement priority And prohibits the city from spending resources to impose criminal penalties for the personal use and personal possession of psilocybin mushrooms By persons 21 years of age and older and also establishes a panel to review the effects of the change in law It does not legalize commercial sales of mushrooms leaving a potentially large gray market Sovine says her experience in cannabis legalization, which progressed from medical to recreational every state that's legalized it Convinced her that decriminalization rather than medicalization Is actually the far more radical and liberatory path to take maybe we want to see Doctors being able to prescribe psilocybin, but is that the only way we want to be able to access it? Should we still be going to jail and having it be a criminal offense outside of having a physician prescribe it for you lawfully? I think that the core tenant and the reason why the campaign became what it was today Was because we don't necessarily think that going through that process necessarily means access to all patients Yeah, so I include that last clip because an interesting aspect of the this law is that it was sort of modeled on Like sanctuary city laws where it's really about telling That you know local law enforcement saying we're not we're just not going to prioritize this Um, whatever the federal government or the state laws are it's just not going to be something We deal with um, and uh, I wonder you know, uh, what is that? You know what what do you make of that template and how can it be applied in other realms because I know that That's something that you're interested in I think so even with my strategy like I said, we've recruited 300 or ish candidates and campaign managers We're just not at a political reality yet where libertarians are filling up the ballot Which means there's got there's going to be places where there's not libertarians on the ballot where we need to do something Um, and I really think the issues is the realm where we're going to create the most trust And I think that is a good example of that because kevin who is the guy in those clips is a good friend of mine We got we got involved in that effort and if you remember that effort passed by the skin of its teeth the denver one specifically Um, and and in fact they they pronounced that it did not pass the day of the vote And then the next day said oh it just barely got over the top kevin called me after that and was like thank you man Like we got the libertarian part of colorado to endorse that effort You know there was libertarians on that effort now there's trust now There's trust there and I can have that conversation and kevin is going to be coming to one of our take human action tour events and and so again, I think issues are probably the fastest way that libertarians can get involved Shift the narrative around an issue push something forward that normal people want not necessarily the political class and and Build that trust and have the conversation and I think kevin over the course of his experience has become more libertarian as a result Yeah, so I look at that. Yeah Yeah, yeah, and I I I talked to kevin before this and he told me yeah, he does he's he's a fan of michael heiss and That yeah, you you secured I guess the organ party libertarian party endorsement of of the initiative um, what what are you know? When you think about the local offices, there's very specific ones that you mentioned like Uh city council and sheriff. I think there were maybe a couple others Mayor school board mayor school board. What are the components? Like what are the powers that these have that you are hoping that libertarians? Elected at the local level will be able to use um to like, you know immediately advance liberty so With denver and like that effort they're a state that has valid initiatives available to them and not every state does It's like 26 24 or something like that So in those states that don't have that you're going to have to go to the lobbying route and and um You know you can affect issues that way, but that's also getting elected as a libertarian to city council is how you can Do exactly what was done with that ordinance? It's just it's just a different methodology of attaining it like you can push back against your state laws you can push back against federal laws and and uh, you know, that is the big value there is is their ability to nullify The the out of control feds and you can do it with all manner of things You know, like you can do it with essentially anything that's not in article one and section eight from from drugs to guns to To immigration, you know to uh, even aspects of monetary policy like you see out in Missouri They're they're doing a state level initiative to um, essentially recognize gold and silver as currency There's all kinds of things that we can do It's just we've got to get real about where we can do them and we're not going to win federal office and do it And but we can do it on a town by town basis while building up our political capital and our trust level with the people at a ground at a grassroots level at the uh mesas caucus, uh website, uh in the issue campaigns that you mentioned because you rightly talking about how Issues oftentimes are places where a small number of libertarians or or any kind of third party Or or a special interest group can really make a big impact The issue campaigns that are mentioned are abolishing lockdowns decriminalizing psychedelics and cannabis and keeping guns free Are there particular places either in large cities or at the state level that are on the you know, that are in your scope To actually start moving on I are you know, so where is the next uh denver uh decriminalization? So after there's a you are actually targeting and looking towards there's several methods of figuring that out I mean, can I tell you town x not off the top of my head? But what I can tell you is that Again, it's like I said in our original interview if you live in a blue town like a very blue town and they are not decriminalized We're at a point right now where people can have their opinions on what happened with the britney griner thing Oh, they should have done it. They shouldn't have done it. None of that matters in my opinion What matters is the fact that they did it gives us as libertarians the opportunity to go and say You to blue towns to say your president said that he wanted to pardon Uh federal marijuana convicts and and brought this chick home. Why are our people in jail here? You know and and kind of torque them hit the left from the left So I think we have to basically go to the blue towns Hit them with hit them on uh issues of overlap that we have with them And do the same thing on the right and I would target the reddest towns and the bluest towns Respectively to start with and move down from there depending on how many people you have in a given town I want to uh go just talk a little bit about uh results and what uh success Would look like and then maybe turn to some of the questions Because some some interesting questions have come in from the audience And if you have any other questions everyone who's watching now would be a great time to throw some more in But you know you said at the end of that interview with nick uh something like buy our fruits You'll know us so you're saying like just look at what happens and and you'll see and you know It's it's still early on but I want to give everyone context of what has happened since The takeover these are this is some data that uh, we were going through This is just the historical the historic data of uh donors To the libertarian party over 10 years and the reason I'm pulling this up is just to show an overall pattern You see these spikes in election years followed by a decline and then another spike In 2020 there and another decline. Um, so that's Kind of the historic pattern that is to be expected now. This is a closer 12 month look at active donors and the reason I'm talking about active donors because this is something michael has said is What we should judge them by the the The intensity and size of the uh support for the party So you see that there's a little bit of a decline and then a spike that spike is right after The uh, reno convention when the uh, mrs. Caucus kind of took over leadership of the party And then you see this slow decline and it's it's settled down below The level before the takedown so that that doesn't look uh great and then we we talked a little bit about um, you know, some of the The state seat that was lost overall, um There's fewer libertarians that are holding elected office now than than were before These are numbers that we will all link below uh in the show notes Um, so what do you make of you know, what's transpired so far? Why what's your explanation for that? Um, and when would be fair for us to kind of judge Your your efforts and the results of the reno reset So we're about seven months in and I think you're you're seeing a big reconstruction essentially You know, there's been turnover on the staff as the the vision of the party has changed Um, you know all of that kind of stuff So, you know, there was a big surge of people after and the party also just posted a financial report Posting its first two million dollar a year in the midterm elections in like 20 years or something like that So, you know, you can uh, you can do a lot of things with data Um, I can tell you that I've been on the phone all week with entrepreneurs and with influencers who are coming our way And and saying, you know, we have audiences Uh, we you know, we have our own businesses. We have, you know, community respect and stuff like that And I want to take up cause with you and take up cause with the lp. So I think I think it's analogous to like twitter, you know, like Musk came in Bunch of employees came out, uh, you know, it looked like there could be issues Well now it's like one of the top downloaded apps again and people have a little bit more faith Although they got to free my boy scott And you know, people have more Yes, god horton needs to be put back on twitter. Um, but um, you know, so I I think we're in the middle of of that reconstruction period So as far as to answer your question, um, you know, I I have always thought that it would be Expected that there might be a short term dip as that reconstruction happens You know, there are people who are kind of been around in the movement a while who have no idea what happened still Um, and so, you know, I would ask your audience if you like what I'm saying go to lp.org slash join join the party help them out and As far as when's fair 23 is it going to be our year one for putting out the uh, the political strategy and then obviously 24 is going to be dominated by the The president's race to stick with the uh by your fruits. Uh, you shall know us uh line when's when's the first harvest I think this anti-war rally I mean, when is the last time you saw the libertarian party get out in the streets and get out in the community on an issue that we're I'm saying so, um, you know, the you know, if by the end of the 2024 election cycle You have you and the the mesas caucus, uh, supervise, you know, kind of uh leadership of the party Hasn't significantly changed things. Is it is it right to say, okay, you you guys have failed I would have to see the data okay Yeah, I would have to see the data Um nick do you have any other uh questions before I turn to some of these audience questions? Uh, yeah, let's run through the questions and then let's talk about the uh, the curious case of uh, Dr, uh, dr ron paul and dr ran paul After that and okay, okay So this is a question that's representative of a few that have come in from silver sword studios question for michael Do you think the rhetoric or in your words strong messaging of the mesas caucus has effectively worked to promote The broader libertarian movement to what extent if so So, yeah, I really do actually Uh, sorry about that. Yeah, I do um so First of all in your first video where we did our first interview at reason I would encourage people to go to that video and look at the comments The most liked comments on that whole thing from your guys's audience was This guy is speaking to exactly why I wasn't in the libertarian party. I am hopeful. I'm encouraged I want to join and it's just filled to the brim of things like that in in there Um, we have gained the party has not had the support of the biggest voices of the liberty movement The tom woods is the scott hortons the you know, the dave smiths prior to this, you know and all of that stuff We've brought them in i'm telling you i am i'm talking to a lot more influencers and all the time now and entrepreneurs Who who are coming in so? I I think we have and I think it's just going to be a matter of time for You know that that's a play out and and them to influence their audiences and you know, we've got a lot to do Maj tour is at work, uh hard at work recruiting for the party You know, there's there's just a lot of this stuff that's going on right now How you know, uh, i'm looking at a uh, january 6 post from the lp national account and it's a shot of adam kenzinger and a couple of Cops who were involved in the january 6 protest And it says grown men who cry like little babies on national tv over a protest shouldn't be ruling over you This was sent to me by a couple of high-profile libertarians who were like, you know, this This makes me want to leave the libertarian movement not the party. Um, I mean, how do you assess that kind of? backlash or you know, I think about um, you know, there's one thing I think we all agree I mean, it's certainly on this call that the united states should not be involved in ukraine Certainly not in any kind of direct military capacity, but even you know giving aid and things like that How does making a statement saying the u.s. Should not be involved in ukraine Can pour with a lot of lp national and mesas caucus or affiliated people who are like Zalenski is a welfare queen zalenski is a neo nazi zalenski is this like Do you ever like how do you How do you work to discipline your messaging so that you? Are not like needlessly alienating people who are who agree with you And they might be that you know january 6 is full of shit Um, but then it's another thing to kind of make a message that is mocking You know people who are you know serious in their in their comportment and whatnot Zalenski came into our country waved his country's flags and got our politicians to give him billions of dollars And then he's seen all in plain on on luxurious boats and and all of this stuff And he also was at first willing to negotiate You know a ceasefire and allowed himself to be turned by boris johnson So I don't think zalenski. What are we supposed to revere zalenski? No, I'm not saying we're supposed to revere zalenski If ukraine if the internal politics or the external politics of ukraine don't matter to us Why foreground zalenski as opposed to putin Because why not foreground putin in exactly the same terms you're talking about and this is where I'm asking as as a strategy issue. I'm not asking why you would legitimate it or why you would uh, you know, uh, Rationalize it, but it's like, you know for the same reason that like, I mean, you know, I mean, you know that that's the question to me Because american because american policy has nothing to do with putin and it isn't it isn't aiding him We have no control over that But we do have control in our ability to fund this war to keep Having people die so that ukraine can be used in this, uh, uh geopolitical agenda to weaken russia for for the strength of Of globalism like in all of this crap like that's the only thing that we have control over. What am I going to do? Shake my fist to say putin back off. I mean, yeah in in in principle Maybe maybe it's that the proper, you know, because again The republican party or or certain aspects of the republican party are already attacking zalenski Yeah, but zalenski deserves to be a tech in exactly the terms you are no our our government Deserves to be attacked, right? Yeah, sure But zalenski every every but zalenski turned down peace comes here with the hands, but zalenski turned down peace Yeah, and and he did that on on behalf of western geopolitical interests Well, I mean again, my question is the strategy of you're trying to appeal to americans Right who who are going to join the libertarian movement and I the question was How do you go from how do you not needlessly alienate people who would be like, you know what? We shouldn't be involved in ukraine, but I'm not sure that I want to be involved with people who personalize this and talk about You know zalenski as a neo-nazi zalenski as this or that anymore than they find it reprehensible when people say russia is not all bad But then they actually, you know embrace putin as the last Gasp of but it's not it's not what it's not like it's new for america to be funding Really fucked up groups. I mean how many terrorist groups in the middle east did we fund in train? You know, or what are we supposed to just ignore that? We're doing this righteous crusade and the narrative is that Zalenski is this freedom fighter and shutting down religions and and all of this stuff Like as again, that's what our policy is tied up in our policy is not tied up in putin There's kind of we're kind of limited in what we can do narrative Well, the the issue that I've seen with uh, some of the messaging around foreign policy is the the shift that has happened um, because the previous libertarian party was also Pretty strictly non interventionist principled non interventionists, but there would be expressions of you know solidarity with people who are you know fighting for their freedom, whether it's in hong kong or Um trying to keep their liberties in taiwan or you you know Russia did invade Ukraine and try to march all the way to kiv. Um, so The idea that um, they're you can be against an intervention But still have empathy for the people who are you know fighting for their lives and their liberty That seems to have Been lost in the mix to some degree. Is that fair? Is that a fair reading? I don't think so. I mean because I think it's pretty empathetic Where where are the where are the mesas caucus where the mesas caucus tweets supporting the people of ukraine? In for their self determination I think by getting us out of there it is that because I think this war would have been ended at this point If if we weren't pumping this money I think a lot less people would be dying if we weren't keeping it going so that they could have this geopolitical agenda To weaken russia at the expense of all these ukrainian lives. What's more empathetic than that? Uh, you know what is like a tweet that would say we you know the the people of ukraine have a right to fight for their own you know Lives, uh, but not with us dollars as opposed to you know the the types of tweet. I mean, right, but but again What caused like yes, he invaded and that is totally fucked up So at the same time at the same time we have to look at all the provocations and all the nuances and all My question is not about the specific stuff and it's also like at the lp angela mccardle You may have said something like this that to You know to show support or solidarity with the people of hong kong or or the people of taiwan Is to engage in cia talking points my question is that kind of rhetoric does that? Do you are you comfortable or are you confident that that will yield? More supporters in america than it will alienate Again, I think we have to tell the truth and we have to look for the right people So I don't know what it means to needlessly divide because the i'm i'm a big proponent of the fact and and it is a fact That the power of the state that we talk about is that if you say taiwan should not be invaded by china Then you're you're a dupe of the cia I mean this no, I wouldn't go that yeah, I wouldn't go that far But what I would say is that the nature of the power that is exerted over us While yes at root is is raw power you're talking that hang on let me finish One I would say the number one method of control that that is exerted over us is psychological and therefore narrative And then they use the fact that we are social animals to then enforce that narrative so they can do whatever they want And it's okay, and we nobody pushes back and we have to be very careful about their use of language and recognizing these These patterns and push back against that that's the extent to which we have like one of the major ways that we have to be involved In the culture war is how language is being used as neologisms to push their agenda And that's that's what's okay, and so to start the international like the the border the you know national border integrity of ukraine is ultimately to be Doing claus Schwab's bidding I mean this and I you know what we don't we don't need to go on I'm just saying though that this you know a lot of people raise questions And I think it's legitimate to say like you know the rhetoric that you're employing in order to achieve these goals Which we share certainly in the in the case of ukraine You know, how do you factor in you know, and it's not about truth because we're talking about rhetoric and narrative here You know how do you how do you count up? How many people that might bring in? You know that are good and how many people that might alienate and that's bad I think that question cuts both ways. How do you do it? Because what because you because well, I know that I I mean I yeah, okay What I know is that since since the the takeover the social media engagement has gone way up and that is not that is not A end in of itself like I get that like that has to be used to recruit people But I'm telling you me personally our social media is also way up and I am now getting more and more Entrepreneurs and and things like that that I've ever had in my inbox weren't to talk to me My days are filled with phone calls to these people so like yeah metrics for Figuring out You know, okay, because it's one thing a lot of people want to call you or they want to bend your ear But it's going to be the number of party members the number of donations Right and and the number of elected officials Right, and I think there's still some ways to go in terms of programs You know what I mean like right now the party has been inundated with Basically cleaning up the fires that were lit on the way out. So like what are the incentive programs? You know, I don't think we've gotten to that yet. Yeah, like membership and incentive programs What's the membership recruitment drive campaign? I don't think we've gotten to that yet, you know, these things all do have to happen. Yeah I lost this question, but somebody was asking. Oh, here it is Related dylan griffin. How much involvement does the mesas caucus have in controlling the social media content of state affiliates? zero zero So that that one problematic state affiliate out there is not a mesas caucus uh branded Affiliates I mean the the people who became the leadership there, you know, they were our guys, but again, as I said in our original interview Um, well, I might not agree with every tweet I also think that it worked for them that they tripled their membership And I also think there's a way of handling things, you know people We're all engaged in politics and I'm not going to sit here and flog people publicly and then say, hey, you know, uh Please volunteer. That's just not how it works in a professional volunteer organization. Um, you know, I think you talk to people privately Like, you know putting out tweets of you know, megan mccain crying at her dad's funeral and joking about That's just another example of kind of this like weird Lack of empathy that I don't think uh, like reflects well on libertarians as a whole empathy for who? Oh for megan mccain Yes, megan mccain's losing her father. I mean as a human being that is For megan mccain. Why should I? Because you're a human being Yeah, but again, no, but you're also you're in political communication. So if you don't have sympathy How are we supposed to express our rage at these problems? Where is that? Where is the vow for that? Yeah, because I know I will say that one is about the the farthest edge that I'm willing to And that was our conversation Then right because you want to create a world that's full of empathy and whatnot But if you do it in that way libertarianism is not about empathy per se Okay, yeah, it's not it's about property rights now There's an element of tolerance, but it's about property rights and and and free like free association And and the right of you to control your property Might you might I mean would you say say if you have you know, say the most outrageous thing that you want to say that Right now that will help catapult again because this is strategic communication is strategic It's not about truth per se like your your idea is your philosophy your goals are rooted in truth But is that the truth? You know that it's it's a good thing to mock people Who are crying at their father's funeral? I personally wouldn't have done it I personally wouldn't have done it But I also get it because again, where is the expression of outrage at these these warmongers these murderers in our society How are we supposed to express that politely? You know what that doesn't actually get to you know that I doubt that that turned anybody into less of a warmonger You know so I think it I think it started a conversation You know, I I think it started it did not start a conversation about foreign policy It started a conversation about the lp of new hampshire and the way it is undercutting or affecting the ability of libertarians to gain more grounding in cultural discussions and political discussions Yeah, I would I would say, you know empathy and just you know, uh basic Human civility it does seem like an important part of of politics and I would argue empathy is an aspect of Libertarian philosophy as well, but that's a little far afield the the the thing that I Was uh wanted to say about you know, the what nick was raising is um this idea that um, you know, there's there's the meme out there of like i'm for the current thing And what I worry about is that the libertarian party is is turning into the danger Right. Yeah the inverse of that at times of i'm i'm the against the current thing like that is Equally can't be purely reactionary. Absolutely. Yes. It's a reflective contrarianism that Is not it's just by definition not going to be correct very often and it's going to tarnish uh libertarian ideas because libertarian ideas are you know meant to analyze things for in a very Uh specific like reason-based way instead of kind of being reactive. Um, is that No, I think that's right I think we can't be purely reactionary because then you can just be led around the nose You got to be smarter than that. Um, but again, that's that's one state affiliate and they're running their experiment and I think I think, you know, we'll see what happens at their next convention. I think we'll see what happens I mean, I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the the ukraine conversation It it kind of feels like that it kind of feels like a lot of people We're feeling supportive of ukraine and so the libertarian party's stance was well We have to be like as anti-ukrain as possible. Um, some of that has leaked in to like vaccine discourse and so forth. Um It's it's concerning uh to People who are trying to look at things uh, and you know reason through them on a case-by-case basis Yeah, I mean, I think uh, we're speaking to a lot of people that are furious at the at the situation where You know our prices are going up constantly and you know, they're angry and there has to be a Positive channel for that anger. I don't think politics is characterized by empathy right now. Um, and and I think That's why our job is to abolish the state because who's the one driving up the prices Who's the one spending our money on on these other countries when we're falling apart? You know, I mean like that's why I don't respect megan mccain and and all these people who would destroy our future I do think that uh, what might be reflected in this conversation is a you know that actually A kind of communication strategy aimed at the remnant versus aimed at Kind of politically homeless people or something like that that reflects to some degree the mesas caucus strategy versus a kind of reason magazine strategy But let's uh, can we talk about uh, ron paul and rand paul because they come up in the document And I think that's a really interesting You know kind of thing to talk about and you know, what sets your strategy apart uh, michael from uh, if not previous lp things, but it helps clarify it. Um, can we talk about? uh, zack, do you have the uh The slide about I uh rand paul Um, I I don't I don't have a well. I'm sorry. So just yeah summarize what it is It's uh ron paul is um, you know a republican But more he kind of transcends the republican party in a way that rand paul doesn't um, you can Kind of expand on that idea mic if you would Sure. Well, first of all, I reject the the notion that ron paul is a a republican per se like I I think libertarianism is a is a philosophy before it's uh A political party and from what once we're getting into political parties. You're just kind of talking strategy. I think he at the time that he was running and perhaps a lesson that he learned from 1988 is is that um You get more attention if you're running as a republican And I think that's been true for a long time And I think that was kind of an animating factor of why libertarians should run as republican And we should try to take over the republican party But I also think as we've discussed earlier in this conversation that the media paradigm has radically shifted To where in the long term that is no longer serving our interests Um, you know, I think it's hard to argue that that ron paul Didn't have an explosion and and people reading bosteod and thinking about libertarianism um, however We now have the opportunity to get our ideas on the tympools and the joe rogans and the and the uh Lex freedman's and and all of this stuff to form our own narrative about ourselves where we don't have to kind of Make these concessions in order to try to have a shot at getting attention And that's where I think the kind of parable of ron paul and rand paul comes in it in my heart of hearts I do think ron paul or i'm sorry rand paul is a libertarian I just think he's playing a fundamentally different game than than ron paul ever played But I think because ron paul was always seen as a libertarian in uh in in republican clothing And and because he was able to buck them the way that he did that he was able to have a cultural movement that that transcended You know his inability to pass uh bills Whereas rand paul is playing a political game and you'll see even republicans who who who say well, he's he's like trump You know, I don't believe he's like trump But it doesn't that doesn't matter at this point We're talking perception and I think that's because he has wrapped himself up in the culture and the narrative of the GOP and that's what we now have to escape to form our own language and paradigm and yeah Can you uh talk a little bit uh when we we spoke uh last spring in rino? You said that your politics come from ron paul Just can you uh describe like how old are you and was it the ron paul uh campaign in 2008 that activated you into politics or Talk a little bit about how he came to be you know He came on your radar screen and kind of energized your political worldview. Yeah, so i'm uh 33 years old So it was about 18 19 at the time of um, you know that first race Very different world back then, you know, my family had a computer in the living room that we all shared with a dial-up internet So, you know, I didn't know anybody. I didn't know what to do. Um, I didn't have you know These groups and these these communities that we have now it was basically just your parents are not super political or anything like that I assume no, no not super political um and uh But uh, essentially one of my best friends Showed me these clips of ron paul and yeah, that's that's what activated me and I would say Made me a actual libertarian and started going down that path. Um and uh Essentially 2012 came around we decided we've got to do something And I actually have videos of this where the very first time I went out to the federal reserve building In philadelphia just me and my friend and started bullhorning the first amendment center about all these federal reserve talking points That I picked up from ron paul And kept doing things like that and then came on the radar of a meet-up group an activist group in philly called truth freedom prosperity About 40 of them came out. I found holy shit. There really is this underground world and then I just never looked back Yeah, what was it about ron paul that appealed to you so strongly and I mean you're not alone There's no question, you know ron paul. I started at reason in uh 1993 and I'd say, you know At that point if you ask people, why did they become a libertarian? I was primarily, uh, you know, iron ran melting freedmen Maybe robert hindland. Maybe reason A couple of other things. Um, but you know, there's no question Since 2008 on like ron paul is you know, one of the major feeders if not the major feeder His courage it's it's as simple as that it's his courage His his willingness to buck the republican party to rebuke the to to buck the audience. He might be in front of and get booed Um to tell the truth. I mean that I would have to say that that's the core of it Um, you know going into south carolina and making the the case for harrowing is a pretty tough sell Um, and then to get them to cheer is a friggin miracle Right And he also I mean you're talking about that moment when he was asked at a presidential debate You know, would you legalize harrowing and he said yes, like I'm not going to use it if it's legal Would you and it brought the house down? He also was willing in front of military or military leaning audiences To actually critique american foreign policy in a way that has really never been heard of at the national level from an elected Uh congressman really since like maybe the 30s, but Right exactly all of that stuff I mean, of course I was animated by the freedom philosophy and the beauty of the ideas and all of that stuff But on a more personal deeper level beyond political philosophy The courage Yeah at the risk of reopening the uh has conversation that ron paul The one thing that is amazing about him as an individual is like, uh, you know, there are people around him there's the newsletters in the past etc But when he was on the national stage, you know from two, you know, really in the 21st century on You never heard he he's the opposite of a troll, right? He never spoke poorly of anybody in front of him, etc And I mean is there a is that part of his appeal that he I think I I think so and I know where you're going with that Um, but I also think that we're in a different time I also think that uh the libertarian movement and especially people within the mesosphere are much younger and so I would I would say go back and look at 1988 ron paul where, you know, he basically said, you know There was one guy who was basically saying, you know, we we have to have the government enforce Morality in terms of drug use and I mean he didn't use these words But he essentially said well, maybe the government should put your fat ass on a diet, you know I mean like and and so, you know, I think We got ron paul the grandfather and Maybe not ron paul the the beast athlete from back in the day I was from the morton downy junior show if anyone's gonna look for that on youtube, which was like the kind of like Forerunner to like jerry springer in a way, but with a slightly more intellectual Edge to it. I don't think that especially when he said he would puke on him. That was very intellectual Going to say that uh, you have morton eddie jr and intellectualism have never been seen in the same rooms Uh, and I'll also just point out very quickly that ron paul also Was able to hit home runs in congressional baseball games while burdened by the uh, rainbow Astros uniform So, yeah, that's a different planet. Um, you also if I may, um, you know, you you had said you got your Context from ron paul your philosophy from jordan peterson Um, what do you mean by that and uh, you know, what what do you take from jordan peterson? And are your personal preferences somehow wrapped up in the project of the of the, you know, mesas caucus So what I what I mean by that is I think it's important to set the table when it comes to jordan peterson because I find that People come into Understanding jordan peterson from all these different angles, you know, like there might be people who didn't follow him in 2017 Who came in on his comments of like? Oh, this fat chick on the cover of this magazine is not beautiful. You know, I mean Um, but I I I think a lot of people that came into jordan peterson came in With with nothing having to do with politics at all. Um, I think they came in through his bible lectures Um, that's certainly where I came in and those bible lectures are not political I mean, he might have the the off comment here about how, you know, if um, this philosopher said that Uh, religion is the opiate of the masses communism is the methamphetamine of the masses You know, he might have little things about that that harrod harrod is obviously part He would have been part of aoc's posse things like that things like that and and um Uh, but I would say the core of of if I had to give a bumper sticker message for what jordan peterson's cultural internationally cultural phenomenon that around him from that 2016 to 2019 period was if I could put a bumper sticker on that It would be voluntarily adopt as much responsibility as you can in your life And if you do that that will imbue your life with the meaning necessary to uh, you know carry yourself through the dark times And those dark times will come as a matter of uh, you know, human existence As a matter of human existence. So you like the I mean his uh, uh, you know I mean his uh interest in archetypes and in a kind of yes True. Well, uh, yes. Yes. I I think essentially I think Just the same way that ron paul was this figure that got all these young people reading bosteot and misis and hayek and rothbark I think jordan peterson was the same thing for for carl yung and carl rogers and and soljnitsyn and Nietzsche and all these different thinkers that have a lot to say It's not political per se But I do think that there's overlap because what is liberty if not taking maximal responsibility for our lives? And I and and and I think there's a beauty to that and I think the whole I I think just as much as the state we have a serious problem with with nihilism in our culture and in our society and and um, We have got to fight back about that. How do you define nihilism? Hope like hopelessness not seeing the meaning in things thinking, you know, and um, You know just thinking that there's no purpose But people don't act that premise out. They act as if they're aimed at a goal That's the whole point of per of human action that we're goal oriented And perhaps you could say that the highest of all goals is Is divine whether that exists as a supernatural reality or not is irrelevant. It's it's the thing that guides us and and um basically we form An ideal of ourselves that we would like to be and then are judged by that ideal in our striving towards it And and you know, that causes us to reflect on ourselves and and Change and and aim at the ultimate good and I think we've lost connection with concepts like these And and I think he has helped people to understand them and to pull themselves out I mean go and look at those lectures. I was going to kill myself. I was addicted to drugs I didn't talk to my father for five years The the amount of good that came out of that is is um, and frankly I think it was the best social movement that happened since ron paul And I think there's a lot to learn from it if he can become an international cultural phenomenon off a core message of responsibility We can fucking do it with libertarianism Is that something that you think has been missing from the libertarian party's message is that uh, you know, the message of personal responsibility and like strong I mean libertarians are all individualists, but um, it's really that that's kind of it's a transcendent message It transcends politics But uh, is that something that you think there should be more emphasis on uh, politically or is that outside? scope of politics. Oh, yeah, because there's there's there's this kind of um um, paradoxical relationship with freedom, uh, where freedom and responsibility where freedom is um, taking full responsibility for your life But but then as you have that freedom and you pick your path in life Part of maturation is restraining your is itself government. It's restraining your own freedom and and kind of locking off all Or blocking all all of the other paths to focus in on the things that imbue your life with meaning or or advance your life or advance your family's life and that's that's Why responsibility is we have to be able to take that responsibility for ourselves We can't have that imposed upon us by the state and I think this is the level that libertarian is missing Is is that we're all ideas and no narrative no story And and I think by telling a story about no freedom is taking ultimate responsibility for our life so that we can imbue our lives with the most meaning possible um, you know, I think that has that that can absolutely animate people Is there a tension between um, you know, uh, somebody like robert nosik the philosopher talked about uh, a utopia of utopias and he kind of Talked about a minute a minimal state if that a night watchman state if necessary Would be uh, you know would be there to allow people to kind of do their own thing as much as possible and then minimize friction points um, but when you say that if you have a vision of freedom that is uh, You know say it's a christian community which follows very traditional social and sexual rules and things like that And that's there and then somebody next door to them is living a very libertine, you know playboy mansion lifestyle Is that uh, you know, is libertarian able to contain that kind of framework or does it kind of trend towards? A single morality under the banner of truth that this is the best way to live I think that's for the individual. I think again we're like we're Where it's it's like something I said earlier where libertarianism is not a full scale or a full form worldview It's a political and legal theory I do think that there are certain certain ideas that would like a basic respect for property rights That's kind of got to be there like to maintain um, uh libertarian society But again, we're social animals another thing I love about jordan peterson is is um He helped me to revolutionize how important the first amendment in free speech is It's not just our ability to say what we want and speak truth to power and all that kind of stuff It's our it's a divine principle for how we can disseminate reality and and and um disseminate what works and what does not work Um, so the kind of thing that you're getting at has got to all play out in the social marketplace You know, maybe it is the case that if you live a libertine lifestyle Especially into your 30s and beyond and you're you're breaking people's hearts and you know Maybe there is a relationship between that and and people becoming bitter and resentful And they're not living the best life that they can maybe there is But that is that for the state? Of course not but this is why we have to build up organic leaders Are you a um, are you a religious person? Uh, if you were gonna hate my answer for this, um, not really not religious. I'm spiritual I don't know It's interesting you mentioned, um, you know that property rights is really just a basic respect for property rights It's kind of the thing that all libertarians can agree on. I think that something like that is probably right Um It but it does make me wonder like what is the relationship that you see between Libertarianism and like decentralism because this project is called a, you know, uh project decentralized, um, and It's like what is, um Like how far down does the decentralization go? And like what are you willing to compromise from a libertarian perspective to achieve decentralization? I guess a a simpler way to put it is can you decentralize into authoritarianism because you can imagine breaking free of some of the, uh Dictats of the federal government, but then you're stuck with a state government. That's actually worse from a libertarian perspective than is The federal government because at least we have, you know, the bill of rights protecting us at this point So like what if a state? Uh, like if a state broke away and it decided, uh, really property rights are not sacrosanct. Um, and, uh You know eminent domain on steroids, uh, is what what goes here Um, is that a danger of being too dogmatic about decentralization? Mises himself would tell you if this right of self-determination could apply to every individual it must be so Um, so again, it goes again. It goes back to an earlier part of the conversation You aim for the ideal and and again This is this is a principle that's outlined in Rothbard's article the case for radical idealism And it can be summed up as You aim for the ideal and along the way you take what you can get but you always aim at that ideal Um, I would argue that when you say like, okay, let's say you decentralize Um, and you and estates the seeds could it be worse from a libertarian perspective? Um, you know, then the federal government broke away from I I gotta be honest I I understand what you're going there like some bad things could happen at a state by state level I've never seen a state government starve 80 percent of yemen to death. I don't think they're capable of doing that I've never seen a state government drop nuclear bombs on on japan before. I don't think they're capable of doing that What about less? I'm not saying they're angels American military that is that that's um, the big evil that you're hoping to abolish here. Um, I I can understand that perspective However, domestically, um, you know, you can imagine states that would strip away All second amendment rights. You can imagine ones that would strip away first amendment rights and second amendment rights Due process all all these things are like states are constantly trying to do this and Pretty much the only thing that stops them is, you know, constitutional challenges I mean, I had a little bit of state governments have State governments have constitutions just the same as the federal government and what is it doing for the federal government? You know what I mean? Like we still have state I I I mean my state we have a stronger second amendment than the federal constitution Um in terms of in terms of decentralization though would Save with gun rights because this is playing out in certain states that are trying to devolve Gun rights certain types of gun rights decisions to the local level. Would it be okay? Uh, if a local town said, you know what? We are absolutely going gun-free. We are giving the police an absolute You know monopoly on force and we're going to go house by house And uh, you know and you guys opted in you, you know, you're living here You voted for us who voted for this is I mean it would you be Are you in favor of decentralization? Even when the uh, you know, the outcome is anti libertarian as most people would define I would I would say I'm not in favor of illiberal policy ever Um, but I do think that a a just like a problem like that like gun control It's better if it's isolated to one state than it is the whole friggin country So you always have to put up that fight But you see I would say you see a lot more hope on a state by state level than you ever do from the feds The feds just inspired with the nih and all the big corporations to like essentially socially coerce this vaccine And and there's all sorts of problems associated with that now Whereas even in new york, which is like a illiberal hellscape had a um The the court decision reversed their their gun stuff so like There's always going to be this tension between Liberalism liberalism in the classical sense and and illiberalism But the question is is where does the fight become more manageable? A in federal government that is trending ever more towards super national international government Or or at the state level and down and down and down it varies right because it It depends because there were various speech rights that were enforced ultimately by the federal government certain civil rights I mean if you were black in the south and you wanted to go to a good public school You were fucked until the feds or you know or an equally bad You know public school the feds did play a role there. So Um cannot too quick things and then we're going to wrap up Let me can I ask you one question on that from yeah, would you say that the federal government is a net Is a net rights protector or a net rights violator? I don't think I don't I think that's the wrong way to look at in the same way that States and local governments are the the way that we win we are kind of like, you know Clint Eastwood in uh, you know the good the bad and the ugly you're constantly working One government against another another government against another government against people In order to get like the biggest fear of individual rights and autonomy So I you know on on certain levels the federal government has been great on certain levels state governments have been great And then sometimes you have like, you know, third sector groups like the you know, the catholic church Which in one place could be totally repressive and another can be an agent of freedom and liberation. So Um, yeah, I just want to comment. Yes comment. I will say this just to kind of set the set the table on this I am an opportunist Yeah, um, we don't have a lot of avenues available to us So if while we got the feds if I can get a good outcome with it and fuck it I mean, I'm aimed at decentralization, but I'll but I'll we're we're under a lot of duress and and decentralization is a tool not in ended itself Uh, yeah, I mean, yeah, I would agree with that the goal is more more liberty I just think that um, it's much easier to fight for liberalism when it's your city count Just to go back to jordan peterson briefly you said, you know, the you you Uh, you know, like the connoisseur of of a of a fine band, you know, an underground band that became popular You like his early work What happened in 2019? Uh, and his kind of you know, his journey which may or may not be indicative of everybody who kind of believes his thought But like he is now working, you know for what on the daily wire He is a conservative pundit. It's like has he become less interesting. Why has he become less interesting? Uh, I think so in terms of his politics what he would identify with and has publicly identified with Um, is he calls himself a classical liberal? He specifically says i'm a british classical liberal So I don't think he's the worst guy in the world. I also think that he has shown Um, a huge willingness to change in the in the face of new data I mean, I personally handed the guy a copy of choice by by bob murphy next thing You know, he's having safa dina moose and bob murphy on the show saying i'm interested in the austrian school You know, he took the vaccine and then basically said, hey, um, I took the vaccine and now the state won't leave me alone What the fuck? Um, so I I think You know, I I think he's his own man. Um, and and uh now in terms of your question I'm not I'm not nearly as interested in his political commentary as as uh archetype myth meaning narrative Uh, uh neuro neuro chemistry and all of this kind of stuff And I suspect that what he's going to find over time is that is the stuff that A lot of his audience came to him for because it imbued their life with meaning and that they're not they're not interested in more politics Thank you, uh, Zach um There's one question here that maybe we can finish up on, uh, Amanda Gibbs Can michael tell us about his classes at the mesis institute? So this is your your chance to plug uh, mike on our on our way out Uh, well, I don't have classes at the mesis institute. I I uh attended mesis university and I I uh, I think everybody should mesis university was an absolutely fantastic experience. Um, but um, okay, maybe uh, maybe we can talk about Whatever candidate training that the mesis caucus Oh, that's I might be what she's asking about gotcha. Yeah, I guess I'll just say for the record that we're not formally associated with the mesis institute We all just love them, um, but um But yeah run is libertarian.com if you are interested in running for office We'll give you the training no matter what you're running for Um, but uh, we will try to get you to run for local office because we think that's the most viable But yeah, run is libertarian.com. That's uh, where we're funneling all the candidates and and uh, you know Connecting them to our organizers for on the ground support connecting them to training right now to clip it twice a month Um, and then we're also going to be doing in-person training at our take human action tour events Okay, thank you mike. Um, anything else nick before we get out of here Uh, you know, uh, can we uh, just to try and throw a one more log on the fire. Um, do you have You, you know, you've talked about the The the need to radically decentralize to sub county level races, but there's also a role for national Uh races and people running for offices Um, I know that you've said in the past that uh, dave smith and mage torre would be the ideal ticket in uh 2024 Do you still believe that and if so make the pitch I 100% believe that because um I think the two of them combined especially Are in positions that nobody else in the liberty movement is in. Um, I think you know, dave has been on dr Drew, I haven't never seen any other libertarian on there. He's been he's forming relationships with pat david He's forming relationships with tucker carlson. He's friends with joe rogan. He's been on with meghan kelly They love him over at tin pool. Uh, he's on kennedy. He's on greg guttfeld He is just on more platforms and in front of more people effectively giving the message By a large margin than anybody else in the movement. I don't really think that's up for debate and and um, You know, so I think he has the the the ability to Speak to the most people and get them excited about our ideas and and be in that funnel Likewise, I think mage torre has a huge platform and and legitimacy to crowds that um, We just don't have access to you know, like, uh, you know, he's uh, he's shouted out by a track In a track by name by roist of five nine who was a major rapper has done duo albums with m&m You know, I mean like uh, he's he's done debates with lube fiasco He's and another thing that mage brings to the table is that like it's one thing for libertarians to be let's say Principally good on an issue and and to be seen as legitimate in the eyes of the people who care about that issue so like For example, it's one thing for us to be second amendment absolutists and to speak that principle It's another thing for mage torre to be respected by all of the gun Trainers around the country and the ammo producers around the country and and colea noir and you know, all of these people You know, it's it's not just the ideas. It's the legitimacy. It's one thing to be interviewed by joe rogan It's another thing to be interviewed by joe rogan. Who is your friend and colleague in comedy where there's like this transference of legitimacy And and I and I think that when you put the two of those together We can reach tens of millions of people And and and effectively at that and I think that's going to flood us with the most number of people And get as many people have the most political capital that we have ever had and start nullifying and and you know Having these pockets of resistance around the country the one The criticism that that comes to mind there is that And you know, you say this explicitly in the document that we got to kind of get rid of this idea that Yeah, we're we're in it to win it that we have any shot whatsoever It just makes us sound like crazy and delusional that that's always what the libertarian party candidate has Traditionally said is like, yeah, I've got a shot at this actually Harry brown kind of initiated that in his book why government doesn't work in 96 Said that explicitly as well as an interview to me at reason at the time, but right before that They usually said we are running informational campus Let me give you an example of of something in this realm that I thought was very eye-opening I'm apparently I'm the only one who saw this I've never heard anyone else mention this moment But when Justin Amash dipped his toe into the presidential race in 2020 he got a bill mar interview um, and that's great In that interview like I think it was right at the outset bill mar asked him So what you know, what are you doing? You think you can win this race and amash said something to the effect of like, well, yeah, of course I'm running You know, I don't think I if I wasn't if I didn't think I could win I wouldn't be running something like that and bill mar laughed at him He laughed at them and basically said yeah, well, you know, you guys come around every four years You always have a story and it always sounds the same I really think he's speaking to how normal people do and I think we gotta I think we've got to embrace the fact that the role of these races is different than winning I think we have to embrace the fact that we are just pitching a different paradigm And we're being a thorn in their side and fuck these people and but you know, like I I really think that we've got to just embrace what the role of that is and it ain't winning not yet What what is the Like value proposition for somebody anybody to cast a ballot for somebody who's like, yeah I'm not even this is not really a serious candidacy There isn't one right now and I think we have to be honest about that there we don't I mean Why why would they if they if they know that we're not going to win and they see team a is as being more dangerous than team b And they have to defend themselves from that um We don't like basically the only value add that we have is changing the paradigm That like and I mean what to you guys is the value of it. I I think Because there's a lot of time and money that is spent, you know getting on ballots and so forth So like what what really would be the point of that if your objective is not really to win votes I mean, I think we can incorporate that we got to say listen If you love these ideas, like if you want to be a thorn in these side give us your vote We need we want you on the ballot But or what would be on the ballot to cause this trouble and to disrupt But we're not going to win and nobody thinks we're going to win sounds kind of like gary johnson in 2016 Well, I say I would say it was more 2012 gary johnson who was a lot better Um, we are uh, uh, we're going to wrap up. This has been a lot of fun. It's been very long I think this is our longest live stream uh to date zack Yeah, is that check out? Yeah, Michael flew right by though I want to uh do a quick shout out to a gmm for his five dollar donation in question Michael ice Yeah, should we bring that up just since he threw in five bucks. All right. Yeah. Yeah Is michael familiar with edwin vieira's proposal that each state legalized gold and silver in order to undermine the fed I am and um legislation to do just sample legislation to do just that is available on the tenth amendment center's website And then you also have the Missouri freedom coalition Who is working to do exactly that? Um, so yeah, I totally think that's something we should do and I think bitcoin should be In that conversation as well well um Okay, uh, let's leave it here michael heiss of the mesas caucus. Thanks for talking to reason and uh, you know, we'll see you around Thanks guys take human action