 It's an election year which you may have heard Hillary Clinton is running for president you may be aware a guy named Donald Trump is running as well and A gentleman from Vermont named Bernie Sanders is in the field We don't know exactly what's going to happen because we don't know whether Hillary is perhaps going to be indicted Which is certainly possible If so will someone like Joe Biden or Michael Bloomberg get into the race if not Can a Bernie Sanders and an avowed and open socialist win the presidency in the US certainly possible Could Donald Trump be president can he translate some of his Media savvy and popular in the actual primary votes. Could we end up with a Ruby or a cruise? We just don't know So I will make a couple of predictions though because we're trying to make predictions today That's why we're here. I'll make at least two very safe predictions one of which is that Commentators and pundits will say it's the most important election in our lifetimes And it furies me when I hear that you know this sort of drama And the other thing is they'll say we're at a crossroads America's ever and always at a crossroads, you know what I mean We're always about to choose between two fundamentally different paths When in fact the policies of the various candidates always seem about the same So the policies seem the same but the personalities seem quite different And if I could speak to any of the candidates, I would offer just two easy Pieces of advice they would really capture the sort of populist spirit we're having this year in 2016 I would just say any candidate who vows to number one not bomb Any Islamic countries during their presidency and number two Not put any US troops on the ground in any Muslim countries during their presidency. They just promised those two things I guarantee you they would have a popular grounds. Well of voters behind them They wouldn't even have to do so on moral grounds. They could do this simply on populist grounds Because the neo-conservative foreign policy that we've all been sold and we'll talk about that today It's not nearly as popular as our elites would believe But of course this idea of elites being out of touch with the electorate, right? This is nothing new I'm sure some of the people in this room are old enough to remember the 1972 election When Richard Nixon won re-election in a landslide. He won 49 states Now the one state he didn't prevail in is Lou Aqua's home state of Massachusetts I don't know if any of us know what Lou was doing that year Perhaps he was worked for George McGovern in peace But so he won he won Massachusetts and he won the District of Columbia and you probably heard the story. There was a very famous Film critic named Pauline Kale who wrote for the New Yorker and the New Republic Quite a prestigious critic and she was actually misquoted as Saying I can't believe Nixon won. I don't know anyone who voted for him So it made it sound like she was just this completely out of touch rich Now I'll be elite in New York. Well, it turns out she said it sort of self deprecatingly She said I live in a very isolated world and in my world No one I know voted for Richard Nixon So she was actually acknowledging that the circle she ran in in New York were not the same as let's say, you know The Dakotas But nonetheless this stuck with her over the years. She's no longer with us And this has become sort of social mythology that that there were so many people who are out of touch in places like New York City That they couldn't understand somebody like Nixon and we saw this sentiment expressed again in 1980 Joan Walsh Who's now a columnist for salon calm was was writing for a radical Santa Barbara California newspaper time She said, you know, my friends and I the night before the election We're all sure that there's no way this country could elect someone like Reagan It's just inconceivable and of course Reagan won in a landslide in 1980 gets to me Carter. So It's interesting how this keeps this cycle of out of touch elite seems to repeat itself. And if you fast forward a bit Some of you might recall in 2003, California held a recall election for their governor Gray Davis And this is a very contentious election It was two pieces one was recalling Davis the second was where they're not you were going to vote for Swarovski So all of the counties in San Francisco and Los Angeles voted against this recall But yet the recall passed by 55% Because California has lots of rural people inland But we don't think of California that way and Los Angeles knows and San Francisco And certainly don't think of California that way and I remember reading a letter to the editor at the time And it said something like, you know, I can't believe now that we're gonna have to be governed by a man We despise Whose views we abhor just because he got, you know, these yokels out in the country to vote for him You know, why should we be governed by him? Well, why indeed? It's a pretty good question if you think about it And from my perspective, I'm not sure any philosopher or political theorist or certainly Social contract theorists has ever answered that question to our satisfaction. Why should we be governed by someone? We don't want to be governed by So do we really think that if Trump wins that progressives will accept this? Do we really think if if Hillary Clinton wins that the right wing would just accept this that they'll just accept Ted Cruz? And I'm not just talking about they won't accept it in the sense, you know Well, there was voter fraud somehow like in the 1980 election or in the sense of the well There's too much PAC money and Citizens United lets all this money come in and it all just the election I'm talking about something more fundamental that that we're reaching a point in America Where people are starting to view the democratic will of the country is invalid So that's really a profound change if you think about it. I mean we may well be reaching the end of this myth of Democratic consensus and from my perspective, that's a great thing. That's a healthy thing And you know these divisions have always existed. We talked about red state and blue state right versus left Look at colonial period. Yeah, the Jeffersonians the Hamiltonians Look at the Civil War. Look at the New Deal I mean we've had deep divisions in our country throughout our history, but I think what's changed fundamentally is that we now have Two things we have a much more diverse population culturally religiously ethnically Etc in large part due to the 1965 civil rights act excuse me 1965 immigration act and number two We now have this thing called the internet and with the internet comes these things called social media And what's especially important is it the internet provides anonymity or at least relative anonymity? So for the first time really in our history, we had this incredibly detailed sense of what other people really think and You can go on to Washington Post or New York Times and just see these really acid comments So I think this is actually quite new in America and it's starting to expose The great elite lie of democracy, which is democracy is only valid when the right guy wins right so this mythology of Democratic consensus Finds its home in what we might call the mythical consensus. We might call it the bush Clinton axis, right? This is the kind of center the moderates You know your David Brooks your Chuck Todd's on meet the press your Jennifer Rubin's your George will so they've convinced us that There's a consensus in America And these are just some of the elements of this myth is What they've convinced us is that if we could just do away with these extremists and these ideologues and Bring the conversation back to the center There's really this great consensus down the middle of the country and this is really where serious people ought to be governing And you can always tell a consensus type when they use the slur called the adults in the room Have you ever heard this? Well, we need the adults in the room Really that doesn't include us So so one of the hallmarks of this mythical consensus, of course is globalism and Democracy the benefits of both these things they don't see the inherent conflict between those two of course globalism and democracy Globalism tends to attenuate direct democracy But they don't see the irony and they say these things are all ever and always good and we all believe in the UN and the EU project and the IMF and things like the international criminal court These are just part of the consensus. We all agree that these are good We all agree with neoconservative foreign policy. This is taken as an article of faith That it's America's duty to spread democracy and we understand this Which really means intervene militarily, but also intervene using foreign aid and non-government organizations and we all accept the neoconservative foreign policy as a settled part of The American consensus we all accept central banking The role of the Fed and other central banks and creating money goes unquestioned It's inconceivable that we would operate in this country without a central bank So says the consensus we all agree to this sort of post constitutional legal landscape, right? Where we simply accept judicial review is it allows the Supreme Court to make law We accept executive orders as a form of executive governance The corporation doctrine we accept that the commerce clause and the general effort clause have basically vitiated Article 1 section 8 powers. We all agree that the 9th and 10th amendments are effectively null and void That these things are decided Consensus we all believe in a robust public education system. We can't really imagine America without it We all believe in a robust entitlement system social security and Medicare being The hallmarks of those and here I hate to say is a place where the the consensus types might actually be right When you look at some of the data there is an awful lot of support for social security Medicare So you have to hand it to the progressives for creating These programs that created a middle class entitlement electorate We all agree at some level of reasonable taxation and regulation You know, we don't call it socialism if you just sort of regulate industries This is this is just something we all know is is for the best We all agree that abortions, okay? It would be radical to get rid of it. There might be some restrictions we would place on abortion, but Late-term abortions that sort of thing but for the most part abortion is not going to go away. That's the consensus And we all agree to this sort of myriad nebulous benefits of pluralism and diversity and affirmative action and Gay marriage gay civil rights these things are sort of unquestioned as part of the new American consensus according to the David Brooks and the Jennifer Rubins and the George Wills and Finally the the American consensus down the middle believes in reasonably open immigration You know, it would be nice if we could stop these these ms-13 Tattooed gang members from El Salvador coming that would be nice, but for the most part, you know Immigration is noble and we should permit it So this is a consensus that we're told Holds in America but If you spend a lot of time online We just in the Washington Post in the New York Times much less the fever swamps of some of the sites like salon or Some of the sites of some of the social media surrounding black lives matters occupy Wall Street Feministing comm you see that that there's actually not so much of a consensus on these items You actually see that there's some different things that the emerging the researching socialists left really believe Now the socialists left is sort of embodied by the Bernie Sanders phenomenon But there's not necessarily direct overlap some some people on what I would call the socialists left love Bernie Some think perhaps he's not radical enough, but if you look online and read what Socialist progressives really think you'll find that they go way beyond globalism. They're they're they're pure internationalists They truly believe in in some sort of global governance above and beyond Washington DC and Brussels They're their number one hallmark I would say Identifier is identity politics so social justice Every issue of the day has to be viewed for this through this filter of sexism and racism and Hobophobia and privilege and That the conclusion we draw from this is that America's past is largely shameful and hence we have to progress That's why we called well, that's why we're called progressives So identity politics are really at the heart of Bernie Sanders new socialist left on foreign policy It's a bit muddled. I would call I would say that the left has sort of a peace core foreign policy They're not necessarily completely on board with neoconservatives in terms of bombing and boots on the ground But they're awfully flexible when a Democrat becomes president When Obama was elected we find we suddenly find that code pink is not so active And then what's happening in Afghanistan in Iraq and Syria is perhaps not so awful But there's maybe some some daylight at the end of the tunnel that the left is a little more little less bellicose in this sense Central banking the Sanders left tends to be a little confused. They tend to Have some suspicion of the Fed and some understanding that it might benefit elites But they're not sure they want to do away with it and they don't like the idea of gold Bernie Sanders has actually hired a modern monetary theorist if you want to look that up MMT, which is a whole new sort of monetary policy He's hired a woman who is a professor to be part of his campaign team On economics, of course the Sanders left is is absolutely socialist And they advocate either de facto if not outright nationalization of whole industries like banking energy education health care They of course advocate for vastly increased welfare and entitlements They think that America has a very thin social safety net if at all And they would see us have a system much more European in outlook But of course they're for wage and price controls and I include in this the idea of a minimum wage because that is a that is a wage floor of sorts As a matter of fact, they take the minimum wage very very seriously You'll see this in some cities like Seattle and others where they've now instituted a $15 minimum wage They believe in guaranteed income scenarios They believe that everyone ought to have some form of income solely for existing in America. They also believe in income limits If you get into places like Salon and Democratic Underground You'll see that there's plenty of people in Bernie's camp who actually believe that income should be capped at a certain level Whatever that might be of course Climate change and global warming are very important to the socialist left. They believe in banning fossil fuels ultimately They certainly believe in banning private fire firearms ownership This is something that you will absolutely find Almost uniformly on the left that firearms have no business being owned privately by individuals certainly not more military style firearms They also believe in free speech with an asterisk, right? They believe in criminalizing certain types of hate speech that make people feel bad about themselves Something more than just yelling fire in a crowded theater But actually just something where where someone feels abused or impugned upon via social media for instance and Finally, I think maybe one of the most interesting Elements of socialist progressives today that they actually share with some people on the right is they're not seeking consensus It's no longer about this consensus America where we're trying to win you over ideologically or get your vote Socialist left is actually quite comfortable with working through executive orders with working through the judiciary With making decisions simply based on demographic changes in other words if certain demographics don't agree with us Changes will come via immigration or are just through birth and death rates So there seems to be less of this idea that we have to we have to win over the center There's kind of an edge to what you'll read Online from some of these people and I find it very interesting and frankly I find it somewhat refreshing because I Like the idea that the Sanders left is using the term socialist And I like the idea that they're talking about these things openly because I think it's healthy if we do so And I think we who are on the other side of socialism ought to be just as as brave and use just as much candor But there's a new element in the American electorate this year called the alt right now The alt right is a really interesting mix of people. It's not so much an ideology or a political movement As you might almost call it a zeitgeist, right? They don't particularly have a home like national review for conservatives or or salon for liberals But they exist Primarily on social media their anti establishment their anti GOP And they're certainly anti mainstream media and what's interesting about this the alt right this emergent alt right is that they actually Tend to be quite a bit younger than traditional conservatives whose whose ages are higher So if you look at at some places like Breitbart where you can get a bit of a flavor for the alt right and especially in the Twitter verse You'll find a whole new species Of what we might call right-wingers who are much younger and see the world in a much different way Probably more than anything the alt right is populist in orientation They they dislike elites they're distrustful of elites But they're not necessarily Ideological and that's actually one of their beefs with libertarians They say the America isn't working and it's not so much an ideological problem as it is a populist problem And because they're populist as you might expect they're also openly nationalist They believe in the idea of an America You know how much that involves the government really depends But this idea of a uniquely American identity is okay with the alt right And they also believe that America's past is not necessarily shameful That we've gone too far in sort of denigrating ourselves and beating ourselves up and Of course the alt right is defined by its position on immigration When it comes to immigration the alt right is for limited or no immigration whatsoever And this is really going to be a sticking point for Trump and I think any candidate who wants to win their votes What's interesting about the alt right is is while they we think of the Neoconservative right or the establishment right or the fundamentalist right in America is being deeply religious and coming from religious convictions The alt right is more culturally Christian in other words, they they like Christian culture because of what it produced in the West ideologically They like America for what she's produced, but they're not this kind of of Christians. You'll find necessarily in fundamentalist Baptist circles They're not turn the other cheek Christians and they they view Christianity at least in its current forms in America somewhat weak weak-willed and not standing up to some of these ideological and cultural forces that the alt right would say are destroying us On the foreign policy side, they kind of believe in an America first port foreign policy So here's where perhaps the alt right gets closest to liberate tearing perspective The idea that we shouldn't expend blood or treasure And trying to fix the Middle East or save the Middle East so all the the alt right is suspicious of Islam And interested in shutting down or limiting immigration. They're not necessarily interested in expanding our wars or our footprints in the Middle East They're equally suspicious of central banking. They may not be anti-fed in the technical sense They may not have thought through all the machinations of money creation and inflation, but they do understand How the Fed creates an elite in this country and really an illegitimate elite so in that sense they're Anti-fed because they're anti-elite and There's certainly not free market ideologues even though they are on the right which is normally in our popular parlance associated more with free markets Now there was the alt right sees things that are more important than just Economics they said there's there's other things beyond economics that trump Those interests and so we ought to look at we ought to look at things like Protectionism from an America first perspective and so you can see sort of a thread maybe from the early 90s and Papi cannon That's that that finds its way all the way up to the alt right today Now on issues of race and diversity and social justice, of course the alt right is deeply skeptical They say you know all these things that we've been told are necessarily good or not necessarily so good for us And we're going to question these things. We're going to question feminism. We're going to question multiculturalism We're going to question affirmative action diversity, etc. etc And so of course as a result of this they the alt-right has been tarred as racist and xenophobic That may be true But it may also be true that a more charitable view of the alt-right would see them as simply saying hey look Identity politics is a two-way street We've been beaten over the head for all these years and now we're going to reassert ourselves Now the alt-right certainly Differs from the the Sanders left on the question of guns. They say guns are a okay as a matter of fact guns are good and guns belong in private hands And finally on this last point What the alt-right really shares with the progressive left with the socialist left is this idea that they're not seeking consensus This is no longer a meeting of the minds or a meeting in the middle This is now sort of open warfare at least online and The alt-right feels so marginalized they feel like the American dream is so far in the rear view mirror now But they're not even really arguing with progressives. They're not even really talking to progressives The internet and the anonymity it creates has allowed us to have these sort of atomized Areas where we go and we read and we talk to people who think a lot like us So it's interesting that the alt-right while it blasts progressives while it makes fun of progressives It doesn't really seek to change their minds, and I think that's part of this awakening that's happening in America. So What can we learn from all this as libertarians? What can we learn from the alt-right and the correct progressive left because it seems like all the action this year is populism And libertarians never really been populist in its orientation And I know some people in this room are probably discouraged. We we've read articles that say well, you know the libertarian moment is past This has been a theme in in Fox News and BBC in the week in Politico and Washington Post You know all these events have occurred. We've had you know the bombings in Paris We've had these refugee crises across Germany and other countries in Europe We've had all the turmoil and problems in Syria happening You know perhaps Rand Paul didn't quite catch fire in the way that the mainstream media thought he Might a year ago, and you put all this into a blender and the media likes to tell us that the libertarian moment is past But I disagree with that I I suggest we look at the populist uprising as an opportunity not as something that should disillusion us We've all probably heard some version of the saying that just because you don't take an interest in politics Politics takes an interest in you right whether we like it or not and this this is attributed to the Athenian to Pericles Supposed to have said this About 430 BC and Pericles is actually talked about as an early statesman and an early populist So he really liked the idea of using populism as Statecraft is a form of statecraft those libertarians. We don't believe in statecraft But does that mean we also must not believe in populism well Rufus J. Rufus fears was a famous historian He's no longer with us, but he was a story and historian for many many years at Oklahoma University And he really studied Pericles among other statesmen and He defined a statesman to someone with vision But also the ability to achieve consensus to achieve that vision And that's the rub right? Achieving consensus to achieve the vision because today in America. There's no longer a Vision and there's no longer a consensus Therefore there are no statesmen So matter of fact I used to cringe when I heard people call Ron Paula statesmen because I thought here's this great man Who should be known as a doctor and an educator That is not as someone who would ever ever want to use statecraft or have a vision for your life But I understood it. I understood why people meant it as a compliment But today we're at a point Where the sheer failure of politics this grinding divisiveness That these elections are putting upon us every four years is Creating this growing awareness of the futility of it all the failure to achieve any consensus versus Well, we see as the real consensus the real harmony all around us in the marketplace every day surrounding us There's a lot of ways we might define a libertarian society or more libertarian society But one way we might Define it is to say a libertarian society is a society where the great matters of the day cultural Economic social are not decided by politics And I would suggest that we are heading in exactly that direction Now we shouldn't be naive as the state loses control loses support loses consensus. It could go either way The marketplace in civil society could expand but the state could also expand in some very nasty fashions But I'm convinced that this loss of faith in government is Quantifiably different today. This is not just our grandparents Sort of complaining about let's throw all the bums out. This is different. Something's different in America today And really that's what our movement is all about, right? It's helping people make the leap from where they already are which is government isn't working To where they need to be which is government can't work At least certainly not a government of 320 million Diverse people top-down style from Washington, DC. It's an absurdity And we just need to help people understand that You know the socialist left Opposes an economic elite the alt-right opposes a cultural elite both of these elites to a large extent Find currency are created and funded by the state So we should take the opportunity to make that point and channel some of this anger into our movement And sometimes I've heard and I've read that well just being anti-establishment or opposing things is not enough Okay, maybe it's not enough, but it's a good start It's an excellent start and probably a lot of people in this room started that way So let's embrace populist. Let's embrace populism Political parties might be coming to an end We might have to face the possibility that the future is less ideological because populists by definition Are less ideological And there's nothing wrong with issue libertarianism single issue libertarianism Ron Paul worked this Very very well with regard to end the Fed Which was a populist uprising and with regard to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan These were both populist sentiments that didn't need a lot of intellectualization to sell And libertarianism is not an intellectual exercise, right? It's not a suicide pact It has to offer real solutions to the problems people see The state isn't working The Fed can't work Neo-conservative foreign policy can't work social security and Medicare and Medicaid can't work on paper or otherwise So we know what can we know what real money is we know what real economic prosperity is we know what real peace is and finally Despite claims to the contrary as believers in the marketplace, we know what real social cohesion looks like. It's not the state So we can't afford to look down our noses At this sort of populist uprising. Remember, it's not just elections that are won and lost on these tribal And emotionalist grounds. It's not just elections that are won on self-interest It's whole movements that are won on naked self-interest and too often libertarianism is viewed As people who have heads without bodies, right? Without guts without stomachs Or worst case scenario, as C.S. Lewis called them men without chests So libertarianism doesn't mean to mean This hyper individualized, atomized society where all we care about is pure economics Society without the state doesn't mean Society without culture or language or identity or God or something bigger than ourselves So I'll conclude with this the future is not necessarily left versus right Red state versus blue state status versus libertarian The future is centralized versus decentralized. It's what works versus what doesn't It's reasonable people versus unreasonable people It's PC versus the truth So libertarian shouldn't be heartless any more than they should be headless And I will conclude by just saying That who we are as people is equally as important as what we think as libertarians. So thank you very much