 Here in Colorado, we actually took it a step further and really devolved to local authority. And so we had a very different approach in some of our, you know, big blue cities and some of our rural areas. We left it in local hands because these are real trade-offs. That's Jared Polis, the Democratic Governor of Colorado, talking about his approach to mask mandates. In December, he told the Colorado Public Radio Station that public health doesn't get to tell people what to wear. I mean, that's just not their job. And he withstood pressure to impose mandates during the Omicron spike. Polis' approach of devolving decision-making seems to be working. Colorado has one of the lowest COVID death rates in the country. The state's also growing, while California and New York shrink. Florida is ascending, but Governor Ron DeSantis is becoming a culture warrior in ways that are short of backfire. Polis, on the other hand, is bringing an unmistakably libertarian flavoring to the centennial state. His embrace of letting people decide extends to other areas, too, such as childcare. It's very reasonable to raise your child in different ways. Some parents are helicopter parents, right, where they watch your kid every moment of the playground, and other parents want their kid to, you know, go two blocks in their home, play on the playground, and return home by dinner. Polis championed the reasonable independence for children bill, a free-range parenting law designed to stop state overreach when it comes to things like letting your kids play outside. He says the law will allow child protective services to focus instead on serious cases of harm. We wanted to be clear that, like, in fact, yes, your kids can play alone. It's reasonably safe. That's how kids learn. The 46-year-old Polis, who is openly gay, married, and the father of two, says he got his laissez-faire sensibility from being raised by ex-hippies. I used to hike, you know, in the mountains near my home when I was, you know, tan with a friend, you know, I'm without parents. I respect freedom. I think that it's great that Colorado has people that are deeply religious and conservative. As long as they don't force their values on others, we have people that are very, you know, hedonistic. I mean, you name it. I mean, it's great because you're free to be the way you want. That's the way it should be. Polis started two charter schools and is a defender of abortion rights. He recently signed a law guaranteeing a woman's right to choose, and he's relaxed laws on occupational licensing. Back in 2014 as a member of Congress, he was accepting bitcoin for campaign contributions while his colleagues were calling for it to be banned. A serial tech entrepreneur who has masked a fortune estimated by pro-publica to be in the hundreds of millions before entering politics, Polis is committed to a strong economy and says the proper state income tax rate should be zero. We've cut the income tax twice since I've been in office. When I came in, it was 4.63%. Now it's 4.55%. We also cut property taxes for two years. We'll need to renew some of that. Income is not a good thing to tax because it taxes productivity. As a society, we like income. We want people to make income. He's a strong supporter of free speech and wants to keep the government from regulating social media. An increasingly popular cause among progressives and conservatives. The government needs to tread very, very lightly when it comes to any speech-based regulation of tech or any other industry. I would say federally there is a role for antitrust law. Now we can have a whole discussion on that. You don't want to overdo that. I would argue it's a very competitive space when you talk about social media in general. If somebody offers a better service, they'll get there. There's a number of hybrid different services. If somebody has a better search than Google, there's nothing to stop people from going over using that. But that's the realm it should be had. When it comes to speech, the only real actionable item should be the same as a direct threat. I will kill so-and-so. That is actionable. Is it illegal? But other speech that can be construed, misinformation, disinformation, political speech, it should be refuted if it's misinformation or disinformation. But there's not a government role in damning that. Hollis says he's happy that the election of Joe Biden restored rationality to government. But he feels like not enough policy has changed even with the Democrats controlling Congress, especially when it comes to immigration and free trade. But I really believe that tariffs and immigration would solve inflation. It really would. It would wipe it out. And neither party is very good on that right now. Trump took a hard turn against TPP and trade deals and free trade, instituted tons of tariffs. Biden has slowly unwound a few but hasn't really committed to it. Immigration, Trump was awful. The worst. Biden, a little better. But I wish, I wish much better. And comprehensive reform still seems elusive no matter who controls Congress, Democrats or Republicans. I mean, it's hopeless for the Republicans. Don't get me wrong. But even with Democrats in charge of Congress, I don't see a lot of movement or conference on immigration reform. Hollis is no minarchist. And while critical of President Joe Biden on immigration and free trade stands by his argument made in the pages of Reason in 2014 that libertarians should vote for Democratic candidates because they are supportive of individual liberty and freedom. He's called for carbon taxes while recognizing their potential to become slush funds for expansive new government programs. And in April, he signed the largest budget in Colorado history. Yet in a country that's highly polarized, he's succeeding by governing mostly from the middle. And it's hopeful that our experiment as a Republic, we're about a quarter of a millennia old will be 250 years old and just a couple more years. I think that means it's time for awkward adolescence. I think it's a time for rediscovering who we are absolutely legitimately. And the left is right on this coming to terms with legacies of slavery and racism that absolutely existed and pretending they didn't is doesn't serve anybody. And then of course, on the right understanding that there's not some collective guilt today for what might have happened 100 or 200 years ago. It's important to be honest about it. But just by being honest about what your great grandfather might have done doesn't mean that you have culpability. There's not we don't believe in blood guilt in our country. And so I just went, you know, there's just a lot of rhetoric on both sides. It's hurtful to this. But I think gradually there'll be something that kind of builds out from the middle that leads to a higher level of understanding as we emerge from adolescence into our hopefully wise adult years where we preserve the tenets of liberal democracy and our rights and free enterprise.