 I thought we talked politics right because the world is is nutty out there and it's I don't know what the latest news is but I'm assuming the Republicans in Cape are gonna cave any minute now right and cut a deal to to get this over with so I thought we talked a little bit about how we got into into the condition that we are today and I don't I'm not gonna talk a lot so I thought we really open this up and have like a conversation and I'll take I'll take questions and we do it that way I don't think there many people yet I need to convince of anything it looks like I'm pretty much among friends so I'll just give you a sense of my take on what's going on in Washington DC right now why we got into this why we're in this mess kind of in a broader perspective and then just let's open it up and see what you guys want to talk about and I'm always I'm always game for whatever people wanna want to discuss the fundamental problem you know in American politics is that we have lost all sense of principle there's no sense of what the role of government really should be there's no political party today in in in Washington that represents a principled position around limited government and I'm not even talking about kind of a libertarian or an objective as perspective limited government any limited government any limits of government you know this so the Republican Party sold its soul to the statist agenda decades ago decades ago and what we're seeing today is the concept consequence of that we see two political parties both with statist agendas one that wants to move to the left fast and one that wants to move to the left slow but that's really the only fundamental difference between these two party that I have a preference for slow over fast I think we all do because slow gives us time maybe to have an impact on the culture and and and stop the move to the left to the move to greater statism and shift other direction but fundamentally there is no political party that represents the founding principles of this country there is there are no with with a few exceptions I mentioned in a minute there no political figures no substantial political figures over the last decades that have stood for the founding principles of this country and when you get a political figure like Barry Goldwater he gets defeated in a landslide because he is the close to being principled and the country's not ready for that and then you have a political figure like Ronald Reagan who's a little bit watered down from from Barry Goldwater right who can get elected but then can't do anything because nobody else agrees with any of these principles and nothing really happens and he gives a great speech but he doesn't really execute on it and then once he's out of the office everything goes back to the same as it was right government continues to grow and ever growing great so we have two political parties that are statist and of course the reason for that is that we have a population that is statist I mean it it's a mistake for us to believe that somehow all that's needed is some great politician to come about and the country will rally around him and everything is everything is fantastic the fact is that we have a population that doesn't know what the founding principles of this country are that has no sense of what individual rights or negative rights or the real definition of rights is we have a population it's ignorant of history that's ignorant of economics and it you know the country's drifting leftwards because the country is left towards the country's drifting leftwards not just the politicians the politicians are following the people and and they're very much caving in I mean even with Obamacare the all the polls show Obamacare is unpopular but you know why it's unpopular because there's a certain fraction some people hate it because it's bigger government but there's a fraction of that that hate it because it's not enough go because what they want is single-payer universal health care and Obamacare doesn't give them that's too complicated right they just want to go and get free health care like free non-care whatever you want to call it like like the Canadians and the Europeans get so it's not that there's a majority of the country who want a free market alternative to Obamacare there isn't there isn't so what we're seeing today is a consequence of a country that has drifted dramatically leftward in its ideas in its ideology a country that is very much ignorant of the foundations of freedom and foundations of liberty and this is why I still believe that the primary focus of any campaign for liberty has to be educational has to be educate people and change the culture and the politics follows because the politics are reflecting that culture and the culture is left it's even on the Tea Party right so either anti Obamacare but they will they will fight to the death for socialized medicine for anybody over 65 it's called Medicaid right most of them are over 65 most of them getting overcipients of this and they will fight for it right so even the Tea Party is much as energy as they have and I'm a huge fan of the Tea Party they need educating they don't understand what liberty really means they don't understand what freedom means they don't understand what individual rights mean and they therefore they're completely inconsistent and all over the map even in economic issues which is their relative strength social issues is a disaster with them so the political campaign is primarily ultimately a cultural educational campaign and you cannot you cannot get around that fact we're in a period where because of the Tea Party we have some political leaders who I think a little bit better on some issues that relate to rights that relate to founding principles whether it's a rampart or a Ted Cruz or you know if Lee from from Utah or Johnson from Wisconsin there's somewhat better on the issues of economic rights and they're fueled by a Tea Party movement that is that on certain issues is very adamant and very passionate and very engaged and you get quite a few House members that are the same way and they've chosen this moment in time to kind of stand up against Obamacare now if they mean for the last three years I don't know but really to stand up and to make this a big deal and it's refreshing I have to say I enjoyed Ted Cruz's pseudo filibuster I enjoy listening to them passionately advocate for this it's fun to see politicians who actually are taking a stand or something even though the political costs might be negative you know to them it might be hurtful it's hard to tell Republicans are not popular right now because of all this and I think you're seeing a real real challenge there you're seeing a few politicians who have some principle some not as many as we would like but some you're seeing a majority of the public and party that's just traditional Republican party you have no clue about what a principle is and I have no idea what Ted Cruz is talking about or what any of these guys are talking about and it's just drifting along because these guys seem passionate and they're they get a lot of phone call from Tea Party people so they're just being dragged along you know into the shut down and into all this stuff and you have a population I think mostly is confused as we said relatively you know it doesn't really understand the issues you know the Tea Party loves Ted Cruz but for some good reasons some not so good reasons and it's just a mess it's a and it's an other consequence so that this is gonna turn out to be a disaster for the Republicans because there's no strategy here there's emotion there's passion there's a little bit of standing on principle but there's no strategy and there's not enough people involved to make any kind of real difference just the few people willing to stand up a too few and they will land up caving and get nothing in return or what they get in return they'll play it up and they'll pretend that it's meaningful but it'll be meaningless I mean either the Senate compromise thing I haven't seen if that was passed and I was in a final version of it but you know the one thing they could have got one of those stupidest dumbest things in the barbeque was this 3% tax on medical devices I don't know if you know how familiar it's 3% on revenue it's not a profit basically it takes out all the profit from these businesses that run a very slim margins anyway and these are innovative many of them are startups right and many of them don't have profits and it's just it's just the dumbest stupidest idea ever it's just because from every perspective even from perspective of somebody trying to maximize social utility or trying to do some social welfare stuff it just it's just silly right the you know these are companies that are creating great products new products innovative products and you're destroying you're destroying and what's going to happen is the good companies are going to move overseas because the fact is do Europeans regulate less and tax less innovative companies so you know why stay in the US the Republicans won't even get that I mean that's already out of the Senate bill and even the House Republicans I think have given up on that one so and the most they would get is a postponement of another not a complete projection I would say they completely lost what they fought for and this is a consequence of no real principle so even Ted Cruz right he gives a great speech and I you know he pitched out was short during the speech I have to respect him I told everybody go up and to buy a coffee so that's great but this you know to do something like the shutdown government for that cause this this Obamacare you should have been advocating for this air you know speech after speech after speech for the last two or three years right last year Republicans ran a presidential candidate that couldn't talk about Obamacare because he invented it was called Romney King so it was nowhere in the in the debate last year right so people have just accepted Obamacare is gonna happen it's suddenly out of nowhere it comes out so it from PR perspective of strategy perspective this whole thing makes absolutely no sense and of course the fact is Obama and the Democrats you know control the Senate they control the White House what Republicans hope to get here they're not gonna win the PR battle because it's random it's a principle out of nowhere they haven't laid the foundations for it you know they're not gonna get anything from Obama because Obama has nothing to lose here he's gonna blame everything on Republicans I mean I'm all for shutting down the government anytime you shut down the government's a good thing right but you gotta have good reasons to do it right like you know how about privatizing national parks I mean that would be that should have been a big slogan of the Republicans once everybody was denied the national monuments and national parks come out with a proposal to privatize them all and that would solve you know solve the problem of people now being able to come in when when the federal government has no money to run it propose something about the budget so they don't want to raise the limit the debt limit right but every budget proposal that they've proposed that they put on the table raises the debt limit so they come across as hypocrites right oh we won't raise the debt limit but do you have a budget proposal that won't raise the debt limit no we would also raise it that way we're just we would raise it a little bit less than the Democrats it's just it's just it's it's unconvincing unprincipled uninteresting and and you know from a PR perspective it's a complete loser so you know they're gonna they're gonna capitulate the government will open they'll raise the debt limit and they've got nothing to show for it or they will have nothing to show for it so at the end of the day this was probably a strategic disaster from there in spite of the fact that I was inspired by a few people standing up and saying their peace they could have done it so much better and the problem is you know their unwillingness to define their principles you know because if they define their principles they get into trouble so even Ted Cruz right he could talk about Obamacare but he would never mention Medicare right so what's the difference between Medicare and Obamacare if you're against Obamacare how can you be for Medicare Medicare is your social life medicine for 65 year olds what's the difference right so and they know that they know that if they strike an actual principle with regard to Obamacare they actually stand on principle they're gonna be called out on Medicaid and they can't because you know they fear that more than anything I mean Paul Ryan has a modest proposal about vouchers for Medicare which is good which is a step in the right direction and he was vilified as a monster by by the press and by the Democrats and and the public's not buying it so at the end of the day you know well we've got better people in Washington on on these economic issues we've got some politicians that actually making a much better case than has been in the past it's still true that they cannot move anything forward as long as the American people are as ignorant and unconvinced as they are today and I see no indication that they're engaging the kind of educational campaign that you would have to engage in in order to change the American people's minds one of the things I've been telling I speak a lot in front of tea party groups and conservative Republican groups and one of the things I think that people need to start considering is that it might be impossible to save the Republican Party it might be impossible to actually bring principles into the Republican Party use that as an educational platform and an electoral platform and it might necessitate starting a third party that that people should really think seriously about a third political party partially because it will it'll be fresh right remember what what you guys some of you too young but what Russ Barrow did right I mean he was an uncharismatic little short guy who was not articulate he didn't do good television he sat at the desk with flip charts and flipped them over and he got 20% of the votes he got 20% of the vote because he's he looked at the camera and he told the Americans he showed them the numbers and he told them the truth and he used as an educational platform he actually educated Americans about in those days deficits and and and debt right things are a hundred times worse than they were in the early 90s so it would be and that was fresh right it wasn't just a Republican partisan doing it wasn't a Democrat partisan it was something new or something different and I seriously think that to change what's going on now you need a shock to the system you need something new you need something different and a third party led by the right people it needs to be big it needs to be big names and has that big money behind it but the money I think is there if you get the right people is probably the right path and you know again they're not going to be objectivist and they're not going to be libertarian but if they're just more free market than what we have today and more principled at least in making some time attempt to connect to the founders and really talk to the American people about what the real problem is on present alternatives I think I think it's it's the only shot we have long term to save this country from the disaster that is the two-party system that we have right now so you know that's my assessment kind of the politics of it I you know I I don't see I unfortunately I don't see a third party coming about I think that the people like Rand Paul and Ted Cruz and so on to commit it to the Republican Party to split off and do something interesting and exciting and I don't see any major figure outside of politics who would take that on and really embrace it and can generate a national buzz in order to get something like that going and I think I think our campaign needs to continue to be one of education and one of education about the political foundations of this country and more importantly as probably many of you know what we believe at the institute is you're not going to really change things until there's a there's a moral revolution is an ethical revolution in this country until people are willing to to reject the morality of selflessness and the morality of you are your brother's keeper your moral purpose in life is to serve others and on and on and to embrace an individualistic moral theory and to embrace individualism and that should really be I just think our campaign is is around individualism and it's a hook to the founders were clearly individualists and it's a hook to a moral foundations for individual rights and therefore more foundation for limited government so the struggle for individualism must continue and this is a long it's going to be a long drawn-out campaign to resurrect the spirit of individualism in this country tea parties is just the beginning of that but it's gonna have to sustain itself over the next couple of decades because that's probably about the time we have in order to win this so get energized there's a lot of work to do and there's a lot of educating to do but that at the end of the day is what it's really about thank you all