 The foundation of our strategy is notification and decentralization. Michael Heiss is the founder of the Mises Caucus and the leading strategist behind the group's takeover of the Libertarian Party at its 2022 convention held this year in Reno, Nevada. Mr. Chairman, it's taxation. Taxation is in detail. The caucus fashions itself is the Ron Paul movement 2.0 with a message focused on ending wars, ending the Fed, and ending what they call the COVID regime. He formed the Mises Caucus after the 2016 presidential run of former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson. 4.3 million votes, highest vote total ever. No lasting movement, no return on investment on those votes. Heiss won the backing of influential Libertarian podcasters Tom Woods and Dave Smith. It's Michael Heiss for starting this whole thing, man. It's all the credit goes to Michael and began the methodical work of getting his allies into leadership positions in the majority of Libertarian Party state affiliates. By 2022, the Mises Caucus controlled 37 state delegations. Mises Caucus endorsed candidates swept the national party's entire leadership slate, which means that big changes are coming to the Libertarian Party. Reason sat down with Heiss to talk about the LP's new strategy, had a measure success, and his response to critics who say that the Mises Caucus is damaging the party and the wider Libertarian movement. Michael Heiss, thanks for talking to reason. Thanks for having me. First question I got asked, what is that t-shirt? This is a day where your movement is taking over the Libertarian Party. I'm investing a lot of value in what you're wearing. What is that? Well, it's a Jordan Peterson shirt. It's a funny Jordan Peterson shirt. I would say Ron Paul is my biggest influence in terms of the freedom philosophy and all that, but I would also say Jordan Peterson is just as big an influence on me for different reasons. What do you like about him briefly? I didn't realize that the pursuit of liberty was also my pursuit for truth, which is ultimately my pursuit for meaning. I wouldn't have worded it that way until I encountered him and it helped me just put everything I felt into words. You are the founder of the Mises Caucus, which is about to take over the Libertarian Party. Explain what that means to take over the party. It means that we recruited more people than anybody else and that they agreed on a vision of decentralization and bringing the Liberty Movement and the Ron Paul Revolution into the Libertarian Party to actually represent that movement and bring enough people in so that we become the dominant influence on the party. What are the main elements for the Mises Caucus? What are the top three characteristics or policy proposals that you're after? We train all of our organizers and then the organizers do onboarding meetings with recruits where we train them on what we call our three-prong strategy. The three-prong strategy is one party organizing. Now, this is the one everybody pays attention to as far as everybody else is concerned. This is the only thing we do. But this is recruiting people, organizing people, getting them to join the party, particularly their state party, getting them active in their county-level party if they don't have one, creating one, organizing for conventions, state conventions, all of that stuff. That's prong one, party organizing. Prong two is candidates. Now, the other two prongs, I would say that the foundation of our strategy is nullification and decentralization. So, when I say candidates, we have a very specific focus. We focus on city council, sheriff, mayor, judge, school board. That's why we have the PAC is to support candidates like that. Candidates that if they won, could nullify and kind of have that oversized punch. And then we kind of jump from there up to president. And the idea for president is that that is our greatest megaphone opportunity. That's the greatest opportunity to shape or change the Overton window, get the message out to people, excite people, change their world views and bring them in. So, it's national messaging for local action. And then the third strategy, the third prong of the strategy is issue coalitions. So, that's just taking stock of your town. Libertarians talk a lot about, for electoral purposes, purple areas. And we might be able to win elections there. And that's true. But I actually want to target the deepest reds and the deepest blues. Because I've done this in my own town. I live in a very Democrat town. It's like 75% Democrat voting. This is Norristown, Pennsylvania. Norristown, Pennsylvania. And the idea is that there is a gap between what the political establishment wants and what the rank and file wants. Or I should say what the political establishment does and what the rank and file wants. And we as libertarians are uniquely positioned to exploit that and basically say, hey, I live in a deep blue town, the Democrat party of Pennsylvania has weed legalization on their platform. And it's not decriminalized in my town. This seems a little weird. That gives me a gap to go in there and be the catalyst to say, why is it taking some random libertarian guy to convince you that this is a slam dunk with your own constituency? And, you know, same thing on the right. Could be a deep red town. We all love our guns, right? Right? Right? Well, here's the gun sanctuary legislation. Let's go. And, you know, be that catalyst. The three things that I've heard about coming into this convention and that longtime libertarians are everybody's talking about regarded Muses Caucus priorities. The first is removing the abortion plank from the party platform. Since its founding in 71, the LP has always been very forward in saying that women have a right to an abortion when they draw that line has changed a little bit over time. But you, the Muses Caucus wants to remove that from the platform. What is the rationale for that? So the rationale about that is that it takes aside, it doesn't actually represent libertarians. It represents one sect of libertarians. And the party in its history has the Dallas Accord, which basically says we're neither anarchists, we're neither minarchists, we're a libertarian party for all libertarians. That includes pro-life minarchists. So by having the openly pro-choice plank in there, it takes aside, which is then used as a cultural cudgel to keep the party a certain way in my opinion. And if we want to actually represent libertarians, which is what the libertarian party ought to be doing, we shouldn't be forcing, like I would oppose a pro-life plank, but we shouldn't be forcing aside that there is no consensus in the literature, in the community, in the candidates, in the thinkers, nowhere. There's no consensus whether or not it's a violation of the nap. And I would even go further and say that I don't actually think libertarianism can answer the question of abortion. Does it answer because the plank is really that the government doesn't have a right to regulate it? And would you say that is an error of libertarians? I would say it's not indicative of pro-life minarchists, which have a seat at the table. That's not my position. But if we are a libertarian party for all libertarians, they have a seat at the table. So immigration, also discussion about restricting immigration, or the libertarian party has always been very pro-immigration, reducing the hurdles that people have to jump through, making it easier to immigrate here. The Mises Caucus seems to be against that, or wants to restrict it or minimize it or say it's more complicated than that. What is the, what should the LP plank on immigration be? So the Caucus doesn't take a stance on it in our plank, and my rationale is very similar to the abortion plank. Well, first of all, it's a myth that we're against immigration. I would say the majority of the Mises Caucus members are open borders. But again, my rationale is very similar to the abortion thing. Open borders and private borders are not the same thing, but they're both libertarian canon. So again, by taking a side on this, we're representing one side and basically pushing out another side or making them feel not represented. And when you put open borders plus pro-abortion in there, again, it kind of forms a cultural hegemony for one side that might not be indicative of the wider libertarian movement that was exploited around Ron Paul. I mean, the Mises Caucus appeals more to social conservatives. I would say it appeals to the Liberty Movement, which is largely not in the party. The party is having about it. And the Liberty Movement, you're talking the Ron Paul movement, right? I think the Liberty, I think, I think Ron Paul is kind of the archetype for the Liberty Movement. Okay, the way you're defining it then. So and he's anti-abortion and he is kind of anti-immigration. I wouldn't say he's anti-abortion. He's pro-states rights, and that is the constitutional answer. But every, I mean, he consistently introduced a life begins at the moment of conception law every time, every year he was in office. So when he was running, he advocated that it's a state's issue. And constitutionally speaking, I think that's accurate. But again, this kind of goes into what the vision of libertarianism is. Is libertarianism this thing where we get power and then we enforce our, like enforce the nap on everybody? Or is it more about self-determination? And the cultures locally can kind of decide what they want to do. And maybe that culture locally isn't going to conform to your standards or my standards, but they should be allowed to have them, you know? Following this interview, the Mises Caucus successfully pushed to remove language from the party's platform, condemning bigotry as irrational and repugnant. And former libertarian party vice presidential candidate, Spike Cohen, broke her to compromise to insert a new line stating that the party would uphold and defend the rights of every person, regardless of their race, ethnicity, or any other aspect of their identity. So the third thing is the language in the platform denouncing bigotry. In a section that is talking about freedom of association, what's the rationale behind that? It's one sentence. We condemn bigotry as irrational and repugnant. First of all, it's redundant when you look at the rest of the plank. The rest of the plank outlines that government should not be discriminating on lines of sex and gender and religion and all that stuff. So that's already covered. So that language is, it's a virtue signal basically. It's, you know, I'll use the term cultural Marxism. What is happening nowadays with the woke, wokeism is people are using language and they're changing to, how do I word this? They are, they are using language as dialectics along cultural lines to push for collectivist ends. So back in the day when you had cultural revolution, the Marxist revolutions, they had their dialectics of the rich versus the poor and the owner versus the worker and they were pushing towards collectivist ends. It's the same ideology that's happening now, but they're pitting, you know, cis versus, you know, straight and male versus female and trans versus whatever. And that language is indicative of that because that is, that very sentence, I think it is, came from Maxine Carruthers, I think it was, who is an open Marxist. So if we're going to be, if we're going to be pushing our own language and our own vision, we should do it on our terms and not use other people's language and try to repurpose it when that already is the dominant culture. Is the Libertarian Party open to bigots and races? Technically speaking, you can, you can have whatever thoughts you want. You can't violate the nap though. That doesn't mean that it's a good thing or that you have to accept it, because again, we have to be accepting of people's standards, even if they're controversial or we might not like them. But libertarianism isn't about wrong think. It's about non-aggression, self-ownership and the property rights. Article from the Southern Poverty Law Center that came out just before the convention started opens by saying, high-profile Mises Caucus members espouse hateful rhetoric and collaborate with white nationalists and individuals linked to former President Donald Trump. Do they? No, I mean, most people that I hear think Donald Trump should be in jail for war crimes, you know? I personally have made it, I even, and this is a concession that I'll make. I actually think certain people on certain libertarians have given Donald Trump more credit than he deserves in foreign policy. People will say, well, he didn't start any new wars. I don't think that's any credit to him. If you assassinate the second highest political leader of Iran, you're running a real risk of a serious war. They just didn't happen to fight back. That's not, he didn't start wars because he didn't want to or he had peaceful intentions. But the answer is no, and that's laughable, and there's no quotes in that article. And the article is written by people who just lost. And that's what the whole thing is. So, well, can I ask, have you met with Steve Bannon? No. Okay, have you met with any Republican operatives who, because part of the theme of that story, and Pete, you hear this echoed, that the Mises Caucus is actually kind of working either loosely or not so loosely with the Republican Party to minimize presence in states where the libertarians have, you know, have changed election outcomes. But what's the evidence of that? I don't know, I'm asking you. But you're a reporter and you're asking on it that had no sources. I'm reading what I've read, what people have said, so I'm giving you a chance to respond to that. I would say if you couldn't find any sources, that's probably a good indication of what the truth is. Are you committed to running a full slate of candidates? Because this is also something that people seem anxious about, the idea that you're not going to run as many candidates as much as spend more time kind of messaging. We absolutely want to run candidates. It's just we have to do a better job of delineating between the roles of races that are winnable and not winnable, and using our resources in a way that actually minimize the state effectively. So like that's why, going back to our three-pronged strategy, that's why we focus on city council mayor share of all that stuff, things that could nullify. In my opinion, state senate, why? Why are you doing that? You know, like I understand governor, senate, stuff like that. These are ballot access races. They are races where in your state you can get the message out, drive the recruitment. But I think there's a difference in vision between the Mises Caucus and kind of the conventional wisdom within the Libertarian Party to this point where their main metric of success is how many votes did we get? And I think that's a failed metric. I don't think that's actually indicative of success. What is, what is indicative? Membership, minds. Okay, so let's say as we're going into the 2024 election cycle, what would success look like for you in terms of increased membership? A huge influx of Libertarians. So like from $70,000 to, can you say like, you know, if I don't get to $30,000, you know, could afford it? We need to hit at least $30,000. We're like, I mean, that's, that's, that should be the bare minimum. $30,000, I think membership peaked in the Libertarian Party in $2,000 after Harry Brown ran and we were at like $31,000, $32,000. So that's the peak of membership for the party to this point. So we have to at least get back to our previous highs. And with the opportunities that we now have in front of us, which are completely unprecedented, we should be able to eclipse that. Yeah. What are the most pressing threats to liberty right now that the Libertarian Party should be addressing? The COVID regime and the way that that has made people realize that, you know, I know 9-11 shipped at this, but there was still that veneer of it can't happen here. You know, we're America. We're the land of the free. It has happened here. And now people are grappling with that. And we need to take advantage of that because there is the entire counterculture of the country, once more freedom. Now I'm not saying they're Rothbardian anarchists or anything like that, but they want freedom. And they kind of have this visceral feeling that they know something's wrong and that things, the future is not looking good. And they want to do something about it. And there's no viable alternative that, and at least in their minds, there's no viable alternative. And we have to do something to present that alternative. And I don't think the party has done a good job of presenting that alternative. They've done what they've tried to do is play it safe, appeal to the middle and say, you know, I'm fiscally conservative and socially liberal. I'm the best parts of this, you know, of the liberals over here, of my social stances and I'm the best parts of the conservatives. When we're not, we're our own thing. We're our own paradigm that we need to push forward. We need to push forward our own culture, our own vision, our own language, our own narrative and inspire people along that. And that's what we've done as a caucus. And in a short time, we have taken over the third largest party along that load, along his lines. There's a quote from a discussion about, from you talking about how the means this caucus took over state, you know, kind of forcibly took over state parties, liking it to rape. And you said, and I don't have the exact quote in front of me, you know it, right? Maybe you want to say it. Can you repeat it? I believe it was every state that's gotten this dick end up loving it. Yeah. So what do you mean by that? Well, it means that, so, you know, you're espousing the narrative of the people who have opposed this and saying that we're this or that and we're helping Trump or we're Republicans or this or that and that's the counter narrative to try to stop us. And, you know, there might be people who are neutral or who have been in the party a long time and don't understand what we're doing and they might really think that. But then what happens is most of those people, they just want to see good things happen. They just want to see people join, they just want to see people run and get on the bout and all this. We are the people doing that. That's why we're, Angel just one by seven. That's why you have a group of people laughing. Right? Right. We're the people, they're laughing because it's absurd. And, like, we're the people who are showing up in these states. We're the people who are getting the signatures in these states. We're the people who are showing up and doing the work and creating new counties and all of this stuff. Injecting money through the membership. We are doing those things. So when reasonable people see that, who maybe were not Mises, they end up thanking me later for taking it out. Do you like, you know, is it a good idea for the leader of, you know, the thought leader? You are now the eminence gris of the, agree of the Libertarian party to be using rape metaphor. So, I mean, you made it a rape metaphor, but I think it's funny. Okay. And I think they think it's funny. And I think if you're, I think the party's been very humorless for a long time, and that's part of the problem of the negative culture that we're trying to fix. What is the role of trolling in terms of messaging and stuff like that? Like, because people talk, you know, and I don't think many people would disagree with you that the, you know, messaging coming out of the Libertarian party, the national committee has been very anodyne, you know, at best. But, you know, Mises Caucus and trolling and kind of edgelorting is, you know, these are synonymous. What's the role of that? And how do you use that? So, I wouldn't say they're actually synonymous because people, people say that and they focus on one state. Yeah. But we've taken over about 37 states. Yeah. Can you name them? Can you, can you, can you name 30 states that are synonymous with trolling? I could not name 30 states that are in America right now, but yeah. But it's not synonymous then. It's one state. So, or two states. So, that would be New Hampshire. Yeah. But, but the problem is with that, is that it's also working for them. You know, what, with a new, I'll answer your question more directly, but it's a virile for New Hampshire. Prior to us winning New Hampshire, the Libertarian party had no relationship with Porc Fest. It had no relationship with the Free State Project. Now they do. And now they've tripled membership despite a coup attempt where they stole the property, stole all the, the stuff. You know, you would think that that would cause a real trust problem. Maybe you have an exodus of membership. Instead it tripled because we're actually tapping into the Liberty Movement there. And they liked that, that, that messaging. And maybe that state is a little bit different because they have the Free State Project and relatively speaking to other states, their GOP is not that bad, like relatively speaking. So, that maybe changes the role of what the LP has to do when compared to that. But to answer your question more directly, the, I think there's room for it. I don't think like the trolling edge lord stuff. I think there's room for it. I don't think it should be our bread and butter. But I think there is a, there is a role for it to be judiciously used. And I think a good example of that is one tweet that went super viral was from Kentucky when the passport thing was first happening and kind of comparing that to the Star of David. They got a lot of recruits off that. They got a lot of attention off that. And yeah, anytime you get a lot of attention, there's going to be some group of people who are like, well, I don't like that. And that's just too bad. We're not going to win everybody. Do you feel, are people right to be anxious at all about Denise's caucus taking over the liberty? Of course, people are going to be anxious about change of anything. So what, how do you speak to people like that? If you know people who, and I've talked to a lot of people who are, you know, longtime LP members and you know, some of them are, I'm against this, many are, I'm just nervous. How do you speak to fears that, you know, this is going, the party is going to become much more conservative socially, or that it is, and it's going to be much more divisive? I don't think it's going to be more divisive. I think the drivers of the division were the people who stood to lose and now they have lost. Right. And I think the division was generated from the conflict of like this control of the asset that is the libertarian party. And that's over. I still think there's going to be skirmishes. But I wouldn't say that we're the drivers of conflict. How are we the drivers of conflict if we're the biggest growth in the party? And the party's messaging is anemic. And the biggest figures in the liberty movement have all abandoned it. Like that's, they've just destroyed themselves. That's not us being divisive. What is your role going forward? Because are you going to be, what will your role in the party be or how will you be interacting with it? I'm really excited about the future because now we're going to actually have a party to work with instead of fight with. So I want to basically be our national issues guy for lack of a better word. You know, I want to go out, talk to people like decriminalized nature or normal or gun owners of America or a firearms policy coalition. All these different issue-based organizations and basically sell the fact that we just took over the third largest party. Now they're not going to care about the inter-party drama. That's not the point. The point is we have an organizational apparatus nationwide that's capable of doing something like that and we can aim it at other things. So I need you to tell me where the hotspots are for decriminalization of psychedelics or decriminal or gun sanctuaries. I need you to tell me where they are and I will put people on it and we will get this done. And that will be, I mean that'll be less electing candidates and more doing ballot initiatives or working with other coalitions to change things. Yeah, that's more ballot initiatives or just lobbying at the city council level. But we also have Whitney Boatwright who was our candidate's coordinator. So the past two years, we've given $50,000 to local level candidates. And we want to continue to scale that up. Do you, I've heard conversation or people saying that the LP, the national has been tanking in terms of fundraising. They need to take a line of credit out against their building because of the Mises Caucus. How do you respond to that? I think that is incredibly tone deaf because if you talk to libertarians, which is who the party is supposed to be representing, they would say, well, I'm not giving it, I'm not giving the money because they said nothing about the lockdowns. They said nothing about the COVID passports. They've been completely anemic. They have, they've shown no bravery. They've shown no bravery where the country needs us to be brave. They need us to be courageous and the party hasn't done that. I'm willing to bet that we're going to have a huge explosion of membership because all of these people that are here, I'm willing to bet there's a lot of them who are not members of national so they're not reflected in their calculations. But if you go to the state conventions, what's happening? I have never seen a convention this large. They're all at the state level. They don't trust national. National is the reason why national hasn't been getting support. It's 2024 and the Libertarian Party nomination for president comes down to Justin Amash or Dave Smith. Who do you vote for? Dave Smith, no question. Yeah, why is that? Because I think, well, first of all, I think it's a great race because Justin Amash, I fully respect him, you know, followed his career, fully support him, and we'll totally support him if you won the nomination. So it's nothing, you know, like I dislike Justin Amash or anything like that. But I will say, I think he represents the best version of a strategy that has failed. And to oversimplify it, that strategy is vote chasing as the primary value. When to me, that is not the value. The value is changing the way people think. If we're going to get people to vote Libertarian, we need to get them, get them thinking differently. You know, Gary Johnson, 4.3 million votes, highest vote total ever, no lasting movement, no return on investment on those votes. You know, we had, I think it was 7,500 people total that had joined the party, you know, became members from the Gary Johnson campaign. As of two years ago, that was down to less than 35. So like, they didn't stay because they weren't what you might call true believers. They didn't feel it in their bones. You know, it didn't have that same animation to it that the Ron Paul thing. You know, why is there no cultural Rand Paul movement that lasts? Why is there no cultural Gary Johnson movement that is less? But there is a Ron Paul revolution that lasts in his day. I think we need to learn from that and learn what the implication from that is. So we, I think that there might be a case where even if you don't aim for maximizing votes and you aim for reaching the most number of people, that somehow you might end up with the most number of votes. The Mrs. Caucus candidate for chair one, going away, Angela McCartle, one with, you know, 70% of the vote or something like that. But 300 people out of, you know, the 1000 or so who talked or who voted, voted against her. What's your message to those people? Buy our fruits, you'll know us.