Regime Libertarians
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Explaining football to the friend who's just there for the nachos? Hard.

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Hello, hello. What's up, everybody? Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem. I am Dave Smith. Thank you for joining. Thank you particularly to those subscribers who are watching the episode live and ad-free and uncensored, which you can do too if you sign up over at partoftheproblem.com. I am solo for this episode. Robbie the Fire Bernstein is out. But guys,

I can say this when Rob's not here. I'm uncomfortable saying it too much when he's present. But make sure if you're in the Denver area, go grab tickets to Rob's special taping this Saturday, his first ever stand-up comedy special. You know, for people who...

who have come out to live shows that we do have seen Rob stand up live. They will, will attest the kid is just hilarious. And I've, I've known Rob since he first started standup comedy. And like he was, he was a real new guy on the scene when I first met him, he had just started and it's been very cool. You know, we've obviously become very good friends and we do the show together, but it's been, it's been really cool.

watching him get really good at standup and, uh, you know, like I'm, I'm familiar with the material he's doing. Cause he's been, he's been working it out over the last year or two. And, uh, it's just really, really good. I think you guys are going to love it. So make sure go to porch tour.com. If you can, I think there's still some tickets left for the late show. They will sell out. So make sure you go get those if you can. Oh, and of course we're me and Robbie, the fire Bernstein are going to be back

in Kansas City in a couple weeks. I'm really looking forward to that. We had a great time there last year. So Comic Dave Smith for those tickets. And then Poughkeepsie, Philly, Bozeman, Montana. And then there's a whole bunch more ticket links that'll be up on the website in the next couple weeks. So you'll have some real good shows for the rest of 2024 and then a bunch of fun stuff coming up in 2025. Also,

I should remind you guys that I will, on election night, I will be on the Valuetainment show for the Patrick Bet-David podcast for the...

while we maybe get results. I'm not sure, but there'll be a lot to talk about. Um, and so I'm really looking forward to that. I love, uh, Pat, Pat, Patrick, Pat, David is the man and I love his whole team. They're great. So I'm really looking forward to going back down there. Of course, I owe them for, uh, one of, if not the best moment that I've had professionally this year, which was of course the Chris Cuomo debate, um, which was, you know, uh, uh,

I was going to say it was a lot of fun. I don't actually know if it was a lot of fun to do it, but it was a lot of fun to have that be done, if that makes sense. It was a lot of fun to get the response that I got to it. So that was really cool. Love those guys. Looking forward to being back down there in Florida for that show. Hopefully all the debris has been cleaned up by that point. Okay. Anyway.

I don't mean to make light of the hurricane. Thoughts and prayers to everybody who's been down there for all of it. Okay, so I got, as happens every now and then, I got thrown a little bit of a curveball right before the show started where I saw something and it was something that I was like, I can't not talk about this. So I think this is how we're going to open the show here. And just to give a little bit of background here,

I, there was an interview with Meghan McCain on Reason TV. Reason, if you're not familiar, is, well, they were a magazine for many decades. And now, of course, like, you know, everyone, they do a lot of online content, a lot of videos and podcasts and stuff like that because it's the new world. And so, you know, that's how it's

Everybody, if you want to survive, you can't just be a magazine anymore these days. But Reason Magazine was, I believe, the longest running libertarian publication. And they were, I think, for a long time, kind of the only...

a real, you know, widely distributed libertarian magazine. And, you know, the libertarian world, you know, this is a little bit inside baseball, which I try to stay away from on the show typically. But like, you may have noticed, let's say, if you're not super connected to the libertarian movement, you may have noticed that there's like kind of wildly different

different people who use the term libertarian. So there are people like me who use the term libertarian. And then there are some people who use the term who probably seemingly have very different political and cultural bents to them. And part of that is because like with any political movement, there's just, there's different camps. And so in the same way that like, you know, Donald Trump

may call himself a conservative and Dick Cheney may call himself a conservative, but they're very different, you know, and whatever, you know, Kamala Harris might call herself a progressive and then some, you know, like active,

activists on the college campus might call themselves a progressive and be like, oh, there are actually a lot of differences between them. But so the libertarian world is no different. There's always been these different camps. And the camp that I've always kind of been in is like the Ron Paul Mises camp. And for people who don't know, again, just in case you don't, just so you can kind of understand where, you know, the different factions here. But so, yeah,

Lou Rockwell founded the Mises Institute with Murray Rothbard. Now, Murray Rothbard was like essentially the guy who founded the modern libertarian movement. He was just like an unreal genius. He was an economist by training, but he was also a philosopher, a historian. The guy wrote dozens and dozens of books and some really excellent stuff. He's the guy who I credit most.

more than any other one person having kind of shaped my thinking, introduced me to a lot of these ideas. And so Rothbard essentially was kind of in what is sometimes called

There's different terms for it, but the Beltway libertarians, they're often called the regime or the establishment libertarians. They probably do not particularly agree with any of those descriptions, although I probably don't agree with a lot of the descriptions they would throw at me. So it is what it is. But the Cato Institute and Reason Magazine have basically – they've kind of become seen as those – the DC libertarians. These are the libertarians who –

are more likely to get a senator to want to sit down and do an interview with them um although yeah times are changing we got uh you know i mean i've gotten a couple congressmen no working on the senator um but anyway so there's uh there there's always been this kind of tension between these different groups and i was reminded of this

when I watched this video, there was a speech that Lou Rockwell gave. I think it was back, it's gotta be 15, 20 years ago, something like that. But he gave this speech, I believe it was called Regime Libertarians or something like that. But he had this line in the speech where he was obviously, he was being very critical of like the Cato Reason Magazine type libertarians. And he had this line in his speech where he said something like,

The whole speech was like what defines the regime libertarian, and essentially he was arguing that they kind of claim to have this ideology, but when push comes to shove, they'll abandon their principles or they'll water down the message. They'll essentially do whatever needs to be done for them to continue having respectability in D.C. At one point he straight up says that they'd rather have Janet Yellen

at a cocktail party than Ron Paul. And he was taking specific shots. I think that was directed at Cato, who has, I think, a few different times had the Fed chairman at their cocktail parties or their events or whatever. And again, it's just not

For a libertarian to be like hanging out and being friendly with the chairman of the Federal Reserve, it's kind of like a Jewish liberation organization having Adolf Hitler at a cocktail party. It's like, yeah, the whole point of you is you're supposed to be against them. So that's not great. But anyway, he had this one line in the speech where he said that –

uh and again i'm gonna mangle this he said it in a much more you know articulate way than i will but it was something uh to the effect of the regime libertarian will sit down with um with war criminals and he said something like the perpetrators of the most unjust wars but his blood boils in moral outrage over an off-color joke

And I just loved that line. I loved that line. I thought it was so perfect. And there's something I've talked about on this show for many, many years. When I first started doing the Part of the Problem podcast in like 2012 or something like that, it's about over a decade ago, I remember talking about this all the time. And particularly...

uh from the libertarian point of view that there's this major problem in american culture uh in progressive culture but you know i repeat myself um where and it's particularly a problem for libertarians although it should be a problem for i think like any decent person but there is this kind of um there's like there's a hierarchy of of values with

With everyone and with every culture, with every individual person, you always, whether you think about it or not, you always have a hierarchy of values. It's something that's very important to notice about politicians and even just like political commentators, like people who do this. Everybody always has a hierarchy of values. You can always see, even if people may list out like these are all the political opinions I have.

there's always one that makes their blood boil more than the other one. And that's always an important thing to notice. So the point I used to make on the podcast back in the day, which still is as true as ever, is that we kind of live in a culture, and a lot of this is artificial. I'm not saying it's all organic, but we live in a culture where prejudice is

bigotry, racism, things like this. And of course, all of those terms are very ill-defined and broad. But those things are viewed as worse than egregious rights violations. And the example that I used to give, I mean, at the time I was talking about Barack Obama, but it applies to every, you know, to every president since then. But I used to say, I was like, look, if Barack Obama

On one day, if he were to like drone bomb a wedding in Yemen and kill 17 innocent people, six of them children, you know, which was the thing that Barack Obama liked to do a lot. He was real into doing that. So if he did that in one day and then the same day he came out and he said, there's no such thing as transgenderism. If you're a boy, you're a boy. If you're a girl, you're a girl.

We all know what the outrage of the day would be.

Right. The outrage of the day would have been the second thing he said. And it doesn't have to be about transgenderism. It could have been sexist or racist. It could have been racist against white people. You know, if he had come out that same day and said, you know, white people have it easy in this country and they have no idea what it's like to, you know, be black or something like that. Fox News, you know, would have jumped all over that. And the literally the

Drone bomb that hit a wedding in Yemen would be like the 17th thing on the list of outrage. This would be way above it. And I think if you're at all like a decent person, particularly if you're a libertarian, the best of people, um,

You could see there's a major problem with this. There's a major problem when your priorities are this out of whack. Like, however you feel about the statement about transgender people or black people or white people or whoever it is, you could say, hey, that's wrong. You shouldn't have said that. But murdering children is worse.

I don't think that's actually that radical of a view. Okay. But from the libertarian point of view, it's even more true because if your entire political legal theory is that people have natural rights and those rights shouldn't be violated. Well, giving your opinion, even if it's a really shitty opinion, that could never be as bad as,

murdering people or that could never be as bad as an egregious violation of people's natural rights in the case of murder, a violation of their most fundamental natural right, which would be the right to live. But, you know, the right to life is a little bit more important than the made up right to not to not be offended is more or less the point. And this to me is something that once you see it, you can't unsee it.

And it's – and also I would add that progressives – and don't get me wrong because all the people who call themselves conservatives in Washington, D.C. are also a bunch of progressives. But –

progressives who tend to be the ones who loudly advocate for the biggest expansion of government power. Like it's always, you know, there's always, you know, that's always at the heart of the progressive message is that the government should be doing more for whatever group it is. And those people are the biggest kind of pushers of this cultural dynamic where kind of

Being offensive, you know, racist, sexist, transphobic, xenophobic, whatever the terms are, is it kind of has this spot as the number one most egregious violation of decency. That's number one.

And then down here, like rights violations, maybe if they even like ever get mentioned. But I think for any libertarian right away, you should be able to see that like buying into that framework is death. Because once you accept that, if you accept that offending people is worse than like murdering people, then how are you ever going to achieve a freer society? Like it just it's it's so self-defeating.

Anyway, there's been a major theme of mine from the beginning of the podcast to today. I still think that that that simple dynamic is a major problem in this country. It's look, it's one of the things.

that you see play out right now in the presidential election. It's one of the things that Donald Trump benefits from is that everybody's always just like, oh my God, he's outrageous. He's offensive. And then he could sit there and say, hey, you know what's really offensive? The fact that our border's wide open. You know, and like there's just this dynamic of like, and of course, because of the Trump phenomenon, it's maybe the first time that that dynamic's ever been like in question in my life.

uh which is you know i'm not i'm no spring chicken um okay so the other thing i should mention before we get to this clip is that uh i i okay first of all it's from reason tv i should say full disclaimer i i

I know several people who work for reason, and I've always had a fairly good relationship, at least with a lot of them. There's definitely some of them who really, really don't like me. But there's a lot of them who I've always kind of at least

been cordial with or at least I think been cool with. I really like Liz and Zach. I like their show, Just Asking Questions. I've done it several times and I always enjoy having conversations with those guys. And I always had a pretty good relationship, I think, with Nick and Matt. I don't know

I don't know how much those guys actually like me, but we've always been cool enough. I think there's definitely some other people there who have been pretty harshly critical of me, but you know, that's okay. That's, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Um, yeah.

The interview is with Megan McCain, who I also I do know her not very well. And we had a little bit of a weird thing between the two of us. So just anyway, I don't know. Listen, I know this is a little inside baseball, but it's kind of fun to talk about this stuff. So when I used to do the Kennedy show regularly on Fox News before it was unjustly canceled, I

I used to do that show all the time. I was a regular on the show. And in fact, Kennedy was the first person who ever put me on television. And I'm always just enormously grateful to her for that. She also, you know, first of all, I grew up like an MTV kid.

in like the the late 80s early 90s and um she was a vj at the time and then it was just i don't know there was something just really cool about it that she ended i used to watch her when i was a little kid and then she ended up being the first person who ever put me on television and she's also just like the sweetest funniest smartest person you've ever met she's just great i love kennedy and i loved her whole staff it was a real great experience uh being a regular on that show and so

I ended up being on a few panels with Meghan McCain and we were, I thought we were kind of cool. Like it, it was, uh, you know, me and her at the time we had both started dating who

we eventually went on to marry and have kids with um and we used to talk about that before the show she was always very nice to me but when we were on the show uh we'd always argue because you know she's megan mccain and i'm me and she'd always be advocating for the next war and i'd always be tearing that argument to shreds and that's just you know that was the dynamic um so one day i may have told the story on the podcast before i'm not sure about this but one day um

And the producer from Kennedy called me in the morning. I was supposed to do the show that afternoon. I was doing the show that afternoon. And she called me and said, well, I had a very good relationship with her at this point. And she called me and said, hey, listen, you're on the panel with Meghan McCain today. Meghan asked if you could not bring her family up.

And I was kind of taken back by it because it was just such a weird way to phrase it. Like I was like, bring her family up. Like it,

It made it sound like my like what I would say on the show was like your mom's fat or something like that. Or I was like, I don't like bring her family up. I was like, you mean her father, who's the chairman of the Senate Arms Committee? Like, no, I'm not agreeing to not bring him up. And of course, as you know, if you know anything about Meghan McCain, she always brings her father up. Like every single time she talks, she always mentions her father. So like, what am I going to not bring?

respond to the fact that your father is the most blood soaked boar mongerer in the world? Like, I don't know. No, I'm not going to. And I kind of got upset that they even asked me that. And I was like, well, no, then don't book me on panels with Meghan McCain. But I'm not going to not talk about her father being the leading war hawk in the Senate. Anyway, so we went on the panel that day and we we had we ended up getting into an argument.

on the show. And I was, you know, just about, she was pro-war. I was anti-war. I don't exactly remember the argument, but she was really unhappy with me after that one. And she unfollowed me on all social media. And she, I found out later, she requested to never be on a panel with me again, which was fine. I was like, okay, well, I'm not going to stop saying it. So yeah, probably if you don't want me to talk about that, you probably just shouldn't do panels with me because I'm going to keep talking about it. So whatever. It was fine.

I later found out that she had just found out that day that her father was terminally ill.

But I had no way of knowing that at the time. You know, at the time, it was just like, oh, I'm not going to not mention a war hawk. Turns out he was dying. The world learned about that a little bit later. Anyway, so I can understand maybe that's why she wasn't in the best of moods that day. But anyway, I don't even know why that anecdote is relevant to this, but it was just in my mind. And so I was going to share it with you guys. Okay, so the topic...

Anyway, so Meghan McCain's being interviewed by a guy. I don't think I know who this is. I don't think I've ever met him. I could be wrong about that because, you know, I'm getting old and developing dementia slowly. But I don't think I've ever met this guy before. His name is – hold on one second. I saw my buddy Jacob Winograd posted this.

And so I asked him, I was like, who is this guy who's interviewing him? And he told me it is Billy Binion. I might be mispronouncing that a little bit, but he is a reporter at Reason and his Twitter bio says covering all things injustice. So anyway, that's the background. And then let's play the clip. And I think you guys will see pretty quickly why I found this interesting.

And I feel a little weird being in Reason's office because libertarians tend to really hate me. So I hope your readers don't just, or listeners, excuse me, don't just like click off as long as they know I'm a guest. Not this libertarian. I know, not you. But they hate my politics. How about that? Well, there's actually a lot of overlap or some overlap.

Which will get into... The Libertarian Twitter account every year on the anniversary of my dad's death tweets a picture of me crying at my dad's coffin and says what amazing it is that he's died. So every year they do that. I don't feel a lot of love. Is this the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire? Yes. I'm sorry. Of New Hampshire. Well, they are, I would say, the worst. The worst of the worst. I also just want to... Just like not to do this, but like...

I know when people get very triggered when I talk about my dad and I get it, Nepo baby, like freak out. But I want to say something like he won New Hampshire, like historically high when he ran for president both times. He was extremely popular. There's actually data that like he could have actually ran for governor there in one. So it's weird that it's like specifically New Hampshire that seems to really celebrate his death. Yeah, that Libertarian Party is totally unhinged and is mostly made up of people, I think, who care less about libertarian values and more about getting attention on the internet. Yeah.

Well, look, there's lots of people in my lane doing that too, who are just, you know, going online and creating drama for clicks. And it's a really shitty, awful part of, I think, politics right now. But I'm just teasing. I just, I have to give you a little bit of shit before I go. Okay. All right. Actually, really, I really enjoy Reason Magazine. That's all you really needed to hear that she goes on to say she really enjoys Reason Magazine. So I just, I cannot explain how...

God damn appalling that whole little back and forth was.

Okay, there's people online who are just trying to get clicks and say outrageous things. And that's really the worst part of our politics, as reasons Billy here, who's against all things injustice, laughs it up with her. I don't know. You know, I don't actually think that is the worst part of our politics. I think maybe the mass slaughter of children is even worse.

This is even worse than offensive tweets. Isn't that a crazy radical view that I hold? I think killing people's kids for bullshit reasons to make weapons companies a bunch of money while you lie through your teeth to the American people while you're going around slaughtering kids. I think that is even worse than people just trying to get attention on social media, which look.

Again, by the way, maybe this is a disclaimer. Maybe I don't even need to make this, but I've been one of the, you know, a pretty strong critic of the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire's Twitter accounts. I don't like some of their more shit posty tweets. And I didn't like the one that I didn't like that they share that picture of Meghan McCain, you know, but yeah.

Give me a fucking break. Give me a break. This Billy guy, this fighter of all things injustice working for a libertarian publication is going to say that they're the worst of the worst because they tweet offensive things. Well, by the way, the subject is John fucking McCain.

This blood-soaked monster who, if there is an afterlife, is certainly burning in the pits of hell right now. John McCain, the champion of the Iraq War, the war in Afghanistan, the war in Libya, the guy who went over and met with ISIS's friends in Syria and criticized Assad.

Obama for not sending more weapons to Al Qaeda and ISIS in Syria. The guy who met with neo-Nazis in Ukraine and bragged about how they were going to lead this coup against Yanukovych. But yeah, he's the guy who's

largely responsible for every fucking war to this day, to this day. But you will sit down with this woman and say, and throw them under the bus and say they're the worst of the worst? Lady, you're talking, sir, Freudian slip, you're talking to the daughter of the worst of the fucking worst, okay?

Like, goddamn, have a backbone. And then he's going to have the nerve, the fucking nerve to say, this is like when Chris Cuomo told me that I was only motivated by clicks.

You go, oh, you just want to be against the COVID tyranny because that's how you get views on your podcast. And it's like, motherfucker, you're going to sit here and tell me my motives are impure when you were the number one show at CNN during the whole COVID, the rise of the COVID regime. And you never said one goddamn word, one word that would go against the official narrative. You just kept cashing those CNN checks, didn't you? Okay.

OK, and then as soon as he's off CNN and he's over there now at on Patrick Bet David's show and doing deals with Valuetainment. Oh, all of a sudden now he's talking about how there's vaccine injuries and how he's on ivermectin. But then he's going to turn around and tell me I only do things for the clicks. I mean, Billy.

To sit here and say that New Hampshire's own, you know, the libertarians in New Hampshire, they're only motivated by what? Trying to get attention or something like that. See, they don't really care about liberty. They only care about getting attention. Well, what are your motives here, dude? Kissing Meghan McCain's ass when you're talking about the legacy of her father?

Wait, what's your motivation here? Oh, maybe it's to get a little bit of respectability. Maybe your motivation isn't really to fight all things in justice. Maybe your motivation here is to like virtue signal. Oh, look, I'm with you. I'm against people being edgy on Twitter. That's so much worse than being a fucking war criminal. Like Jesus Christ, man. So pathetic.

And it's the worst thing. It's like, it's such an embarrassment to libertarians. It's like the fucking worst. And I can't tell you, man, like no matter how big this show has gotten or how big my like, you know, profile has gotten, it's still libertarians like this are still this albatross around our neck.

Where anytime you try to argue with somebody else that libertarianism is the way to go, they can always point to someone at Reason or someone at Cato and go, yeah, sure. Yeah, you guys are really great. Look at this clown here. And they're not wrong. They're not wrong. Because you got to deal with people like this who use the term who are just so fucking pathetic. I mean, you know, I remember...

during, which was, it was true for a bunch of people at, at Cato and reason during the COVID insanity, right? So there's back four years ago or three years ago, um, when you had, uh,

You had, you know, lockdowns nationwide lockdowns. I shouldn't say nationwide lockdowns. They never they never locked down South Dakota, but every other state, every other state had lockdowns. Can you think of a more anti-liberty policy than the government through lockdowns?

executive fiat, not even through like a legislation, but just through the governor's declaring emergency powers, invoking emergency powers, many of which were not outlined under the law at all.

Now, one of the best moments, by the way, for people who don't remember this, but one of the best moments of the lockdowns in terms of political coverage of it was when my governor, Governor Murphy, went on Tucker Carlson's show on Fox News. This was before Tucker got fired. And it was one of the only times that a lockdown governor got like a tough interview. And Tucker Carlson said,

asked, and fairly politely, but he asked Governor Murphy about, there had been an incident where I can't remember who it was. It might have been some Jews at a synagogue or it might have been some Christians at a church, but there was a group of people who went to worship during the lockdowns and they all got arrested.

And so Tucker Carlson asks him, he goes, well, look, like, you know, I've read the Bill of Rights and the First Amendment says that, like, you know, the government can't interfere with your right, your freedom of religion. And so he's he asked him point blank. He goes, I'm just wondering, like, so where do you get the authority to arrest someone for the crime of going to church?

Like, where do you have the legal authority to do that? Because it pretty clearly right here says you can't do that. And Governor Murphy looks into the camera and he goes, he goes, listen, I'm not thinking about the Constitution right now. I'm thinking about people's health.

And Tucker goes, yeah, but like I'm asking you where you get the legal authority to do this. And Governor Murphy said, and I'm not exaggerating, you can go find this clip. It's out there on the Internet somewhere, I'm sure. He goes, well, you know, that's above my pay grade. That was his response. That's above my pay grade. It is above the pay grade of the governor to understand the law.

and understand what legal authority he has. I'd say that's exactly your pay grade. That's exactly what you're paid to do. Anyway, so during 2020, this happens, right? And look, again, this is part of the reason why, say, someone like me, why my influence has grown tremendously over the last few years and why publications like Reason and Cato have substantially shrunk.

Because you'd have all of these, so you'd have all these people at Cato and at Reason, and they would just like really intensely go at Ron DeSantis in Florida because he, after locking down the state, he reversed course, said we're never going to do lockdowns again. But then he took it a step further and he also banned Cato.

mandates in private businesses. So he essentially said that that like businesses aren't allowed to have mask mandates and later weren't allowed to have vaccine mandates. And so he he kind of mandated against private mandates. Now,

Now, look, there's certainly a libertarian argument. Like the libertarian position is that businesses should be allowed to do what they want to do. That's not the government's decision whether they want to require you to wear masks. That's the business's decision because they own that business and that belongs to them. So there's no question it's a violation of libertarian principles in the purest sense to have a governor mandate what businesses can and can't do. However...

In, you know, the grand scheme of things in the year 2020 to be like appalled at

DeSantis and not appalled at the other 48 states who were all in lockdowns at the time is like madness. Like you believe in liberty and then the government just instituted totalitarianism across the country. And you're sitting here picking a fight with the one guy who's fighting back against it.

It's absurd. And in a similar sense, you could say that like, ah, you know, I think a lot of these New Hampshire tweets are in bad taste. Okay, no problem. But the policy, the underlying policy that you're talking about here is mass murder. I mean, this is just like the most insane thing ever. But then you're going to question other people's motives. You know, what are your motives exactly here, man?

Now that's what I'd like to, since we're in the game of questioning motives here, maybe yours ought to be brought into question a little bit. It's just unbelievable. It's such a goddamn embarrassment. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Sheath Underwear, longtime sponsor of the Part of the Problem podcast. I love these guys, great guys who run the company, and the product is unbelievable. It's the most

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Like I've always said, man, it comes back to the whole thing I've always said. Number one, if you are, if you're a fighter of injustice or if you're a libertarian of any sense and you somehow have in your hierarchy offensive tweets up here and celebrating warmongers down here, you have lost the fucking plot. You are out of your goddamn mind. It's just a totally indefensible position. And again,

I'm not saying it's everybody at Reason. I'm not saying it's everybody at Cato. There's some good people there. But these type of embarrassing moments always seem to come from those groups.

Always seem to come from those groups. And, you know, they can criticize like our camp and they do all the time. And you see all of them like, you know, and it'll be like, oh, someone had a tweet that was offensive or, oh, you know, they were at an anti-war rally and someone held up a Russian flag. So are you really pro-Russian or something like that?

But at least my camp isn't doing this shit, man. I'm not saying we're perfect. But if there's one thing you can count on the good libertarians to do is to fucking never be more concerned with being respected by war criminals than sticking to the principles of liberty. So anyway, that's I don't know. I guess that's all I have to say on that. I guess my final thing I would just say is that it's like,

That point that I made before about the hierarchy of outrage, that's like, look, I know there's probably like a logical fallacy in here somewhere, but so don't take it. I'm not saying that it's like your hierarchy is everything, but it is the best like,

rule of thumb. It's the best like roadmap to see like what, like in terms of like which political commentators you trust and which ones you, you dismiss.

what really gets their blood boiling? That is like the best question to ask yourself. What really do they care about? Like what issue is that? And even within the issue that they care about, then go to like within that issue, what is it that really gets them worked up? That's what fucking matters, man. Cause like even,

Like even amongst some say like a, like a left wing progressive or something like that. Like if they want to talk about like systemic racism or something like that, it was like, okay, fine.

Even within that, what are you really furious about? What are you really working on? What are you talking about? What issues like, do you really care about? Is it like, I want to tear down a statue? Is it like a college professor said something offensive or something like that? Or is what you really care about the fact that like,

Kids in the South side of Chicago have to grow up with bullets whizzing around them. And we got to do something about that. There's these kids in Baltimore who fucking have neglectful parents and that shitty school system and a shitty police force that none of them do anything for them. Cause like, you know, I may disagree with the left progressive, but if it's the latter, if you're telling me like, Hey, there are these kids in the inner city of Baltimore who really don't have the things they need. I'm listening at least. Yeah.

You know, I could at least be listening to that. I may not completely agree with with your prescription, but like I OK, it's like you're you care about what really matters to some degree, at least. But if it's like, oh, someone told an off color joke or like someone said something offensive, it's just like, go fuck yourself, man. Is that your biggest problem in the world? Then great.

Then great. Then I guess a lot of problems have been solved if that's what you're actually focused on. All right. Let's switch gears. I've said about as much as I can say about that, I guess. There was one other thing that caught my mind.

that caught my eye, I should say, that I wanted to respond to on the show today. So there was a, there's, because, you know, there's obviously election day is coming up a few weeks away. And, you know, we've been focused on the presidential election, as have most people who have been, you know, in this space. But there are also a bunch of other elections coming up. And one of them, which is an interesting one, is the Senate race out in Texas.

Texas has been, obviously Texas is a red state, but there have been some years where it got pretty close, where the Democrats were like within striking distance. And that's, I think, due to demographic changes primarily. Maybe there's other factors as well, but essentially you've had a lot of people from California,

And a lot of people from South America moving or immigrating to Texas. And over the years, that does have an effect on voting patterns. And so, you know, one of the interesting dynamics in American politics has been migration patterns and not just like immigration, but people moving within the 50 states. And obviously, like we had

pretty high levels of that over the last few years, particularly with people flooding out of New York and California and flooding into places like Texas and Florida. Now, one of the big questions

One of the big political questions over the last few years has been like, well, what effect does that have on voting patterns? And this was something people were asking about Florida a lot because so Florida, right, like they ended their lockdowns, as we were just mentioning, quicker than than every other state that locked down.

Um, and then they were kind of like for a while, they were like the place that was open while the rest of the world was, the rest of the country was shut down, uh, because of COVID. And I mean, it was like South Dakota never had a lockdown, but you know, South, not too many people want to move to South Dakota. No offense to my listeners from South Dakota, but you know, what's up.

Um, but Florida was a place that had a lot of, you know, those beaches and cities and, you know, there were, so a lot of people moved down to Florida. They also don't have a state income tax. So that helps. And there was a question mark about like, okay, well, are these, let's say New Yorkers who have traditionally voted, you know, for the Democrats, they're moving down to Florida now, which was a swing state. Um,

Are they going to vote for Democrats? Or is it the fact that, you know, maybe the people who moved weren't the Democrats and the people who moved were Republicans, or maybe the people who moved used to be Democrats, but they're so against the lockdowns. I mean, you got to be pretty against the lockdowns to move out of your state because they're locked down. So how would that work? And we got a pretty clear answer in Florida with DeSantis where he won. DeSantis won his first election by like a

razor thin margin. I think it was a few thousand votes that made him governor and he won his reelection with like a dominant blowout one by like 20% or something like that. Um, so anyway, those questions are still up in the air in Texas. Uh, it's a little bit different in Texas than it is in Florida. And it looks like, I believe this is a pretty tight Senate race.

Anyway, none of that is really the point of this clip, but it was it did have to. The clip has to do with Israel and Palestine. And I did think that this was almost like a microcosm of a lot of the insane shit that I've been talking about over the last year, where it is even for someone like me who's just living in this. Like, this is what I do for a living. It was shocking.

To see this display. So here is Ted Cruz in a debate with his Democratic rival for an election that's a few weeks away. And here were their their answers on when the topic of Israel came up.

When I was elected 12 years ago, I resolved then to be the leading defender of Israel in the United States Senate. And I've worked every day to do that, to stand up and fight to support Israel. I am proud to stand with Israel. Our position should be that America stands unshakably with Israel.

When President Trump was president, I urged him to move our embassy to Jerusalem. He did, and I was there the day we opened the embassy in Jerusalem. I've never seen such celebration. When President Trump was president, I urged him to pull out of the disastrous Iran nuclear deal. He did, and it was the single most important national security decision of his entire presidency.

Congressman Allred has consistently lined up against Israel. He urged them to. I just, I just hope people kind of appreciate how utterly bizarre this is like on every level, you know, and, and I,

I understand that people might look, there might be things that people see from, say, like the left wing protesters on college campus who are protesting Israel's horrific war in Gaza. And there might be some things that those protesters say that you don't really like very much. They might they might have some chance or say some things that kind of turn you off. I mean, look, after all, they are 20.

And just if everybody here could just think about yourself when you were 20 and how retarded you were. Okay, well, these guys are 22. So they may say some dumb shit. They might even say some like offensive things that are in bad taste. I've criticized him a few times for doing that. And you might see some things on Twitter from some more right wing people that you think is like, man, there's a lot of Jew hatred going on here. And so I understand where a lot of that stuff turns a lot of reasonable people off.

But just for a second, focus on how goddamn bizarre this is. A senator who's running for reelection in Texas gets up on the debate stage and just pledges his loyalty to a foreign country.

Just what other foreign country does anyone ever do that with? In what? And not just in our country, like in what country? In what country does anybody ever stand up in like the the Greek elections and talk about how loyal they are to Italy? Like what a bizarre thing for a politician to have to do.

to sit up here and talk about how we must be unwavering in our support of this foreign country that's halfway around the world from us. That's a very controversial country right now that objectively is involved in like a pretty horrific war. Maybe you support Israel and you think like, oh my God, it's so terrible. They have to do this. They just have no other option and they have to do this. Still pretty controversial. It's all a pretty terrible thing they're doing. And why the fuck do our politicians have

to be loyal to a foreign government. This is madness. And then on top of that, on top of that, think about what he's bragging about. He's bragging about Donald Trump's Middle East policy. Now, if you don't, for those of you, if you don't understand the significance of like moving the embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, okay, the reason why that was a controversial move is because

East Jerusalem is what is considered by the international community to be occupied territory. Like it's not supposed to be Israel's.

It's supposed to belong to the Palestinians. And so they're like, obviously it's not a policy change to move the embassy to Jerusalem. It's a signal, but the signal is a huge, like middle finger to the Palestinians. It's like a, it's like letting them know that even though there's always been these kind of like,

You know, people have been dangling this carrot in front of you that you might get a Palestinian state one day. OK, so in all of the negotiations toward a Palestinian state, they all fell apart. And it's a very interesting history if you care to read about it. But the Palestinian state was always Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Like so part of Jerusalem is supposed to be given to the Palestinians at some point.

But moving the embassy there was just like officially letting them know that that point will never come. Abandon hope. No one is coming to save you. You know, at the beginning of the creation of Israel, there was a lot of hope that the surrounding Arab states would come save the Palestinians from the Palestinian people. That was a lot of their hope.

In the late 50s and the early 60s, after the Arabs had lost wars, the other Arab states, this is, with their conventional militaries, they had lost wars to Israel, and they had essentially...

it had become obvious that that wasn't happening, that these Palestinian refugees were, no one was coming to save you. And this is when Yasser Arafat rises up and, and the PLO and, and all of these forces and, and like the kind of terrorism first begins because then they were basically trying to like recreate the model that had been successful in other places like Algeria, Algeria, I think was the biggest one, but there, it,

The kind of the type of warfare that really has defined post-World War II warfare, where you have, you know, if you think about, say, like in Vietnam or in any of the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, well, you have these asymmetrical conflicts where there's a much more powerful military who's an occupying force and you want to drive that occupying force out. Well, OK, the way to do it.

at least the way that worked in Algeria. And this was Algeria drove the French out, I want to say in 1961 or 1962. And the way they did it was essentially through this guerrilla warfare or what you might call terrorism. And the idea was that, you know,

You have guerrilla fighters. You commit heinous, violent acts. You trigger a response from the much stronger army that's brutal and gruesome. And then...

the international community and the people back home, they go, Jesus Christ, we don't want to be a part of this. And that's what happened in Algeria. That like left-wingers back home in France were like, yo, what do you mean we're slaughtering people over there? We don't want, and they ultimately drove them out. So this was the attempt after that, that maybe through terrorism, we could drive the Israelis out. The problem is that, you know, if

Israel is a colonial power. They're what historians call settler colonialism. So they're not, it's not like France is

Where they're like, hey, we're going to go colonize Algeria, but France is still back here. I mean, if you cause enough problems for the French in Algeria, they might do what they ended up doing, which is just leaving and going back to France. The difference with the Zionists is that there was nowhere to go back to.

It wasn't like, oh, you drove us out, so we're going to go back to Poland and Ukraine. That just wasn't happening. They were there permanently. So anyway, this terrorism stuff has...

not only been horrifically wrong, but it's also just failed objectively. And so anyway, there's this whole history of it. But Donald Trump moving the American embassy to Jerusalem was like, in some sense, like a nail in the coffin. Abandoned hope. It's never happening. The Israelis are never leaving. And oh, although that talk about compromise in a Palestinian state, that's also never happening. So just imagine

That you did this a few years before the attack on October 7th, and you're still bragging about it? Like, there's not a little part of you that goes like, oh, maybe that wasn't the best move. Maybe it wasn't the best move to say, you're now hopeless. You have no recourse. That's it.

It's over. You lost. And it's not like, don't get me wrong. It's not like you lost the territory that is Israel. That boat sailed away a long time ago. It's that you will be subjugated for eternity. You also don't get your own state. That's specifically the message of moving the embassy to Jerusalem. You will never get your own state. You will be ruled by the Israelis forever. And I'm,

like, I'm not exaggerating when I say this. Israel has been ruling Palestine since 1967. Okay. There's been all these talks of a Palestinian state since then. This was a signal that they will never come. So Ted Cruz is simultaneously bragging about that decision. And then also bragging about Donald Trump pulling out of the Iran deal that allowed

inspections of their nuclear facilities. Now we don't have that anymore. And now the reporting is that Iran is actually pursuing nuclear weapons. So like, I'm just saying in just imagine that the context is that there is this brutal war going on in Gaza. Israel just invaded Lebanon. And there are, let's say,

really high tensions between Israel and Iran and where Israel has, they've both thrown shots at each other. Israel started it, but they both like have been sniping at each other and Israel's vowed to respond to the latest rocket attack that, that Iran just sent. And you're bragging about laying the foundation for this current dynamic. So that is just batshit insane. And then also just the, the absurd, bizarre,

You know, like just bragging about how you are fully supportive of a foreign country and that support will be unwavering. And my opponent doesn't support this foreign country with every inch of his soul.

You're not you're not even loyal to a foreign country. He attacked his Senate rival. Like, what the fuck is this? All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show. This is for adults over the age of 21 living in states where Delta eight is legal. If you want to get high on some Delta eight THC, well, we got the hookup. You got to check out yo delta dot com.

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at yodelta.com, promo code GAS for 25% off your entire order. All right, let's get back into the show. But let's go back to the video. Here's the response. Here's the response from, hey, I'm loyal to a foreign government and you're not sufficiently loyal to them. Here's the response to that.

Send money to Gaza, even though it would go to Hamas. He has supported Kamala Harris and Joe Biden flowing over $100 billion to Iran. 90% of the funding for Hamas and Hezbollah comes from Iran. I'll tell you, Congressman already invited a radical Imam here in Dallas who calls Zionists monsters.

and has compared them to Nazis. Congressman Allred calls them the very best of North Texas. I don't support those who engage in anti-Semitic actions. And I will tell you the funders of the anti-Semitic protest on college campuses are among Congressman Allred's biggest supporters. We need clarity. We need to draw a line. And as for me and my home, we will stand with Israel. Senator, thank you for that. Congressman, you have 60 seconds. We have to talk about this because there was a vote.

It's not about talking. It's about action. We had a vote in the United States Congress to provide military funding and aid to Israel, to Ukraine, to Taiwan, to address humanitarian issues in Gaza and around the world. Part of that aid package was $5 billion in the interceptors that were used in the Iron Dome to prevent the Iranian rockets that just rained down Israel a couple of weeks ago. That happened in spite of

of Senator Cruz. It was a very illuminating vote because the extremists were the ones who voted against it. The far left voted against it. The far right voted against it. I think there was only 18 senators who voted against it. All right, so let's pause it. Ted Cruz was one of them. So you can't tell me. Okay, so again, I just want you, everyone, to imagine.

Just how you cannot overstate the madness here. Okay. So because keep in mind, this is politics. This is, we're a few weeks out from an election. Now, politicians are running for, uh, um, for, for office. Do they tell the truth and tell you what they're going to do? Or do they just pander and say whatever the voters want to hear?

Okay, so now that you asked yourself that question and it to ask it is to answer it keep this in mind This guy's a Democrat. Okay, the latest polls I saw were 50% of Democratic voters consider what Israel is doing in Gaza a genocide Okay 70 something percent Want a ceasefire? Okay, so it is like

overwhelmingly more popular amongst Democratic voters to not be supporting Israel's war. So just keep that in mind in the background. But when so when Ted Cruz gets up and goes, hey, I am totally loyal to a foreign government. I'm unwavering in my loyalty to that. And my opponent over here isn't totally loyal to a foreign government.

It's just like, I mean, it's like an alley-oop, like a perfect volley for you to just spike the shit out of that and go, yes, sir, I'm loyal to the United States of America, not to some foreign government. And I'm happy to work with Israel when it's in America's interest. But if it's not in America's interest, then we don't do that. And if Israel's doing something that I consider to be wrong, I don't have to support them. I'm loyal to my country. Who are you, Mr. Flag-Waving Consultant?

Like it's just right there to set it up. But of course he can't do that. He can't do that. So he has to go, nah, I'm more loyal to this foreign government, not you. No, no, no, no, no. See, it's about actions. And I totally supported this bill, which would have given another $5 billion to Israel. I'm the most loyal to Israel. I'm the most loyal, not you. And the exchange continues. Anyway, we don't even need to play any more of the video. You basically get the point.

But is it when you look at that and you go, OK, so wait a minute. So what's really going on here? What's really going on? I mean, if we live in a democracy and politicians are all fucking liars anyway, why wouldn't he just say the obvious thing, which is correct and would totally destroy your opponent and would also be far more popular with the voters?

it's like oh yeah because that's not who they're talking to they're not talking to the voters they're talking to the power structure that's what they've got to consider they've got to consider aipac and the adl and the southern poverty law center and just the entire political machine and you know that if you don't pledge your undying loyalty to israel a foreign country you're in jeopardy of being completely ruined

I don't know, AIPAC brags about the tens of millions of dollars that they've thrown into political races just this year. And what if you're a critic of Israel, there's just going to be tons of money sent to your opponent. So that's what's really going on here. And all I'm saying is like, you could be as turned off and as appalled by

the protesters on college campus or by right wingers who hate Jews or whatever. You could like I'm not defending any of that. Fuck all those guys. But just for a second, look at this. Look at this dynamic. This is insane and indefensible and anti-American. It's anti-sanity.

You have to just compete over who pledges their loyalty to a foreign government at a time when they're just committing horrific atrocities, when the International Court of Justice has ruled that they're plausibly committing a genocide. But you must declare your loyalty to them.

I'm sorry. But again, back to what I said before about like the hierarchy of outrage. And it's important to remember because listen, every outrage, like everything else is a finite resource. You only have so much of it. There's only so many hours in a day. There's only so much breath in your lungs. You can only be outraged about so many things.

And I'm sorry, the protesters or people on Twitter, none of them rise to the level of being as outrageous as this. This is madness.

All right. I'm going to wrap up the episode there. Do not forget, guys, if you're in the Denver area, go grab tickets to Rob's special taping and come see us in Kansas City and all over the place. PorchTour.com for all Rob's dates. ComicDaveSmith.com for all of mine. Catch you guys tomorrow for the members-only stream. If you want to catch that, go sign up at PartOfTheProblem.com. All right. See you guys tomorrow. Peace.

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