Speaker 1: So welcome to the first of our Armstrong and Getty podcast.
Speaker 1: We probably need a jazz your name for this, but
Speaker 1: it's going to be our long form conversations with people
Speaker 1: we like. Yeah, I kind of like it as a
Speaker 1: as a as a standalone name. It's very very down
Speaker 1: to earth. Well, it's descriptive. It's like, you know, Boston's
Speaker 1: first album was called Boston, I get it, you know,
Speaker 1: or they're from Atlanta when you're getting that's right. So anyway,
Speaker 1: this is our our our our long form podcast, and
Speaker 1: our our first guest is a good old friend personally
Speaker 1: and professionally. Tim sander for Vice president for Litigation at
Speaker 1: the Goldwater Institute. He also spent fifteen years at the
Speaker 1: Pacific Legal Foundation, an organization which were big, big fans of.
Speaker 1: He's the author of Cornerstone of Liberty, Property Rights in
Speaker 1: twenty first Century America. Co authored with his fabulous wife
Speaker 1: Christina Sanderford, The Right to Earn a Living the Conscience
Speaker 1: of the Constitution, a wonderful new Ish book about Frederick
Speaker 1: Douglas called Frederick Douglas Self Made man um and in
Speaker 1: a great writer and thinker. Pay Tim, Hey, so you
Speaker 1: have you want to you want somebody who can just
Speaker 1: keep talking and talking and talking for a tremendous amount
Speaker 1: of time, and you invite me. I get it now,
Speaker 1: I see what you're talking. Well, you've got the depth
Speaker 1: of knowledge. But were you aware maybe you were aware
Speaker 1: this this Some people call it the intellectual dark net
Speaker 1: that exists out there, and I like that name because
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of off the grid, but there are
Speaker 1: millions of people doing it listening to these podcasts and
Speaker 1: one of the from YouTube videos that sort of thing
Speaker 1: very big. Yeah, But one of the things that seems
Speaker 1: to be a theme is they're not clearly one thing
Speaker 1: these conversations. It's not like it is at all of
Speaker 1: regular radio or TV where you tune in and you
Speaker 1: immediately say, is this a liberal show or a conservative show?
Speaker 1: These long form podcasts you can't really figure out with
Speaker 1: the guests are, which, by the way, is the way
Speaker 1: normal people are, you know. Yeah, that's the thing I think.
Speaker 1: I think the term dark net is ridiculous. I think
Speaker 1: gets an attempt to try and make it sound like
Speaker 1: it's some shadowy conspiracy of evil capitalists. But the reality
Speaker 1: is that with the availability of all sorts of different
Speaker 1: kinds of media. Now we're seeing the the subdivision of
Speaker 1: of our conversations into a finer and finer degree, so
Speaker 1: that you have more intense audiences that might be smaller,
Speaker 1: but their motive more devoted. And you saw that, for instance,
Speaker 1: when cable television first came out, the quality of television
Speaker 1: drama improved because you could have longer form stories with
Speaker 1: more in depth characters and complicated plots and things because
Speaker 1: you weren't going for a larger audience. We're going for
Speaker 1: a more loyal audience, and so you could explore things
Speaker 1: more deeply, like with HBO. And so I think that's
Speaker 1: what you're seeing. That's pretty good. Maybe that maybe this
Speaker 1: is this podcast thing or whatever you want to call it,
Speaker 1: is like, um, it's like cable cable tv has been
Speaker 1: to network shows well, and of course a lot of
Speaker 1: it's going to be terrible just for the because of
Speaker 1: the base a rule, everything is crap and so most
Speaker 1: of the most hell yeah, everything starts from there. So
Speaker 1: you know, it's funny. It strikes me as a guy
Speaker 1: who's raised raised a passle of kids. The more kids
Speaker 1: you have to appeal to it meal time, the more
Speaker 1: likely you're gonna get bland crap, and I think you
Speaker 1: know the same as true of virtually any sort of entertainment.
Speaker 1: You know, this is probably a super broad question on
Speaker 1: this topic, but what the hell, um, where do you
Speaker 1: think we are in terms of the exchange of ideas,
Speaker 1: particularly in the United States, because moronic cable news yelling
Speaker 1: is at an all time high. On the other one,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and it's it's unforgivable, it's criminal in its stupidity,
Speaker 1: and it's it's dishonesty. At the same time, though, you
Speaker 1: have a phenomenon like the one we've been talking about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have no idea. I mean, see your next book.
Speaker 1: We have we have at our fingertips. We have these
Speaker 1: devices in our pockets that we can use to connect
Speaker 1: to Wikipedia and have the entire world's knowledge at our
Speaker 1: fingertips and all of the great music and art and literature.
Speaker 1: And instead we mostly at our at our best, we're
Speaker 1: sending each other videos of kittens. So I think it's
Speaker 1: that it's a weird phenomenon where the curve is flattening out,
Speaker 1: so that instead of having a few people who have
Speaker 1: access to a tremendous amount of information and they're the
Speaker 1: recognized intellectual leaders of the culture. Instead, everybody has a
Speaker 1: slightly more improved knowledge of the world, but it's only
Speaker 1: slightly and so it sort of tends towards the middle
Speaker 1: of the road, which may not be a good thing
Speaker 1: in some ways, but in other ways it's a great thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a lot of people out there who
Speaker 1: would never have had exposure to the world's great art
Speaker 1: and literature who today can access it. It's just are
Speaker 1: they going to take advantage of it? Should we necessarily
Speaker 1: want them to? I don't really know why. Why wouldn't
Speaker 1: we want them Because Western civilization is oppressive? Haven't you
Speaker 1: heard that? Do you know about in your sectionality? Well,
Speaker 1: there is that, But I was thinking more like mic
Speaker 1: Roofen says, not everybody needs to go to college, not everybody,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not necessarily a bad thing that somebody
Speaker 1: doesn't like to sit there and listen to Bach and handle.
Speaker 1: I happen to, but a lot of people don't. And
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean that those people are stupid, and it
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that I am intellectually superior to them. Those
Speaker 1: are criteria established at in previous age. Nowadays, we have
Speaker 1: people who have intense knowledge of very tiny fractions of
Speaker 1: the world. It's an era of specialization. That doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: mean that it's that's not necessarily a bad thing that
Speaker 1: the age of the Renaissance man is over. The Age
Speaker 1: of the renaissance man came about because the number of
Speaker 1: people who are illiterate was tremendous back then, and so
Speaker 1: if you could read, you necessarily became a specialist in everything.
Speaker 1: But nowadays that's not the case. I like Barbara Back
Speaker 1: and Bill Handel stop it. You know, I've been called
Speaker 1: renaissance man, tim, But it does occur to me that, like,
Speaker 1: if you're referred to as a renaissunts doctor, you'd be
Speaker 1: run out of town, or a Renaissance astronomer, you'd probably
Speaker 1: be pretty behind the curve. Um Well, that those people
Speaker 1: are calling a renaissance man, they were, they're referring to
Speaker 1: the Renaissance fair. But that that reminds me to walk
Speaker 1: around with a big turkey leg. It's my thing. It
Speaker 1: reminds me the idea that you know, we were always
Speaker 1: against rocking the vote. We we don't want more people
Speaker 1: to vote unless they take the time to like read
Speaker 1: up on the issues, then then please do. But unless
Speaker 1: you're going to no, don't vote. I like voter turnout
Speaker 1: being relatively low since most people aren't paying attention, and
Speaker 1: you know, it kind of gets to here. All this
Speaker 1: information is out there, but are people going to take
Speaker 1: advantage of it? And do we want them to? Yeah? No,
Speaker 1: that's a good point. I mean we the vote can
Speaker 1: be a dangerous weapon, and yeah, we handed out indiscriminately.
Speaker 1: If everybody voted, I mean, if we had something like
Speaker 1: turn out the vote politics, our our entire political system
Speaker 1: could be turned upside down. Today, there's not an issue
Speaker 1: that you couldn't stand on its head if everybody decided
Speaker 1: to vote, and thank they don't. Yeah. Yeah, the qualifications,
Speaker 1: the requirement that people know what they're talking about before
Speaker 1: they go into the voting booth seems perfectly reasonable, and
Speaker 1: yet it's regarded that is regarded, it's always been pest.
Speaker 1: How do you feel about a poll test? I know
Speaker 1: it's it's history is not good. But what about if
Speaker 1: you had a test and you have to be able
Speaker 1: to name the president, vice president, and how many Supreme
Speaker 1: Court justices there are? Something like that? I mean, pretty simple,
Speaker 1: you'd wed out of think that's liable to It's liable
Speaker 1: to so much abuse that I wouldn't favor that because
Speaker 1: if you could wave your magic wand to wave away
Speaker 1: the abuse, well, then it would be best just to
Speaker 1: do that instead of imposing attack. In fact, the best
Speaker 1: thing to do is to reduce the authority and white
Speaker 1: males is that where you're going. I'm sorry interrupted you.
Speaker 1: You're not going to landed white males. You know, if
Speaker 1: I'm saying, you get the government so that it's not
Speaker 1: doing anything. It doesn't matter who gets to vote. You know,
Speaker 1: lots of feminists like to quote the line from Virginia
Speaker 1: wolf Um where she referred to a room of my own.
Speaker 1: I want a room of my own. The actual line
Speaker 1: that she said was give me a room of my own,
Speaker 1: and you can keep the vote. Because what matters is
Speaker 1: let leave me alone, give me private property, and don't
Speaker 1: bother me and take my stuff away to pay people
Speaker 1: not to work. And it doesn't really matter who gets elected.
Speaker 1: That's why you don't see all this this bruja, however,
Speaker 1: gets who gets elected dog catcher or something. But there's
Speaker 1: tons of money being poured into who gets elected president
Speaker 1: and elected to Congress because there's so much redistribution of
Speaker 1: wealth involved. That's the real problem. Interesting, which brings us
Speaker 1: to really kind of the root of your career and
Speaker 1: your books, um, which we mentioned and we'll get into
Speaker 1: a little more specifically in a bit. But you know,
Speaker 1: in this great age of resurgent populism, uh, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of populism that's really unhealthy. For instance, and the
Speaker 1: Founding Fathers knew that most people want a king, don't
Speaker 1: they in a royal family, in a wise and benevolent
Speaker 1: pop out of rule from on high. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: there is a something to be said for that. I
Speaker 1: think most people don't think long enough to to say
Speaker 1: where does the money come from that the government is
Speaker 1: going to give to me. They think that many people
Speaker 1: think of the government as their parent, when the reality
Speaker 1: is that government is your child. It's the people who
Speaker 1: support the government. So as a matter of common sense,
Speaker 1: the government can support the people. And I don't want
Speaker 1: to come off as contemptuous of the average human being, um,
Speaker 1: but but there's danger there, and the Founding Fathers understood
Speaker 1: that because it's really seductive idea that the government will
Speaker 1: take care of me. In fact, it's not only is
Speaker 1: it not, it's not a condescending thing to say. Most
Speaker 1: people don't understand or think about politics. It's not a
Speaker 1: condescend anything. It's that it's the focus of a lot
Speaker 1: of scholarship. It's called rational ignorance. And my my friend
Speaker 1: Ilias Souman, who's a law professor at George Mason University,
Speaker 1: he focuses a lot of his scholarship on rational ignorance.
Speaker 1: It is not rational for a lot of people to
Speaker 1: spend their time studying politics because they have other things
Speaker 1: to do. They they spend their time studying, you know,
Speaker 1: how to make how to do gardening, or how to
Speaker 1: build buildings, or how how to put up a bridge
Speaker 1: or something. That's what their time is spent on. And
Speaker 1: it's we would not be rational for me to spend
Speaker 1: my time studying engineering, because I'm not an engineer. For
Speaker 1: the same reason, the it's not rational for most people
Speaker 1: to spend their time on politics. It's not necessarily a
Speaker 1: bad thing, but it does mean that we need to
Speaker 1: be very wary when they express political opinions or demand
Speaker 1: a say in what the government does. You're a an
Speaker 1: expert on the founding, what do you think we we
Speaker 1: we regularly asked this, as you know, it's a common
Speaker 1: question if the Founding fathers were alive today, what would
Speaker 1: they think of their experiment? Do you think shocked that
Speaker 1: it lasted so long? Or horrified to where it's end
Speaker 1: hut up? There would be a lot of the ladder No,
Speaker 1: I I think I think Jefferson would be horrified that
Speaker 1: we hadn't torn up the Constitution long ago and rewritten
Speaker 1: it several times. Jefferson had this idea that we should
Speaker 1: rewrite the Constitution every generation or so, and he would
Speaker 1: be horrified also, by the way, at the size of
Speaker 1: the states. He thought the states should be much smaller
Speaker 1: than they currently are and should be subdivided down into
Speaker 1: the two hundreds hundred citizens per town unit or something
Speaker 1: like that. Came up with these really great ideas to
Speaker 1: try and limit government power and keep power in hands
Speaker 1: of local decision makers as much as possible. So he
Speaker 1: would have been horrified, and he would have said that
Speaker 1: we had sold out the American dream to the Hamiltonian
Speaker 1: notion of get rich quick. And by the way, that
Speaker 1: is really true. There really is. There's two American dreams.
Speaker 1: There's the American dream of patient, careful hard work that
Speaker 1: provides a modest living for yourself and your family, and
Speaker 1: then there's the American dream of get rich quick, and
Speaker 1: those two have always been intention and it's when the
Speaker 1: latter starts to rise in society that you really need
Speaker 1: to be careful and worried about the government. I think
Speaker 1: James Madison would have been more pleased than Jefferson. Madison
Speaker 1: had this idea, had a more conservative view about what
Speaker 1: government could accomplish and and how reasonable it was to
Speaker 1: expect people to be responsible citizens, and his answer was
Speaker 1: not very so I think he would have been a
Speaker 1: little bit more pleased, but he still would have been
Speaker 1: pretty shocked by the scope and size and power of
Speaker 1: government today. No, none of them, none of them, not
Speaker 1: even not even people like Hamilton's or John Adams, who
Speaker 1: were more of your big government guys. Not even they
Speaker 1: would have had they all would have been horrifying. That's
Speaker 1: what I was gonna say. You could find things that
Speaker 1: they would disagree on, I'm sure, but I would think
Speaker 1: they would all be shocked at the royal government place
Speaker 1: in everybody's life in the modern world, which brings us
Speaker 1: back to the rational ignorance you're talking about. As I've
Speaker 1: said many times, it is an impossibility for a voter
Speaker 1: or hell, even a legislator to have anything near a
Speaker 1: thorough enough knowledge of what the government is doing to
Speaker 1: be a responsible voter or responsible representative, which which is
Speaker 1: just that's a deal breaker. If you have a government
Speaker 1: too large and complex to comprehend much less control, then
Speaker 1: you've done something terribly wrong. Yeah. I think The Atlantic
Speaker 1: ran an article some months ago about talking about how
Speaker 1: the presidency was just too big a job for for
Speaker 1: people across the board, And that's absolutely true, and it's
Speaker 1: not true just in the era of Trump. It was
Speaker 1: true of Obama, I was true of Clinton, industry, of Bush.
Speaker 1: No no individual could possibly understand even a fraction of
Speaker 1: what the president is required to do, so of course
Speaker 1: the president can't possibly get it right. No nobody could
Speaker 1: possibly handle that kind of information. Is just too much
Speaker 1: work for any one person to do, or or a
Speaker 1: group of people like you said, Congress doesn't read a
Speaker 1: lot of the bills because nobody could read all those bills.
Speaker 1: So what happens is that the intellectual leadership kind of
Speaker 1: devolves into the hands of think tank people like me,
Speaker 1: or into the hands of staff members, especially in a
Speaker 1: state like California with the with term limits and things.
Speaker 1: You often find that the staffers stay around, they become
Speaker 1: the permanent political class. And then it's a matter of
Speaker 1: of this, you know, these ideas that float around the
Speaker 1: capital for a decade or two, until all of a
Speaker 1: sudden there comes a need. Oh, hey, let's we need
Speaker 1: to do a bill on such and such. What what
Speaker 1: have we gotten a drawer? You know, Well, they've gotten
Speaker 1: a drawer what's been floating around for ten years? And
Speaker 1: that's what it gets past. That's exactly what happened with Obamacare,
Speaker 1: when when a ballcare came about. All these notions have
Speaker 1: been floating around Washington, d c. For decades or so,
Speaker 1: and they all just stuffed it into a bill and
Speaker 1: there you go. And so you get this horrible, crazy
Speaker 1: quilt of a bill that nobody still understands what it does.
Speaker 1: You know. So let's circle back to something you said
Speaker 1: that we're talking about Hamilton's earlier and they get rich
Speaker 1: quick view of America, the American dream. How does that
Speaker 1: intersect with the desire for big government. I don't get it,
Speaker 1: he says, feigning ignorance. Yeah, well, a lot of people
Speaker 1: expect to get rich quick off of the government um
Speaker 1: or at a minimum that they can use the government
Speaker 1: to keep other from other people from getting rich quick.
Speaker 1: And it's the government is a great tool for for
Speaker 1: ruining your competition and getting what you want right, stifling
Speaker 1: competition by both through licensing laws or other kinds of restrictions.
Speaker 1: And you know we by the way, we often talk
Speaker 1: about this in economic terms, but it's also true in
Speaker 1: social terms. The government doesn't just prevent competition in economics,
Speaker 1: it also events competition in ideas. So religious groups will
Speaker 1: often try and use the government to restrict their opponents
Speaker 1: in exactly the same way that businesses try to use
Speaker 1: the government to restrict their their competitors. Licensing laws, for
Speaker 1: for for starting a moving company, are a good example
Speaker 1: of how existing moving companies use the licensing requirements to
Speaker 1: prevent economic competition. A lot of the time, you see
Speaker 1: the same kind of competition between religious groups as as
Speaker 1: opposed to economic groups. So, for instance, every few years,
Speaker 1: Texas goes through a meeting where they adopt textbooks, and
Speaker 1: because they're the single largest market for textbooks, that matters
Speaker 1: a lot, so a lot of religious groups will rally
Speaker 1: around that meeting to try and get the textbooks they
Speaker 1: like adopted because they know that that will set the
Speaker 1: trend nationwide. And it's exactly the same phenomenon. And James
Speaker 1: Madison understood this when he wrote the Constitution. He used
Speaker 1: that example, used the competition among religious groups as his
Speaker 1: explanation for why you need limited government, because that kind
Speaker 1: of competition will cancel itself out if you have the
Speaker 1: right checks and balances in place so that no one
Speaker 1: church can take over the power of government and stifle
Speaker 1: religious freedom of religion and so forth. And the seam
Speaker 1: is true of government, I mean of economics. If if
Speaker 1: you have these competing interest groups, as long as the
Speaker 1: government's power is limited, it doesn't really matter whether they
Speaker 1: hate each other or whatever, because they're not going to
Speaker 1: harm the rest of us by creating a monopoly. And
Speaker 1: so that's why I often say that my goal is
Speaker 1: the separation of economics and politics in exactly the same
Speaker 1: way as the separation of church and state. How far
Speaker 1: away are we from that goal? About a billion light years,
Speaker 1: you know, probably worth mentioning. It's specifically one of my
Speaker 1: favorite books of yours, The Right to Earn a Living,
Speaker 1: which is just it's such an eye opener about how
Speaker 1: government is used in regulation is used not to keep
Speaker 1: us all safe and make things fair, but precisely the opposite. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The founding father is called the problem of faction. A
Speaker 1: faction is a group within society, which can even include
Speaker 1: an entire majority of the society, that wants to use
Speaker 1: the government for its own private purposes instead of for
Speaker 1: the public welfare. And the fact is that there really
Speaker 1: is only one thing in the world that is genuinely
Speaker 1: in the public welfare, and that is the protection of
Speaker 1: individual rights. Everything else you can think of favors one
Speaker 1: group at the expense of another, whether it be public schools.
Speaker 1: Public schools favor those who have children against those who
Speaker 1: don't have children. I don't have kids, but I have
Speaker 1: to pay to support the public schools, And there's always
Speaker 1: some excuse given, Oh, well, you benefit from the fact
Speaker 1: that there's an educated populace. Ha ha ha. Yeah right.
Speaker 1: It's the parents who benefit from the public schools because
Speaker 1: they don't have to provide for the education entirely by themselves,
Speaker 1: because they're subsidized out of my tax at my tax dollars.
Speaker 1: So everything else that you can think of is like that.
Speaker 1: It benefits some people at the expensive others except for
Speaker 1: the protection of individual rights. And so the more you
Speaker 1: get to a government that does nothing more than protect
Speaker 1: individual rights, the better off. Society in general is as
Speaker 1: opposed to one faction over another using political power for
Speaker 1: their own best interests. A tangent since you brought up
Speaker 1: the idea of getting rich quick the recent Supreme Court
Speaker 1: ruling on gambling, so there are a lot of states
Speaker 1: that are either going to get into the lottery thing
Speaker 1: now or increase it or opening up more um gambling,
Speaker 1: to sports betting, to to to make money off of it,
Speaker 1: and only the governments will really be allowed to do
Speaker 1: it large scale. So so you've got taxpayer money being
Speaker 1: spent to advertise to people to that they're gonna get
Speaker 1: rich quick, I guess, so that they can bring in
Speaker 1: more money to the state government and then wasted. How
Speaker 1: do you feel about that? Yeah, you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: funny because of course, as a libertarian, I believe that
Speaker 1: if you want to gamble, it's every bit, it's your right.
Speaker 1: The government has no business getting involved. But you know,
Speaker 1: gambling is a is not exactly a healthy occupation, and
Speaker 1: it does encourage social morais and habits that are inimical
Speaker 1: to a good society, and it should be. I don't know,
Speaker 1: it is worrisome that the government is in the business
Speaker 1: of fostering these kinds of activities. If you think about it, though,
Speaker 1: it's funny because government has always been doing that. Government
Speaker 1: has been subsidized by um taxes on liquor forever, and
Speaker 1: there are states where the government owns all of the
Speaker 1: liquor stores. Liquors is a monopoly run by the government,
Speaker 1: and government taxes on cigarettes and things. You know, these
Speaker 1: syntaxes have always been a very important part of government's income,
Speaker 1: precisely because it knows that. You know, they're kind of
Speaker 1: addictive and it's hard not to do them, so they're
Speaker 1: a healthy stream. When prohibition went into place, prohibition was
Speaker 1: only made possible by the passage of the Income Tax Amendment,
Speaker 1: because the federal government was supported so much by alcohol
Speaker 1: taxes that the only way that you could prohibit alcohol
Speaker 1: was to come up with an alternative income stream for
Speaker 1: the government. And that was why the income tax was
Speaker 1: such a an important part of the progressive platform. I
Speaker 1: was happy to hear you say that that you're troubled
Speaker 1: as a libertarian, you know, because I'm the same way.
Speaker 1: I'm libertarian most things, but on this one. The idea
Speaker 1: of the government with the billboards of happy, smiling people
Speaker 1: winning money, which is a lie. Almost nobody, nobody, You're
Speaker 1: not gonna win, you know, long term, your math, you're
Speaker 1: gonna lose. But they're so they're lying to people to
Speaker 1: try to get them to spend money on something that's
Speaker 1: a bad habit, to try to fill state coffers, which
Speaker 1: then they will waste the money. Wow. I was gonna
Speaker 1: accuse you too, of of dabbling in paternalism. I was
Speaker 1: really looking forward to that. But now I get it.
Speaker 1: So would you, either one of you have a problem
Speaker 1: with just, you know, me running a sports book on
Speaker 1: the up and up. I'm not stealing from anybody, as
Speaker 1: long as it's not like a state encouraging it and
Speaker 1: in misleading people as to how likely they are to win.
Speaker 1: That's that's a very libertarian point of view. I think, well,
Speaker 1: you know, government itself is a sin in some way,
Speaker 1: so it kind of makes sense. But it's also a
Speaker 1: very read of tax All of these taxes, cigarette taxes,
Speaker 1: alcohol taxes, and sports am betting taxes in the form
Speaker 1: of gambling harm the poor more than the rich. That
Speaker 1: because the richer we are educated enough to know what
Speaker 1: a bad bet buying a lottery ticket is or and
Speaker 1: and they tend not to smoke or drink as much. Actually,
Speaker 1: I'd be I'd be more okay with it if I
Speaker 1: could count on the fact that if somebody gambles their
Speaker 1: whole life and ends up with no money when they're
Speaker 1: sixty five, sorry, you're just out of luck. But that's
Speaker 1: not the way it works. They're gonna get some of
Speaker 1: my money to be able to live, you know, a
Speaker 1: dignity in their old age, as Barack Obama wants put
Speaker 1: it um. If that's the case, then I do have
Speaker 1: a stake in whether or not they gamble away their money. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is where that's why socialism so complicated. Daniel Alker,
Speaker 1: in his book on Prohibition, points out that one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why the DuPont family worked so hard to
Speaker 1: get the Prohibition Amendment repealed was because they thought that
Speaker 1: that was the first step in getting rid of the
Speaker 1: income tax. Well, instead, what you ended up with was
Speaker 1: both You've got government taxes on alcohol and income taxes.
Speaker 1: Is there any he's setting this trend towards gigantic government
Speaker 1: high taxes, many many regulations, and and look, I realize
Speaker 1: you occasionally you get a Reagan or a Trump roll
Speaker 1: and back some regulations here and there. But you know,
Speaker 1: that's just nipping around the edges. That's just tiny little
Speaker 1: bobbles downward in a trend upward. What will it take
Speaker 1: the reset giant war, cataclysm flu that kills two seventy million.
Speaker 1: You know somebody I was it, George Will, It was
Speaker 1: some prominent commentator just recently said that he thought that
Speaker 1: nothing short of a catastrophic war. Now maybe it was
Speaker 1: Charles Murray, nothing short of account I've been saying that
Speaker 1: for a decade. Yeah, that's gonna pay attention to one
Speaker 1: of those bastards. Spend one of the armstrong and getting
Speaker 1: principles forever. We need a war or fatal disease to
Speaker 1: come along. Damn, I can't anything. I'm reminded of that
Speaker 1: at the Simpsons episode when Bart looks at the at
Speaker 1: the Generation X or millennial or whoever was and and
Speaker 1: he says, we need another Vietnam's been out their ranks
Speaker 1: a little wow wow. But Bart, no, I mean it's
Speaker 1: true that crises tend to motivate people, and there will
Speaker 1: inevitably be a crisis if we continue down the road
Speaker 1: of ever expanding government and irresponsibility. But uh, nothing, there's
Speaker 1: absolutely none of this is written in the Book of Faith.
Speaker 1: There's no reason in the world why we couldn't give
Speaker 1: me an example. And I asked people all the time
Speaker 1: giving an example of a society that went back from this,
Speaker 1: that went backwards to two more, you know, lean responsible.
Speaker 1: I don't know of one. I mean, without without a cataclysm,
Speaker 1: you mean, or just disappearing. Yeah, well, I just don't
Speaker 1: think it happens. Yeah, exactly, That's what I've asked historians.
Speaker 1: It just doesn't happen. I wish it would, but I
Speaker 1: don't think it's gonna happen. Well, I've got an example.
Speaker 1: Hong Kong when when the British um you know, they
Speaker 1: they had Hong Kong for quite a long time, and
Speaker 1: it was not the economic powerhouse that it became until
Speaker 1: sometime in the mid twentieth century when they decided to
Speaker 1: do it as an experiment and create as close to
Speaker 1: a lazy affair society as they could. And between the
Speaker 1: two thousand, you know, Hong Kong became this incredible economic
Speaker 1: powerhouse because of sharply limited government. Now the price for that,
Speaker 1: The downside to that was a good degree of authoritarianism
Speaker 1: because it was imposed and the people there really didn't
Speaker 1: have a lot of democratic control over how that worked.
Speaker 1: But it was it was done, and it was done
Speaker 1: from the top down. As an ideological thing. We are
Speaker 1: going to create a free market society, and that you
Speaker 1: need a wise and benevolent king then, because the people
Speaker 1: are never going to vote for that, you know, which
Speaker 1: which could bring us to uh. You know, when democracy
Speaker 1: comes to the Middle East, they vote for a theocracy. Um.
Speaker 1: But I was going to say for Japan, that's another
Speaker 1: You know that your Middle East example gives me a
Speaker 1: good example, and that is McArthur occupying Japan. Japan in
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties and forties was every bit the terrorist
Speaker 1: theocratic society that the Middle East is today. And after
Speaker 1: the Caphy, the catastrophe of the war, MacArthur takes over
Speaker 1: and he says, we're going to write you a constitution
Speaker 1: and it's going to have things like freedom of speech
Speaker 1: and so forth in there. And look at what has resulted.
Speaker 1: What has resulted, It has been prosperity and modernization of Japan.
Speaker 1: We point it could have been a weird, weird porn
Speaker 1: good point. It takes a catastrophe as your it takes
Speaker 1: a village, I guess, but I agree, and it is
Speaker 1: absolutely necessary to point out we are writing our own catastrophe.
Speaker 1: It stands at twenty two trillion dollars of debt and
Speaker 1: and growing every day. What's it saying that the hard
Speaker 1: times that you've been repeating, Gosh, hard times make for
Speaker 1: strong people. Strong people make for good times. Good times
Speaker 1: make for soft people. Soft people make for bad times,
Speaker 1: make bad times. And that's what we're going through. Yeah. Probably.
Speaker 1: And it's hard because the generation that went through World
Speaker 1: War Two and experienced not just World War Two, but
Speaker 1: the but the prosperity of the fifties that came when
Speaker 1: Truman and Eisenhower eliminated the government controls that had been
Speaker 1: imposed during World War Two. That generation is disappearing. And
Speaker 1: the what we're seeing is the rise of Heck, we're
Speaker 1: right seeing the rise of a generation that doesn't doesn't
Speaker 1: remember the Cold War at all. And that's a scary thing.
Speaker 1: And what's interesting. Lincoln actually gave a speech on this topic,
Speaker 1: his first prominent address in the l where he said,
Speaker 1: you know, all of the revolutionary leaders, they're dying off
Speaker 1: and and they are no longer around to remind us
Speaker 1: of the tyranny that they experienced and of the importance
Speaker 1: of freedom. And if we don't remember those lessons were
Speaker 1: destined for a real disaster. And obviously he was right
Speaker 1: about that. Does I think we're seeing the same thing.
Speaker 1: There's been a number of poles lately, uh, articles and
Speaker 1: all kinds of different things showing a a much brighter
Speaker 1: view of socialism by young people. Hillary Clinton said not
Speaker 1: long ago, she said coming out as a capitalist really
Speaker 1: hurt her in Iowa. I mean, that's that that would
Speaker 1: have been crazy a couple of decades ago. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: it's a that's a very frightening thing. I mean, I yeah,
Speaker 1: nothing shows me more than seeing these things about the
Speaker 1: positive view that young people have of socialism, the the
Speaker 1: deadliest and cruelest of all human ideologies. Yeah. You get
Speaker 1: stuff for free, you see. Yeah, everybody gets a free
Speaker 1: education and they don't have to worry about working, and
Speaker 1: they can be a put if they want. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it is scary, tim Although the one and it's
Speaker 1: an odd reassurance to find, but the one reassuring thing
Speaker 1: I've found is that those same polls, when they ask him, right,
Speaker 1: what is socialism? The kids don't have a clue what
Speaker 1: it is. It just sounds vaguely pleasant to them that
Speaker 1: they will get a free college education. And you know, honestly,
Speaker 1: as you said at the very beginning, these are the
Speaker 1: people who are going to be voting so god so
Speaker 1: many things we could talk about. We could talk about
Speaker 1: the unholy state of higher education right now, the idea
Speaker 1: of coming out of school with you knows worth of
Speaker 1: debt for your undergrad degree, and and you know how
Speaker 1: that's changed so much in a few, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: a few generations. I kind of sympathize with the kids,
Speaker 1: thinking there's got to be a better alternative than this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what happened is the biggest thing I think is the conservatives. Really,
Speaker 1: the blame I think belongs primarily with the conservatives. The
Speaker 1: Conservatives claimed to be the voice of freedom, of the constitution,
Speaker 1: of limited government and free markets, and the Conservatives have
Speaker 1: never really understood free markets and never actually supported free markets.
Speaker 1: And they then tied themselves to social conservative attitudes such
Speaker 1: as hostility to same sex marriage that made them uh no,
Speaker 1: longer a tendable position for the younger generation. And so
Speaker 1: the younger generation has thrown out the conservative his and that,
Speaker 1: and by doing that, they've also thrown out the good
Speaker 1: sides of conservatism, which were the few aspects of limited
Speaker 1: government and free markets that some conservatives sometimes understood. But
Speaker 1: that's some good stuff. That's that's that's really good right there,
Speaker 1: because we we've been on stages before, and you know,
Speaker 1: you can talk about small government and all that sort
Speaker 1: of stuff and fiscal responsibility, and but if people think
Speaker 1: you're most of this has changed now. But if people
Speaker 1: thought you were anti gay marriage or you know, anti
Speaker 1: legalizing marijuana or whatever, that the conversation stopped there. You
Speaker 1: weren't gonna get anywhere with your small government clapp track.
Speaker 1: To some degree, that's a good thing from a libertarian
Speaker 1: point of view. That's because that shows that the audience
Speaker 1: was attuned to the hypocrisy of those who claims to
Speaker 1: be in favor of private property rights and free markets,
Speaker 1: but at the same time thought that the stage should
Speaker 1: tell people whom they could marry. And that's a positive development.
Speaker 1: The downside is that the left is going to take
Speaker 1: advantage of that and they're going to wed socialism to
Speaker 1: their own views, and I one hopes that the younger
Speaker 1: generation will also see the hypocrisy of that, to see
Speaker 1: that the left is wrong when it says, yes, you
Speaker 1: can choose whom to go to bed with, but we're
Speaker 1: going to tell you what property you can own and
Speaker 1: what businesses you can run. If if we can maintain
Speaker 1: the skepticism against both sides, then there's a hope for
Speaker 1: a future. Where are politics believe in freedom across the board? Well,
Speaker 1: let's not gloss it over the downside of socialism and
Speaker 1: central planning. For you know, for those who haven't been
Speaker 1: obsessed with it for most of their adult lives, why
Speaker 1: not socialism? Tim It sounds great, equal fair, etcetera. I
Speaker 1: you really do want a long form podcast, don't you.
Speaker 1: The central evil of socialism is in the idea that
Speaker 1: you exist to serve others, that moral good consists of
Speaker 1: you working to support other people and other people working
Speaker 1: to support you, when the reality is that I do
Speaker 1: not exist to make other people happy. I exist for
Speaker 1: my own sake, and I have a right to pursue
Speaker 1: my own happiness not having to to curtail my behavior
Speaker 1: to satisfy the desires of other people. Every other evil
Speaker 1: that arises from socialism, from the shortages that are inevitable
Speaker 1: in it, to the political and social oppression that results
Speaker 1: from it, flow from that central evil premise. I'm not
Speaker 1: nearly as good at quoting folks as you are. It's
Speaker 1: it's a gift. It's it always amazed me, but us,
Speaker 1: And who's going to challenge it? Perfect? Yeah, But I
Speaker 1: absolutely love what I've heard expressed in a couple of
Speaker 1: places lately that the amount of control or oppression it
Speaker 1: takes to make socialism work, it would be repugnant to
Speaker 1: any human being who who either remembers what it looks
Speaker 1: like or can imagine it. You either. I mean, the
Speaker 1: only two reason people reasons people work are for reward
Speaker 1: or to avoid punishment. And there must be so much
Speaker 1: punishment to make socialism work. It ends the way it
Speaker 1: always ends, That's right, And the reason why is because
Speaker 1: a thriving economy is a living thing. A thriving economy
Speaker 1: is kind of like um, it's kind of like the environment.
Speaker 1: It's like an ecosystem, which means it's constantly in a
Speaker 1: process of change. It's not a static, fixed state and
Speaker 1: socialism views it as a static fixed state or or
Speaker 1: or like some sort of a machine instead of a
Speaker 1: living organism, and so it tries to prescribe rules that
Speaker 1: will be enforced by the government, to say what you
Speaker 1: shall charge or how much you will produce and so forth.
Speaker 1: And because that can't work, what you really do is
Speaker 1: you end up you get end up moving the competition
Speaker 1: to some other aspect of the economy, and then that
Speaker 1: has to be clamped down, and then it moves it
Speaker 1: to elsewhere, and then that has to be clamped down
Speaker 1: until the entire society has clamped down. So, for example,
Speaker 1: if you impose a price restriction on milk, and you say, no, no,
Speaker 1: we're all the only commodity that we're going to impose
Speaker 1: a price restriction is on milk. Nothing else. You can
Speaker 1: charge whatever you want for everything else, just not milk.
Speaker 1: Milk has to be what cents a gallon. Well, if that,
Speaker 1: if you do that, the dairies aren't going to produce milk.
Speaker 1: They're gonna put that They're gonna put their products into
Speaker 1: making cheese or butter instead because they can make more money.
Speaker 1: So if you're gonna enforce your milk restriction, now you
Speaker 1: have to restrict the production of cheese and butter also,
Speaker 1: and now the dairies are going to start making ice
Speaker 1: cream instead, So now you've got to restrict the production
Speaker 1: of ice cream. And then you're gonna have to restrict
Speaker 1: the cows, and you're gonna have to restrict the farmers.
Speaker 1: They're gonna have to restrict the feed that goes to
Speaker 1: feed the cows, and then you're gonna have to restrict
Speaker 1: the transportation the trucks that carry the cows from one
Speaker 1: place to another, and then you have to restrict the
Speaker 1: fuel that the trucks use, and pretty soon you have
Speaker 1: to restrict the entire economy just in order to maintain
Speaker 1: your price restriction on milk. It limitably works that way.
Speaker 1: Can't we just put the dairy farmers in a re
Speaker 1: education camp and beat them until they comply. That's that's
Speaker 1: what ends up happening, exactly, because they don't work for profits,
Speaker 1: so the so the only thing they can do is
Speaker 1: to work out of fear, and so you have to
Speaker 1: impose more and more fear in order to get people
Speaker 1: to work. Now, the answer that socialists always give is, oh, no,
Speaker 1: new socialist man won't be selfish and greedy. He's going
Speaker 1: to care for his fellowman the way he cares for himself.
Speaker 1: Now we know that that's nonsense, that that is has
Speaker 1: never been the case and will never be the case.
Speaker 1: But and the only way to accomplish that is through
Speaker 1: forcible re education. And so you create these labor camps
Speaker 1: in order to teach them to sacrifice themselves for the
Speaker 1: benefit of the hive, because we're running people as if
Speaker 1: they were ants and so, and of course who's going
Speaker 1: to do that. There has to be somebody who's in
Speaker 1: charge of the hive, and so inevitably you have a
Speaker 1: dictator class that gets fat and and the and while
Speaker 1: the people are starving. Yeah, it's like, remind me of
Speaker 1: that the Lenin letter that came to light a couple
Speaker 1: of years back. Uh, the letter actually exists, um where
Speaker 1: he says, better to hang a thousand farmers than to have,
Speaker 1: you know, the overall good not succeed or something. Just
Speaker 1: I mean, just amazing that anybody could actually think that way.
Speaker 1: They were going to village the village hanging farmers to
Speaker 1: show you this is why you need to comply, and
Speaker 1: he thought, well, you know, you hang a thousand farmers
Speaker 1: but overall people are gonna be happier. And that's a
Speaker 1: hell of a mindset. It's like the old like the
Speaker 1: old trick of getting the donkey to move forward by
Speaker 1: holding the carrot in front of him, or you can
Speaker 1: whip him with a stick from behind, and so there
Speaker 1: you have the old carrot or the strict stick approach.
Speaker 1: The socialists say that the carrot is oppressive, so they
Speaker 1: eliminate it. So then they're left with making bigger and
Speaker 1: bigger and bigger sticks. Wow. Wow, that is well said.
Speaker 1: So uh, having solved socialism for the next few generations.
Speaker 1: I want to talk a little bit about your book,
Speaker 1: The Permission Society, which is terrific and and we is
Speaker 1: that the one we partially inspired? Yes, that was because
Speaker 1: you You are very fond of saying that whenever the
Speaker 1: government talks about permits, you need to remember that the
Speaker 1: root word of permit is permission. And I haven't and
Speaker 1: never use it as a noun without using it as
Speaker 1: a verb. The government is going to permit me to
Speaker 1: reap my patio. How kind of them? That's right? And
Speaker 1: I was having I was thinking of that when I
Speaker 1: was having a conversation with a friend of mine who
Speaker 1: does Second Amendment law. And he was trying to argue
Speaker 1: in some cases that the same rules that apply when
Speaker 1: the government requires you to get a permit for a
Speaker 1: parade or a protest ought to also apply when the
Speaker 1: government requires you to get a permit for a gun,
Speaker 1: and that is that they're they're prison. It's very rare
Speaker 1: that the government is allowed to impose restrictions on you
Speaker 1: for free speech, and so it should be the same
Speaker 1: thing for gun permits. And I thought you could apply
Speaker 1: that logic across the board to all the different things
Speaker 1: government requires us to get permission to do. And you
Speaker 1: start to think about all the things government requires you
Speaker 1: to get permission for, it's amazing. I mean everything from
Speaker 1: from the permit to build a house or run a
Speaker 1: business to a prescription to to have a medicine. A
Speaker 1: prescription is just a government permission slip allowing you to
Speaker 1: own a medicine, right right. And And I actually just
Speaker 1: watched a speech you did at the Cato Institute about
Speaker 1: your book a few years ago, and you let off
Speaker 1: with a great quote, was it from Madison about how
Speaker 1: the the American the Constitution and the Revolution flopped the
Speaker 1: idea of um of rights and permission on its head. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Madison wrote this in two. It's an essay called Charters,
Speaker 1: and he says that in in Europe, charters of liberty
Speaker 1: were granted by power, but America has set the example
Speaker 1: of charters of power granted by liberty. And what he
Speaker 1: meant was that in Europe you had things like the
Speaker 1: Magna Carta. And if you actually read the Magna Carta,
Speaker 1: what it says is I the keing in giving the
Speaker 1: following freedoms to the people. Well, where did he get
Speaker 1: those freedoms to begin with? Right? Did he just invent them?
Speaker 1: Did he just grow them in his backyard? What the
Speaker 1: American Constitution says is no, No, the people are free
Speaker 1: to begin with, and they give the government power. And
Speaker 1: Madison says in that essay that that change from the
Speaker 1: idea that government gives us freedom to the idea that
Speaker 1: we give the government power because we are already free.
Speaker 1: That change is the most important change that the American
Speaker 1: Revolution accomplished. You know, if we could go crisper, you know,
Speaker 1: gene gene stitching whatever they call it, gene editing, gene editing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: with one briefly stated idea and in fact, like the
Speaker 1: next four generations With that, I think it would be
Speaker 1: what you just said, when what Madison just said, the
Speaker 1: idea that alright, alright, okay, I guess we need a government,
Speaker 1: but we're going to tell you what you can do,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna do no more than that. Yep, that's right.
Speaker 1: And actually I there's a book that I really recommend
Speaker 1: called The Discovery of Freedom by Rose Wilder Lane, where
Speaker 1: this is the basic thesis. Now, the book's got some
Speaker 1: some problems, some of its historical claims aren't accurate, but
Speaker 1: the essence of it is exactly right. You're right. That
Speaker 1: is the key, that the idea that human beings are
Speaker 1: fundamentally free, that freedom isn't given to us by anything.
Speaker 1: Once you have that idea in your mind, and if
Speaker 1: you apply it consistently across the board, it's really amazing.
Speaker 1: What a different world you would have, a world where
Speaker 1: where you can accomplish, you can pursue your own happiness
Speaker 1: without having to ask the government. Mother, May I first
Speaker 1: go ahead? I was gonna say, you know, I was
Speaker 1: thinking we ought to ask before before we wrap this up,
Speaker 1: what does it even mean to say you're a libertarian
Speaker 1: at this point in our nation's history, because there's so
Speaker 1: many different definitions. Is it just escaped mental patient Gary Johnson,
Speaker 1: as we often call him on the radio show. Does
Speaker 1: it just mean that you embrace the idea that that
Speaker 1: the people should establish a limited government and keep it limited.
Speaker 1: The the simple answer to what a libertarian is as
Speaker 1: a person who believes the government has no right to
Speaker 1: dictate my economic choices, just like it has no right
Speaker 1: to dictate my personal choices about who my date, or
Speaker 1: who my UH read, or whom I speak to. It
Speaker 1: also should have no authority to tell me what I
Speaker 1: do with my property, or whether I run a business,
Speaker 1: or or any of those sorts of things. Government is
Speaker 1: strictly limited to defending individual rights and nothing more. That's
Speaker 1: the simple answer. The more complicated answer is that libertarianism
Speaker 1: is a species of liberalism. It's and a lot of
Speaker 1: people get this confused because they think that libertarians are
Speaker 1: kind of conservative, and actually where the opposite of that. Conservatives.
Speaker 1: The primary concern for a conservative is creating and maintaining
Speaker 1: a society. Libertarians aren't concerned with creating and maintaining a society.
Speaker 1: They're concerned with individual flourishing. They want the individual to
Speaker 1: be free to pursue happiness. I'm ever flourished in my life.
Speaker 1: That's a good goal. Well, then you need to get
Speaker 1: out mortal friends, um and and liberals, today's modern liberals,
Speaker 1: they also want the individual to to flourish, but they
Speaker 1: think the way to a published that is for government
Speaker 1: to take money from people who earn it and give
Speaker 1: it to them, or to give them an education, or
Speaker 1: give them housing and everything that flourishing is assured to
Speaker 1: protect them and stuff. Yeah, exactly, Whereas the libertarian says, no, no,
Speaker 1: you have the right to God to lead your own life,
Speaker 1: but don't expect me to come pay in your bills
Speaker 1: for you where and so those are two branches of
Speaker 1: the same treat Conservatism is the idea that our primary
Speaker 1: concern is creating and maintaining society, and that means curtailing
Speaker 1: individual rights sometimes in order to maintain healthy society. It's
Speaker 1: just by historical accident that libertarians and conservatives joined forces
Speaker 1: during the Cold War because they're both anti communist. And
Speaker 1: what we're seeing in today's world is the breakup of
Speaker 1: that of that connection. We're seeing libertarians no longer joining
Speaker 1: forces with conservatives, which incidentally, is why you see the
Speaker 1: Trump phenomenon because the libertarian wing of the of the
Speaker 1: Republican Party, they weren't interested in participating in that kind
Speaker 1: of of a choice, and some of them voted for Hillary.
Speaker 1: Even some of them may even voted for Gary Johnson,
Speaker 1: some of them voted for Trump's and so it fractured
Speaker 1: the Republican vote, which is why you saw that phenomenon occur.
Speaker 1: What do you do about people that make bad decisions
Speaker 1: in life? If you're going to look at it from
Speaker 1: a libertarian standpoint and you believe in free markets and
Speaker 1: try to stay away from socialism, because we talk about
Speaker 1: this a lot um. The person that's made bad choices
Speaker 1: throughout their life and they end up with no money.
Speaker 1: The person that does the dumb things and ends up
Speaker 1: in the hospital but doesn't have insurance when they could
Speaker 1: have had it. How do you handle that? Well, I
Speaker 1: have a couple of friends who often say stupid should hurt, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and there's a and the good thing about that,
Speaker 1: of course, is if you if you witness in your
Speaker 1: life as you're growing up, people who have had some
Speaker 1: really bad results from their actions, you might be careful,
Speaker 1: more careful with your own actions. Yeah, that's not theoretical.
Speaker 1: I saw things. But so are you gonna end up
Speaker 1: in your in your cold hearted libertarian were old tim sender?
Speaker 1: Are you gonna have a homeless people starving, or people
Speaker 1: going to the hospital and they can't get their broken
Speaker 1: ankle fixed, or what I suppose that might happen. I
Speaker 1: don't think that it's going to be nearly as common
Speaker 1: as the nightmares that the left likes to throw out
Speaker 1: and say everybody's gonna be starving the streets. I always
Speaker 1: thought it was funny when people say, uh, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: what it free to do? What free to starve? As
Speaker 1: if you won't starve if your hands are tied rights,
Speaker 1: has less chance starved to death than the person who's
Speaker 1: who's who's being dictated to by the state. Um no,
Speaker 1: a free society, if you want to help people who
Speaker 1: are unfortunate, you will not be stopped. Well, yeah, exactly right.
Speaker 1: And I think you know, private charity will become a
Speaker 1: much more significant part of every community. Um, you know
Speaker 1: when government charity. But Joe, the thing is, it's not
Speaker 1: it's not about that to me. The thing about private charity,
Speaker 1: it's you're absolutely right a private charity. Not only as
Speaker 1: a theoretical matter would it occurred, but historically we know
Speaker 1: that's the case because the most charitable time in American
Speaker 1: history was the late nineteenth cent three, which was also
Speaker 1: the freest economically speaking, as everything from the Red Cross
Speaker 1: to the A s p c. A dates from the
Speaker 1: time where we got closest to Las Affair. So absolutely
Speaker 1: that will happen. But the most important point here is
Speaker 1: that the what about the poor argument he's always whipped
Speaker 1: out in an effort to get you to say that
Speaker 1: you exist to make other people happy, that your life
Speaker 1: is deter the goodness of you as a person is
Speaker 1: dependent upon the degree to which you serve poor and
Speaker 1: unfortunate people, and that is something I absolutely refused to accept.
Speaker 1: I exist to provide for myself, to pursue my own happiness,
Speaker 1: and to accomplish my own goals. If I happen to
Speaker 1: be charitable to other people, which I do, then that
Speaker 1: is because I derive personal benefit from that, because I
Speaker 1: think that person deserves some help, because it makes me
Speaker 1: feel better as a person to help that person, or
Speaker 1: or because I just am not willing to live with
Speaker 1: myself while watching this p and suffered well, and your
Speaker 1: your motivation doesn't really matter to me. If you're free
Speaker 1: to do whatever the hell you want, including given all
Speaker 1: your money to the poor, it's your business, right. Uh.
Speaker 1: I had one more topic I wanted to get onto.
Speaker 1: I've got a big one, but I'm saving it for
Speaker 1: the end unless we come up with more topics to
Speaker 1: get onto. Oh god, it flitted right out of my mind.
Speaker 1: A capable of talking in our right. Yeah, God, bless you.
Speaker 1: And it finally it popped back into my mind. Um,
Speaker 1: what do you make of the culture of ready offense,
Speaker 1: the culture of the microaggression, the culture of um celebrating victimhood.
Speaker 1: I think it's a horrifying development and it has to
Speaker 1: be ended now. It should have been ended yesterday. It's
Speaker 1: a terrible thing to see, and I think we see
Speaker 1: it particularly in There's three aspects to it. There's the
Speaker 1: ideas of approp creation, the idea of social constructivism, which
Speaker 1: is the idea that everything, all the differences between people
Speaker 1: are really just the result of social construction, that that
Speaker 1: society can change. And there's the idea that of racial identity,
Speaker 1: constituting your your mind, that you are only who you
Speaker 1: are because of your race and there and that's what
Speaker 1: leads to the idea of privilege, that that any advantage
Speaker 1: you have is just because of privilege. Disregarding that perhaps
Speaker 1: you or your or your ancestors made wise, wise choices
Speaker 1: and governed their resources prudently, we disregard all of that
Speaker 1: and say, the only reason you are in your status
Speaker 1: is because of privilege, and therefore the only reason other
Speaker 1: people are in a lower status is because they lack privilege.
Speaker 1: Those three things appropriation. The appropriation is a horrible idea
Speaker 1: that that people shouldn't learn from each other or adopt
Speaker 1: each other's cultural practices because they somehow belong to some
Speaker 1: racial group. The appropriation, social constructivism, and privilege are the
Speaker 1: three things that lead to the culture of grievance that
Speaker 1: at its worst, most most intense state you see in
Speaker 1: the Middle East today. If you'd explained some of those
Speaker 1: concepts to me twenty years ago and told me they
Speaker 1: were going to catch on, I thought that's not possible.
Speaker 1: And references to the Nazis are so tired. But as
Speaker 1: I've said many times, I am unfamiliar with any society
Speaker 1: that was so enthusiastic about pinning labels on people perhaps
Speaker 1: on their jumpsuits. Since Nazi Germany, it's astonishing to me
Speaker 1: to see the United States of America in a position
Speaker 1: where everybody must know you know what you are, before
Speaker 1: they can even listen to your opinion. There are two
Speaker 1: aspects of today's social grievance culture that are very similar
Speaker 1: to Nazism or to proto Nazism. One of them is
Speaker 1: the idea of group grievance. People forget that the Germans
Speaker 1: saw themselves as victims of the Jews. They thought they
Speaker 1: were being victimized and depressed and kept down by Jewish privilege,
Speaker 1: and they thought of themselves as reacting against the aggressions
Speaker 1: of the Jews. We forget that fact. The second thing
Speaker 1: is that this idea that cultural items belong to different groups.
Speaker 1: What what I said about appropriation, they came up with,
Speaker 1: For example, Deutsch physics versus Youdon physic. Youd In physic
Speaker 1: was Jewish physics, like Albert Einstein, the physics of Jewish scientists,
Speaker 1: and that was different from good German physics, Deutsche physic,
Speaker 1: which was culturally belonging to the Jews. And that is
Speaker 1: exactly what we're seeing in social studies departments and even
Speaker 1: in some science departments and universities today that are saying
Speaker 1: that certain kinds of thinking, certain ways of thinking, belonged
Speaker 1: to certain ethnic categories, and you shouldn't cross this category.
Speaker 1: That's a terribly dangerous development. Wow, that is a shocking parallel,
Speaker 1: because I've heard of that the rejection of traditional mathematics
Speaker 1: is being you know, paternalistic and white and western and
Speaker 1: that sort of thing, which is just a horrifying notion
Speaker 1: because it always leads you. You see this in particularly
Speaker 1: in the work of Tanahsse Coats, who writes for The Atlantic. Now,
Speaker 1: I could spend a good two hours talking about how
Speaker 1: much I despise Coats his work, and he's won the
Speaker 1: National Book already, want a Genius grant. He is not
Speaker 1: a fringe figure. He got a genius grant. I didn't
Speaker 1: realize that he's brilliant and completely deluded in my mind,
Speaker 1: but gone. Tannahessey Coats is a white supremacist who happens
Speaker 1: to be black. He believes that the United States is
Speaker 1: a society based on racial class that exists for the
Speaker 1: purpose of oppressing black people, and that white people have
Speaker 1: no place in it. And I mean the black people
Speaker 1: have no place in it, and that they and he
Speaker 1: his entire book, Between the World and Me. The thesis
Speaker 1: of that book is that black people should abandon the
Speaker 1: American Dream, in fact, should abandoned dreaming altogether, because the
Speaker 1: American Dream is a myth concocted by white people to
Speaker 1: a press black people. It's a disgrace. And when he
Speaker 1: gets to the end of the book and applause the
Speaker 1: September eleventh hijackers, you see the degree to which that
Speaker 1: nihilism leads to a system that that that degrades and
Speaker 1: denigrates Black American citizens. And it's it's really offensive to
Speaker 1: me as an American to see anyone council Black Americans
Speaker 1: to abandon the American dream, that that Black Americans have
Speaker 1: suffered so much for. I mean, when you when you
Speaker 1: hear the term American dream today, very few people think
Speaker 1: of James trust Low Adams, the writer who invented that phrase.
Speaker 1: In almost everyone thinks of Martin Luther King, who articulated
Speaker 1: the American Dream better than most white Americans are capable
Speaker 1: of doing, because he was laying claim to that dream
Speaker 1: as a fellow American. And Tana hasse Coat says, no,
Speaker 1: his writing is organized around the principle that that is
Speaker 1: white privilege and that America is a white supremacist nation
Speaker 1: in which black people have no place. I don't know
Speaker 1: how the ku Klux Klan should not applaud every word
Speaker 1: that is uttered by Tanahs Coats. And that's the culture
Speaker 1: that you lead to out of this social grievance notion.
Speaker 1: Well that should put this podcast on the map. That
Speaker 1: a little screed right there. Well, yeah, yeah, I tell
Speaker 1: you what. Let's get together again and go further down
Speaker 1: that line, because I think it's an important one. So
Speaker 1: I got after I read his book, I got so
Speaker 1: incensed I started writing a response to it, which is
Speaker 1: now ninety pages long. And I have no idea what
Speaker 1: to do with this. Give it to me. I'll set
Speaker 1: it to music. I'll make it a rock. You'll do
Speaker 1: it like a Hamilton's sort of thing. Yeah, exactly, exactly awesome.
Speaker 1: Come up with some dances, send off for send up
Speaker 1: for ideas of rolling out Already, you can't just use
Speaker 1: the same melody. So I got a question for you,
Speaker 1: and if you don't want to answer it, you can,
Speaker 1: or we can even edit it of the podcast. But um,
Speaker 1: I've wondered about this for a while from a libertarian
Speaker 1: survival of Western civilization sort of thing, with demographics being
Speaker 1: so important. Well, first of all, are you mostly an
Speaker 1: optimist are mostly a pessimist on the future? Do you
Speaker 1: think for the good of the world. I'm an optimist
Speaker 1: in the long run and the pessimist in the short run.
Speaker 1: I think it's going to get worse before it gets better,
Speaker 1: and then I think it's gonna go off better. One
Speaker 1: of the reasons I think it's gonna get worse and
Speaker 1: stay bad we're headed toward in another dark ages is
Speaker 1: the idea that, um, well, it's not an idea, it's
Speaker 1: just a fact. Developed affluent countries stop having kids. They
Speaker 1: just do for some reason. And it's happening all across
Speaker 1: the Western society. You as a committed and developed Eastern society.
Speaker 1: And I would never tell anybody who doesn't have kids
Speaker 1: that they ought to have kids, or that it's a
Speaker 1: good idea. Trust me, you don't want to have kids
Speaker 1: unless you really really want to have kids, because it
Speaker 1: is your you mean, it's just you know, I'm glad
Speaker 1: I have kids, but it is not something you get
Speaker 1: into lightly. You know, I think I'll get a parakeet.
Speaker 1: It's not like that. But you're committed done not having kids.
Speaker 1: What do we do? What does society do to try
Speaker 1: to get people for that believe in capitalism and freedom
Speaker 1: and education to start having more kids, because currently in
Speaker 1: America were below the two point one live birds per
Speaker 1: couple to to keep society going. And they're doing it
Speaker 1: all over Europe. That a lot of your European countries
Speaker 1: have started these government programs to convince people to have kids.
Speaker 1: It's not working and it shouldn't work. What what do
Speaker 1: you do about that? Well, I'll begin that with you
Speaker 1: know you like my quoting so much. I've got a
Speaker 1: quote from you for you from Francis Bacon, who who
Speaker 1: writes he that has a wife and children has given
Speaker 1: hostages to fortune, for they are impediments to great enterprises,
Speaker 1: either a virtue or mischief. Certainly the best works and
Speaker 1: of the greatest merit for the public have proceeded from
Speaker 1: the unmarried or childless men, who both in affection and means,
Speaker 1: have married and endowed the public. So you see, I'm married,
Speaker 1: and I've married and endowed the public. Wells the only
Speaker 1: Bacon I'm interested in sizzling in a pen you childless pastor,
Speaker 1: and you and you have and and that's fine. But
Speaker 1: in general, it's just a fact that that capitalist democracies
Speaker 1: are being replaced by people coming in from other countries
Speaker 1: that don't believe in that sort of thing, and they're
Speaker 1: and they're just not having children. I don't know, since
Speaker 1: you know, I'm I'm reminded of another quote from Walter Williams,
Speaker 1: who says, what do I care for future generations? What
Speaker 1: have they ever done for me? I'm I'm not going
Speaker 1: to be around to worry about that, so I'm fine
Speaker 1: with that. I I just think that my resources are
Speaker 1: better best put in this direction rather than another direction.
Speaker 1: And other people have other choices, and that's fine. And
Speaker 1: my children are are the ideas, and I hope that
Speaker 1: other people's biological children will take up those ideas and
Speaker 1: make the world a better place and always there for
Speaker 1: them to do it. And and if they're not going
Speaker 1: to do it, then it doesn't matter, you know, one
Speaker 1: way or the other, whether whether there are more of
Speaker 1: these kids or more of those kids. Well, to paraphrase
Speaker 1: the great English philosopher Graham Nash, who's you know, if
Speaker 1: you're not having children, don't teach your children, well, teach
Speaker 1: your immigrants, well, teach your you know, third worlder's, your
Speaker 1: your Africans, your Central Americans, your Mexican folks, whatever, we
Speaker 1: need to aggressively and enthusiastically express the things that we've
Speaker 1: been chatting about. I think that's what's happening in Britain
Speaker 1: and France, and no, I think they're they're they've they've
Speaker 1: fallen into the cult of self loathing and multiculturalism to
Speaker 1: the point that they're afraid to defend that which is
Speaker 1: clearly not only good but great about Western civilization, which
Speaker 1: is a bizarre sort of neurosis to me. But there's
Speaker 1: a route, there's a there's a basis for optimism in that,
Speaker 1: and that is that the immigrants who are fleeing those
Speaker 1: oppressive societies, they already understand freedom a heck of a
Speaker 1: lot better than a good deal of natural born Americans,
Speaker 1: no doubt about that. And the societies that that have
Speaker 1: the self loathing and xenophilia, as like to put it,
Speaker 1: those societies they're the ones. They're the wealthy, upper class
Speaker 1: folks who aren't having kids, so they won't pass on
Speaker 1: those that mental infection to the next generation. So you know,
Speaker 1: there's I think it's impossible to predict. This is one
Speaker 1: of those things that falls into the realm of you know,
Speaker 1: the butterfly flaps its wings in Central Park and you
Speaker 1: have a hurricane next year. I it's impossible to predict
Speaker 1: what's going to result from these connections of people from
Speaker 1: different civilizations and cultures. And I honestly don't know, And
Speaker 1: I don't think that it's necessarily the case that a
Speaker 1: free society will go to being an unfree society for
Speaker 1: those demographic reasons. Well, and I hope yeah. And you know,
Speaker 1: probably a week after recording this podcast, there will be
Speaker 1: a nuclear holocaust or some sort of you know, microbe
Speaker 1: that wipes out three quarters of the planet, and this
Speaker 1: discussion will be rendered ridiculous because, as a tim points out,
Speaker 1: you just never which way these things are going to go.
Speaker 1: But I'm still enthused about trying to teach folks what
Speaker 1: what counts and what yields a happy society, and that
Speaker 1: is ironically, you know, stimulating happy individuals and on that.
Speaker 1: You know, that's that puts us in a in a
Speaker 1: good point though, and that is that one of the
Speaker 1: things that we advocates of freedom find to be a
Speaker 1: handicap when we talk to the public is that we
Speaker 1: can't point to any specific outcome of freedom. We can't
Speaker 1: say freedom will lead you to X. All we can
Speaker 1: say is that freedom gives you the ability to make
Speaker 1: a future a better future, if you choose to put
Speaker 1: yourself to it, and so that whereas the welfare state
Speaker 1: is or the communists or the socialists, he'll say, if
Speaker 1: you'd go my way, we will lead to X, and
Speaker 1: it's always a lie, but he can always point to something,
Speaker 1: even if it is just a lie, whereas we don't
Speaker 1: lie like that, And so we can't say no, freedom
Speaker 1: is not going to solve your problems for you. It's
Speaker 1: not gonna necessarily feed the hungry or in clothe the naked,
Speaker 1: although freedom tends to do that better than any other society,
Speaker 1: but we can't tell you for certain what the result
Speaker 1: of them is going to be. Instead, it's the open
Speaker 1: ended opportunity. It's the ability to build your own life,
Speaker 1: which a lot of people have a hard time picturing
Speaker 1: in their minds, and so they go for the lie instead,
Speaker 1: they go for X that's offered to them because it
Speaker 1: looks real, and yet it turns out to be a lot.
Speaker 1: It's interesting that that idea of you can be what
Speaker 1: you want to be, you know, with your your efforts
Speaker 1: and talents, is so exciting for some people and so
Speaker 1: frightening for others, depending on who you are, how you're built,
Speaker 1: or what you've learned. I guess well, it's frightening for
Speaker 1: me too. It's all right for anybody who thinks about
Speaker 1: it at all. It really is, and it and it
Speaker 1: ought to be. That's what stimulates you to make the
Speaker 1: right decisions as best you can, and to avoid the
Speaker 1: wrong decisions. It's when making wrong decisions is no longer
Speaker 1: a fearful prospect, then you really should be afraid, because
Speaker 1: then you're gonna make wrong decisions more so. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a fearful prospect, the idea of free society. But we
Speaker 1: know from the blasted civilizations of the past, of the
Speaker 1: of the desolate killing fields of the Soviet Union and
Speaker 1: Nazi Germany, and the horrible stillness of oppression in Iran
Speaker 1: and China, we know what the lack of freedom leads to.
Speaker 1: So that freedom scary. A couple of bad sports bets
Speaker 1: and I could be eating dog food. Is an old person.
Speaker 1: There's no doubt about it. Now you get used to it.
Speaker 1: Tim Sander for Vice President for Litigation at the Goldwater Institute.
Speaker 1: Tim big fun, great to talk to you. Let's do
Speaker 1: it again. Yeah, it'd be great. Thanks, guys. Ever tell
Speaker 1: you about the time I ate kibbles and bits at
Speaker 1: a party? Yes? I made people laugh. Yes, you have
Speaker 1: anything for the bid? Anything for the bit? Anyway? Did
Speaker 1: I did I ever tell you about the time I
Speaker 1: ate spaghettios? I would, I thought to myself. When I
Speaker 1: was a kid, I loved spaghettios and I was at
Speaker 1: the grocery store, so I bought a ken of it
Speaker 1: and I and I took it home and oh god,
Speaker 1: that stuff is disgusting. Oh it's horrifying. It is you
Speaker 1: can't choke it down. And so that that's the big
Speaker 1: Vidio's phenomenon. So that now, when I watched shows from
Speaker 1: the eighties, like I watched night Rider and and I
Speaker 1: love this show as a kid, and I tried to
Speaker 1: watch it, I've had that happen. I've had that happen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you watch it and think this is embarrassing. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: if you had kids, don't feed them spahettios. Thank you, Tim,
Speaker 1: Thank you jug Lar