1 00:00:00,320 --> 00:00:04,040 I think it was Julian Assange saying how the thing that 2 00:00:04,040 --> 00:00:07,720 really, really affected him in the development of his political 3 00:00:07,720 --> 00:00:12,560 thought was seeing the massive, massive global protests against 4 00:00:12,560 --> 00:00:17,600 any war in Iraq in 2003. And it didn't make the slightest 5 00:00:17,600 --> 00:00:21,480 bit of difference. Nothing that people did mattered 6 00:00:21,480 --> 00:00:23,440 at all. It did not stop. 7 00:00:23,440 --> 00:00:27,280 This determined few that were absolutely determined to wreak 8 00:00:27,280 --> 00:00:30,090 havoc, chaos, death, and destruction everywhere. 9 00:00:30,490 --> 00:00:33,890 And you would think again if these people, as you say, hadn't 10 00:00:33,890 --> 00:00:37,450 been given this special perch and we hadn't been propagandized 11 00:00:37,450 --> 00:00:39,450 to think of these people as being special. 12 00:00:39,730 --> 00:00:42,290 Like they have magical powers now because they collected a 13 00:00:42,290 --> 00:00:44,810 certain number of votes, and that gives them magical powers 14 00:00:44,810 --> 00:00:46,690 to do things the rest of us cannot do. 15 00:00:47,090 --> 00:00:50,330 If we didn't have that, these people would be in prison 16 00:00:50,330 --> 00:00:52,650 somewhere. Or at the very least, at the 17 00:00:52,650 --> 00:00:56,010 very least, everywhere they went they would be jeered. 18 00:00:56,340 --> 00:00:59,060 They would find it impossible to function in normal society. 19 00:00:59,220 --> 00:01:02,580 But to this day, they're honored and welcomed in all elite 20 00:01:02,580 --> 00:01:04,300 circles. I mean, that is a bizarre 21 00:01:04,300 --> 00:01:07,220 situation. Your World War One example is so 22 00:01:07,220 --> 00:01:10,020 important cuz the guy George Creel, who was head of the 23 00:01:10,260 --> 00:01:13,780 Public information Campaign, appointed by Woodrow Wilson to 24 00:01:13,780 --> 00:01:17,180 get people on board with this, talks about how in his book is 25 00:01:17,180 --> 00:01:21,820 titled How We Advertised America, How he had 756,000 26 00:01:21,820 --> 00:01:25,140 pamphlets published to make sure everyone knew to register for 27 00:01:25,140 --> 00:01:28,860 the draft. 10s of thousands of speakers on street corners 28 00:01:28,860 --> 00:01:32,420 making the case for why the Germans are absolutely terrible 29 00:01:32,420 --> 00:01:36,380 and we got to take on Kaiser Wilhelm, cuz I mean taking down 30 00:01:36,380 --> 00:01:39,300 Wilhelm, you just take him down and then no one worse could take 31 00:01:39,300 --> 00:01:41,380 his place. I can't imagine anyone worse 32 00:01:41,380 --> 00:01:43,700 than Czar Nicholas ever controlling Russia. 33 00:01:43,860 --> 00:01:47,660 So yeah, let's make sure to get on board with this war. 34 00:01:47,660 --> 00:01:50,420 Arthur Ponsonby wrote a book in 1928. 35 00:01:50,760 --> 00:01:53,760 After the First World War and said, how is it that all of 36 00:01:53,760 --> 00:01:56,760 these countries constantly lied explicitly? 37 00:01:56,880 --> 00:01:59,800 There were babies on bayonets in Belgium, there were crucified 38 00:01:59,800 --> 00:02:02,600 Canadians, there were mutilated nurses everywhere. 39 00:02:02,880 --> 00:02:04,440 And then there was nothing to back this up. 40 00:02:04,440 --> 00:02:08,479 And Ponce and B's thesis is more or less that in order to get the 41 00:02:08,479 --> 00:02:12,640 population to be willing to get the limbs of their songs blown 42 00:02:12,640 --> 00:02:16,600 off and devastate 10s of thousands of cities, you almost 43 00:02:16,600 --> 00:02:19,730 have to lie, you have to say. Putin's going to take over 44 00:02:19,730 --> 00:02:22,490 Ukraine, then Eastern Europe, then Western Europe, then South 45 00:02:22,490 --> 00:02:26,290 America, then Mexico, and then Putin's coming to America. 46 00:02:26,290 --> 00:02:31,210 It has to be so sensational in order to arouse the public into 47 00:02:31,250 --> 00:02:36,370 justifying both the huge sacrifice in life, limb and the 48 00:02:36,370 --> 00:02:39,010 monetary cost. And you have to constantly 49 00:02:39,010 --> 00:02:41,490 vilify. The opposition has been totally 50 00:02:41,490 --> 00:02:43,370 deluded. You can't talk to Putin. 51 00:02:43,490 --> 00:02:46,130 See, we could have a formal alliance with Joseph Stalin. 52 00:02:46,490 --> 00:02:49,690 But Putin is a bad guy. We can't talk to President Xi of 53 00:02:49,690 --> 00:02:51,130 China. He's crazy. 54 00:02:51,410 --> 00:02:54,730 But Nixon and Kissinger can go make friends with Chairman Mao 55 00:02:54,850 --> 00:02:59,050 after China explodes a nuclear bomb in 1964, proving their 56 00:02:59,050 --> 00:03:03,010 capabilities in every sense. They don't have the incentive to 57 00:03:03,010 --> 00:03:06,290 make friends with people who they obviously easily could make 58 00:03:06,290 --> 00:03:07,850 friends with. Not to mention they were friends 59 00:03:07,850 --> 00:03:10,330 with Saddam Rumsfeld shaking hands with him. 60 00:03:10,770 --> 00:03:14,350 And that's why puns in these. Thesis is so important to know 61 00:03:14,350 --> 00:03:18,550 that that's why all of these people who are unrelated in all 62 00:03:18,550 --> 00:03:21,710 of these countries for so many years have engaged in wartime 63 00:03:21,710 --> 00:03:24,270 deception, because it's almost a requirement. 64 00:03:24,270 --> 00:03:27,150 The truth about Ukraine, if we didn't go to war and we didn't 65 00:03:27,150 --> 00:03:30,390 take on Poland, the guy on the throne would be someone like 66 00:03:30,390 --> 00:03:33,110 Viktor Yanukovych. Or we could fight a huge, 67 00:03:33,110 --> 00:03:36,110 massive, bloody, deadly war and the guy on the throne could be 68 00:03:36,110 --> 00:03:38,190 Vladimire Zielinski, who recently said. 69 00:03:38,610 --> 00:03:40,290 That we're not sure if we're going to be able to have 70 00:03:40,290 --> 00:03:43,010 presidential elections in a time of war, because that's not 71 00:03:43,010 --> 00:03:44,570 consistent with our Constitution. 72 00:03:44,810 --> 00:03:48,690 Conscripting men by the 1,000,000 confiscating property 73 00:03:48,690 --> 00:03:52,050 from the Orthodox Church outlawed 11 political parties. 74 00:03:52,210 --> 00:03:55,570 And this is NATO's guy who's going to defend democracy. 75 00:03:55,570 --> 00:03:59,330 So that is Ponce and B's reason for why we actually see all 76 00:03:59,330 --> 00:04:01,370 this. For some reason, I have this 77 00:04:01,370 --> 00:04:04,730 sense that he's unpopular among historians. 78 00:04:05,090 --> 00:04:07,130 I could be wrong about that, but. 79 00:04:07,370 --> 00:04:09,930 Or maybe maybe not among historians but among the 80 00:04:09,930 --> 00:04:13,410 fashionable people who are knowledgeable about who he is. 81 00:04:13,690 --> 00:04:16,649 But if he is, it's only because he's a truth teller. 82 00:04:17,050 --> 00:04:18,690 It's only because he's a truth teller. 83 00:04:19,050 --> 00:04:22,370 The falsehoods that are told in wartime, occasionally a few of 84 00:04:22,370 --> 00:04:25,290 them come to light and make it into the textbooks. 85 00:04:25,610 --> 00:04:29,890 So we know something about what happened in Vietnam, which seems 86 00:04:29,890 --> 00:04:33,770 to be almost the only foreign policy adventure that bothers 87 00:04:34,050 --> 00:04:36,490 left liberal historians. That's the only one that really 88 00:04:36,490 --> 00:04:38,850 they bother to dig all that deeply into. 89 00:04:38,850 --> 00:04:41,490 The rest of it, I don't know. For whatever reason, it just 90 00:04:41,490 --> 00:04:43,850 doesn't keep them up at night. I was wondered about that. 91 00:04:43,850 --> 00:04:47,570 What made Vietnam so unique? I mean, I suppose part of it is 92 00:04:48,130 --> 00:04:50,730 that the draft was in place at the time and a lot of people did 93 00:04:50,730 --> 00:04:52,970 not want to go. And after Nixon got rid of the 94 00:04:52,970 --> 00:04:55,930 draft, the antiwar protests basically dried up. 95 00:04:56,250 --> 00:04:59,570 And so I think a lot of people's opinions about that war were 96 00:04:59,570 --> 00:05:02,330 tied up with their quite legitimate fears of being 97 00:05:02,650 --> 00:05:05,500 conscripted into it. But The thing is, there's more 98 00:05:05,500 --> 00:05:09,580 to the moral enormities of war than the chance you might be 99 00:05:09,580 --> 00:05:11,460 conscripted into it. There's also all the people who 100 00:05:11,460 --> 00:05:13,060 die. Exactly. 101 00:05:13,060 --> 00:05:15,140 Yeah. And from my grandmother's 102 00:05:15,140 --> 00:05:18,460 telling of this, she was completely shocked to see on her 103 00:05:18,460 --> 00:05:21,340 television the actual atrocities of war. 104 00:05:21,340 --> 00:05:23,780 You think, gosh, there's probably some fighting, but 105 00:05:23,780 --> 00:05:26,980 they're also negotiating on the sidelines and well, we can't 106 00:05:26,980 --> 00:05:30,500 really let this one just end, cuz then the Soviets will take 107 00:05:30,500 --> 00:05:33,620 over Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and then they'll take over America. 108 00:05:33,880 --> 00:05:38,120 Once the costs are actually real to you and you actually see not 109 00:05:38,120 --> 00:05:41,800 just, well, there's some drone campaign in Afghanistan or Iraq. 110 00:05:41,800 --> 00:05:45,720 Once you see the Chelsea Manning videos of innocent civilians 111 00:05:45,720 --> 00:05:48,040 getting murdered, then it's actually real to you. 112 00:05:48,280 --> 00:05:51,840 Just like they will say, well, few million people died in the 113 00:05:51,840 --> 00:05:53,560 Second World War, but we had to do it. 114 00:05:53,800 --> 00:05:57,760 But watching Tony Tempo gets suffocated to death by Dallas 115 00:05:57,760 --> 00:06:00,080 police officers while he's begging for his life. 116 00:06:00,440 --> 00:06:03,880 After he called the police that wakes people up, the Eric Garner 117 00:06:04,040 --> 00:06:08,120 situation really woke people up to this is the life of a 118 00:06:08,120 --> 00:06:10,280 peaceful person. You just had Maj. 119 00:06:10,280 --> 00:06:15,040 Torre get arrested on your stream the other day and we can 120 00:06:15,080 --> 00:06:17,920 actually see a peaceful person getting aggressed against and 121 00:06:17,920 --> 00:06:22,360 that makes it so much more real to us then all of these abstract 122 00:06:22,360 --> 00:06:24,440 figures. But it's still important to know 123 00:06:24,600 --> 00:06:28,080 that the wars are still empirically based on lies. 124 00:06:28,760 --> 00:06:32,490 Right now, I sent out a note to everybody in my School of life 125 00:06:32,490 --> 00:06:35,890 program and tell them what happened when I had Mahjon and 126 00:06:35,890 --> 00:06:39,530 all of a sudden we lost the feed and we had seen that he was 127 00:06:39,530 --> 00:06:41,610 being accosted. But we could also see because 128 00:06:41,610 --> 00:06:44,130 we've been watching the video, he wasn't doing anything wrong. 129 00:06:44,130 --> 00:06:48,130 And I'm quite sure they did not count on who he was talking to. 130 00:06:49,050 --> 00:06:51,930 And yeah, the running video and how many people were 131 00:06:52,050 --> 00:06:56,090 eyewitnesses and everything. But anyway, the world we live in 132 00:06:56,090 --> 00:07:00,980 is crazy, and you and I have at least some of the answers and 133 00:07:01,180 --> 00:07:03,580 nobody wants them. Is the same thing open? 134 00:07:03,580 --> 00:07:06,420 He really seems to water. If I could just end on a white 135 00:07:06,420 --> 00:07:09,220 pill. Kaiser Wilhelm wrote the Kaiser 136 00:07:09,260 --> 00:07:12,380 memoirs and says, look, we lost this thing because of 137 00:07:12,380 --> 00:07:15,460 propaganda, the British. Their tanks were good, but the 138 00:07:15,460 --> 00:07:17,820 propaganda machine, that is really what killed us. 139 00:07:17,820 --> 00:07:21,820 So I was on the lookout for who our best propagandists can be 140 00:07:22,140 --> 00:07:24,980 and I came across an article from The Independent by Skyler 141 00:07:24,980 --> 00:07:27,980 Baker Jordan, she says. I went to a right wing 142 00:07:27,980 --> 00:07:30,100 libertarian conference as a socialist. 143 00:07:30,260 --> 00:07:34,140 I was pleasantly surprised by what I found, she says, quoting 144 00:07:34,140 --> 00:07:36,620 Dave Smith. We are libertarians because we 145 00:07:36,620 --> 00:07:39,860 love liberty and we hate injustice, comedian Dave Smith 146 00:07:39,860 --> 00:07:41,940 said in remarks on the opening night. 147 00:07:42,380 --> 00:07:45,660 The reason we are libertarians is because governments destroy 148 00:07:45,660 --> 00:07:48,420 innocent people's lives and we hate that. 149 00:07:48,620 --> 00:07:52,020 Smith went on to speak against the Patriot Act and imperialist 150 00:07:52,020 --> 00:07:54,820 wars such as Iraq and Afghanistan and in favor of 151 00:07:54,820 --> 00:07:58,060 civil liberties, the exact issues which motivated me to get 152 00:07:58,060 --> 00:08:01,540 involved in left-leaning politics in the early 2000s. 153 00:08:01,820 --> 00:08:04,140 Dave Smith, the comedian who headlined night one of the 154 00:08:04,140 --> 00:08:08,020 conference, pointed out that it was we progressives who oppose 155 00:08:08,020 --> 00:08:09,740 the Bush era wars and Patriot Act. 156 00:08:10,020 --> 00:08:12,600 I myself. Was dismayed when liberals on 157 00:08:12,600 --> 00:08:16,440 Twitter demanded January 6th insurrection of suspects be 158 00:08:16,440 --> 00:08:19,440 added to the No Fly List. I'm old enough to remember when 159 00:08:19,440 --> 00:08:22,520 the left opposed the No Fly List, and I still do. 160 00:08:22,720 --> 00:08:26,360 Indeed, my principles have not changed much since 2002. 161 00:08:26,520 --> 00:08:30,480 American politics, however, has. So I think the best thing we can 162 00:08:30,480 --> 00:08:35,120 do is find our best propagandist like Thomas Soul says culture is 163 00:08:35,120 --> 00:08:37,919 changed by people who are willing to take a big risk. 164 00:08:38,240 --> 00:08:41,090 Be courageous. And in a way that makes you sort 165 00:08:41,090 --> 00:08:43,130 of envy them and make them very likable. 166 00:08:43,409 --> 00:08:46,050 Get them in front of the masses and then people will say, hey, 167 00:08:46,250 --> 00:08:49,730 it's OK to be a libertarian. That's why I was cool with being 168 00:08:49,730 --> 00:08:54,850 a libertarian after I saw OBGYN, Ron Paul, Vietnam Veteran say 169 00:08:54,850 --> 00:08:57,370 things in this very nice way. And it wasn't just someone 170 00:08:57,610 --> 00:09:02,330 online or some hippie from Woodstock saying or is terrible 171 00:09:02,330 --> 00:09:04,770 and it's all about money. So finding our best 172 00:09:04,770 --> 00:09:07,370 propagandist. I think might be our best 173 00:09:07,370 --> 00:09:09,570 strategy and he does well on Rogan every time. 174 00:09:10,210 --> 00:09:13,690 Well, I agree with you on Dave's extremely strong. 175 00:09:14,050 --> 00:09:18,170 Dave is extremely effective I think and it's interesting the 176 00:09:18,170 --> 00:09:22,610 sliver of people in what we might broadly consider our 177 00:09:22,610 --> 00:09:23,970 movement who are critical of him. 178 00:09:24,250 --> 00:09:27,570 Not one of them could do 100th of what he does like, not one of 179 00:09:27,570 --> 00:09:32,010 them is a better communicator, is able to attract that big of 180 00:09:32,010 --> 00:09:33,450 an audience, not one of these people. 181 00:09:33,450 --> 00:09:37,190 So anyway, let's end by promoting because people should 182 00:09:37,190 --> 00:09:40,630 be reading you because you are a great young up and Comer. 183 00:09:40,630 --> 00:09:42,350 I hope you don't think that is patronizing. 184 00:09:42,350 --> 00:09:44,710 It's the truth. I mean, you are beyond it, up 185 00:09:44,710 --> 00:09:45,990 and Comer. You're already here. 186 00:09:46,230 --> 00:09:49,710 You've arrived through your hard work and your effectiveness as a 187 00:09:49,710 --> 00:09:51,710 communicator. Tell us briefly about the 188 00:09:51,710 --> 00:09:54,910 Volunteerist Handbook, which I will link to at thomas.com slash 189 00:09:54,910 --> 00:09:58,150 2356. The Volunteer First Hand Book is 190 00:09:58,230 --> 00:10:01,630 a collection of 50 articles excerpts from books. 191 00:10:02,010 --> 00:10:04,970 The things that took me from being a progressive to being a 192 00:10:04,970 --> 00:10:09,250 libertarian, the wide variety of authors is, I think, what makes 193 00:10:09,250 --> 00:10:11,570 it so important. You have people from the right, 194 00:10:11,570 --> 00:10:15,690 such as Joe Sobran making the case in The Reluctant Anarchist 195 00:10:15,930 --> 00:10:19,530 for why things like the Myth of the Rule of Law are things that 196 00:10:19,530 --> 00:10:21,490 pulled him away from being a statist. 197 00:10:21,730 --> 00:10:24,730 And we have people on the left, left, libertarians like Sheldon 198 00:10:24,730 --> 00:10:28,130 Richmond, making the case that libertarianism far from being 199 00:10:28,130 --> 00:10:31,180 every man for himself. Is actually more accurately 200 00:10:31,180 --> 00:10:35,780 defined as social cooperation between a wide, interconnected 201 00:10:35,780 --> 00:10:39,020 web of people in society. Even though I'm sitting in this 202 00:10:39,020 --> 00:10:41,740 room alone, I'm using a microphone someone else made 203 00:10:41,940 --> 00:10:45,140 Internet, someone else gave me a house that someone else built. 204 00:10:45,220 --> 00:10:47,660 Air conditioning that other people built were constantly 205 00:10:47,660 --> 00:10:51,100 socially cooperating, and we should see that as a great 206 00:10:51,100 --> 00:10:54,580 benefit as opposed to cooperating where one group has 207 00:10:54,580 --> 00:10:58,010 the right to coerce another. So those are the things that 208 00:10:58,010 --> 00:11:01,250 really got to the heart of what changed my mind about the world. 209 00:11:01,530 --> 00:11:06,570 It's 318 pages, but you can find a summary of the book in the two 210 00:11:06,570 --> 00:11:09,810 introduction pages and the two afterword pages. 211 00:11:09,810 --> 00:11:13,650 Cause I know that's long and you can get it on Amazon or Barnes 212 00:11:13,650 --> 00:11:15,690 and Noble. Or, if you don't trust me that 213 00:11:15,690 --> 00:11:19,170 it's going to be good, go to libertarianinstitute.org and get 214 00:11:19,170 --> 00:11:20,650 yourself a free PDF.